The Tale of India Pale Ale

OK, if you thought I was going to write this post in iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets or any other form of poetry, you clearly haven't been reading my blog up to this point. I have a basic and utilitarian command of the English language (sort of) and am happy when my co-workers don't point out any misspellings, grammatical errors, misplaced commas or stylistic crimes.

On to the beer...

As I've said here several times before, I love craft beer. I feel fortunate to be living at a time when brewing quality, small batch, beer is back in vogue. I realize that it never was out of vogue in most of the rest of the world, but here in the US, the period from 1960 to 1990 was dominated by large corporate breweries  making what was, to my taste, soulless beer.To put things in perspective, in 1992, the top 6 brewing companies controlled 92% of the US beer market. In the 1990's micro brewing started to pick up steam (no pun intended since Anchor Brewing in California,with it's Anchor Steam beer was one of the pioneers of US micro brewing). By 2011 there were more than 1,900 micro breweries operating in the US. For the first time, the total out put of the micro brewery class exceeded 5% of the annual US consumption by volume.

There are now an almost dizzying array of manufacturers, styles and alcohol contents available to consumers. I say, bring them on, the more the merrier! For almost two years now, my beer consumption has been heavily weighted toward a particular style - India Pale Ale. This particular style of beer is steeped in history and in come cases, myth. In researching for this post, I stumbled onto a wonderful article called Mythbusting the IPA, written by Pete Brown for All About Beer Magazine back in 2009. In it, Mr. Brown addresses "ten of the biggest myths around this fascinating legend―some wholly inaccurate―others merely misunderstood." If you have even a passing interest in the history of this beer, I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read his article.

The Oxford Companion to Beer says that IPA is characterized by high levels of alcohol and hops. The floral nose and slightly bitter/dry taste are perfect for my palette. These beers pair wonderfully with a large variety of foods -- from pizza to steak -- and do quite nicely all alone. Again from the Oxford Companion: "Of all the styles, IPA is the most romanticized, mythologized and misunderstood. It inspires the fiercest debate, the greatest reverence and the wildest conjecture in the world of beer."

Every brewer in the business these days makes an IPA, more often than not, more than one. There are singles, doubles and triples, usually delineated by alcohol content. Some of the triples have ABV (alcohol by volume) contents in the double digit range, quite high for beer. However, the appeal of these beers is not the alcohol content, it's the taste and versatility in food pairing that makes them special to me. Over the past two years I have tried a great number of IPAs. Almost all have been good, some have been very good and a few have risen to the top (for me). They include:

Bell's Two Hearted Ale

Green Flash West Coast IPA

Stone Runination

I'm sure I'm doing a grave injustice to several others that I have truly enjoyed by not listing them here but in the spirit of brevity I'll close by saying that if you haven't tried the newer generation of these beers, you should. I know that I will keep seeking out the new ones as fast as they can make them.

Five "favorite" beers?

A while back, I wrote a post about the five best restaurant meals I'd ever had. It wasn't easy to cut the field to five since I've been fortunate enough to have had many great restaurant meals over the years. The other day, a friend and I were talking about the great selection of beers that are widely available these days and he asked me what my favorite beer was.

I'm rarely speechless, but in this case I stuttered, stammered and started spitting our various names along the lines of "well, there's xxxx, but wait, I can't forget yyyy, oh jeez, then there is zzzz." This went on for a while until I finally admitted that there wasn't a singular answer. As I noted in the restaurant post, sometimes it's the time, the place, the company and in this case, the food you're eating at the time that makes a beer memorable. My friend convinced me to try to define the five best beers I've ever had and do my best to recall the "when and where".

So, in no particular order, here goes. These are not necessarily my five favorite beers (although some of them are) but they do represent some very memorable moments in my beer experience.

