The Session #77: I'm So Bored with the IPA

For this month's Session Justin Mann asks What's the deal with IPA's?   Good question, since I've been asking that myself.

Certainly, if one takes a look at the most popular beers on beer geek hangouts like RateBeer and BeerAdvacate, IPA's and Imperial IPA's dominate the lists.  A list of the best commercial beers recently rated by the American Homebrewers Association is no different.  A lot of this is attributed to a backlash against dull, lifeless light lagers that dominated America's landscape for decades.   Of course, light lagers still completely dominate the world of beer in terms of overall sales, even if the sales of these beers are in slight decline. 

True, sipping palate searing IPA's beats swilling vapid nothingness of industrial lagers, but can't we do a lot better than this?   Doesn't brewing have far more possibilities than simply dumping a bunch of hops in the brew kettle and calling it a day? 

Sure, I like IPA's but there's just too many of them.  Even Costco has an IPA.  (On the west coast, it's brewed by Gordon-Biersch.)  There are times I think world would be a better place if half the IPA's were simply taken out and shot.  It's precisely at these moments when I grudgingly try a new IPA, and discover a uniquely enjoyable twist to the style I didn't think was possible.  It frustrates me to no end.

I recently enjoyed Costco's IPA, bottled under their
Kirkland, brand at a picnic.

So I think that right there explains all the hub-bub about IPA's.  Craft beer is a lot about pushing the limits of beer and in the United States, that usually means bigger is better.  You can do wonderful things with malt, but it's largely limited to  toasting it at differing amounts to draw out varying levels of carmalization.  Yeasts offer plenty of variety, but it's often subtle and nuanced.  If you're looking for big new flavors in beer, hops are the easiest way to go.  Plus plenty of new hop varieties are cultivated each year, so brewers have more and more flavors to play with.

But perhaps this is all a trick question.  Take a look at some the most popular craft beers, at least those brewed by the Brewers Association Top 50 Breweries.  Let's see, there's Sam Adams Boston Lager, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, New Belgium's Fat Tire, Shiner Bock, Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Lagunitas IPA (that's one IPA), Alaskan Amber, Bell's Brewing Two Hearted (that's two IPA's), Boulevard Brewing Unfiltered Wheat, Stone Brewing's Arrogant Bastard,  Anchor Steam and plenty other beers that are decidedly not IPA's.  If you want to include "Crafty" beers into the discussion, that brings beers like Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat, Widmer Hefeweizen, Redhook ESB and Kona Longboard Lager into the discussion.  And dare I bring up Blue Moon?

I'm sorry, what was this about IPA's being so popular?  Hop-obsessed beer geeks furiously posting reviews on the internet are definitely not the typical craft beer drinker.  At least not yet.

My Tongue Survived an IPA Tasting

One thing I've learned from running is that the human body is capable of remarkable adaptation from repeated stress. While an IPA tasting of this hop heavy beer style normally results in my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth and my lips left paralyzed in a permanent pucker, it looks like all those California hop monsters I've withstood over the years have conditioned my taste buds so that I can actually taste the subtle flavor components of beers that once upon a time tasted like chewing on an old bicycle tire.

The best beer bar in the South Bay is ironically called Wine Affairs, and they put on beer tasting events once a month. This month, it was an IPA tasting event consisting of no fewer than ten different examples of the IPA style, and with my wife Linda being a closet hop head, it seemed like I could talk her into going with me and putting off doing the laundry another day. Thankfully, she took me up on it.

My usual "brilliant" comments on an IPA typically consist of "this tastes pretty bitter" or "it's rather hoppy" but once you begin to taste them in series, even I could start tasting the differences. We started out with Meantime IPA ("fruity and citrus like, biscuity malt") progressing to Deschutes Hop Henge ("sweet, piney and grapefruity"), Ballast Point Sculpin ("light body, strong floral bitterness"), and then Duvel Triple Hop ("aromatic, coriander flavors with grassy and herbal hops") before my taste buds gave out after about the sixth beer, and all I could say "Yeah, that's bitter all right". Linda, on the other hand, had no problem getting through the whole flight.

Maybe I should ramp up my training by sucking on hop pellets to keep up with her.