Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century. Lost Rhino with Tuppers’: Mother Tupper’s Back of the Cupboard Imperial Rye Pale Ale

Date:  March 31, 2019

The Story—  When you have a name like “Tupper” (go ahead, look it up) you had better get used to people smirking at you.   We were hesitant to name a beer “Mother Tupper’s” for all kinds of reasons, but when we mentioned the idea to my mom, she practically fell out of her chair laughing and begged us to do it.

Our friends at Lost Rhino were kind enough to collaborate on a couple of batches of beer in 2014.  One was a precursor to the Mother Tupper’s brewed to commemorate out 25,000th beer tasting write up.  We used it to get an idea of how the spice of the rye would interact with the Mount Hood hops that has become a signature feature of Tupper collaborations.   We called the “Tuppers’ 25K” a rye pale ale, but it really was a rye IPA and it turned out really well.

So to celebrate my mom– the true “Mother Tupper” turning 94 we turned up the dial on everything that made the 25K special and designed a beer with 9.4% ABV and 94 IBUs.   It was exceptional out of the box (and exceptionally expensive to make), and it’s lasted well when cellared properly.

It’s a “Double IPA” or an “Imperial IPA” with rye– put the “rye” wherever you like.   We chose the owrd order because it scanned.   Why the “Back of the Cupboard?”  Because “Mother Tupper” sounds like the cupboard owner in the nursery rhyme.   What did you think “Mother Tupper” referred to?

The Beer— Well balanced array of gentle fruits. clean malt and resiny and oily hops.  Mount Hood spice, Amarillo orange zest.  Very smooth.

Value —  Very good, at least.   No bias at all.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century. Mad Fox XX (20,000)  India Ink, Black IPA, Falls Church, Virginia

Date:  March 30, 2019

The Story— The almost immediate success of Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale encouraged our brewer, Jerry Bailey of Old Dominion Brewery, to listen carefully to any new ideas we could suggest.   He encouraged us to play a major role in formulating a new pilsner he wanted to brew and at least a part of him still regrets his decision.   The pilsner was a huge critical success, winning national accolades and two GABF medals, but sales didn’t match Geek-ometer ratings, and Jerry was leery of taking a risk of brewing another beer he could neither sell nor discontinue.

In the 90s, Ellie came up with the idea of an “India Ink” beer that would keep most of the hoppy full flavored characteristics of an India Pale Ale, but use a dark malt.  We didn’t know, but Greg Noonan of the Vermont Pub and Brewery, had come up with the same concept a year or two earlier.   Noonan got some press buzz but certainly didn’t get rich on the idea, so it’s probable if Jerry had listened to Ellie’s pleas, we would have had another Keller “critics delight, stockholders’ fright” on our hands.

The name is an oxymoron.  A black ale isn’t a pale ale and the only dark beers like it that got to India were porters that had a well-established name that didn’t need embellishment.  Some brewers called theirs “Cascadian” IPA’s but it seemed to others as if the Western Brewers were trying to appropriate the style and even some of those Western brewers have rejected the moniker as implying a false regional origin.  Brewery icon Greg Koch argues persuasively that “IPA” has a meaning beyond the literal words it represents and there’s no better way of describing this beer– it is, after all, an IPA with black malt.

Whatever the name, the style took off in the early years of the 21st century and almost every brewery seemed to have its interpretation of the style.   Even the name, which I know Ellie thought of first, had been used here and there.   Still, Mad Fox hadn’t done one yet and we needed a designated beer to celebrate our 20,000th tasting note.  Bill Madden of Mad Fox did a near miraculous job of translating Ellie’s words into dark elixir.   The key was using dehusked Carapils malt, which gave the beer a dark richness without the acidic darkness other malts can create.

We are, without doubt, biased, but we think Mad Fox’s version was as good as any of the over 170 Black IPAs we’ve sampled.

The Beer—  Chewy rich malt.  Toffee notes but with slight hints of chocolate.  Mount Hood hops show sweet and herbal leafy flavors before leaving lots of leaf, a touch of citrus and a bit of pine late.  Chewy but clean.  It was pretty much exactly what Ellie had been dreaming of for many years.  Her calm and measured reaction to it:  “Wow!  Complex and yummy; chocolate, spice, dry roast, pine and clean.”

Value —Excellent, especially during happy hours and half price growler fill days at Mad Fox.

Availability:  Sorry, not now.  I hope we’ll be able to do another batch of this either at Mad Fox or elsewhere, but for now the black IPA style is the only sub category of IPAs that is in significant decline.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century. Quattro Goomba’s Old School, Aldie, Va.

Date:  March 29, 2019

The Story—  This is the second Beer of the Day from Quattro Goomba’s in the not-very-central but scenic Aldie, Virginia.  You can see the previous gem from brewer Chris Jacques here.  As we near the end of our March madness of IPA styles, we circle back to the version that started the craze.

