Beer Name: Linchpin

Breweries: Greenflash Brewing Co. and Founders Brewing Co.
Beer Style: White IPA
ABV: 7%
IBU: ?
Size: 22oz Bomber
Beer Advocate: 85
Rate Beer: 98

Collaboration Week is winding down here at Ohio-Beer, and we hope you have enjoyed reading the posts this week as much as we have enjoyed writing them. Hopefully this will become an annual event for us because it’s things like competing breweries coming together that make the craft beer scene so special. How often do you see competitors coming together to make something unique for their fans to enjoy and come together? Maybe in the music industry or when In-Bev buys another mass-produced beer company, but thats about as close as they’ll ever get to collaboration with another company.

I had my own personal streak going here that I have yet to review a beer that wasn’t from Ohio. Well, my friends, today my streak ends. If only this would have happened this year, my streak would still be going. Linchpin is a collaboration from two breweries that are in my top 10 (Green Flash and Founders), so you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon this bottle a few weeks ago. This beer uses two different yeast strands (an American and a Belgian) and a heavy focus on “C” hops, according to the commercial description. The description also states that a beer with so many components can only be held together by … you guessed it: a Linchpin.

Linchpin pours a hazy yellow, almost orange with a solid quarter-inch of head.  Linchpin has well-carbonated mouthfeel, and they weren’t kidding about using a lot “C” hops. The aroma is really citrusy right out of the bottle with a sweet yeast and malt smell coming through. The taste is a little underwhelming from the aroma – I was expecting a lot of flavor – but it’s mostly hop forward without a lot of bitterness, and a slight bit of clove and fruity esters give way at the end to a wheaty malt flavor.

From reading the description, I was expecting an IPA meets heifeweizen or something similar, but in the end it came off as a IPA with a slight bit of those heifeweizen characteristics. Not a bad offering by any means, but I was expecting more from these two breweries.

Ratings:

Sessionability: Not overly bitter for an IPA and went down a lot smoother than most. 5-pack.

Overall: Like I stated above, I was expecting more based on the description. 3-pack.

Would best be consumed: With a friend. C’mon, it’s collaboration week; share the love!