643. Hardywood Park Craft Brewery (Richmond, VA) - Tangerine Cream Ale

“A most extraordinary dessert-on-a-stick inspired beer, this tangerine cream ale will bring you back to the days of running after the ice cream truck for a citrusy treat. Tangy tangerine and bright, juicy orange notes melt away to reveal layer upon layer of sweet vanilla cream in the finish. Perfect on its own, or paired with your favorite tangerine cream bars.”

I picked this up on a lark as we were heading toward the checkout line at Trader Joe’s the other day…sure that its prominent place at the end of one of the aisles meant that it was from one of those fake breweries that are fronts for Trader Joe’s house brands. But it turns out that Hardywood Park is a real brewery…and it also turns out that I have not logged a beer from Virginia over the course of this odyssey. I know I’ve tried beers from Virginia, but after I looked at my notes, I realized that those were from our trip to Shenandoah National Park in 2016, before I started this whole beer blogging thing. This one gets me to 31 states.

Okay, fine, get on with it, right? How is the beer? There’s more cream flavor than citrus flavor, but it’s still well balanced. Those flavors are sweet up front, but there is just enough of a dry finish to double down on that solid balance. And at 6% ABV, it’s a little bigger than most cream ales. A slightly stronger citrus flavor would not be unwelcome, but that is truly picking at nits; this is the best non-Kismetic beer that I have tried in I can’t remember how long.