Tag Archives: IPA

The Case for Christmas Beer: One Curmudgeon’s Begrudging

Posted on by
Great Lakes Christmas Beer Goggles

Great Lakes Christmas Beer Goggles

I have a well-documented disdain for Christmas beers, winter warmers, and other beers with cutsie holiday-inspired names like Silver Beers and Jingle Beers and Have Yourself a Beery Little Christmas. But around this time of year it is hard to avoid them. They take up half the craft beer cooler at my favorite corner store. The Bollywood music playing in the background adds a certain confusion to the scene, but the store owner certainly knows what brings in money.

Now well into my thirties, I understand that from Thanksgiving to December 25, and perhaps from well before, my life will be invaded by Christmas. The music I hear, the ads I see, the food and drink I buy, the clothes in stores, the shows at theatres, the urges to donate, the urges to buy, the insistence of want, the stupid shit people stick on their heads, cars, children, and pets, even the way people bid me farewell. After all these years, I’ve also come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be okay with it.

I’ll especially not be okay with the replacement of my favorite IPAs and… IPAs with The Nutcracker Wheat and Rudolph the Red Nosed Rainbeer. Because, let’s be honest: this curmudgeonliness has little to do with my personal religious beliefs and everything to do with what I want to drink after a day of playing retail Christmas Elf to dozens of customers, all equally pissed off that they have to spend their hard earned money on siblings they never really liked anyway. And that beer I want to drink is one made of water, grain, yeast, and hops. Please hold the nutmeg. Continue reading →

How to Run a Successful Beer Tasting: Step 1) Invite Poets

Posted on by
The Royalty

The Royalty / Fallen Soldiers

According to the experts, when you run a beer tasting you should always begin with the lightest beer with the lowest abv; however, when you’re tasting only imperial IPAs, this might mean you start at 8%. My friends Kate and Orie came over to help Ben and I taste a mixed sixer of double IPAs so I wouldn’t end up with an article on alcohol poisoning instead.

We had some pizza while we did our stretches and a few warm-up sips of a Brooklyn East IPA — overall a very responsible preamble. We also did a little research, by which I mean we talked at our phones and accepted Wiki definitions as good enough. Turns out Imperial just refers to any beer that has extra bunches of hops or malt, resulting in extra bunches of alcohol. It originated when the British had to brew their stout extra forte to make the journey to the royal Russian court. Basically, big and bold beers, regardless of style.

We start out with Hopmouth, a double IPA from Arcadia Brewing in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At 8%, Hopmouth was dangerously smooth — sessionable, even. Overall it was good, quite drinkable, but not our favorite.

Brooklyn Brewing’s Brooklyn Blast, at 8.4%, is up next. (Side note: this name is embarrassingly hard for me to say even without alcohol, transposing my Ls and Rs like I was Long Duck Dong in the spectacularly un-PC Sixteen Candles.) Kate takes a sip and trills, “it’s the tips of the hairs on the back of a bee! A ferocious honeysuckle meringue!” (Side note 2: I should also mention that Kate and Orie are musicians, poets, artists, beautiful people with shiny, twisty minds.) Continue reading →

On Getting Old: Archiving Your Membeeries

Posted on by
Little Old, Pink Notebook o' Beer

Little Old, Pink Notebook

I can hear my parents bickering through my window as they approach my door. I tell them this when I let them in and my dad yells, “We’re old and can’t hear a damn thing anymore!” My mother bustles through laden with bulging tote bags and tupperware. Dad says, “get the beer,” and gestures with full arms at the two six-packs on the ground. When I lock the door my mom turns around on the stairs, “We’re old and can’t hear anything anymore!”

My mother just returned from Pittsburgh where she visited a beer store whose name is now forgotten. Because she doesn’t know much about beer, she purchased a mixed sixer of IPAs whose labels she didn’t recognize and a six pack of an IPA from Pennsylvania. I only recognized one of the singles, so she did good.

While Mom gets dinner dished out, my dad says, “I say we start with one of these,” he rips off a can from the six-pack for me, “and then these,” gesturing at the mixer. I picture us both on our backs, passed out, and my mother leaning over us, irate. This is how we do tastings in my family.

Recently I’ve been looking at the technological side of beer tasting. There’s a surprising number of beer-related apps, for example. Everything from a virtual encyclopedia of beer abvs to rating “communities” to next drink recommendations. I checked out my little old, pink beer notebook that I kept pretty religiously for a few years. Most beer entries went like: Name / percentage & state of origin / bar or circumstance. Then mixed in among these are phone numbers with no name, band name ideas, email addresses for people I don’t remember. The handwriting gets more expansive as it moves down through the night. Does BeerAdvocate have a data field for bartender name and level of attractiveness? Continue reading →

The Belgian IPA: a Compromise We All Can Swallow

Posted on by

belgium-beer-flagFor the longest time I treated it as a fault, a failure of some sort. I tried to hide the fact from others and went to great lengths to avoid situations that could have revealed my failings. My tastes were a disgrace, especially for one who called herself a beer snob.

Now that I’m solidly in my mid-thirties, though, I feel old and wise enough to say What do you care? Shut up and drink your beer. So: I don’t like Belgian beer. ThereIvesaidit! So far, no not-so-merry monks have run into the room, robes a-flutter, threatening to bludgeon me with oversized wheels of cheese.

I’ve been drinking long enough to know that it is not the Belgian part of Belgian beer that I don’t like. That unique, expansive taste of Belgian yeast is delightful! Rather, it is the lack of hops that gets me. I need the dryness, the bitterness, the kick in the pants that is a well-hopped beer. And then I discovered the Belgian IPA.

Sweet mother of fermentation! Where have you been all my life?! My first Belgian IPA was a tulip glass of The Audacity of Hops in Boston’s Cambridge Brewing Company. I was suspicious. My favorite cute bartender with the Buddy Holly glasses served it to me and I eyed it sideways, its perfect head and cloudy orange hue suspect. But then I took a cautious sip and was hit with a face full of hops. I was instantly converted. Continue reading →