Beer style of the week; Imperial IPA's (The HOP Monsters)

Week 27

In keeping with our theme style for the past two weeks (English and American-style IPA’s) http://www.examiner.com/beer-in-boston/beer-style-of-the-week-american-style-india-pale-ale-ipa we’re ramping up the IBU’s (International Bittering Units) and throwing out all preconceived notions about what style of beer is most hoppy and bitter. The Imperial IPA is for now, the hoppiest beer style in the world. Many American Barley Wines and some Imperial Stouts drift into Hop Monster land, but they are both a story unto themselves, better saved for cold New England winter evenings.

Double the lip smacking, jowl clenching, teeth grinding, face scrunching pleasure, the Hop Monsters are coming to steal your palette!

English IPA’s register between around 40 - 60 IBU’s, American IPA’s are rated at 40 – 70 IBU’s, the Imperials are rated between a whopping, palette ripping 80 – 120 IBU’s. In addition to their screeching hoppiness, these beers are big in the alcohol department as well (8%-18% ABV)…the mad brew scientists at Brewdog in Scotland created a 41% ABV monster called ‘Sink the Bismarck’. Mercy!

If the English created the IPA style to withstand the long ocean voyages to India while they were colonizing that land, they could have sailed on to China, New Zealand and Borneo, and back had they carried Imperial IPA’s on board. The captain would have been able to tell which sailors got into the Imperial stash by the permanent puckers etched upon their mouths.

So who really prefers beers with such a high degree of alpha hop acids? Just take a peek at BeerAdvocate.com’s Top Beers. http://beeradvocate.com/lists/popular 3 of the Top 10, 16 of the Top 100 are Imperial IPA’s. Add the American Barley Wines and Imperial Stouts on that list and you’ll find that perhaps 50% just LOVE the hoppy side of beer.

Food pairing: Sharp and/or peppered cheeses, Spicy BBQ, wild salmon or game meat. I have also found it to go well with 4 cheese Mac & Cheese with chorizo. Try a splash on vanilla ice cream!

Note of advice: When sampling an assortment of beers for the evening, save the Imperial IPA for last!

Pliny the Younger – Russian River Brewing – Santa Rosa, California – 11% ABV

This beer sometimes lands in the #1 spot for the Best Beer in the World!

One 1/2 pint wasn't enough, so I had a second.

It pours an amazing orange-hued amber with a medium-sized off-white head and a smattering of patchy lacing.

The aroma is certainly the high point of this brew, though the rest ain't bad either! A smell reminiscent of a fresh cut blue spruce comes to mind. Smells of citrusy grapefruit, orange and lemon zest is direct and potent. A sweet malty smell lingers through. A light perfumy rum alcohol aroma rises from the depths.

A solid, slightly sweet, almost oily doughy malt body lies a firm foundation for all the varied hop tastes to dance and frolic about. Bitter orange, pink grapefruit, essence of pink and floral hop flavors abound. A taste of over-ripe pears and hint of cherries in cream is noticed.

A rich golden rum fuminess releases in the exhale.

This is a really decadent and flavorful brew!

New England Imperial IPA

Heady Topper – The Alchemist Pub & Brewery – Waterbury, Vermont – 8% ABV

Shared a 22oz bottle with a very generous friend.
Served in Delirium goblets.
Pours a hazy pale orange color with a fluffy, but fading white head. Lots of sticky and patchy lacing rims the glass.
A big whiff of pine and wild flowers blast out of the gate. A resinous hop aroma rises and pulls a dry malty smell, along with some perfumy citrus and a little mellow rum.
The tastes follow the aromas very closely. Very hoppy, yet held in check by a solid caramel malt with some honey sweetness.
So flavorful, yet so drinkable!

Smuttynose Big A IPA – Portsmouth, New Hampshire – 9.6 ABV

22oz brown bottle.

It pours a very hazy, orange-hued amber color. The off-white head is smallish, but it lasts a good time. Patchy lace hangs around throughout.

