• Mike Riedel

If you're an IPA lover, you likely belong to one of two camps: West Coast Style or New England Style. The West Coast styles are generally clear, more malty, with pronounced citrus and pine bitterness; the New England style tends to be cloudy with low bitterness and sweet tropical flavors. Our beers this week, however, don't care about the war between east and west. They're playing it neutral, and bringing the best of both worlds into your pint.

Desert Edge - The Haze Between: It pours a beautifully clear, deep golden-amber hue, topped with two fingers of creamy off-white head with fair retention. A short collar of lace is formed as the head recedes, and some lazy streaming bubbles are visible—very much a Desert Edge beer out of the gate. Pale grainy malt and just a touch of caramel sweetness supports big hoppy aromas of white grapefruit, Meyer lemon, tangerine and fresh grass.

Malts begin with some clean grainy and slightly sweet caramel notes, which serve their purpose to support resinous hops. Notes of grapefruit, tangerine, pine, dank hop oils, a bit of grassy/leafy whole cone hop, and a touch of melon/earthiness emerge Getting into the finish, the fruity parts subside, and this beer gets pithy and piney. The beer is medium to light in body, and isn't sticky, sweet, cloying, thick or syrupy by any stretch of the imagination. It's a clean, crisp base, but both the 5.0 percent ABV and the medium bitter punch lend the perception of weight, allowing this ale to be super chuggable. Not a chugger? Then it's not a problem. Great effervescence, and natural pithy, dry finish.

Verdict: This is the kind of the beer I wanted this session IPA to be. It's a really lovely brew, melding together classic old-school malt structure with old-school hops, and then both boiling the hell out of it for big bitter resins, while using modern hopping methods to coax out some more fragrant, fruity notes. It's just fantastic.

Uinta - Trop Nosh XXXperimental IPA: This is a hazy double-IPA that is nowhere near as turbid as some of the murky bombs you'll find out there. Instead, it's only slightly cloudy, to the extent that you can nearly read through it. Solid head production and retention. On the nose, it's difficult to tell where the hop expression ends and the orange begins—but in a good way. Very complementary notes of citrus and pineapple pair with peach and mango. It's quite fragrant, as the aromas were very prominent even as I poured the beer into my glass.

This one proves more bitter than most in the "hazy" crowd, but dialed back perhaps a touch from the Hop Nosh series. It also lacks some of the soft malt sweetness of Uinta's other IPAs, but this beer, while very good in its own right, isn't nearly as nuanced and delicious. There's a nice, slightly tangy sharpness from the natural-tasting orange notes, and lighter tropical and stone-fruit notes adding to the citrus-forward mix. It's supremely drinkable, given the 9.0 percent ABV, but it does drink much closer to a "hazy" IPA than it does a West Coast-style IPA.

Verdict: This is a delicious beer, and very refreshing despite the monster ABV. It's one of Uinta's easiest drinking Double IPAs, one that will likely please both sides of the aisle.

You'll find Uinta's Trop Nosh in 16-ounce cans, which should be making their way into DABS stores very soon. The Haze Between is only on draft at Desert Edge in Trolley Square. As always, cheers!