Golden Road Brewing - Point The Way IPA

Not so long ago, craft beer in Los Angeles was almost completely nonexistent. Then, something crazy happened: LA started caring about (and making) good beer. And while there still isn't an LA brewery that's generated a ton of buzz throughout the industry (yet), there are a few that are starting to make a little noise. One of these breweries is Golden Road Brewing, located in Glendale. The founders, Tony Yanow and Meg Gill both have a pretty solid resume in the brewing world (Tony is the founder of a successful beer bar in LA and Meg has worked for Oskar Blues and Speakeasy) and they were able to get Jon Carpenter, a former assistant brewer for Dogfish Head, to be their brewmaster. Golden Road's flagship beer is an IPA called Point The Way and I grabbed the first can I saw down here.

Point The Way IPA pours a hazy burnt orange color with a nice looking one finger tan head. As soon as I started pouring the beer, I smelled a ton of juicy grapefruit hops. When I smelled it a little more, I got some notes of caramel malt, orange zest and a pretty substantial amount of pine. Not bad at all.

The taste was a pretty nice balance of bready malts and peppery citrus hop notes. I got a good amount of grapefruit throughout with a slightly off-putting flavor of waterlogged bread in the middle. Luckily, that flavor was short lived and was followed by a dry finish with notes of grapefruit pith and aspirin. At 5.2% ABV, this isn't close to being one of the bigger IPAs out there, but the low ABV coupled with the refreshing prickly mouthfeel make this a really approachable and drinkable IPA. If there's such a thing as a "Summer IPA," this is it. It's not exactly mindblowing, but this is a solid beer and a definite step in the right direction for beer in LA.

Final Grade: B+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 38