Do You Remember Your First IPA?

Sebago Brewing's Fryes Leap IPA at the brewpub in Gorham, ME in 2007. Still a beer I enjoy on occasion to this day.

 

I used to groove on that Young's Double Chocolate Stout.

 

Sierra Nevada WAY back in the day and I was obsessed with finding it on tap in the Midwest.

 

Same here. It was probably 1998ish and I was already a Victory fan, but only had their lagers. Was at a happy hour and I order Victory and Hop Devil is what I got. I won't lie, I basically looked like the guy in the Keystone bitter beer face ad, but I was sold.

 

Not sure what my first IPA was, but I remember that DFH 60min was the first IPA that I actually liked.

 

Depending on how you look at things, it was either Anchor Liberty or SN Celebration.

Grant's was around also, but never seemed as hoppy as those two.

 

Right there with you buddy, me in the eighties, but I did think Bert Grants was pretty special. Looking back it seems even more special

 

I just don't think that it was fresh by the time it got to NY.

Liberty was usually on tap at my favorite watering hole, so that was pretty spot on. And clearly better than the bottled product.

 

Yeah at that time the bottling date wasn't really on my radar, but I do remember liking Grant's enough to grab it when I saw it.

 

I think about this from time to time. It was a long time into beee before I started checking that. Makes me wonder if maybe some of my favorite or most memorable beers back then just happened to be the freshest.

 

No, not really. I remember SN Pale Ale in the late 80s (not sure the exact year). I remember Pete's Wicked around the same time and Redhook ESB in the early 90s.

Closed to today, I remember getting into this phase of craft beer around 2012 with Stone Double Bastard and BP Victory at Sea.

IPA just doesn't ring the old bell. Wait, let me check Beer Advocate!

[Edit: I'm back. As I should have expected, SN Celebration. I entered it in 2012, but my guess is that I had it far sooner than that year.]

 

I don't remember my very first ones; I was drinking anything that looked interesting for a while, befor I went basically all stouts. I remember having a DFH 90 minute, I think - possibly 120, in my dorm room and wondering why it was hitting me so hard - this was before I relized there's different alcohol levels.
The one that turned me into a hop head was Stone's Ruination, around 2000, 2001 or so.

 

That may be, at least in part, what made Celebration Ale so looked forward to. There was never any rolling of the dice in terms of freshness.

 

That's a solid point.

 

Thank you. I was scrolling about and thinking that my first IPA had to be Ballantine. It wasn't like the Schlitz and Lowenbrau that my Dad kept around. It was sharp and a statement.. Then I was in England for a nice visit long ago. To me, Beer Heaven....

 

I have a couple of those glasses somewhere, but I don't know if they are from 2005. I must have had the same 12-pack. I used to love the Michelob Amber Bock, and I think that 12-pack was where I first got it.

My input to the OP's question is that my first IPA was Arcadia's IPA. It tasted almost like pure grapefruit juice. I like grapefruit juice but not mixed with beer. I didn't buy another IPA from any source for a couple years after that.

 

Robert Chistgau, long time rock music critic, wrote a short article about beer in 1975 (actually available online The Great Gulp: A Consumer Guide's to Beer - although there's a typo not in the original which I'll fix below) published in Oui magazine. I always remember his comment about the beer:

 

Had to be Celebration. As a Chico boy all I frank was that which came from the local brewery.

 

Sierra Nevada Celebration that my mom bought me for christmas my freshman year of college. I seen everyone on here excited about it, and since I didn't have a fake ID I had to wait till I went home. Blew me away then, blows me away now.

 

If I had to guess, I'd go with a lagunitas bomber of some sort. Probably around 2008