What Was Your Gateway IPA?

DFH 90 min circa 2009

 

As much as I hate to admit, I think Bridgeport IPA was my intro into IPA-land! Don't enjoy it much now, but it was just light enough to not scare my virginal tastebuds away!

 

My first IPA was Ruination and I was instantly enamored of the style. I love the IPA and have not stopped drinking them since.

 

SN Celebration ale

 

Magic Hat - Encore. but now I am always disappointed when I go back to it.

 

I'm pretty sure the beers like the IPA and ESB were added to the lineup when Gambrinus bought BridgePort from the Ponzis (I had a friend who worked there at the time)- so that would put it in 1995. I hung out there a lot up until 1993, and there definitely wasn't an IPA then.

I guess it does seem pretty old-fashioned now, but there weren't too many IPAs on the shelves when it came out. I'm kind of curious to check it out again, just for old times sake.

 

When I actually knew the difference between beers, Heavy Seas Loose Cannon or Lagunitas

 

Summit Saga quite a long time ago

 

Bell's two hearted

 

We gotta get you some Nelson and Pupil.

 

Commodore Perry. The grapefruit won me. It was also my first time experiencing that hops fade with age, since I was saving the last one to try to "make them last"...

 

Feel free heh

I thought Heady Topper was phenomenal. Usually for my taste a hoppy pale ale (zd or pseudo sue is perfection when I can get them). As far as shelf beers I revisit 8 Bit Pale Ale, Dale's, etc.

 

Probably HopDevil or Stone IPA.

 

Sculpin was my gateway, then the other BP hoppy beers- Big Eye and Scuplin taught me how different IPA's can be, and Dorado was a IIPA I drank quite often 2-3 years ago. Deschutes Hop in the Dark also!

Pliny was probably my go-to more often than Sculpin because it was on-tap everywhere in SD. Alpine was a rare treat unless we drove up there. All the other locals- Stone, Alesmith, Green Flash and the smaller breweries like Hess and Societe, too... all thanks to Sculpin.

 

If you can find it fresh, Moon Man is up there with my favorites. Lakefront IPA, too, although good luck finding a sixer of that younger than 2 months old.

 

Does Alpha King count as an IPA? If not- I would say DFH 60 and 90 min....

 

harpoon or stone i think

 

Hop Ottin', about a dozen years ago. Took to IPAs like a duck to water.

 

I also know we went to Cape Cod in summer 1995 where I was able to get Harpoon IPA for the first time, and we drank a shitload of that, that week. I'm pretty sure I had already gotten into IPAs via Bridgeport by then but if you're right about the timing of the Gambrinus takeover, maybe not. If not my introduction to the style had to have been either those Harpoons or Avery IPA right around the same time, and BridgePort followed shortly thereafter. I'm going to get a sixer of BridgePort IPA on the way home, for old time's sake...wouldn't mind a Harpoon either but not available here, still.

 

It was either Goose Island IPA or Hoptimum. I can't remember. 2011.