{"id":1797,"date":"2015-02-12T09:51:06","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T14:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/?p=1797"},"modified":"2015-02-12T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T14:51:06","slug":"review-woodchuck-hopsation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/?p=1797","title":{"rendered":"Review: Woodchuck Hopsation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1834.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-1798\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1834-1024x623.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_1834\" width=\"500\" height=\"304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1834-1024x623.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1834-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/IMG_1834.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Though we don&#8217;t usually review beer and cider, sometimes when a rep reaches out and asks if you&#8217;d like to try out a new drink, you&#8217;re just in the mood to try out a new drink. That&#8217;s exactly what happened with Woodchuck Cider&#8217;s newest addition, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woodchuck.com\/cider\/styles.html#\">Hopsation<\/a>\u00a0(5%ABV). If I&#8217;m\u00a0being honest, I&#8217;m not entirely sure <em>why<\/em>\u00a0I was interested in trying it, because while I do enjoy ciders, I find most Woodchuck expressions to be too sweet, and I am not the biggest fan of the current style of A MILLION\u00a0HOPS FOREVER that seems to have taken over the beer industry. Lucky for me, Hopsation seems to\u00a0have\u00a0predicted this and decided it would prove me wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Right off the bat, it smells different than most ciders. It has the sweetness, but also a large floral component that really made it smell like a carbonated\u00a0Gew\u00fcrztraminer (which is a semi-sweet, floral German wine that I happen to like, for those who haven&#8217;t tried it).<\/p>\n<p>The taste wasn&#8217;t far off from the nose, either. It wasn&#8217;t as sweet as I expected, but not particularly dry either. Floral and very crisp, the hops did not impart any bitterness to\u00a0the Hopsation\u00a0at all, but rather a bright grapefruit\/citrus tone. The most surprising thing wasn&#8217;t that the sweetness was under control or that the hops actually gave it an interesting flavor, but how restrained and subtle it was. Whenever I see a beer with a gimmick, I expect it to be heavily leaned upon, like cloying nutmeg\u00a0Christmas ales, or pumpkin beers that taste like they&#8217;ve had a whole container of pumpkin pie spice dumped into them, but in this case, the gimmick actually improved the product.<\/p>\n<p>If you hadn&#8217;t gathered by now, I was really expecting not to like the Hopsation at all, but I&#8217;ve got to say, I think I may have a reason to buy a case of Woodchuck Cider for the first time in many, many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though we don&#8217;t usually review beer and cider, sometimes when a rep reaches out and asks if you&#8217;d like to try out a new drink, you&#8217;re just in the mood to try out a new drink. That&#8217;s exactly what happened with Woodchuck Cider&#8217;s newest addition, Hopsation\u00a0(5%ABV). If I&#8217;m\u00a0being honest, I&#8217;m not entirely sure why\u00a0I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,90,144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer","category-cider","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1JYfz-sZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1800,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions\/1800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homespeakeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}