| Hoppy New Year By Glenn DeLuca For BeerNexus.com SORRY, I couldn’t resist! I’m a Hophead and no I didn’t just come out of the cooler; I’m hoppy to say I love IPAs more than the many other styles available. And if we go to the Craft Brewers Association stats they’ll tell us that IPA dominates the craft beer industry. So everything should be “peaches and cream” for me when I go to one of my favorite watering holes for a couple of drafts, but unfortunately these days the draft selection is getting worse not better. How can that be, you say, when breweries are making multiple IPAs each, that means more. Well more doesn’t necessarily mean better. I can’t tell you how many Passion Fruit IPAs I’ve had recently and to be honest I don’t know that I’ve ever seen or eaten a Passion Fruit; what’s a Passion Fruit and what’s it doing in my IPA. If Warren Buffett had known every fifth brewery was going to brew an IPA with Passion Fruit he would have bought some stock and made a “barrel” of money! And Mango, there’s another one of those “tropical fruits” that is also appearing a lot in my IPA. Sam Rebel IPA was great, then they Juiced it with mango and sorry but it’s not as good. Oh, and there’s Guava. We’ve only just begun winter and I don’t have enough fingers to count all the tropical fruit IPAs. Sierra Nevada has “Tropical Torpedo” coming. Is this the new spring/summer feature for ’17 that we’re going to get in the dead of winter like we do pumpkin beers in July? Maybe I shouldn’t be complaining all that much because at least these are real fruits. Some brewers are adding even more “interesting” things to beer. Let’s see Dogfish Head added Scrapple to their Beer for Breakfast, Flying Fish added pork roll to their Exit 7 – Pork Roll Porter, Rogue added bacon and maple syrup to their Voodoo Doughnut Maple Bacon Ale and I’m sure there are more out there I haven’t heard about yet. There must be collusion among the brewers, what else can it be? Maybe we can go after them using anti-trust laws and stop all this nonsense. Or maybe The Donald will start tweeting about IPAs about 3:00 AM after the bars have closed and scare the fruit out of them. You know what I want in my IPA; I want Citra and Equinox and Galaxy and Amarillo and El Dorado and Cascade and Centennial and Chinook and Simcoe and Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin and Waimea and Summit and Wakatu and Topaz and Columbus and Motueka and… Okay I think I made my point, there are a ton of really great hops to choose from and you can use more than one at a time and in different strengths and you can dry hop or wet hop, so do we really have to resort to a flavor enhancement?? Look if somebody wants some fruit in their beer, just ask the bartender to add a slice or wedge like they do with a Blue Moon or a cocktail; don’t force me to have it also. Maybe those of us who like it “straight” (and we’re talking booze here, don’t stray off into any other sensitive areas) can start a new “SF” movement…oh right…Sans Fruit. I guess we should feel lucky we haven’t seen some other possible combinations like, Persimmon IPA or Eggplant IPA or Kumquat IPA or Lychee IPA or… Well I hope I never see any of these although I also hope I haven’t given any brewers any ideas either. Glenn DeLuca writes about beer and culture of drinking. He may be reached by writing thebigG@beernexus.com. *** *** *** |
Glenn DeLuca
Outtakes from a life of beer.
beernexus.com presents
| Big G's Beer Beat by Glenn DeLuca |
| BeerNexus is proud to welcome beer writer Glenn "Big G" DeLuca as a contributor to the site. A widely traveled beer hunter, Glenn is a leading advocate for the growth of craft beer. |
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