CulturAle Press

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century.  Pizza Boy The Huma League; Enola, Pennsylvania

Date:  March 18, 2019

The Story— The northern west coast of the United States is still the source of some of the most respected hops in the world.  But other fields have challenged their near monopoly of flavor in your face hoppiness they held in the late 90s.  Aussies and Kiwis proved that you didn’t have to have a farm within a day’s drive of Portland to produce interesting hops and even Europeans are developing new strains that show complex  fruit and big alpha hops.

For us, though, the big breakthrough has been the return of lupuculture to the American mid-Atlantic.  From new York to Virginia, farmers are rediscovering why that region once led the Americas in hop production.  Some strains still grow wild, but increasingly farmers are realizing they can make more money growing hops for craft breweries than growing kale for millennials.

Pizza Boy Brewery at Al’s of Hampden is a funky wonderful brewery in Enola, Pa., a short drive from Harrisburg.  It sits on the one side of a sharp valley — a comfortable Holiday Inn Express is across the ravine, but please don’t try to walk it.   it used to be a smallish pizza place with a brewery in the lower level, but now it’s a big pizza place with a showcase brewery behind glass at the end of the beer and food hall.   It was always a great stop over; it’s now a destination brewery and tap room.   Almost 100 beers pour from the taps and Pizza Boy is confident enough to put some first class beers from the state and the country alongside the dozens of beers from the on-site brewery.

Terry Hawbaker is a master brewer who put Bullfrog Brewery in Williamsport on the beer geek map decades ago.  He’s a Picasso of sorts – having proved his ability to produce absolutely excellent versions of standard beer styles, he moved on to beers that make women without heads and guitars with disjointed necks seem normal.  But for all his wild and sour wanderings, he still has his touch with the basics, and he has a remarkable ability to find ways to bring the full potential of the the local Pennsylvania hops to fruition in his beers.

On our last visit, he had close to a half dozen beers featuring local hops and every one of them was a winner.  Our feature beer today was not only one of the best of the evening but one of the best of the year.

The Beer—Full malt still gives room for the distinctive and tasty local hops.  These Pennsylvania hops are exceptionally complex: earthy, some musty closet, pine, pineapple and leaf with even a hint of a little black pepper.   Ellie liked how balanced it was for a big beer.

Value — Excellent.  Five bucks for a standard twelve ounce pour of a masterpiece you just can’t get anywhere else.

Note– the 100 taps makes creating sampler trays an impossible task.  You can’t do all of them anyway even with four ounce pours, so take the time to savor an “adult sampler” of a range of third-liter pours.

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.

We return from a St. Paddy’s stout break to our voyage through 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.”