The some citrus and piney ester smells dominate the aroma department, but they are subdued and not as strong as expected. A light smell of dried hay and grass hang around in the background.

The malt is mostly caramel sweet with a mild fruity taste.

This brew is of course all about the hops. White grapefruit, orange zest, and potent pine flavors abound. A slight metallic tang is noticed in the back of the throat. A raw and somewhat harsh vodka-like alcohol kick can't be missed.

Others to try:

Hop Monster – Paper City Brewing – Holyoke, Massachusetts – 9.5% ABV

Otter Creek Imperial India Pale Ale – Middlebury, Vermont – 11% ABV

Galaxy Imperial Single Hop IPA – Hill Farmstead Brewery – 8% ABV

Is there an Imperial IPA lurking innocently on a shelf at your local packie?

Cheers!

Quote: “There can’t be good living where there is not good drinking” – Benjamin Franklin

Beer style of the week; American-style India Pale Ale (IPA)

Week 26

Last week we explored the origins of the original English India Pale Ale style; http://www.examiner.com/beer-in-boston/beer-style-of-the-week-english-style-india-pale-ale-ipa

Just to recap; the IPA was created out of necessity because the Pale Ales that English brewers were shipping to India didn’t survive the long ocean voyages very well. By the time the beer arrived it had gone stale. The English troops stationed there were not satisfied with tea and bland beer alone, so the brewers pitched loads more hops (a natural preservative) into the brew kettle. The results not only saved the beer’s beeriness, it also created a stronger more flavorful brew.

This week we focus on an IPA style that’s similar, yet distinctly different from the English IPA; the edgier, stronger, slightly unruly, American IPA. Whilst British men wear proper trousers when supping IPA’s, America men wear pants or cargo shorts while slugging down their IPA’s.

The traditional English brewers of IPA’s tend to use the traditional hops varieties (Challenger, Goldings, Fuggles, Target) and pale barley along with a little crystal malt (Victory, Maris Otter), and yeast strains such as Ringwood known to brewers for centuries. The American versions are all over the place as far as hop, malt and yeast varieties are concerned. And speaking of differences, New England IPA’s differ from Mid-West, Northern, Central and West Coast IPA’s. At any rate, IPA’s, no matter where they originate, they should be hop-forward ales with medium to solid malt backbones. The malt characteristics of New England IPA’s can be described as biscuity, bready, with caramel or honey-tasting sweetness. The hop profiles are rangy from piney, floral, citrusy, grapefruit, metallic, tea-like, resinous, spicy or all of the above. Gotta love that freedom to explore! Also, gotta expect a few flops when brewers chuck massive doses of ingredients into the brew kettle simply because they can.

Let’s look at a couple West Coast and Mid-West America IPA’s to compare and contrast to New England versions;

West Coast IPA’s

Racer 5 IPA – Bear Republic – Healdsburg, California – 7.0 ABV

This is a big IPA...could be an Imperial IPA and no one would bitch. It pours a bright shiny copper with a medium-sized off-white head and some trails of lace. The aroma is mostly made up of fragrant floral hops, with a hint of sweet malt. The body is fairly full and sweet for the style. Caramel and vanilla wafer come to mind. A big blast of fresh sharp-edged hops jumps out with grapefruit, lemon zest and a faint metallic tang. The warming alcohol mixed with the lush sweetness gives this brew a sort of brandied candy flavor, only a tad more astringent in the finish.

Stone IPA – Stone Brewing – Escondido, California – 6.9% ABV

This shiny copper IPA is loaded with fresh whole hop flavors. The aroma is almost totally floral hop based. The medium/rich malt body doesn't provide much competition for the hops, but it plays a nice supporting role, while offering a trace herbal, earthy character. Full grapefruity, pine and citrus bitterness lasts. Lightly sweet with some noticeable alcohol kick that melds seamlessly with the hops. Lasting White Head and nice sticky lace. A nice representation of the style.

