Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

Yet another IPA from my local brewery Untied Brewing Company. This one is called Content is King. 

Aluminium can, 6.8% vol. IBU 25.

Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

In glass, it’s pale yellow, very cloudy with a thin yellow foam.

The nose is hoppy and very flowery : floral and herbal with even a sort of animal note as you would expect in wine. Then some mineral and grapefruit notes.

In mouth it’s very sparkly, very mild and round with sweetness well balanced with bitterness so none stands out (it’s neither sweet nor bitter). Fruity, some yellow fruits and citrus, mainly grapefruit, specially in the after mouth. A very juicy and fruity feel to it.

Some peaches, pears and yellow fruits in general in the middle mouth.

After several sips it also feels lemony in the after mouth in addition to the grapefruit.

Very different from the 2 others, Rays of Haze and File This, and from any other IPAs I have tried so far. 

More on the sweet and fruity side all in all. Very good.

Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company Content is King India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

Next up another IPA from my local brewery Untied Brewing Company. This one is called File This and contains lactose. 

Aluminium can, 6.8% vol. IBU 29.

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

In glass, it’s pale yellow and very cloudy, even opaque with a thin white foam on top.

The nose is very fruity and hoppy, citrus, lemon and grapefruit mainly, some flowers and a bit herbal.

In mouth it’s very fruity with yellow fruit, not bitter at all actually, almost a sweet feeling but not in the sugary sense. Yellow fruit and lemon mainly in mouth and the grapefruit I was smelling as a final note. The grapefruit comes in after mouth as a little refreshing after taste.

Excellent as well. So far my favorite is still the Rays of Haze, but this one comes juste after.

In mouth I don’t taste the flower notes I was smelling. Different from the Rays of Haze in the sense that it doesn’t feel like a white beer at all (no coriander notes). Well balanced and more lemon than the Rays of Haze and less bitter too,

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

I am comparing those two as they are 2 IPAs with the same vibe and feel in color and smell but they are different in mouth.

On their website Untied Brewing Company mentions this one contains lactose thus the sweetness, which is not sugary but more in a round creamy way.

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company File This India Pale Ale

 

Untied Brewing Company Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Next up finally some IPA from my local brewery Untied Brewing Company. This one is called Rays of Haze, a name that I absolutely love with the assonances that it contains (my poetic self at play here). It’s actually an Imperial IPA or double IPA. 

Aluminium can, 8.3% vol. IBU 40 and they call it their « liquid sunshine », which is really is in many ways.

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

In glass it is dense yellow and very cloudy with a nice medium yellow foam.

First impression when smelling the glass : a classic « white beer » Hoegaarden style, which is a compliment, I just love that style of beers.

The nose is hoppy, coriander and citrus (thus the « white beer » feeling). Extremely pleasant and fulfilling nose.

In mouth it feels really fresh and crisp, some bitterness but well balanced all in all. Taste confirms the nose : a classic excellent or an excellent classic « white beer ».

Some citrus, herbal and very floral (maybe the coriander), all being delicate and subtle, nothing is blasting here, which I prefer.

This is an excellent double IPA with a white beer style and feel to it, definitely (of my liking). Rays of Haze, the name only was giving a hint and that’s why I was eager to try it (in addition to the poetic part of that name). I was not disappointed at all, this beer is all that I was more or less expecting and my favorite of the 3 I have tasted so far, all of them excellent, this one even more !

I must say that this style of beers is more likely to be of my liking, white beer types are my favorites in general.

An after taste of cake, slightly, not sweet at all, more on the yeast and baking part of a cake. Herbal and floral with a hint of citrus notes also in the end. Some licorice in the after mouth and a very long after mouth.

This beer is very long in mouth. Excellent.

After tasting, I had it with my dinner of caramelized sweet potatoes and apples casserole.

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Rays of Haze Imperial India Pale Ale

Untied Brewing Company Pioneer Amber Ale

Untied Brewing Company Pioneer Amber Ale

Next up in my reviews of the Untied Brewing Company beers, is Pioneer Ale, an amber ale inspired by English ales, hopped with floral English hop varieties as they mention on their website. This one is an Extra Special and has a limited availability.

Aluminium can, 4.8% vol. IBU 30 and they describe it as strong bitter.

Untied Brewing Company Pioneer Amber Ale

Very dark golden light yellow-brownish color (thus the amber qualification). Very thin foam that disappears fast. A little blurry but mainly dark enough that we cannot see through. Not a blonde type but more a reddish almost what we call a « rousse » type in France. A little lighter in color that a real « rousse », thus amber.

Nose : hop and very flowery, a very pleasant nose actually.

Mouth : densely sparkling with a very regular feel in mouth, the bubbles that is, feel very regular.

Bitter, as they said it would be, but so well balanced that it doesn’t feel that bitter after swallowing. The bitterness doesn’t linger at all which is extremely pleasant when at the same time it feels very refreshing. Then some notes of cookies like sugar cookies, with a hint of malt and the bitter side of sugar caramel. (Not the buttery / creamy side of caramel at all).

Extremely well balanced and as excellent as the Take it Offline one in a totally different style of course (English style versus Belgian).

It ends with cookie, baking and cake notes : some freshly baked cookies plus some more ethereal flowery notes, wildflowers one would smell in the meadow.

Extremely enjoyable and at the same time very different from the Take it Offline, so customers have a choice according to their mood of the day.

