Sweet Tupper, You Know I Thirst For Your Soft Body and Tender Kiss
Written: Aug 24 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The hops, man, the HOPS!
Cons: Not sold in Texas (WAAAHHH!)
The Bottom Line: The bittersweet love story of my life.
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Tupper's Hop Pocket Ale |
"A kiss is just a kiss, but a good pint is a beer!"
--- mrkstvns
Old Man Winter blows fierce and frigid when you're walking along Thames on the Fells Point waterfront on a February evening. Fortunately for men of good taste, the Fells Point waterfront has more bars serving richly flavorful beers than an honest man has scruples.
The first time I ever sampled Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale was such a winter evening. The night wore gray, I wore plaid. The bar was called Max's On Broadway. The bartender was Linda. The music on the juke was Talking Heads. The year was 1993. I was in love.
I fell in love as I watched the lovely Linda pouring my beer --- a lovely golden elixir that was first making its tentative debut in Baltimore, a few short months (or was it merely weeks?) after rolling out in nearby Northern Virginia. Time is not relevant when you're in love.
I fell in love as I sniffed my first pint of Tuppers. It was an experience one doesn't easily forget. I put my nose down towards the pint and breathed deeply, inhaling the glorious hops. I felt like Mea Clarke must have felt in her infamous scene with James Cagney in Public Enemy. Mea and me are lucky folks --- few others will ever experience quite this level of grapefruit intimacy. It is a wonderful way to fall in love.
But looks and a good hops scent will only get a beer so far in life. True commitment requires more. True commitment requires some carry-through, and so I really fell in love with Tuppers when I got my first taste, with its luscious fresh, totally American, hops flavor melded and intertwined with a glorious malt body like two young lovers, surreptiously doing what lovers will do.
More than a decade of winters have passed since my first fateful evening with Tuppers. But true love does indeed last, and when I opened a bottle of Tuppers Hop Pocket last night, all the memories flooded back, and flooded my mouth and nose and total being with the wonderful sensation of freshness and bitterness and grapefruit and flowers and all good things of sunshine and mists and hops and beer.
A Pint of Hops and Sunshine...
There's a perfect glass for every beer! For hoppy ales, nuthin' quite matches the presentation of a nice, clean, all-purpose, smooth-sided pint glass. And I think I'll grace this brew by serving it in a gen-u-wine Dominion bar glass...
Appearance:
The beer pours with vigor, kicking up a frothy white head. It's a deep golden color that I'd probably peg around the 7 SRM level (more or less, possibly less). As I work my way through the elixir, that head sticks with me, trailing delicate fingers of lace all the way down to the last sip.
Beauty is, indeed, in the eyes of the beer holder.
Aroma:
Ahhhhh!!!! Freshness. Florida sunshine freshness. Or should that be Oregon sunshine freshness. I'm just soooo confused. My nose is definitely luvin' it. Smelling this beer is like waking up to a freshly sliced white grapefruit. There's a bit of a pine character to the scent as the beer warms, but by and large, this beer is the classic grapefruit scent that marks classic American hop varieties like Cascades, Columbus, Centennial, or any of their hybrid cousins.
Flavor:
Hops through and through. One of my brewing friends in D.C. used to tell folks that if they wanted to brew a good IPA, they should "go for the wall of hops". He meant that the hop character should be front and center in every aspect possible. People who've followed that kind of advice have usually ended up with very memorable beers.
Tuppers Hop Pocket is a good example of how to "go for the wall of hops". My first impression is "hops". As I swirl the beer around in my mouth, the flavor is "hops". When I swallow, I get a huge lasting aftertaste that screams out, "Hops!"
Yet, somehow, some way, that big wall of hops doesn't ever crash down on me. It's held up by a firm foundation of fresh malt flavor. There's an initial sweetness to the beer with just a little bit of caramel complexity and even a little bit of nuttiness to give it a lightly toasty character. As a result, the beer is remarkably balanced. Few beers manage to achieve just the right balance. Victory Hop Devil does it in spades, but there's no question that this is a masterful balance.
I don't know what the starting gravity on this beer is, nor do I know the actual alcohol level. I'm guessing that this beer started life as about a 14-15 Plato gravity brew with a final alcohol level that clocks in close to the 6 percent level. That's just my tongue talkin' though. The beer does have a good body, it does have some sweetness, it does have some punch to it. It also does have some serious deliciousness, and that's really what matters to us here, isn't it?
Overall Impression:
I loved this beer the first time I ever set lips on it. I love it today, a good 10 years or more since that first time. Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale is an excellent beer --- one of the finest hoppy American-brewed ales you can buy. If you love the flavor of hops, you owe it to yourself to try this beer at least once. I guarantee you, it's will be love at first sip.
About Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale...
