Do You Remember Your First IPA?

For me i think it was Shipyard Mystic seaport IPA 1993 94.
Harpoon ipa for sure after that

 

Dogfish Head 60 Minute. 2014. September. Sitting on the back deck. Poured into a glass. Bought on a recommendation from co worker. I didn’t know shit. It threw me into the rabbit whole because before I’d drink rolling rock and occasional Sam Adams

i thought it tasted like flowers it tasted like nothing I’ve ever had before. It was wild. I seek that flavor still. But will never have it again because it was so new and wild. It’s my magic dragon.

 

The first IPAs I had were English style, and Summit IPA in 1993 was a frequent purchase. I also remember regularly buying Goose Island IPA in the 1990s.

 

It was a 2012, cold, pre-Christmas night at Fort Collins (I wore a Santa hat the whole night) where I experienced my first IPA. Matter of fact my first taste of hop juice/oil came on a tour where I had my first IPA (I almost missed the tour!) The place: New Belgium. The IPA: Ranger (ah good times back then - Obama was President and crowds were plentiful, but I digress.) Oh how I miss Ranger and its sweet beginnings and off dry finish (mind you this was way before the hazy days we live in now). New Belgium's Ranger was the penultimate beer sampled on the tour (the fourth out of five beers sampled on the tour) and I sampled it adjacent to the bottle filling room where the Ranger was being bottled that evening. Talk about fresh! The actual Ranger sampled was poured straight from a bottle off the bottling line and into a glass. Like being in an orchard and picking and eating the fruit off the tree!

 

Yeah dude. OG Flower Power was amazing.

 

Miss that beer so much. You would crack that bottle open and the aroma was just out of this world.

 

That’s easy - Two Hearted, circa 2006 or 2007.

No turning back after that.

And Hopslam was my first DIPA. I nearly spontaneously combusted.

 

I didn't remember, but looked it up: Torpedo from Sierra Nevada, followed by Sculpin, Stone IPA, Centennial, and 60-Minute - not a bad intro to the style...

 

Very cool. I remember Grants having a range of beers. The one I remember is Scotch Ale. My buddy even took me to their pub in Seattle decades ago. Bert Grants was a pioneer in craft brewing, that's for sure.

First hoppy beer must have been a SN Pale Ale sometime in the early 1980s. I'm sure I had some Celebration around then too. I'm sure me and my friends all had the bitter beer face going on.

 

I cannot say with any certainty, but:

Back in mid 80s, my friends and I liked trying every new beer we saw, even if it was just another AAL. We lived in a dry town, so we had to go to a neighboring town for beer runs. Well, Ontario NY had a beverage store that sold beer for cheap. It's where we would buy kegs for parties, or cases. Well, they had a cooler, maybe 3 doors ?, with imports and other brews.

So, we'd go, buy a case of Genesee pounders (16oz, returnable bottles, in the waxed, heavy duty cardboard cases, that had their own deposit), Labatt Blue, Coors Extra Gold, whatever. But, if it was just a dude hangout night, we would also hit that singles cooler, and gamble. I remember thinking that this "Brown Ale" (probably Newcastle) was good, but "flat".

Well, one night, we grabbed a bottle that had a big picture of an elephant head on the label, and, we thought, it must an exotic import, cuz the label also had the word India on it.

Fast forward, we're playing pool, a few beers, shots, and bowls deep, and the next experiment beer was the elephant beer.

Oh shit! The collective response was less than positive. Just not the right time and place I reckon........

I'd really like to try that Elephant beer now.

 

Plus, this thread is really making me feel old.

Even older than I often feel around here.

 

Any idea what that elephant beer was? @jesskidden you have any guesses?

 

Man, back then in the old wilderness times (no internet, let alone hand computers!) , as I came to learn, many breweries would put an elephant on the label, all the better to signify "India!", which was a rare and exotic place to a bunch of apple farmers from Upstate NY.

Everybody who liked beer enough to experiment; distributors, retailers, bars, and consumers, well, we were just flying blind. That's the time we would actually buy beer because of the label (Hey! Haven't seen that before! Let's grab a couple!). Styles? Well, there was American, Canadian (Just like American, but marginally stronger. Living a bit more than an hour away from the border, Hey! let's go to Niagara Falls and buy some strong Canadian beer! Usually Brador at 6.5-7.0-ish percent. We were ballin'!), and exotic stuff like Heineken.

We'd buy Molson Golden or Michelob if we were trying to show the ladies we were classy.

 

IPA has always been a part of the British beer scene, usually the weakest beer in the range for historic reasons (the beer shipped to India was also generally the weakest, and the ravages of the wars left IPA at below 4% ABV)
Greene King IPA is around 3.6% and is still one of the biggest selling cask ales.

 

Ninkasi Total Domination was my first IPA. I was 16 and it was on a road trip to The Grand Canyon with two buddies. Up until that point, my preferences were PBR and Coors Light. PBR is what we always had at gigs and on the road, and I enjoyed it. I started drinking SNPA and Torpedo during my short bartending stint, and when my buddy and I left that place, our interest in beer exploded. Torpedo became the staple, but Stone, Mendocino Red Tail Ale, Bear Republic Racer 5, Lagunitas, Speakeasy Scarlet Red, Redhook Long Hammer, Ballast Point Sculpin, 21st Amendment Blah Blah Blah, Deschutes, Moylan's DIPA, and Drake's Denogginizer were the standard go-to's for me. That was my idea of good beer.

Can you tell I'm not a Mainer?

 

Of course... Brewdog's PUNK IPA
In these parts it was the first IPA for many.
The 2008 (or at the latest 2009) version... the one that has nothing to do with today's Punk Ipa....
The one that, most likely, we'll never taste again.

 

Just a high alcohol beer - was even labeled "malt liquor" for the US market, given a lot of states' labeling laws - M. Jackson put the abv at 6.8 - 7.1% (1982 Pocket Guide). A pic from the mid-80s when AB was importing the Carlsberg brands:


IIRC (@Bitterbill ?) it was eventually brewed under license in Canada by Carling-O'Keefe, and that version seemed to "lose somethin' " . Still on the market and exported to the US (bottled in a green longneck same as the standard Carlsberg) - I picked up a bottle out of curiosity just the other day to see if it was Danish-brewed (it is). Didn't check the abv or even consider buying it.

The name apparently came from the Elephant Gate at the brewery, and the elephant was used in other Carlsberg advertising (just as Yuengling and AB uses the eagle).

 

Boom, me too. Had one at the brewpub in probably '04/'05 (which would've made me 18 or 19, but who's counting?) when I was working there. I remember going "Hm, this is pretty bitter, but I like it!" Was just happy to be drinking a beer. Then, not long after that, I had a Harpoon IPA and was like, "I think I really like IPAs!" Fast forward 15 years later and the love is stronger than ever.

I grew up in Milton. Where are you from?

 

Northern New Jersey/ New York raised, was living just outside of Atlantic City when Dogfish started coming around. Funny enough though I have family in Viola.