There were plenty of IPAs in America in the 19th century; Prohibition decreased them but a generous handful continued into the 30s and 40s.  The most successful was Ballentine, which brewed some of the most flavorful beers you could buy in its heyday in Newark.  Even after Falstaff picked up the brand and brewed it in Fort Wayne, it still had exceptional character.  Ironically not long after the last bottles of it disappeared from shelves in the east, adventurous brewers in the west that showed Ballentine’s lingering influence.  Anchor’s Liberty ale in 1975 made extensive and innovative use of Cascade hops.  Bert Grant brewed the first craft beer labeled IPA in the early 80s in Oregon.  Sierra Nevada’s Celebration and Lagunitas’s IPA smashed remaining doors down.   By the mid 1990s the hop forward taste had spread to the east.  Some consider Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale the first East Coast IPA, though the Tuppers never labeled it as such.  Today, though we don’t think anyone’s done a definitive count, we estimate there are at least 20,000 American IPAs in production right now, with several times that brewed over the course of a year.  Not all breweries match Quatro Gooba’s numbers– five different IPAs on tap when we were there a couple of months ago– but some like Pizza Boy in Enola, Pa. offer far more.

This version from Quatro Goomba’s is one of the best we’ve had lately.  A beer such as this would have been shockingly fruity in the early days of IPAs, but today we’ve grown to accept entire fruit wagons rolling over out taste buds and these “old school” hops offer a spectrum of flavor beyond the fruit bin.

The Beer—Cascade and Centennial give as much leaf as fruit in today’s context.  Herbal notes also grow and a big even full malt is a fine palate for the supersplash of hops and the lingering oils and tangy long bitter.  There’s a bit of a struggle between the big hops and firm malt as it drinks, but every sip calls for another.

Value —  Good.  Quatro Goomba’s offers very good beer at entirely fair prices.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century.  Sierra Nevada Beer Camp #226 It’s Raining Mandarin, “light IPA”, Chico, California

Date:  March 28, 2019

The Story—  We don’t actually know what a “Light IPA” is, but if Sierra Nevada says there is one and brews it, that’s enough for us.   The brewery’s been defining styles for decades, so we give them a quick pass on this one.

Sierra Nevada holds “beer camps” in which, for a fee of course, campers do all sorts of California type things, but some of them collaborate on nationally released beers.  The brewery says about this one: “This beer is a gateway to the IPA style. Our campers designed it to be approachable with an alluring, citrusy aroma and appealing hop bitterness. Its biscuity malt body, round mouthfeel and piney finish make this the perfect beer for IPA novices and hop heads alike.”

Sierra Nevada remains a family held brewery in this world of big corporate take overs.   They’ve wandered off the path with some of their adventures lately, but more often continue to provide a wide range of well-brewed beers that are widely available across the country.

We had it on tap at Adam’s Grill on Kent Island, Maryland.  It’s a barbecue house that used to be called Adams Rib, but has always featured one of the most interesting arrays of beer in the area.  The food’s good and the beer’s good and you’re minutes away from our favorite retreat –the all rooms with view of the water Hilton Garden in in Graysonville.  We think they get these beers because the beertender here participated in the camp a few years ago.

The Beer—  Tons of the advertised Mandarina Bavaria, no doubt, but so much that it seems like there may be actual juice or peel as well.  Chalky with a lasting bitter.  Maybe a “Northern California” SIPA, though at 5.8% abv, you’d better do your “session” carefully.

Value —  Good to very good.   Twelve bucks for a huge 22 ounce vessel of a beer that’s very hard to find.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century. Dynasty Maintenance Mike Milkshake IPA, Ashburn, Virginia

Date:  March 27, 2019

The Story—  Before we’re done, we’ll list over twenty styles of IPA, a few of which are more or less authentic to style.   IPAs are really popular, but brewers try to brew something that’s distinctive if not quite unique.   If they do brew a unique beer that’s even marginally palatable, it won’t be unique for more than a few weeks.   Enter “milkshake” IPAs.   They apparently date all the way back Omnipollo’s “smoothie” series, though the name came later.  We first ran into a beer with that name in early 2018.

Jason Alström, co founder of Beer Advocate wrote “Milkshake beers are not a trend or acceptable with traditional or even modern styles” showing more understanding of beer than of market trends.  Hats off, Jason.  You nailed it.

Vaguely reminiscent of New England clotted malt brew but with even more lactose and gobs of fruit and other seemingly boundless ingredients, these “beers” are unabashedly brewed for people who don’t like beer.   We get it– a brew pub that can’t serve cocktails and wine has to brew beer for people who like cocktails and wine or else that mortgage-saving group of 16 is going to go to a bar no matter how much most of them love beer.

But this is a beer blog.   And this style is not beer.  So we don’t have to be nice to it.

But we have to be nice to the brewer of this beer of the day.   Favio Garcia is one of the truly gifted brewers in the state of Virginia.   He put Richbrau on the map in the 80s, brewed some great beer, including ours, at Old Dominion in the early part of the century and was a critical component in creating Lost Rhino, one of NoVa’s best known breweries.    He’s at a much smaller place now, but perhaps with more hands-on control.   He still has his touch and he’s still a brewer who other NoVa brewers turn to for advice.  The biggest challenge for a brewer on his current list is a helles –a style that is a rare find on this side of the Atlantic, even with the trend to session-able beers. It’s one of the the hardest beer to brew and probably Favio’s best.

We lavish this praise because it’s going to stop when we describe the milkshake.   But to be clear, we’re highlighting Favio’s because it’s the best Milkshake IPA we’ve had.   That’s a bit like talking about the softest phone book you’ve ever been hit on the head with by a Chicago cop, but it’s still better than alternatives.

The Beer—  Creamy, chalky and sweet, and though it takes a while for the fruit to fully emerge, it surely does by the end.  A huge range of flavors make it more interesting and more palatable than others we’ve tasted in the style.

Value —  If you like this style, it’s very good.   We won’t be getting growlers of it here — or from any other brewery.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”