Beer of the Week: Palm Sway

From the Beer Writer: Anticipation can really up the expectations of a beer, especially when one has heard some pre-sample chatter about said brew. This is true in the case of comments both negative and positive. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t go into some beer tastings expecting a little more (or less) based on a fellow enthusiast’s enthusiastic commentary about an ale or lager. Ditto a first sip that comes on the heels of a lengthy pilgrimage to a legendary or trendy “it” brewery. In the latter case, it had better live up to my expectations…or there’s pretty much nothing I can do about it (darn). With the aforementioned human nature in mind, I did my best to forcibly erase all preexisting knowledge I had of this week’s featured beer before trying it. You see, a week before it hit my palate, this new release from Coronado Brewing had taken a gold medal at the top brewing competition on the planet, the Great American Beer Festival. When it comes to bragging rights, they don’t get much more head-swelling. Still, I tried to take Palm Sway island-style IPA from as neutral a standpoint as possible. In retrospect, if anything, I was harder on it than usual. Even so, I found it impressive, not as some special-occasion, best beer I’ve ever had offering, but as the type of mid-level ABV (alcohol-by-volume) hoppy ale that, with a little malt complexity (but nowhere near enough to complicate it) plus plenty of papaya, mango, apricot and grapefruit flavors, is easy to enjoy and fun to come back to. Medal or no, I can see this well-balanced IPA possibly sailing its way to flagship beer status for Coronado Brewing.

From the Brewer: “The ‘island style’ was a style that we first worked on with Maui Brewing when we released our collab, Tropical Tide, back in the fall of 2020. We were looking for an easy-drinking IPA that had the ‘juice’ components of an East Coast without the filling qualities some hazy beers have. The goal was to make a beer that you could drink while somewhere warm like Hawaii or San Diego, without compromising on flavor. Palm Sway has a restrained bitterness but a lot of flavor. Since the Maui collab, we’ve been testing R&D batches of different island-style IPAs and, almost a year later, we finally landed on a winner…literally. This year, the GABF awards were on Friday afternoon. They’re usually on Saturday mornings, which gives me a solid excuse to crack a breakfast beer. But this year, I was still working in the brewery well into the start of the ceremony. When I was done, I scrambled to grab my things and get home so I could relax, drink a beer and enjoy what was left of the awards. I was at our tasting-room bar buying some six-packs and talking to one of our bartenders about what I thought would win. I said, ‘I feel like Palm Sway has a good chance,’ and before I could finish my sentence, our controller walked up to me and said, ‘congrats!’ I looked over at him and said, ‘for what?’ He replied ‘Palm Sway…gold medal.’ I responded simply, ‘shut up?!’ It’s always unexpected and exciting to win.”—Mark Theisen, Head Brewer, Coronado Brewing