For this week's written blog entries, I have a quartet of pale ales to write about. We'll cover the first two right now.

After checking my notes, I realized I reviewed this beer in December. It's quite a bit sooner than I would want to repeat a beer, but as a year-round release, I'm fairly confident it's from a different production batch, so let's do it. Lagunitas Brewing Company's Daytime Fractional IPA is a high quality sessionable IPA. It pours a pretty clear gold color and has a pretty low body. Big, bold citrus flavors are very strong on the palate, along with some dank and piney hop flavors. Overall, it is very well-balanced, bright, crisp, and easily drinkable.

I also had Founders Brewing Company's seasonal fruity IPA, Azacca. Having medium body and pouring a red-gold, similar to a dark ruby red grapefruit, this pretty color sets the tone for the flavor of the beer. It is quite crisp and features flavors of fruits and tropical fruits, including passion fruit and papaya. I feel like there was also some mango and maybe peach there, as well, but there was less of the two latter than the two former. The tropical fruits are well-balanced against a mild amount of hoppy bitterness. This is a really neat beer with a really neat flavor profile--it's not a profile you see often in a lot of readily available IPAs. The last one with such a strong tropical profile was the Sierra Nevada Tropical IPA.

Later this week, more pales from a couple of lesser-known breweries. Also, expect the first of the week's two video reviews tomorrow!