I will be judging this beer as BJCP style 21B, Specialty IPA. While not an official category quite yet, the New England Style IPA still falls in that 21B catch-all category to fill in all the popular IPA variants. With this bee,  I am going to expect it to be highly dry hopped, hazy and juicy.

After pouring, I notice the beer is an orange-yellow color and very hazy, which was to be expected. It looks a bit like orange juice. The head was white and frothy with moderate retention. The hop aroma leans very heavily into the citrus realm, and I could literally smell the hops from two feet away. Aromas present were a combination of grapefruit, orange and pineapple. The malt takes a backseat to the hops, but it is still presented as lightly sweet-smelling and doughy. Moving into the flavor, we see a lot of the same. Citrus hops (grapefruit and orange) with low secondary notes of pineapple are at the forefront. The malt is lightly sweet and tasting of a combination of doughy bread and honey. The hop bitterness is not too high; it falls into the moderate range. The bitterness does linger a bit into the finish, which is what we expect from most IPAs. The beer also finishes a bit more dry than I expected, which is welcome. The mouthfeel is medium with a very creamy texture. No hop astringency, which is something I tend to watch out for in heavily hopped beers. Overall the beer is better than most, thanks to that intense hop punch. You can smell that hop goodness from several feet away, which is going to send some hop heads wild. Of course, all that depends on how fresh this beer is when you get it.