First beer where you recognized what hops taste like

New Belgium Ranger

 

It was either Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA or Long Trail Double Bag IPA. My dad was always a hop-head and he let me have a few of them prior to college. They were my first real experience with craft beer and I've never looked at beer the same way since.

 

SNPA or Jai Alai can't remember but one of those for sure.

 

I had just turned 21. I wanted to start going to bars, get involved with the "scene," you know, that kind of stuff.

A local bar I started going to had a "buy the beer keep the glass" thing every Tuesday. So, over the summer on a Tuesday, my girlfriend and I had made plans to meet up with some college friends that had just graduated and moved to our hometown for 7 PM at a different place than the bar we started frequenting. It was 6:30, and we remembered that the "buy the beer keep the glass" was going on at said bar, so we decided to go get ourselves a glass!

We arrive at 6:45, and we were meeting our friends in fifteen minutes at a place ten minutes away from the keep the glass bar. We had five minutes. The beer you had to order to get the glass was the wonderful Green Flash West Coast IPA.

"What's an IPA?" I said. "I don't know, let's just chug it really fast like we did with the PBRs and Bud Lights back when we were Freshman" she said. We scurry over to the bar, order the West Coast, make a quick, ignorant "CHEERS," lift the glass, and go for it.

Terror and palate-destruction immediately followed. Low and behold, this was not a cheap macro lager.

We were late to our gathering with friends as it took us...time...to finish our first IPA.

After learning more about craft beer and trying more of them, it is now one of my favorite IPAs, and I drink from that very glass all the time.

Go hogs.

 

SNPA

 

Hops in general would be Hopslam.

What a specific hop tasted like would be King Sue. I tried it and definitely knew what Citra and Mosaic hops tasted like.

 

Two beers stand out for me; Mirror Pond Pale Ale and Big Swell IPA. The incredible fruit flavors that can come from hop cones is ridiculous, especially in those beers.