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Founders All Day IPA - Grand Rapids, MI


PappyVanWise

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Another request from the field, and an excellent pairing to last week's Single-Wide I.P.A., we have Founders All Day IPA.

The All Day IPA is named because it is a session beer clocking in at a low 4.7%. Right now it's only available in bottles, but Founders is supposed to be be releasing cans later this summer. I had this a few weeks ago, and remember thinking it's pretty good for a cookout beer.

Founders has been one of my favorite breweries since the first bottle of their breakfast stout oh so many years ago. This is their newest "fully available" beer, and, as of May, has become their top seller. Although I do love their beers, I didn't know much about the brewery aside from them being Michigan-based. Here's some history on their name from a MLive.com:

The brewery's official corporate name is actually Canal Street Brewing Co., an homage to the area in Grand Rapids where several breweries were located in the 1800s. The brewery's original location was on Monroe Avenue, formerly known as Canal Street. "We were playing off of this whole throwback thing," said co-founder Mike Stevens. Early beer bottle labels featured a historic black-and-white photo of four local brewers sitting on a large wooden beer barrel. The word "Founders" appeared above the photo. "It literally stood for the founders, meaning the some of the original brewers of the beer movement in Grand Rapids," Stevens said. "Then everyone started calling us Founders because that's what was on the beer label." A customer offered to design a better label in exchange for some free beer and came up with the logo known today.

Looks like six pack bottles are widely available (reported sightings at Harris Teeter in Arlington), and should be about $10.

Special bonus if you attend Founders Fest this weekend, Don will waive your membership fees for 2014.

Enjoy,

Eric

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The first time I had an All Day IPA it was at a late spring vegetarian cook out. For some reason, it came across as way too bitter to enjoy with any of the food. I can't recall exactly what was on the menu, but it was some variation of grilled vegetables with baguettes. This weekend my wife cooked up some obscenely thick hamburgers topped with point reyes blue cheese, and this my friends, was a beer and food match for the ages. The fat from the burgers did a great job cutting the bitterness of the hops, resulting in the smooth tasting session beer I was hoping for. Blue cheese is a vice of mine, and I had never thought to pair with an IPA, but it also worked pretty well. I think salty cheeses in general would hold up to this well.

To be honest, the bitterness I remember from my first All Day IPA session wasn't here from the onset. The hops profile was more on the piney side again and away from the citrus ones, but with the low alcohol content, the pine wasn't overwhelming like in the higher alcohol IPAs. Looking at Beer Advocate, I might be mixing up pine and fresh cut grass...but neither are flavors I really look for.

Sorry HT didn't have it, but the Total Wine on W Broad Street had plenty. It's only 98 miles from Arlington, so hop on down, it's also right next to the newest Buz and Ned's.

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Just had this with some salmon for dinner. It was a good match. The flavor is remarkable given the ABV. I'm amazed what breweries are doing now to achieve pretty much a full flavor profile with the lower alcohol. Good to help stay awake (I'm a sleepy "drunk") and for the waistline as well.

Could not help to compare with the Boulevard IPA posted just before. The Founders had more pine and resin notes (i.e., bitter) while the Boulevard seemed more fruity. My personal taste favored the Boulevard, maybe because the fruit seems to smooth it out a bit.

Big fan of Founders......they have a great portfolio and this beer is another feather in their cap.

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This could very well be a fine representation of the style, and it could be I just don't care for the style. I'm usually a huge Founders fanboy but this beer didn't do it for me. My taste of it was like it was a "light" version of one of those over-the-top West coast IPA bitter bombs with little malt balance. If I'm going lighter with lower ABV, I'd rather have a good pilsner like Victory's Prima Pils or a clean pale ale like Blue Mountain's Full Nelson.

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I love this trend of session IPAs. I've been lukewarm on the recent two I've tried, though: All Day and Lagunitas' Day Time. Something about the balance of carbonation, hops, and malt seems unpleasantly off to me. Detractors say these session IPAs taste like "hop soda". I get what they're talking about with All Day, unfortunately. For me, 21st Amendment's Bitter American does a better job with low-alcohol and hoppy.

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I had two beers recently that better fit the notion of a deeply flavorful, hoppy beer that is sessionable. Bell's Smitten Rye which was a hoppy Ale with (obviously) rye, but with plenty of pale malt and I think even some wheat to balance it out. It had a light color and a wonderful smoothness to it. Easy to drink plenty of them, but still bursting with some delicious hopness and the great spicyness you get from rye (to me, the Rye IPA is the best thing to happen to IPAs).

The other--which I still have on tap at my house--is New Holland's White Hatter BPA. Generally, BPAs have done nothing for me. To much biscuity, yeasty flavor from the Belgian side that washes out whatever hop character is there. This one is not so. Bright yellow color with a thick, creamy head. Great floral aromas, crisp hop backbone, but with a delicate creaminess from the "B" part of the BPA.

They're both seasonal, so they may already be gone, but they were much better examples of seasonal IPAs than any seasonal IPAs I have actually had.

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I love this trend of session IPAs. I've been lukewarm on the recent two I've tried, though: All Day and Lagunitas' Day Time. Something about the balance of carbonation, hops, and malt seems unpleasantly off to me. Detractors say these session IPAs taste like "hop soda". I get what they're talking about with All Day, unfortunately. For me, 21st Amendment's Bitter American does a better job with low-alcohol and hoppy.

Very well stated, exactly how I feel.

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They're both seasonal, so they may already be gone, but they were much better examples of seasonal IPAs than any seasonal IPAs I have actually had.

I first tried the Smitten rye back in February time frame but I saw it in the cooler section of Ace last weekend. It may be like the conversation I overheard at Irish Whiskey Public House the other night about Oberon ("They call it a seasonal, but brew it 9 months out of the year..." - I don't know the veracity of the statement but it doesn't sound out of bounds).

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I love this trend of session IPAs.  I've been lukewarm on the recent two I've tried, though: All Day and Lagunitas' Day Time.  Something about the balance of carbonation, hops, and malt seems unpleasantly off to me.  Detractors say these session IPAs taste like "hop soda".  I get what they're talking about with All Day, unfortunately.  For me, 21st Amendment's Bitter American does a better job with low-alcohol and hoppy.

I don't know if this marks me as a heathen or anything, but I found that just pouring the Founders All Day fairly roughly into the glass tames that very pronounced soda-like carbonation and makes it much more drinkable.

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