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Happy IPA Day!
Yes, it’s August 2nd and in case your lame calendar didn’t say so, it’s IPA Day! For the uninitiated, IPA is India Pale Ale, a style of beer originally brewed by the Brits back in the 19th century, adding extra hops to the ale to preserve its voyage on ships headed around the Cape of Good Hope to colonial India. More recently, west coast U.S. brewers have taken this beer style to a new level, amping up the hops and daring your taste buds to engage in the resulting bodacious bitterness. It’s what’s made San Diego famous for its beer.
So today I salute you, coming at ya from Downtown Johnny Brown’s with an IPA from Manzanita Brewing Company (who just celebrated their 2nd anniversary), to be followed by the newest double IPA (“Hop Therapy”) from newcomer Rough Draft Brewing. Now I should mention that double or imperial IPAs are what you get when a bunch of insane west coast beer geeks decide that “regular” IPA recipes need to be tweaked, adding even more hops–sometimes at different stages in the brewing process–resulting in the kind of bitterness that is sure to baffle and offend drinkers of cheap domestic light “beer” swill, as it should! In fact, while I don’t know how long the popularity of Double/Imperial IPAs will last, I will declare this as the reigning beer style for 2012.
Here are some more local San Diego County IPAs I can recommend; let me know what your favorite is or what you’re having!*
- Stone IPA
- Alpine Nelson IPA
- Green Flash West Coast IPA
- Pizza Port (Ocean Beach) Jetty IPA
- AleSmith IPA
- Hess Intrepidus IPA
- Mission IPA
- Ballast Point Big Eye IPA
- Karl Strauss Tower 20 (double) IPA
- Coronado Idiot (double) IPA
- Stone Ruination (double IPA)
- Ballast Point Sculpin (double) IPA
(*these are in no particular order nor is this list meant to be exhaustive)
Get your hops on!!!!
Stone/Bear Republic/Fat Head’s Brewery collaboration beer: Texas Brown Ale
This latest Stone collaboration beer just came out last week, and I couldn’t wait to try it. I had hoped to fill up a growler at the 30th Street tasting room this past Friday, but things came up, and when I made it in Saturday afternoon the kegs had already been tapped out by my fellow beer enthusiasts. Luckily, they had some 12 oz. bottles sitting in the fridge!
This time Mitch Steele at Stone joined with co-conspirators Richard Norgrove, Jr. of Bear Republic Brewing and Matt Cole of Fat Head’s Brewery (out of Cleveland, OH) for what’s described as an “extra hoppy brown ale brewed with brown sugar and molasses.”. It seems Cole took the lead in the enthusiasm generating this project, with fond recollections of one of his first home brewing experiments from the early ’90s being in this style.
The result is a brown ale with a lower gravity than most, and a hops-forward flavor that will find immediate enjoyment by West Coast hopheads. Nicely balanced, easy drinking, and with an understated sweet finish that shows off the brown sugar and molasses that went into the recipe. This beer probably won’t be around too long, so seek it out and drink what you can before it goes dry like a sagebrush landscape in the Lone Star state! (Rating on a scale of 10…I was gonna go modest and say 8.75, but it’s a 9, solid! Now let me stop typing and enjoy this….)
Vines & Steins 