Mid-West

Bell’s Two-hearted Ale – Bell’s Brewery – Kalamazoo, Michigan – 7% ABV

12oz brown bottle. No freshness date.

It pours a wonderful honey amber color with a medium-sized white head and a fair amount of trailing and sticky lace.

A big blast of floral hops is noticed upon opening the bottle and increases in intensity during the pour. Citrusy hops and a faint malt smell emerge briefly, then fade. The floral hop aroma remains.

A lightly sweet biscuity malt flavor meekly sets the table for the abundance of hop flavors. Grapefruit, lemons, orange zest and limes make up a jowl clinching citrusy hit. A mild metallic bite and some peppery spices act as seasonings for this potently charged IPA.

Had the Brits invented this stuff during their colonization of India, they'd be flying the Union Jack in Bombay today.

New England IPA’s

Smuttynose Finest Kind IPA - Portsmouth, New Hampshire – 6.9% ABV

12oz brown bottle. Freshness date etched on label.

It pours a hazy orange-hued amber with a big, slow-fading off-white head and lots of sticky, clinging and trailing lacing.

A big whiff of floral hop is released immediately upon opening the bottle. Deep citrusy fragrant grapefruit and orange zest follow, as does a light smell of pinesap. A distant malty grain smell is noticed with a bit more concentration.

A lightly sweet caramel malt is revealed incrementally as it warms. A mild taste of pears comes to mind.

Sharp-edged grapefruit and lemon zest bitterness really perk the pucker up. A bit of fumy alcohol is noticed from time to time. For all of the abundant hoppiness, this brew maintains a nice, lightly creamy malt body.

Hi.P.A. – Magic Hat Brewing – Burlington, Vermont – 6.7% ABV

Pours an orangey amber with a rapidly dissipating head, which leaves a thin sheet and small specks of lace. A fragrant floral and citrusy hop aroma dominates a lightly doughy smell. The sweet malt begins to emerge after a few gulps. Grapefruit, lemon and lime and a slightly metallic bitterness overwhelms at first swallow, and then mellows out slightly. The alcohol kick gains some ground and becomes more noticeable towards the end of the glass. I like the fact that MH relies on traditional beer ingredients in brewing this IPA. I'm not a fan of their propensity to use flavorings (#9, Miss Bliss, Hocus Pocus Lemon and Ginger).

Other worthy New Englanders

Samuel Adam’s Latitude 48

Harpoon IPA (very consistent!)

Leatherlips from The Tap & Haverhill Brewery

Indie Pale Ale from Cisco Brewers

Pucker up everybody! There are IPA’s to be had at every packie, beer bar, brew pub and restaurant in New England. Full flavored, hoppy, juicy, spicy, they are versatile beers!

Next up; Double IPA’s (Hop Monsters)

Quote: “Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer” – Besse Smith, American Blues singer (1894-1937)

Beer appreciation 101; Tour your local breweries!

In order to gain an even deeper appreciation of the world’s greatest beverage, touring a brewery (or twelve) is recommended. Fellow beer researchers, Larry Hallahan and Peter Seitz and I have co-produced and hosted around twenty five cable television ‘Beer Styles’ shows. Five of these shows were devoted to New England brewery or brewpub tours. A brew tour can also be an enjoyable experience without lights and cameras in your face.

Brew Tours are a great way to meet the brewers and find out what drives them to drink. But most importantly, you always get to sample several really fresh beers! And after sampling several more, you will feel the need to purchase T-shirts, hats and glasses to help you remember your brewery tour!

Wonder how beer is made? Let’s use an imaginary friend, “Brewster” to lead you through basic brewing. We’ve added some helpful suggestions to help guide you through the tour. First grab a beer!

You:

How is beer made, Brewster?

Brewster:

Let’s start with a natural process and apply a bit of science to imitate that process. In nature, barley (or wheat) grain will begin to germinate and sprout when soaked with rainwater. At the point of germination when the root begins to form and a sprout rises up to greet the sunlight, is the exact moment of the natural process that the maltster will replicate to produce a malt suitable for brewing beer. The germination of the malt is halted when enzymes are being produced and complex starches convert into sugars.

