Left of the Divide is part of Central City’s Across the Nation collaboration pack with 12 different Canadian breweries, one from each province and territory, all in celebration of our country’s 150th birthday. This one involves fellow Left Coaster Four Winds, and is obviously a big hoppy IPA. Great name, by the by.

This 330ml bottle pours a clear, bright medium copper amber colour, with two zaftig fingers of puffy, rocky, and mildly bubbly ecru head, which leaves some thick underbrush lace around the glass as it slowly but surely subsides.

It smells of slightly dank pine resin, bready and doughy caramel malt, mixed tropical and domestic citrus rind, a minor hard water flintiness, and more leafy, weedy, and perfumed floral green hop bitters.  The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, blood orange and red grapefruit citrus, a hint of dark tropical melon, damp rocks, and more sassy leafy, piney, and dank herbal verdant hoppiness.  The carbonation is solid in its palate lifting and separating frothiness, the body a dense middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a wee airy creaminess contending with a sense of hop acridity in the process.  It finishes off-dry, the malt doing well to keep up with all the citrusy, melony, and forest floor detritus hop kiddies.

Overall, this is a very engaging and enjoyable West Coast joint (see what I did there?), one that I could easily see having a few more rounds of, if this came in a different packaging vector.  At any rate, one of the best of the bunch so far, and that’s actually saying something.