Taproom Hopster Session IPA Beer Review

Welcome to the Drink in the Sights Hopster Session IPA from Taproom Beer Review. I'm a bit nervous about this one. I've had two beers from the Home Bargains Taproom Craft Beer Selection before and they were both rubbish so I'm hoping for much better from Hopster Session IPA. The one redeeming feature of the previous offerings was that they clocked in at close to one pound each, and this one matches the price tag, I just hope it doesn't match the taste. Like the previous offerings the can doesn't reveal who the brewer is but it says they are award winning and based in the South Pennines. It always worries me when a brewer doesn't want its name on a beer.

Hopster Session IPA comes in a fairly cool looking 440ml light green can featuring a beard and some sunglasses, it's all very hipster. The beer is described as 'dry hopped to keep a mellow finish with orange, lemon and grapefruit notes.' It just sounds like a lot of other citrus based IPA's to me. The 3.9% alcohol content back up the session ale title, so at least everything is nice and consistent here. In some ways this is already better value than the other Taproom beers I've had as they were only 330ml cans, but then I was quite glad that was all they were.

The beer pours quite nicely with a light amber body and lively white head which settles down reasonably well. Hopster Session IPA certainly isn't the worst looking beer I've ever seen. The aroma matches the brewers description with a very strong orange and lemon citrus smell, personally I couldn't distinguish any grapefruit though. I should probably say at this point that I've had a lot of citrus based IPA's lately as they just seem to be the in thing and I'm getting a bit bored of them, but I'll try to not let that affect my judgement.

Hopster Session IPA has quite a watery texture, which I guess means it's fairly refreshing at least. The taste isn't really what I expected though, it's a bit malty, and there's a bit of orange peel in there too, but it's really mild verging on tasteless. It's like the brewer got the ingredients they wanted and then thought hang on this is meant to be a budget drink and removed half of them. This is probably the best Taproom drink from Home Bargains I've had so far, but that's just because it doesn't taste enough of anything to actually taste bad. I'm going to give Taproom Craft Beers's Hopster Session IPA 4.5 out of 10. It's difficult to really pick out anything to like or dislike about this beer due to it tasting of very little.