You:

But wouldn’t it help us to absorb the process better if we had another beer?

Brewster:

Of course! (sound of pouring beer) Here! Anyway, the newly formed sprouts are carefully removed, the green malt is dried and the cured malt is ready for the brewing process. The malt may be roasted to varying degrees of doneness after which it is cracked open and mixed with hot water in an apparatus known as a mash tun. The mashing process activates the malt enzymes, which break down complex starches into simple sugars. These sugars will be consumed by yeast during the fermentation process. There are different mash methods. The infusion method produces a thick, sweet, yellow liquid called wort. The decoction method boils a portion of the mash to quicken protein breakdown. The boiled wort is then put back into the mash tun. The temperature is slowly raised until the malt liquid reaches the desired thickened consistency. German brewers use this method to produce malty weissbiers and bocks. There are other subtle mashing variations, but let’s just stick to the standard brewing process.

When the mashing is completed, the wort is pumped or drawn into a brew kettle or the mash is pumped into a lauter tun (a sieve-like device used to help remove mash solids and clarify the liquid) and sprayed with hot water to remove the excessive sweetness in the malt. Now the grains have served their usefulness for brewing beer. Rather than simply throwing the grain away, many resourceful brewers offer the spent grain to farmers for livestock consumption. Talk about contented cows!

You:

Ha ha, Brewster! That is funny! Say, this is the part of the tour where most brewers, offer us another beer!

Brewster:

You are obviously a genius! You should just pour yourself a beer whenever you feel like it.

Ok, now the wort is brought to a boil and the hops, either whole hops, pellets or extract are added. Next the wort is strained and whirl pooled to remove hop pieces and coagulated proteins, then cooled sufficiently before being sent to the primary fermentation container. Here is when the yeast can be added (pitched). If the yeast is pitched too early, before the wort has cooled, it will die and therefore not be able perform its primary function of converting sugars to alcohol.

The “green” beer will ferment for between five and twelve days before being pumped into a conditioning tank where it will age and clarify for up to four weeks.

You:

Can we drink some of this now?

Brewster:

It’s not ready yet…Where was I? Oh, lagers tend to undergo longer fermentation and conditioning. This extra brewing time mellows and blends the flavors of the beer. Many brewers will add finishing hops to the final fermentation process to produce pronounced bitterness and a more hop aromas. While others develop bottle-conditioned beers by adding fresh yeast and priming sugars during the bottling process. High alcohol beers such as Barley Wines, Imperial Stouts, Baltic Porters and Dubbels, Tripels and Quadruples age much longer.

You:

How can you tell how strong a beer is, and what are some of the beer-related measurement standards we should all know? Is that my beer?

Brewster:

Excellent questions! Alcohol is measured in two different ways. Alcohol by volume in beer is the measure of the amount of space the alcohol in a beer takes up as a percentage of total space. Alcohol by weight is the measure of the amount of weight the alcohol presents.

O.G. (Original Gravity) is the measure of fermentables in the beer’s wort prior to fermentation, expressed as a ratio as compared to the density of water. O.G. is a measure of the amount of solids in the wort. If you happen to notice an O.G. Plato rating number on the bottle of beer you’re drinking and would like to translate its meaning into ABV (Alcohol by Volume); multiply the degrees Plato by 4, and add a decimal in the center of the result for an ABV estimate.
Example: 14 degrees P = 14x4 = 56 = 5.6% ABV.

IBU’s (International Bitterness Units) is the measure of hop bitterness. SRM (Standard Reference Method) is a measurement of Beer color.

Ok? Well that’s about it. We’ll skip the bottling process today. Let’s all have another few samples and then I’ll lead you into our little retail shop.

