Goose Island IPA & Midway Session IPA Review – Are These Ales Any Good?

Over the past few months I have been thinking about trying new beer. You’ll have to forgive me, when I say beer I am using the word for all “ale”, so I apologise for that off the bat.

I was never really into the whole ale thing, and just drank the usual lager you’d find in most bars or shops. But then I kind of wanted to experiment a bit.

Recently I got a double pack of Goose Island IPA. Included were a few cans of Goose Island IPA and Midway IPA, what they call a session IPA.

Here’s what I think of both of these.

As mentioned I’ve been drinking a variety of alcoholic drinks over the past year or so. Brewdog has been my go to, but I wanted to try something new. In fact, I have decided to try as many as I can, so you can expect a lot more reviews on drinks.

I saw Goose Island, and decided to give the 8 pack a try. You get 4x IPA and 4x Midway cans. Here’s what I thought.

Goose Island IPA

Goose Island IPA is a 5.9% alcohol Indian Pale Ale. It was really easy to pour, and has a nice colour.

It tastes really nice. It’s very smooth and easy to drink, and you can forget that this is almost 6% in a can. You’d not want to drink too many of these, but I think that it would be pretty easy to.

It has that IPA taste without being too fruity or anything else. You get the traditional ale taste without strong notes of anything else.

It’s a good IPA to drink when you want to have just a couple, or even just one.

Goose Island Midway IPA

Straight off when I poured this the head was pretty big. It’s frothy, and it’s one you really have to pour slower unless you want a lot of foam at the top.

Midway is 4.1% alcohol in strength, what they call a session IPA. This is the one you’re supposed to choose if you want to drink more than a few, aka a session.

I had the first one and thought it was pretty nice, but when I went for another I found it quite weak. This is probably due to the fact that the first one I drank was after another beer, whereas when I tried it for the 2nd time it was my first drink.

I guess that is the point with it being 4.1%, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Goose Island IPA. It was reasonably nice enough, but nothing to get excited about.

Verdict

Overall I liked both, but the Goose Island IPA was the better choice. I’d happily buy that once again, but probably not the Midland IPA.