Styles that can *#@$ off!

I just drank a White Stout from Snowy Mountain Brewing in Saratoga Wyoming that surprised the hell out of me. Really delicious.

 

Not a fan of Orval I take it?

 

Sierra Nevada Celebration is as much a perversion of “original” IPA as anything with lactose and peaches in it. Come at me, dads.

 

Rauchbier can *#@$ off.

Do not want smoke in my beer.

 

Phew, there's not much of it made so we need to keep the consumer base small so there's enough to go around

 

I'm surprised by how many times this style has been mentioned, considering there's only one major name (maybe more regional varieties elsewhere?)

 

Celebration can also be used as an example of a brewer deciding to add "IPA" to the marketing of a beer after-the-fact.

 

Do you not consider celebration to be an ipa?

 

But LIGHT ROAST coffee works well with IPAs. I think a lot of breweries make the mistake of using the wrong roast.

I also love a good black IPA, too! Don’t get me wrong!

 

Well, several regional/local breweries out here make them. A relatively widely available example being Alaskan Smoked Porter, which is reasonably priced and ages well. At least two breweries in my town, Wander and Chuckanut, seem to have one available fairly regularly.

 

I honestly just think of it as Celebration. The brewer calls it an IPA and that's fine by me.

 

The number of folks mentioning Brett beers and sour beers is understandable but sad also. They are certainly aquired tastes and they take a while to grow on you. But once you know what your getting into they are some of the most remarkable beers brewed.

I hated my first Brett beer and the next one, but that didn't stop me. Keep on exploring. Maybe if someone brews a sour Brett Neipa with pumpkin spices and lactose that would be the end. Aged on pumpkins.

 

Beer with a chili pepper suspended in it i.e. Cave Creek Chili

Habanero Sculpin I'm perfectly fine with

 

Yeah, but only if one ignores the evolution of the India Pale Ale "style" during the a century and a half that separates Celebration Ale from those originals. SNCA was in-line with last surviving pre-craft US IPA, Ballantine (even the dumbed-down Falstaff versions of the 1970s-1990s). Compounding the difficulty with the comparison was how the IPA evolution (de-evolution?) was very different in the UK (Greene King) and in Canada (Labatt's, Alexander Keith's).

Yeah, ditto for Anchor Liberty Ale, of course. But, in both cases, it was the beer "community" (well, mostly beer writers, probably in the pre-social media age) who first made the comparisons by the 1990s, with the brewers eventually (and happily) going along with it.*

So, in the US, by that early period of the "Craft era" an India Pale Ale was simply a higher ABV, highly-hopped, light-to-dark amber-colored, top-fermented beer. Although, the first "craft" beer labeled "India Pale Ale", Grant's, while very hoppy - 55 IBUs - Jackson called it "the hoppiest beer in the US" in one of his late 80s Pocket Guides - was originally under 5% ABV (later bumped up IIRC?)

* Addendum - In Rob Burton's book on Sierra Nevada, Hops and Dreams, the creation of Celebration Ale is described as decidedly IPA-centric (tho' it might be a slightly revisionist telling?):

 

I was always thought the point of celebration was that it was brewed with fresh hops (not wet hops but still harvested in september, being brewed by october, ready for sale for the holidays) and as such was pretty solidly in the APA/IPA space. It may seem quaint now that people once thought of that as a 'hoppy' beer but that is mostly because we have gone absolutely bananas with the hopping of late

 

Yes. So much this^^^

 

White/Blonde/Golden Stout
White/Blonde/Golden Barleywine
White/Blonde/Golden Quadrupel
American Adjunct Lager
American Light Lager
American Malt Liquor
Japanese Rice Lager
European Pale Lager
European Strong Lager
American Pale Wheat Ale

 

I wonder what will die off first? Hazy IPAs or their detractors?

 

I think it will be simultaneous - as with the paint stripper IPA. A new IPA variation will take hold. Hazy IPAs / Hazy IPA fans will become the reactionary old guard (shakes fist - "remember when an IPA used to just be galaxy, citra, motueka, medusa hops, wheat, oats, spelt, lactose and whatever in season hand picked fruit puree was available? Those were purist times. Now look at the gimmicky shite they throw in"). WC IPAs and their geriatric fans will become relics. The circle of beer life will continue

 

ISO paint stripper IPA....for old time sake