Lagunitas Brewing Co. -- New Dogtown Pale Ale

Lagunitas Brewing Co. was founded in 1993 in Lagunitas, California (an unincorporated area of Marin County just north of San Francisco).  Now their headquarters are in Petaluma which is in Sonoma County just north of the Bay Area.  In 20 years they have become the sixth best selling craft brewery in the U.S.  In the last decade they have had exponential growth.

New Dogtown Pale Ale states on the bottle: "This is not the original Pale Ale as brewed in far away 1993 in the back of the Old House of Richards Building in the West Main hamlet of Forest Knolls right next to little Lagunitas...It is way better.  Back then the beer tasted like broccoli and kerosene and the carbonation ate right through and drained your stomach into your gut..." 

Aren't we all glad there are choices for beer that do not taste like broccoli and kerosene.  This pale ale is hazy golden color, pours with a bit of a head when you're inpatient like me, minimal but slightly hoppy aroma.  It is lightly carbonated and is immediately bitter on the nose with a continuous bitter linger with a little bit of maltiness that comes up in the linger.  The complexity of the flavor is in the hoppy bitterness -- that's where you can pick up pine-y, grassy, floral hop flavors.  It is medium body and clocks in at 6.2% ABV. 

Overall, it is more like an IPA than Sierra Nevada Pale Ale because it is more hoppy and more bitter.  In fact, it is more bitter than most pale ales.  Not that being more bitter is a bad thing; it's just an observation.  I paired it with some pizza and that was awesome!  If you don't mind some hops or consider yourself more of a "hop-head" then this is an excellent pale ale.  Cheers!