Who can forget their very first beer? Well, OK, maybe you can, but I haven't. I was in, of all places, the Andes Mountains of Venezuela on vacation with my parents. We were on a cruise that had Caracas as one of the ports of call and took a land tour to a German Village high up in the Andes. I remember a couple of things very clearly; the roads were scarily narrow on the repeating switchbacks up the mountain; the driver seemed to be blissfully unaware that there were no guardrails protecting against what would surely be a fatal plunge over the side; and as a young teenager I thought it was way cool to see the fear in my Mother's eyes as we rounded every turn. The village had been settled by Germans fleeing WW2 and remained pretty authentic to German culture. So, that afternoon, with lots of pork, sauerkraut and other German delicacies, I had a bottle of Polar beer - apparently, to this day, the beer of choice in Venezuela.  I remember the beer tasting great. My parents repeatedly told me this was a "special occasion" and not to think this would be typical. I kind of remember sleeping most of the car ride back to the ship.

Fast forward to my college years in Philadelphia. Without giving away the specific year, I'll tell you that it was during a period when the drinking age had been dropped to 18 in many states - Pennsylvania being one of them. Coors had just starting shipping their beer east of the Rocky Mountains and Miller Lite was running their iconic "Less Filling, Tastes Great" commercials with the likes of Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner staring. Sure, I drank my share of these very commercial beers along with plenty of Gennesee Cream Ale, Schaefer, Schmidts, Pabst and Piels. After all, we were on a college budget and they were widely available. I do, however, remember one of my fraternity brothers coming back from a semester break with a four pack (yes, a four pack) of something very different. Everything about it was new to me. It was bottled (we drank mostly canned beer back then), it had a fancy looking label and it was imported! As odd as that sounds now, it was pretty uncommon back then. This particular beer opened my eyes to the fact that not all beer tasted the same - nor did it look the same. It was brown and opaque instead of pale and transparent.

Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout remains today, one of my favorite beers. Samuel Smith has been brewing beer in the UK since 1758. They offer a broad range of styles, all good, but in my opinion, none better than their Oatmeal Stout.

Many, many years later, I was finally initiated into a club that you can only be a part of if you find yourself in Manhattan. I was attending a work related event in NYC with my wife and we had a free afternoon. Since we were both from the general area (NJ and CT respectively) we knew our way around Manhattan pretty well - or so we thought. Some friends asked if we wanted to go with them to McSorley's. Huh? Well, turns out that it is the oldest continuously operating saloon in NY. Been there since 1854. It's a hole in the wall on the on 7th Street just east of 3rd Ave.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of history to the place. Four of us went and were lucky enough to get a table (this doesn't happen often since there aren't many). But we didn't get just any table. We were seated at what we were told used to be "John Lennon's table". Yes THAT John Lennon used to frequent McSorley's to sit, sip and write lyrics. The waiter (who was born around the time of Noah) pointed out some carvings in the wooden table and swore they were made by JL himself. What about the beer you ask? Well, McSorley's serves one style - Ale. When your waiter asks what you want, the only answer is light or dark - they serve two ales of different color, both brewed specifically for them. It's served in 7 oz. mugs, so order at least two at a time. Somehow, the waiters carry eight mugs per hand and can deliver sixteen to a table on each trip without a tray! The beer isn't memorable, but the experience is.

Last year Cynthia and I went to a beer pairing dinner at a restaurant in our local area. Tuscarora Mill is located in Leesburg, VA and is one of our favorites. Every couple of months they do a special beer dinner event that consists of inviting a craft beer manufacturer to bring 5-6 beers and have the chef pair courses specifically to them. We signed up for the Bell's Brewery dinner, not knowing much about them but really liking what we saw on the advance menu. Since we were just two, we were seated with three other couples that we didn't know but were obviously beer enthusiasts (otherwise why be there, right?). Even before the first course was served, they started asking us if we were there for the Two Hearted Ale. Um, sure, and the other 5 beers being offered. They raved about this particular ale and insisted it was, by consensus, their absolute favorite beer.  Turned out to be a great group of people and we had a lot of fun with them.

