Do You Remember Your First IPA?

I remember my friend liking them before me, and complaining about the bitterness around 2008ish. A couple of months later it was basically all I drank.

 

DFH 60 Minute in college (I think it was around 2007-2008), saw it at a store was feeling a little adventurous for something different than the macro crap I was drinking and thought that it was just really cool that it was brewed in Delaware. I really enjoyed it and started thinking more about quality over quantity after that.

 

Don’t exactly know, but Hop Devil is a likely suspect.

 

I don’t remember the first IPA. It was probably DFH 60 Minute or Stone IPA.

I do have two early vivid IPA memories, including my first Racer 5 at Dirty Truth in Northampton, Mass in 2006 or 2007.

The other was my first Bell’s Two Hearted in DC during December of 2006. I’ll never forget how amazing that beer tasted, and how excited I was to find it.

 

Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale... before most of you young whippersnappers were even born.

Although I think that, by contemporary standards, it would probably be considered a blonde.

 

I’m close to 100% that this was mine as well. First hoppy beer was Sierra pale but IPA I’m pretty sure was hop devil.

 

I think it was a bomber from a brewery called Buckeye brewing circa 2006. By today's standards it would probably be pretty tame. But at the time I was blown away. Started me down the craft beer rabbit hole.

 

I wonder back and think what if that was an 8 month old bottle, I’d still be drinking English Ales.

 

in the mid 2000's michelob came out with a variety 12 pk that included a marzen, it had a pale ale and that is my first that I remember. Thev12 pk also came with etched glasses. I still have one left.



So that was my first if that counts.

 

SNPA came before the others I mentioned above, without a doubt.

 

It was in a different century.

 

Aside from a home-brew, probably Grant's -- around (wait for it) 1988? Plus or minus a year.

 

Late '60s/early 70s, split a bottle with the ol' man (a regular Ballantine XXX Ale, who'd buy the IPA every once in awhile), probably poured into a couple of his Ballantine Ale & Beer-branded pilsner glasses.

Reaction: "Whoa!"

Funny, that's my image from my Ballantine website's Falstaff Labels page - notice the green background.

 

Mine too. The next one was the Redhook.

 

I probably had the Redhook too, but I remember the ESB more clearly -- and their Porter or Stout -- can't remember the name.

 

Angel's share?

 

Nah, I'd have never qualified for that status.

Maybe just payback for all those returnable bottles of Ale I'd opened for him over the years? (They were only missing a mouthful or so).

 

Bells Two Hearted followed by Stone Ruination. Here is a picture of my first ever craft beer haul on May 7th 2010. 2 days after I signed up for this site.

 

Lagunitas. I'm not really sure when, but I was still in LA, so before 1999.