I Held the Pint Towards the Fierce Afternoon Sun and Said, "Kiss My Glass"
Oct 02 '01
The Bottom Line Balanced beers? No way! IPAs are brutally honest, brutally hoppy brews with a luscious bitter hop flavor that makes me think "warm sunshine."
Do you love the flavor and aroma of hops? I mean really love it? If you do, then you're probably a lot like me.
When I open pour a glass of a strongly hopped beer, I can just sit and sniff for hours, taking in the richly floral scent of grass and citrus and all good things of God's green earth.
Maybe that's the reason I really love hops so much. Because they smell natural and clean, like sunshine kissing the fields in late summer.
It seems to me that no matter what varieties of hops you love the most, as long as you love hops, you love drinking India Pale Ales (let's call them IPAs). No type of beer cries out "hops, hops, and more hops" the way that IPA does. No beer carries away your imagination more than the thought of 19th century British frigates loaded down with casks of IPA, destined to slake the thirst of British soldiers fighting for queen and empire under the fierce onslaught of the sun and jungles of India.
In my opinion, the worst sin a brewer can commit is to brew a well-balanced beer and then call it an "IPA". Go ahead, lie, steal, covet thy neighbor's wife -- I don't care -- just don't give us poor thirsty beer lovers a wimpy IPA!
Brits and Yanks Duel Over Hoppy Brews...
While British brewers might be the original creators of that luxurious elixir we call IPA, they sadly seem to have forgotten what IPA should really be. Few modern British IPAs are worth drinking and even respectable stalwarts like Samuel Smith produce IPAs that are on the weaker end of the hops spectrum.
Sure, British brewers are more likely to use hops like East Kent Golding or maybe Fuggles, but that alone can't account for short-changing drinkers in the hops department. After all, historical recipes show that British brewers once brewed to enormous levels of flavor and sunshine using those selfsame hop types. When you taste a strongly hopped beer made with these hops, it can be quite a treat because they taste a bit grassier and more floral than many of their American cousins. The rare taste of a highly hopped British IPA steals my imagination, leaving it lying on quiet heath with a whisper of warm summer breeze wafting the scent of dry grass and heather.
That can be a good thing. But so too can the wonderful smells of tons of fresh American hop varieties, like Cascade, Columbus, or Centennial. These hops have a more citric smell and they often taste like fresh squeezed grapefruit. To me, these smells take my imagination to the groves of Florida, and from there, it's a short jump to lying on a warm beach under a hot summer sun.
The bigger the hop character, the faster it takes away my imagination. When I want a true taste of joy and sunshine, I turn to IPAs produced by American craft brewers. Among the best are Victory Hop Devil, Tupper's Hop Pocket Ale (there's a pilsner lager too), Anchor Liberty Ale, and Brookly East India Pale Ale.
The True Essence of All Things Humulin and Lupulin
Now I have heard people say that IPAs can be made with as little as 40 IBU of hop bitterness, but I consider those people to be heretics. These are probably the same people who believe that you can make a decent tasting Coq au Vin without using wine. 70 IBU is more like it!
If beers were car horns then the hops in a glass of Bud would be like the tin horn on a little girl's Barbie tricycle, while a 40 IBU beer would be like the horn on a Chevy Impala. Who the heck wants that? I want a beer that stands up and gets noticed. I want it to be like the strident blast of the twin air horns on a Peterbilt Freight King barrelling down on your Nissan Sentra at 80 miles per hour.
Sometimes bigger is better. If there's gonna be a crash, I'd sure rather be in the Peterbilt than in the Nissan, and when it comes to IPA crashing down on my taste buds, I'd sure rather have the Victory Hop Devil than the delicately hopped version of IPA put out by Fullers.
But that's just me -- the guy who loves, I mean really loves his hops...
Can I buy you a pint?
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