I believe it was the third course (and I honestly don't remember what the food was) but when this beautifully colored, perfectly balanced ale was served, I was converted. Bell's is out of Michigan and fortunately is now being distributed in our area. I try to always have some Two Hearted Ale stashed away in my beer fridge, you know, just in case.

Finally, I am on an IPA kick. For those of you not beer savvy, IPA stands for India Pale Ale. The origin is said to be based on the type of beer that British sailors had on board when they sailed to India because itstood uo to the long journey better than water. There are literally hundreds of IPA being brewed now, some OK, some good, and some great. It is a crisp and bitter(ish) beer with hints of pine and other floral elements. There are single IPAs, Doubles and Triples, mostly distinguished by their alcohol content. A few months ago we were visiting our favorite local beer seller, Cork and Fork, in Gainesville, VA and one or the staff suggested I try Green Flash West Coast IPA.

 
I bought a 22oz. bottle, put it in the beer fridge, and promptly forgot I had it. A few weeks ago I "found" it hiding behind some other bottles and decided it would go well with the spicy vegetarian dish we were having that night. Wow, wow wow! Alert the press. New favorite. Fortunately it seems to be readily available around here so it will now be a part of my reserve stash.

Are these the best 5 beers I've ever had? Probably not. Do they all bring something a little special to the plate, a time, a place, a taste or good or new friends? You bet. The great part is knowing the list will continue to evolve over time.

How about you?

So many beers, so little time...

In a previous post I wrote that I feel we are living in the golden age of beer. Although I realize there has been a lot of good beer being brewed in the world for a very long time, not much of it was available to me when I first discovered my love for beer.

I grew up in a time when regional brands like Schmidt, Schaefer, Schlitz, Pabst, Piels, Rheingold and others of their kind dominated local markets. In my early adult years the mega national brands and their bottomless marketing budgets took over. Budweiser, Miller, and Coors seemed to own the market. Sure, you could still find a few imports here and there. I kind of remember Heineken always being around. Same for Bass Ale, Guinness Stout and Lowenbrau (before Miller bought the rights to brew it in the US).

There were probably a lot of good small brewers in local markets, like Anchor Steam in the San Francisco area, but since they didn't distribute nationally, I didn't know about them. I eventually started traveling in my work and discovered many of these gems.

In the mid-seventies a new term came into being in the United Kingdom - microbrewery. Basically, it referred to a limited production brewer which typically served a regional geographic area. If you've been fortunate to travel in Europe at all, you know that many towns, even very small ones, have a brewery that makes a beer that serves the local population. We aren't quite there is the US, but the microbrewery hit here in a big way over the past two decades.

A newer term, craft beer, seems to be an outgrowth of the microbrewery wave. For me, craft brewing implies a higher art form, designed to create beers from top quality ingredients, often in very small batches. There are literally hundreds (maybe thousands?) of craft brewers that have sprung up all over America. They are making a broad variety of styles and have been able to establish much better distribution networks than in the past.

Another advance for beer lovers is the increasing number of stores that allow you to buy single bottles, and sometimes even mix singles to make your own six pack. This let's us try an unknown brewer's newest release without committing too deeply. Finally, and this is absolutely one of my favorite advances, is the wide availability of "large" bottles sold as singles. these typically hold 22 ounces of beer but can run from 18 up to 26 ounces. These bottles are perfect for splitting with someone when you simply want to pair a particular beer with a meal. Cyn and I do that frequently.

We keep an old refrigerator in the basement for kitchen overflow. Somehow, it seems to have evolved into the "beer refrigerator" . Hmmm, wonder how that happened? Current stock.....

Current passion: IPAs, singles and doubles. Working my way up to triples but, for now, the higher alcohol content skews the taste too much toward a distilled spirit for me. Maybe when I grow up.....

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