Untied Brewing Company Take it Offline Saison Ale

Untied Brewing Company Take it Offline Saison Ale

First up in my reviews of the Untied Brewing Company beers, is Take it Offline, a Belgian farmhouse saison ale inspiration, as they describe it on their website.

Aluminum can, 6.3% vol. IBU 12

Untied Brewing Company Take it Offline Saison Ale

Mild golden yellow and cloudy, very fine bubbles and very thin foam that disappears quickly.

The nose is hoppy and very fruity, on the exotic fruit side.

In mouth it’s a bit bitter at first sip, even though the IBU is very low, but very round and balanced when swallowed. It’s an extremely pleasant experience to taste and drink that very beer.

It’s fulfilling — a mouth full when drinking it —a very complete beer, without being neither feeling strong nor heavy, it’s also very refreshing altogether.

Some yellow fruit (indistinctive for me, I cannot tell if it’s the exotic fruit that were present in the nose, but rather some yellow fruit in general).

Some nut or hazelnut in the end too, buttery or rather creamy also as a finale.

It was my first testing of my can line up I bought the other day at the brewery. An excellent first one thus an excellent first impression.

This beer is just gorgeous, actually on par with the Belgian ales it wants to emulate (and succeeds).

We don’t feel the 6.3% vol. of alcool, it feels « light », my daughter tried it and found it « light », meaning easy to drink. It’s not the case, it’s not « light » but it is indeed easy to drink. 

In one word : excellent !

Untied Brewing Company my can line up

Supporting local businesses : Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company in New Providence, NJ

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

I always like to favor local or small businesses when they provide good products. Furthermore when they combine local and small… and excellent quality.

I wrote 2 articles concerning an excellent New Jersey brewery I was introduced to back in March 2019, Magnify Brewing :  Introduction to the Magnify Brewing beers  and  Magnify Brewing Low Visibility Pale Ale .

After that first introduction I decided to continue my exploration of local (central or northern) New Jersey breweries or micro-breweries which are becoming so popular these days, with good reasons. I have done the same in the French Riviera when I visited my parents this past summer (and I do have a backlog of reviews and pictures, to come during this fall season hopefully).

This new discovery is located right at my door, not technically in my town but almost (in that specific area, the « border » is winding so it could have been), anyway 10 minutes from my home —roughly 5 miles when my own downtown is 3 miles away. One of my tai-chi students had mentioned it once we were talking about craft beers made by local and small breweries and of course it caught my interest, furthermore being so close to my home. This was just before the summer.

It took me a couple of months but I got there finally at the beginning of this month of October 2019 : to my own local brewery, Untied Brewing Company.

Their website : https://www.untiedbrewingco.com

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company : the cans

On the premise they mainly serve tap and fill up some growlers but they do have some various amounts of cans that they release for the customers to take home. Not all their beers will make it into a can and when they do it’s usually in small quantities for limited time so it’s better to grab them sooner than later. 

At the beginning of October, they had released a bunch of special or limited editions cans (in particular an Oktoberfest beer among others) so I figured it was the perfect time to scout the place.

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

Untied Brewing Company

I was not disappointed : the facility is nice, interesting to visit and their display for both the brewing tanks and the bar section is very photogenic. In addition the people working there are very kind and accommodating. I asked if I could take some photographs (with a real camera, not a phone) and they said « yes, absolutely » and let me take as many pictures as I wanted. So I walked around and took pictures to my heart’s content, filmed a little bit also before shopping : I ended up buying the whole series of their cans  — everything I knew I could enjoy, which meant all their canned beer line up except for the milkshake type ones and the ones with spices, both of which I don’t fancy at all. 

my can line-up from Untied Brewing Company for October

These coming weeks I am going to post reviews of those 6 beers. They continue to have all of those still on tap, at least for a while, even if they don’t have the cans anymore at the brewery. 

They also had an announcement of another can release for mid of October, date that I put on my calendar in order to go grab the cans while they are available.

Leinenkugel’s Grapefruit Shandy

Leinenkugel’s Grapefruit Shandy

Following my tasting of the Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy , someone in my tai-chi class mentioned there was a grapefruit version of their shandy type of drinks. As I enjoy a lot grapefruit juice and grapefruit in general, I had to give it a go and make a proper tasting of this.

According to the label  it’s a weiss beer again, brewed with honey with natural flavors. The alcohol content is 4.2% vol. 

Pale yellow and very cloudy like the lemon one. It has a blasting grapefruit scent that one can smell just when pouring it into the glass, without even putting one’s nose close to the glass, which worries me a bit.

Leinenkugel’s Grapefruit Shandy

Nose : citrus, smelling full blast of grapefruit, ruby type — obviously a flavored drink. It reminds me of the San Pellegrino grapefruit soda (the one with the actual fruit juice). It doesn’t smell like a beer but rather like those sodas with actual fruit juice.

The taste is less pronounced than the nose regarding grapefruit, even though pronounced, which I really prefer. We can actually also taste the beer behind the grapefruit flavor. It’s well balanced between the two. It also feels way sweeter than the lemon version and is leaning more towards the sweetness of an actual French shandy « panaché » (not in flavor, only in sugar — sweetness feeling).

Very pleasant and refreshing, actually I prefer it to the Summer Shandy (the lemon one). I think I will buy it again times to times as an alternative to making a true panaché French style and to vary things a bit, as a treat (not a beer per se but a treat).

Well done.

Leinenkugel’s Grapefruit Shandy