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
--- Groucho Marx
Time, she sure does fly like an arrow. Seems like just yesterday that I sampled my first pint of Tuppers Hop Pocket. The calendar tells me that more than a decade has managed to slip away since that evening, but the memory of big hops lives on. Fortunately too, Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale lives on and is even more widely distributed than most of the Dominion product line.
The beer is the brainchild of one Bob Tupper, a veritable fixture in the Washington D.C. beer scene. Bob used to teach in the Montgomery County Public School system --- one of several large suburban school districts outside the city. Bob also loved traveling, and sampling beers whereever he went. Over the years, he managed to build up a huge repertoire of beer reviews and tasting notes, which he parlayed into a never-ending series of entertaining and insightful beer tastings at the Brickskellar --- Washington's premier beer palace for the past 50 years.
Every beer geek in the mid-Atlantic region knows about the Brickskellar and has enjoyed many a fine evening dining on buffalo burgers while ordering off the extensive beer menu, which at any given time will list at least 400 or 500 beers for your gustatory pleasure.
While the Brickskellar often highlights famous emcees, like top brewers from around the world, or their frequent tastings with British beer writer, Michael Jackson, by and large, the bulk of the Brickskellar's monthly tastings are hosted by the Bob Tupper.
In the early 1990s, Bob wanted to try his hand at formulating a distinctive beer that would appeal to his own hops lovin' tongue, but with a clean flavor profile and not so much arrogance as to relegate itself to a niche. He wanted a beer that was flavorful, but in the model of something like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Bob struck a deal with Old Dominion Brewing Company in Ashburn Virginia, and Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale was born! The beer made an immediate impression on mid-Atlantic beer drinkers, who snapped up six-packs in enough quantities to make Bob and Dominion want to extend the Hop Pocket brand with a pilsner (I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but I do know that Hop Pocket Ale came before Hop Pocket Pils).
You Call It "American Pale Ale", I Call it "India Pale Ale...
There's a fine, fuzzy line between the sensory experience that is an intensely hoppy India pale ale, and that of an American pale ale. There are more than a couple beers that call themselves IPA or APA that could just as well have chosen the other descriptor without batting an eye.
I've heard people say that Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale is an India pale ale, but I think that if you ask Bob Tupper, or if you ask Jerry Bailey over at Dominion, they'll tell you that this is an American pale ale. And that's fine --- it is an ale, it is American, and it does follow the model set by SNPA. When Tuppers Hop Pocket won its GABF Gold Medal in 1997, it did it in the APA category --- not as an IPA. That's all well and good.
Personally though, I feel that Tuppers Hop Pocket is better described as an India pale ale than as an American pale ale. My opinion on this boils down to one fundamental point: the hops.
American pale ales are hoppy beer with an often assertively luscious bitterness, yet most aren't so bitter that they'll whomp the tastebuds of a gentler palate. When you think about brews like Full Sail Pale Ale, or Stones Pale Ale, the beers definitely tilt towards hops, but they do it a level that usually keeps its size down around the 45 B.U. level or lower (the notably accepted exception being the fore-mentioned Sierra Nevada).
Yet, when you move into the India pale ale realm, a 45 B.U. level beer is still often considered "within style", yet so too are beers that pack considerably more firepower in the bitterness department. 60 and 70 IBU beers are savored with relish (not to mention the burgers that go with the relish).
By the numbers, Tuppers Hop Pocket is a 60 BU beer. It pushes the envelope of what an APA should be, but is perfectly within range as an IPA.
On all the other metrics, APA or IPA --- it don't really matter too much. They're both roughly normal gravity (12 Plato) beer styles with roughly normal alcohol levels, though APA is mid-to-upper range at normal gravity while IPAs have a lower threshold of 12 Plato and can go up into the 16 degree range whereas an APA would be considered "too big" at those levels. Appearance-wise, nothing earth-shattering --- pale golden to light amber colors are spot on for both styles. Ale yeasts in both cases are fine, normal conditioning is fine, filtering or not is fine. A dash of caramel malt or not is fine.
So I'm long-winded. I need to shut up. Let's wrap it up.
A lot of folks call this beer an American pale ale, a la Sierra Nevada. I call it an India pale ale, a la Lagunitas. It's "in style" regardless of which of these labels you want to stick on it. Personally, if I'm chattin' with fellow beer geeks over a cool pint of ale, I'm gonna favor calling this an IPA --- I think it's the more useful descriptor.
Bottom line is that Tuppers Hop Pocket Ale is one of the nicest hoppy ales you can buy. It has a very fresh, floral and citrus hop scent and flavor, and for that alone, it is worth seeking out.
Until next time, see you in the pub. As always, I'll be the guy ordering up the biggest and boldest brews in the house. Can I buy you a pint?
Cheers!
Closely Related Reviews...
Here's a few more reviews that focus on this particular blend of gloriously bitter sunshine in a glass...
* What to Know About India Pale Ales
* Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
* Anchor Liberty Ale
* Lagunitas Ale
* Victory Hop Devil
* Stone IPA
Recommended:
Yes
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