Humpday Simplicity

Well in somewhat typical Hump Day fashion, today sucked. I have no garage, and those of us in Mid Michigan had some fun weather last night. At 10 PM it was 45 degrees and thundershowering, by midnight it had fallen to 20 degrees and when I checked the temp first thing in the morning, it was 6. So our car was frozen shut. Great. So I walked to work, thank god it's only 5 blocks! The rest of the day was filled with pointless meetings, stupid clients, and micro-managing bureaucratic bullshit preventing me from being able to do my job. Pretty typical, eh?

So when I got home, the Gal and I decided it would be a simple night, no cooking. So we ordered up a nice simple pizza: barbecue pork. And I couldn't think of an better beer to go with my pizza than a nice simple IPA, tonight it's Mad Hatter from New Holland Brewing Company.


I'm sure some of you have had this, it's not rare by any means. What it is, is Good. Just a plain simple IPA, nothing fancy, but damned tasty and spot on for the style. I'm a big fan of Mad Hatter. it's pretty common in my fridge, especially in the summer.

It's a clear golden-amber brew with a sticky and sturdy two-finger thick off white head. This beer is clearly being filtered now, as it used to have plenty of sediment in the bottle that used to muck it up a bit, but now it's crystal clear. No complaints really, I don't mind the filtering for the most part, I just don't mind cloudy beer either. The head is marvelous, moderately rocky, leaves lots of lacing, and takes forever to get down to a film.

The aroma is all grapefruit rind and grass, strongly hoppy but not going to ruin your sense of smell for a week.

A light toasty and slightly sweet malt is overtaken by a rush of the same hops from the nose, all citrus peel and grass, joined by some herbal and floral notes, oregano almost and jasmine, that come in late as more of an aroma.

Not too much to say about the body, except for my only concern with filtering. The body doesn't seem to be *quite* as full as it did pre-filter. Oh well, not enough of a difference to put me off.

One of my three favorite IPAs this one is, and all from Michigan (Two-Hearted Ale and Crooked Tree are the other two in case anybody cares to know), this beer was the perfect beginning to the end of a previously crappy day.