Changing Tastes: Hopslam & Nugget Nectar

@zstef99 Just to piggy-back on @zid about the American IPA style through time.... Celebration and Nugget Nectar are also from period when consumers did not gravitate to IPAs like today. So, craft brewers' marketing of beers often de-emphasized hop-forwardness and the easiest way to do that was to avoid calling it an "IPA". Craft beer was still extremely niche and brewers still needed sales from average beer drinkers, but if the average beer consumer even knew anything about craft beer they knew it was dark and bitter and that IPA was the most bitter [i.e. bad - remember Keystone's bitter beer face ads?] Even within the craft beer drinker niche there was less acceptance of IPAs and more bias towards Belgian, stout, and wheat/hefeweizen styles. There are several OG hop-forward beers that could easily be labeled IPAs by today's standards like Nugget Nectar, Dale's Pale Ale (APA), 3 Floyds Alpha King (APA), 3 Floyds Gumballhead (American pale wheat), Lagunitas A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' (American pale wheat), Stone Arrogant Bastard (American Strong Ale), and a few more.

Agreed. Beer styles are snapshots in time.

 

I got some today. Other stores around New York should probably get it sometime this week, I would imagine.

 

One thing that's interesting to me about Celebration is wondering what the brewers had in mind at the time it was conceived. Did they say to themselves, "Let's make an IPA" or "Let's make our hoppiest ale"? Times have changed.

 

Sounds like they just wanted to get the best hop aroma.
http://allaboutbeer.com/article/celebration-ale/

 

FWIW, that sounds like an IPA to me.

Cheers!

 

If you would have told me a few short years ago that I could walk into my chain grocery store a few blocks away and they'd have fresh Sculpin, Union Jack, and Two Hearted, all beers that I'd only been able to drink on a rare trip to CA or have my friend haul back for me (from MI for Two Hearted), *AND* that I'd pass them all by for other beers, I would never have believed it. This will likely be the first year I also pass by Hopslam and Nugget Nectar (both also available at my chain grocery store!)-- there's just too many other great beers around. Man, how things have changed and are still changing in the retail beer world-- wonder what it will be like a few years from now!

 

Maybe you will only drink beer at the brewery (e.g., brewpubs and brewery tasting rooms) and you will bring your own straw that they will insert into the serving tanks?

A modern day version of:

 

Just had my first 2017 Hopslam, & I have to say - it's pretty darn great.. Bigger honey component & the malt balance is ON POINT.

Is it this week's hard to find Grimm release? No, but it's not really the same style of beer. Hopslam was always a more malty sweet DIPA.

It's pricy, but it's not a $15 bomber. I'm glad to have this once a year treat.

 

I love that they put almost everything in 6-packs (think the BA stuff is the only thing NOT in 6-packs). Expedition and Third Coast Old Ale are well-priced for ~$15-18 a sixer.

 

Last time I had Hopslam it was pretty malty I called it hop layup

 

I'll give you that. I stopped buying Victory Moonglow Weizenbock when they switched to 4 packs...

 

On that note, gotta give Sierra Nevada props for bringing Bigfoot back into sixers after a brief four-pack stint. Too bad about the recall, though.

On topic, this is the first year since I started drinking Hopslam six years ago that I've found this year's batch to be better than last year's; generally speaking, it seems to get worse each year, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit this year. It's an older-school exemplar of IIPA, but it's one that still reigns supreme in the Midwest: Surly (except Todd the Axeman), Three Floyds, Pipeworks, Half Acre, 18th Street, and many others in my region are still focused on the sweeter, beefier, more bitter IIPA style, and NE-style IPAs are really not all that common even now (though that changes every day).