"India Pale Ales" Topic

While wargaming, are IPAs the best beverage trend in a generation or akin to Cthulhu's smegma (undrinkable)?

I like them.

A Fine Pale ale, like Bass or some such is great, but a lot of micro-brewed stuff (Killer Zombie Klowns from Beneath the Toilet or some such) can be an eye opener and not in the best way either. You just have to experiment, to find the right two or three brands you like and go from there.

Mostly smegma to me!

IPA's are the best beer ever if you're in an oppressively hot clime and desperately need an overload of hops to preserve your beer.

Otherwise, they are a miserable hops tonic.

I know I've had a good one or two, but I can't remember the brand. Not my pint of beer.

Too often the "brewer" considers an IPA to be a license to experiment. "You can never have too much hops!" News flash, Bud. Yes you can.

If I want to suck on a grapefruit rind, I will suck on a grapefruit rind. But for now, get me a lager.

They are the best trend period from a generation that has both coined and defined through demonstration the term, Epic Fail!

Still … I'll have a pint.

In fact, I had two on the way home from work.

When did simply dumping all the hops in the world into a beer qualify it as 'craft'? The double/triple/quadruple hopped things popping up everywhere are an atrocity.

Now a nice Belgian Wheat or a really crisp, bright Pilsner are something to drink on a warm Friday afternoon.

I tend to find most "craft" IPA's to be exercises in overhopping .
However -the resurgence is Sours(Lambics and Geuzes to be specific) is encouraging

Agree that the craft brews often put more hops in to the detriment of taste…..but have some Alexander Keiths IPA…fantastic ….oldest brewery in North America up in Halifax NS.

I have to agree with the general tenor of the conversation since it has become the thing to overhop IPAs. However, there are many tasty IPAs on the market that are flavorful and wonderful to drink. Just my two suds.

Love em.

I agree with the OFM. Except I'd rather have an amber ale than a lager.

An Amber Ale for me, please, or maybe a Coffee Porter, yum!

I don't care for them.

There are lots of great IPAs – Alexander Keith's is my personal favourite although my favourite beer is old school Innis & Gunn

I don't drink anymore, but when I did, I enjoyed an IPA now and again.

Much like wargaming, each to his own tastes.

I always enjoyed Guinness, but know many who derided it as a bad pint of motor oil.

Eric

Hate them. Give me a good lager or pilsner while I play please.

IPA is such a wide-open style now--the crafts have really opened up a whole new arena. But am I going to sit by the pool and down six Jai Alais in a row…nah.

Every "local" craft brewer makes one so there's enormous variability in the category. The good ones can be great and the bad ones are awful. I like the good ones, a lot.

Bitter or imperial stout!
If you want something light and refreshing. Witbeir

IPA? Lovely stuff!
In the Working Men's CIU clubs circa 1980, (ladies in the lounge and concert room only, tickets for the meat draw & domino card on sale now) it was pretty much regarded as a soft drink, in that it was typically slightly lower ABV than bitter and came in small – usually dusty – bottles.
That meant you didn't have to drink full pints, and in a setting where a grown man just plain would not order a half, drinking bottles was the only way NOT to drink pints.
They were quite obviously the unloved stepchildren of the breweries, with charmingly naff and dated labelling.
One of the myriad of also-rans – milds, ambers, scotch ales – that lived in the shadow of Bitter.

Call it rose-tinted if you will, but another good thing about that milieu is that any hipster-bearded earlobe-hooped skinny-jeaned artisan organic micro-brewer who tried to pass off astringent fizzy battery acid as "Doctor Hoptastic's Triple-Hopped Vegan IPA" would have been swiftly and cheerfully kicked into unconsciousness in the car park.

Happy days…

"… swiftly and cheerfully kicked into unconsciousness in the car park." Brutal, yet pleasantly lyrical.

Silly stuff that, this below is the nectar I love.

Take a beer.

Add hops.

Add more hops.

Does it taste bad now? Good. Add even more hops and some twigs and call it an IPA.

What Weasel said. The stuff is awful and if it were the first taste I ever had of 'beer' I would never had tried another.

I heartily recommend the Meantime Brewery's IPA, a respectable 7.5% and brewed with traditional Goldings and Fuggles hops.

Too many offerings are in the trendy US style which means that they tend to be overloaded with hops like Citra which gives them an overpowering citrus flavour.

Fine if you like this style, but not IPA to my taste; perhaps they should be reclassified as American Pale Ale.

I like your thinking Norman. Now I fancy a pint of mild for the sake of it.

I used to love a pint (well, several usually) of Mild back in the days when there were still Whitbread pubs in Wimbledon.

Guinness is good, but Beamish (ah, dear old Ludlow!) is better.

I remember my first pint, from a pub in Brierley Hill, West Midlands.
I was fifteen, and it was probably an Ansell's pub.
I asked for a pint, and the publican asked, 'Bitter or Mild?'
I stood there and thought – Bitter? That sounds horrible….. Mild? That sounds more palatable.
I drank mild in pubs for the next twelve years, before coming to the States. Due to that choice, I had a beer belly by the tender age of eighteen – well that's my excuse.
I do miss Banks's, and Holden's.
I will drink a good IPA when I can find one, but otherwise stick with Guiness now. Less calories…..

I drink a lot of beer. IPAs are my least favorite, ranking below even the hideous Belgian Witbiers.

I find IPAs taste like insect repellent to me.

Stouts and porters for me. And the odd Corona in the summer.

Inspired by talk of "not-Bitters", I resolved to look out for milds, ambers, and Scotches on Saturday… (Trent House & Crown Posada)

I didn't manage to find any Milds, but I lucked out on Amber ales: highly recommended local brew Wylam Angel, Harviestoun Broken Dial, and Sharps' Doombar.
Respectable session on "Not-Bitters" – can I do the same on Milds?

I first tried Batemans IPA when competing in my village pub wheelbarrow race back in the 80s. Basically you had to down a pint out the bottle, no assistant from the passenger in the wheelbarrow allowed, then do a lap around the block, down another pint and repeat. As I recall the stuff was so gassy you struggled to get it down, and once it was down it came back up again at high velocity after a few dozen yards.Never touched the stuff since.

IPA – good.