CulturAle Press

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century. Starr Hill Pilot Brewery and Side Stage Brut IPA

Date:  March 25, 2019

The Story— We’ve been in Roanoke delighting in over a half dozen breweries and a city that’s revitalizing itself with beer and music and local shoppes.  It’s an amazing rail center – we’ve seen more than two dozen freights rolling past in the last two days and the Transportation museum is a local gem.

The town boasts three very local breweries and another three outposts.  Deschutes has pulled back and will not brew soon, Three Notch’d has brewing equipment and will brew “soon,” and Starr Hill’s “pilot brewery” is up and running and producing four of the nearly two dozen beers available at the tap house.

We chose this beer because Brut IPAs are something of a rage.  We’ve had others that have sort of blundered into the style, but now it seems to be an actual evolving style and the Starr Hill pilot seems to have taken the style seriously. We’re not convinced “brut” deserves to be a style of its own, but we seem to be in the minority.   So here is Starr Hill’s  version  from its pilot brewery in Roanoke.

The Beer—  Quite dry, chalky and fruity, it seems to be a beer for those who find the New England too juicy and the IPAs and Double IPAs too much of a muchness.  Quite dry, chalky and fruity. More sharp and tart than bitter, but a back bitter builds up as it drinks.  It’s fruity without excessive juiciness.

Value — Good.  $6.50 for a US pint.

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.”