Double IPA

This bottle of Bashah has been sitting in my basement for almost a year. I picked it up in Colorado last fall mostly because I'd never seen it before. I passed it up in favor of other beers in my basement until now because I haven't had a whole lot for Stone or BrewDog that I thought all that highly of. Bashah is a collaborative Belgian-style Black Double IPA, which means it doesn't really have a style at all... It seemed like a bit of a wildcard and I knew enough about BrewDog and Stone's style to err on the side of aging so the bitterness in this beer would die down a little. Well, I think more than enough time has passed, let's open this beer up...

In terms of hype Bell's Hopslam is right up there with Pliny the Elder and Dark Lord. An important difference here is that Hopslam is actually available down the street from me, even if it sells out in a matter of hours. I've had both Pliny and Dark Lord and only one lived up to the hype. I could see myself happily standing in line for Dark Lord with a thousand other beer nerds. Pliny was a different story, it was good but I prefer a dozen similar style beers, I just didn't see what the big deal was. Pliny is similar in style to Hopslam so I was a bit hesitant to drop nearly $20 on a six pack, but here we are...

Dogfish Head's 60 Minute IPA may be their best selling beer but I've always regarded 90 Minute as the beer that took them to the next level. 60 Minute is a solid beer and back when it was first brewed, it may have been revolutionary... but now, it's just another continuously hopped IPA. It's a good beer, which is why it sells in such huge quantities, but it's not what I'd call World Class. 90 Minute is a different story, it was more than just 1.5x the beer 60 Minute was.

Founder's calls this beer a Triple IPA. Triple IPA isn't a generally accepted style of beer... it's part marketing and part one-upsmanship. Without waxing philosophical about beer styles I'll just leave it at this, you have IPAs and Double IPAs and that's it. If you start calling beer Triple or Quadruple IPAs then where does it end? A 60% ABV beer that's arbitrarily called a Septuple IPA? It's ludicrous. But I digress. Founder's Devil Dance is a Double IPA that's been pampered with hops until it has reached 12% ABV. That's no small feat for any beer really, considering most double digit ABV beers are usually Stouts.

Commemorative beers are fun. Mostly it's the one-off rarity of the beer that gives it an exotic flair. Knowing this is probably the first, and last, time you'll have this beer is fun. A lot of breweries do a once-a-year brew to commemorate their anniversary. It's sort of like a birthday beer, a gift from the brewers to you, their loyal drinkers. The story of this bottle of Great Divide's 16th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA really started a year ago when I picked up a bottle of their 15th Anniversary Double IPA. I'd seen those black foil topped bottles a number of times and finally decided I'd give it a shot. I was really surprised how much I liked the rich flavors in that Double IPA. Here we are a year later and I'm excited to try the 16th Anniversary version of that same beer.

Pliny the Elder. A lot has been said about this beer. It wouldn't be any understatement to say that it is considered the best IPA in the world. Even though big India Pale Ales aren't my favorite style I've been looking forward to this one based solely on its reputation. Russian River doesn't distribute to my area so I had to wait quite a while for a bottle of this beer... A generous local homebrewer and like minded aficionado hooked me up with a couple bottles of Pliny the Elder that came to him direct from California. The date stamp on the bottle says it was bottled about two and a half weeks ago, so it's pretty fresh. If this beer is as good as they say it is, this will be the time for me to try it at its best...

Being Kansas City based has its ups and down. While we get a lot of great Colorado craft beers, we aren't a big enough market to draw some of the more limited release beers those breweries produce. India Barleywine is one example brewed by Odell, a brewery who sent just about everything else out this way but for some reason didn't send this particular beer. I was lucky enough to receive a bottle of India Barleywine from the nice folks at Odell and am eager to give it a full review, so let's get to it shall we...

Here's a beer I've been putting off for a while... Hop Stoopid from Lagunitas is pretty much everything I hate about craft beer. That may sound a little extreme, and I'm probably being overly dramatic, but that's why I've passed on this beer for so long. First, I've had four or five other Lagunitas beers in the last six months or so, I haven't thoughts highly of a single one. The common thread amongst those beers, they were too hoppy for their style. I complain a lot about brewery's who try to be extremely extreme and push the IBU envelope by just cramming obscene amounts of hops in a beer. That was my impression of Lagunitas, they make traditional style beers, rinse their bottles with that beer, then fill the bottles with hop tea... Hop Stoopid, their Double IPA, seemed like it'd just be more of the same. Just look at that name... there is no way I'd like this beer.