"India Pale Ales smell like a man urinating in a freshly mown field."
—Bubbles in a Questionable Content strip
IPAs can be among the finest of beers. The originals were developed for longevity during their trip to India, but they became popular in the UK due to their unique hoppy qualities. Sadly I have to say that the original concept and flavour profile has been hijacked by draft brewers and seemingly used as a mechanism for pushing their own agenda.
It’s fairly well known that I generally prefer the malt to the hop, which is unsurprising given the beers I grew up drinking; thinner, sweeter beers like the browns and milds popular in old-fashioned British Midlands pubs in the 1970s and 1980s. Even when I moved into the pale ales and ENglish Bitter beers, I was happy enough drinking them as session beers.
Of course this is just my 2¢, but having lived on the West Coast for nearly twenty years and been subjected to many attempts to produce IPAs, I've reached the conclusion that we've been sold a dud. There are simply too many hops in modern brews. Each brewery seems to believe that it neds to appeal to the hopheads, has empowered hopheads to ask for moar hops as though that were the only coponent of a beer that matters at all. Forget ssweetness, complxity, smoothness, drinkability, it's now become all about hops, and I for one will not stand for it. WHen I'm presented by a menu at my favoured drinkery that is so dominated by the hop that there's nothing for me to drink, I'm done, outa there and I'll find something I can drink, even if that's a $2 PBR or Hamms at the nearby dive bar.
Now I didn’t mind a little hoppiness, after all it’s what makes a good ale. That said, I came to realise that I loathed too much hop, and I can even tell you where I was. It was a Saturday afternoon, at the Bell pub in Norwich, a debauched post-rugby drinking binge with a vast number of rugger buggers intent on swilling as much beer as possible as quickly or messily as possible. Not a pretty sight, and not an easy one for me, given that they dragged me kicking and screaming into their foul antics. It was during the early evening that someone bought me an IPA (possibly because they’d drunk all the bitter). It revolted me. It sent my poor belly into spasm and gave me heartburn, so much so that I slept badly and still felt it in the morning. Honestly, it wasn’t the several brews I’d downed beforehand! I disliked it because it was astringent, sharp, the hops drowned out the essential maltiness and it burned.
When I moved to California, I delighted in finding many beers I could enjoy from a multitude of microbreweries, but as I ventured further afield and pushed back the boundaries, I came across a new phenomenon – the overhopped beer. With names like Hoppy Face Brewery and the Big Ass Hoppy Amber it became clear that many breweries were jumping onto a hop bandwagon and there were many who followed them. I kn we were being taken advantage ofhe day I saw one such called Palate Wrecker. Having tried a few of these monsters (Racer 5 being notable) I decided that I would eschew the hop and stick with my malts.
But I was scorned, and scoffed at, and abused by the hopheads who insisted that unless a beer burned one’s gullet, it was a no-good beer. But it seems that I am not alone in my observation that the hop madness has gone too far. The excellent Samuel Smith writes: “…there’s a disturbing trend that needs talking about: a runaway obsession with hops…” Please, good brewers, leave it out, and bring me a good Nut Brown Ale. Oh, and a nice pork pie.
My views on modren IPAs (especially US West Coast IPAs are echoed in a Questionable Content comic here.) The hazy IPA (aka NE IPA is a much more balanced option, less astringent and maltier and sweeter.
SomeA good deal of material was taken from my beer blog
xclip -o | wc -w
664