Legend Brewing Company's Hopfest

Happy IPA Day everyone! I was excited to find out that it was today, and as any avid reader of this blog knows (aka my Mom), I love IPAs (By the way Mom, it's IPA Day! IPA= India Pale Ale). If the is a "Lager Day," I sure as heck don't know when it is. Now that that parenthesis filled paragraph is complete, to the good stuff...

The IPA I decided to try today was Legend Brewing Company's Hopfest. Legend Brewing Company is located about two hours West of Virginia Beach in the city of Richmond, Virginia. I have had a couple of beers from this local brewer and had high hopes for this one. Now, before I get into the details let me just say that I did enjoy this beer. My description may seem a little negative, and here's why: This beer is entirely misrepresented by its name. Though not as blunt as a beer such as Terrapin's Hopsecutioner (which I am hoping to try later this evening), Hopfest implies a celebration of hops; a jovial cacophony of  intense bitter flavors. This is not the case...

This beer pours a dark, copper color with about a one finger wide head. When I took a moment to take a whiff of this festival o' hops, I caught the aroma of piny hops blended with a very forward malty sweet smell. The malty sweetness is equally forward in taste as well. Hops come second and faintly behind this powerhouse of malt. Like I said at the opening, I did, in fact, enjoy the flavors. It was just not what I expected. In a world of big, hoppy IPAs, I expected this one to be very forward with hops as well.  In closing, though it is not my favorite offering from Legend (which is, thus far, their incredible Barely Wine), I certainly would not say no to the question, "Hey, would you like a Hopfest?"