When it comes to beer, I’m a pretty tolerant guy. If you like weizens, that’s cool. If Porters and stouts are your thing, I’m down with that too. The beauty of beer is in its diversity. We have at our disposal a spectrum of malts, hops and spices, textures and colors and aromas innumerable, like a scratch and sniff culinary rainbow building us a high road to Valhalla where we all spend the rest of our days drinking blissfully with the gods. Even the girlie purveyors of fruit beer and the pudgy partisans of deep-frying have a place at that table. The world of brewing is wide, my friends, and that means we can all have our favorite beers, and drink them too!
Except when it comes to IPAs. That’s where my tolerance runs out. The modern American incarnation of the India pale ale is the best beer known to God or man, and if you disagree with that, then I write you down as a heretic and a scoundrel in immediate need of excommunication from the beer community. No matter that most beer-drinkers in the world, including the entire nation of lager-mad Germany, prefer some other style. Though not every brewery produces an exceptional version, the perfect IPA is the perfect beer. Consequently, it becomes a standard against which to measure everything else. That is the way things stand, and as they were in the beginning, and as they shall always be, forever and ever. Amen.
Unreasonable, I know, but that’s what favorite beers can do to people. Therefore, to celebrate my (and hopefully your) favorite beer style, I swung by Sam’s Blue Light bottle shop in Durham and picked up a couple of IPAs that I hadn’t tried before, leaning towards things that looked challenging for a lover of the plain IPA. The results were generally positive, as was to be expected from this hard-to-screw-up style.
Avery Brewing Company “duganA” double IPA:
After pouring this beer, before even being able to examine it, I was struck by its aroma, and I wasn’t even close to the glass. On the nose it has something uniquely fruity, though some would call it piney. After a bit of sipping and researching, I concluded that the smell must be from lupulin, a word that comes up a few times on the bottle itself. Lupulin is a resinous substance found in the catkin of hops and apparently Avery used fair amounts of it in brewing this beer. It pours a pretty, golden amber, full of particulate matter suspended in it like an asteroid field. The body is medium to full and not dry at all. For some reason I don’t remember much about the flavor of the beer, other than the resinous bitterness of the hops. I didn’t find it very fruity, but its bitterness was balanced by the body, especially its cloudiness. This is definitely a good beer, if not a great one.
Blue Point Brewing Company “Toxic Sludge” black IPA:
Ever since running in to these guys at last year’s World Beer Festival in Durham, I’ve been a big fan of Blue Point. So when I saw that they released a black IPA (a style I was previously unfamiliar with) to raise funds for bird protection in the oil-ravaged Gulf Coast, I jumped on it. And I’m sure glad I did, even though “Toxic Sludge” defies most of my notions of IPAs. If this beer needed to be summed up in one word, it would be “subdued.” On the pour it’s lowly carbonated with a thin head, and a color so brown it’s basically black. Then I went to smell it, and to my great surprise (and initial consternation) I got nothing. Zilch. Nada. No citrus, no resin, no hops, no nothing. Except, that is, for a tiny hint of toast, like a watery porter. I was mighty confused.
On the first sip, it was subdued still. In fact, most of the flavor was in the aftertaste, a kind of back-of-the-mouth bitterness that fills in all the hidden cracks of the gustatory organ, the kind that normally makes IPAs remind one of lemon or grapefruit. “Good,” I thought, “something I’m
familiar with.” But then I was caught off guard again by a counter-flavor, a savory toastiness a la porter that balanced the beer like a charm. Overall, this flavor combo and lack of aroma amounts to a very drinkable, accessible IPA. For someone not normally drawn to the hoppyness of this
traditionally strong style, Blue Point’s limited release might be a good place to start again.
That’s all for this week. Check back next Friday for more beer reviews, probably on locally tapped beer at a bar near you. Until then, happy drinking!
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