Today's review is 55 Smoothie IPA by Farnham Ale & Lager out of Quebec. I've sampled Farnham's beers a decent amount of times over the years but nothing wowed me at all, most of the beers were 100% according to style but just.. never excited me, but a Smoothie IPA, I'll sure try that.
Aroma: The first thing I get from this beer is surprisingly mint for some reason. Once I let it warm up a bit, I get more of tropical presence to it with notes of pineapple, guava, orange peel and lemon/lime. It has a herbal hop presence to it, a touch of pine, a tad vegetal, and a hint of soapiness at the end. Yeah, so far I'd say that this is a bit smoothie-ish but I don't really get any creaminess to it.
Taste: The first thing I get from this beer for some reason is black pepper - I don't know why but that's exactly what I taste, but that being said, I could be tasting that from the grapefruity notes from the hops used. The beer is a tad sweet with notes of pineapple, orange peel and lemon but not juicy sweet in any way as it's more bitter than sweet - good deal of bitter piney hops, some floral notes, and a tad bit of vegetal notes to it. The beer is pretty dry on the palate while the aftertaste.. pepper.
Overall Thoughts: Surprisingly better than some New England-style IPAs I've had in the past year but I'd like to see more sweetness to this as a peppery-taste seems to be what I get more than most of the other flavours. Quite a bit more bitter than most beers of this style but definitely has a bit of a pineapple/orange peel sweetness to it. Would I drink this again? Actually, I would, but it wouldn't be my first choice. It appears that I haven't had a single Farnham beer in over four years and apparently I've only reviewed one of their beers once, their 64 IPA Américaine.. that review feels like it was only two years ago! Santé et merci Nicolas!
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