From USA Today; http://traveltips.usatoday.com/new-england-brewery-tours-24196.html

Quote: “Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale” – William Shakespeare – from ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’

Innis & Gunn Rum Barrel Aged Wee Heavy

12 oz clear glass bottle (that's just wrong!) No freshness date.
Served in an Allagash fluted goblet.
It pours a dark amber/cola color with a fast-fading beige head. Not much in the way of lacing.
It might have had a perfect aroma, except for a slight sulfuric smell likely caused by the fluorescents radiating through the clear bottle. Otherwise a nice peaty malt smell lays the foundation for an earthy wood smell, followed by floral hops and a bit o' rum.
A big taste of caramel malt carries the citrusy and tea-like hops. Sweet dark rum notes slide in behind and lasts throughout.
It gets better as it warms and all the flavors mingle and mix.

New England; A beer lover’s destination paradise?

A recently published survey in Travel and Leisure magazine, ‘America’s Best Beer Cities’ (re-published and tweeted by blog.seattletweeted) reveals the Top 20 Beer cities in America. http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/americas-best-beer-cities

Surprisingly, 3 New England cities rank in the top 20 (actually 3 in the top 10). Boston rolled in at #7, Portland, Maine came in at #5, and Providence, Rhode Island ranked #4 (Is the Trinity Brewhouse really that wonderful?).

But, that’s not the surprising news. What is, is that true Beer Cities like Portsmouth, New Hampshire (check out the Old Seaport Downtown area), Bar Harbor, Maine, New Haven, Connecticut, or Burlington/Stowe, Vermont didn’t make the cut, while cities such as Nashville, Phoenix (Strip Mall Capital of the US), Houston (HOUSTON??!!!??) and Savanna (a nice town, though) did.

Now it might make more sense when we understand that Portsmouth, New Haven and Burlington weren’t even choices on the survey form, but when we see New York, NY, Asheville, North Carolina and Grand Rapids, Michigan miss the top 20, that’s mystifying. San Diego is #18? Huh? Consider the breweries of Green Flash, Stones, Lost Abbey, Ale Smith and Pizza Port. Along with tons of Pubs and Beer Bars, that city belongs in Top 5…at least!

All in all, The ‘America’s Best Beer Cities’ survey should be celebrated, not criticized, because while America’s Mass mega breweries continue to show continuous decline in sales and interest, despite the billions they waste in the mindless bombardment of idiotic advertising, the “Craft” beer industry enjoyed a 12% profit increase in 2010. And that’s not a new trend. The craft market continues to grow each and every year. That the editors of Travel and Leisure chose to include a beer destination survey article tells us clearly that the craft beer and pub scene is very popular in the US of A. That’s good news for us!

As with any survey, there are faults to be found. Anyone can list their favorite beer cities or towns, so here goes…New England represented in Bold

1. Portland, Oregon

2. Seattle, Washington

3. Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts

4. Denver, Colorado

5. San Diego, California (distance between beer is vast)

6. Portland, Maine

7. Grand Rapids, Michigan

8. Portsmouth, New Hampshire

9. Austin, Texas

10. Burlington/Stowe, Vermont (close enough when you’re in Vermont)

11. Asheville, North Carolina

12. New York, New York

13. San Francisco, California

14. Amherst/Northampton, Massachusetts

15. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota

16. Milwaukee, Wisconsin

17. Bar Harbor, Maine (there are lots of beer options in one small area…YA!)

18. New Haven, Connecticut

19. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

20. Providence, Rhode Island

There was/still is a lot of self-debate going on while making this Top 20 up. My friend Bob who lives in Tucson, Arizona is quite happy with the beer options in that ol’ town. The folks of St. Louis or Kansas City, Missouri probably feel their cities should be included in any top 20, and maybe they’re right. If that’s how they feel, they should make up their own damn top 20 list. What are your favorite beer destinations?

Drink up fellow New Englanders! There’s plenty of great beer nearby!

Cheers!

Quote: “Come, my lad, and drink some beer.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)