Tired Hands week is wrapping up and we have seen all kinds of things in the interim, oyster stouts, saisons, pale ales, so how do we close this one out? We go to the old hoppy wheelhouse and consult a draft only classic: NOW TOGETHER IN ONE CONVENIENT PACKAGE. Some naysayers hate on the hoppy saison genre and say that it betrays the musk and nuanced Belgian profile. Other hop heads feel that the base of a saison is too substantial and interferes with the hop oil experience. FUCK BOTH OF THOSE GUYS. Today we are going cones deep into some fertile soil with a straight up hoppy American Pale Ale.

EDIT TO MY PRIOR POST: I did not review this shit previously, I am a drunk pre-diabetic idiot. The cage match was between Singel Hop and Regular FARMHANDS.

Oh shit, picking all these juniper berries and then wiping petrulli oil on myself, hands be all hoppy.

Tired Hands Brewing Company
Pennsylvania, United States
American Pale Ale (APA) | 5.20% ABV

A: The beer pours with nice carbonation albeit very little lacing, a turbid deep orange and almost amber color. The beer has generous big bubbles and eschews the microfine carbonation that you might anticipate in a bottle conditioned beer. It kinda reminds me of a mix of pineapple and orange juice with the yellow and orange blend look to it.

The interplay between the resin and the citrus aspects of this beer shows some serious fucking hop team work.

S: Holy hell, if Entropic was the gentle APA brother who spends time in his room working on interpretive dance, this is the jock asshole hop brother who rolls in an IROC Camaro and socks nerds. This is incredibly resinous and hits the familiar APA zones of pine, lupulin, orange zest i.e. the white part, there is a Jamba Juice wheatgrass aspect to this and closes with a citrus tangelo REREREREREEEEMIXXXX on the backend. There is a ton of feels packed into the smell, if you know what I mean.

T: This imparts more of the citrus than I was expecting from the nose but carries itself confidently through the halls of lupus gaiety. You get a pineapple and tangerine sweetness at the front which fades into a deeper pinecone and dry finish with the oils leaving you both satisfied but wanting another sip because that sweet citrus opener is a hard act to follow. It’s like when AFI opened for Blink 182 in the late 90’s and you were all like “what, how did this. wait.”

At a certain point, taking a simple beer like a pale ale to these heights is borderline obsessive.

M: This is incredibly light and shines as an APA and does not toe that questionable ass genre crossing line like Zombie Dust does. This is hoppy to def with fishtanks in the Civic because Tired Hands pimped their ride with hop cones in the rims. I love the interplay between straight up water and intense hops, the malts are like an abused child getting transferred back and forth in custody battles. The real victim is your bitter zones, you can smoke one of these growlers with a quickness and wonder why your Fedex bills are so high. If that is a drawback, THEN SIGN ME UP.

D: This is not quite as drinkable as Entropic, but strong in different ways. I wouldn’t say this is one of the crowning achievements of the APA realm like Hoppy Birthday or Zombie Dust, but it maintains an exceptional character of residual hops, drinkability, and just straight up vibrant citrus tones that I have not had in any bottle pale ale, to say the absolute least. This is incredibly drinkable and makes me have so many sads that I can’t just go drain this on the regular like Beachwood Alphamaster or something local and amazing. This APA fills an amazing void in the world of resctum stretching stouts and acidic sours always raping your mouthhole. This APA is like a gentle hand holding sessions, blowing dandelions in a field, a light hoppy kiss on the cheek that anyone would be down for.

Drink pale ales once in a while, you dont need to be a tiny dicked bad ass all the time.

Narrative: Trent Kim had a problem that not many could associate with: his banter was too damn pleasant. He had seen several sociolinguists as a child and, during the testing phases he had affected them in such a genial way that they simply dismissed him as playful. It was a clear disability though, Trent had inadvertently coasted through elementary school accidentally coaxing all of his teachers and beguiling all officials with his Godlike gift of bonhomie. Once, when he was 14 Trent came home after driving his parents car to a liquor store, to purchase crack cocaine. He lowered his head in shame when his mother asked “TRENT WHERE DID YOU-” “I know mother, I know exactly what I did wrong, I can’t justify my actions and-” suddenly his mom began peeling a ripe orange and bit into it and exclaimed “oh WHATS A LITTLE CRACK COCAINE FOR A GROWING BOY! I can’t stay mad at you Trent!” The haggard companion in a vinyl skirt was both in awe, and clearly a cheap prostitute that Trent had plied into giving him a handjob for free. Being this likable would be his downfall someday, but for now Trent bit into an orange slice and tossed his back of crack on the kitchen counter.