Spotlight on Jersey: Flying Fish Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA

"What exit?” is a Jersey thing (for some damn reason), so it's fitting that New Jersey's largest craft brewery, Flying Fish, has a whole series of beers devoted to New Jersey Turnpike exits.

Previously one-time beers only available in 750ml bottles, many of those Exit beers are now making their way into six-packs -- and that's a welcome thing, because the Exit series has been Flying Fish's crowning achievement, filled with excellent examples of their underrated brewing expertise.

Exit 16 is one that sounds odd but tastes so right. This is a wild rice Double IPA -- and yes, it's actually brewed with rice. Seriously.

If that brings to mind tasteless macro lagers, though, set your fears aside. This is a complex yet utterly drinkable beer that gives off aromas of citrus and tangerine, and drinks far easier than an 8% IPA should drink. It has all the flavor of a great Double IPA, but with a softness on the palate that really makes it stand out. Superbly balanced, full of hop flavor but not overly bitter, and crazily smooth, this has earned a spot on my list of favorite beers.

This may be the second best thing to come out of Jersey after pork roll, egg and cheese.

NOTE: Portions of this post originally appeared in The Philly Weekly

Quick Sips: Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA

At this point, it’s hard to imagine California’s Firestone Walker doing any wrong. Founded by people with a background in the wine industry and incorporating many of the exacting standards of that industry into their beer philosophy, they have managed to produce some of the world’s very best beers in their respective categories.

Double Jack, Parabola, Sucaba, Wookey Jack, these are some of the best beers on the market, bar none.

Those are big, complex beers, though. A fairly standard American IPA, on the other hand ... the IPA market is a really really really crowded one, so standing out is pretty tough.

Yet they pull it off. A super bright hop aroma that just screams of mango and grapefruit with a dash of lemongrass and pine needles lays atop a nice bed of fresh baked biscuits. Bitter but not too bitter, strong but easily drinkable, this is an IPA that proves you don’t have to go all “double” and “imperial” on us in order to impress us. It's yet another winner from a brewery that just keeps churning them out. Highly recommended.

NOTE: Portions of this post originally appeared in The Philly Weekly

White IPAs Do Not Impress Me

On paper, the white IPA is a great idea. Take the smooth unfiltered goodness of a wheat beer, boost the potency a touch, then add a massive amount of American style hopping. Boom, now you've got a white IPA.

And what a concoction that should be! Sounds like something that will drink in the refreshing way wheat beers drink, but with the lovely citrus aromas and bitterness of an IPA - a match made in heaven, really.

But no. Not even when done by people who know their IPAs...

... I can't quite figure out why the style has yet to click for me, despite having sampled more than a half-dozen white IPAs so far. Granted, it's a new style. Brewers are still working out the kinks and trying to nail down what makes a good white IPA work. Pretty much no one has a ton of experience with them.

Thing is, I just don't think anyone has gotten there yet.

And maybe no one ever will.

A great American-style IPA works in part thanks to having a fairly simple malt bill designed to support the hops, allowing them to do all the heavy lifting as far as taste goes. The malts serve as balance so you're not assaulted with off-putting bitterness, but rare is the American IPA that offers much in the way of complexity in the malt bill - and that's fine, because the point is to provide a platform for those lemon-and-grapefruit-tinged, pine-scented hops to do their thing.

Wheat beers don't play that way. They have an Earthy softness with touches of spice and grain and the feeling of a warm spring day. They are usually unfiltered, and the yeast imparts musty, dusty aromas, occasionally with hints of black pepper or bread or banana. All of this is imparted by the malt and yeast. The hops are generally only there to balance out the malt sweetness. They maybe provide some herbal or lemon-tinged aromas, but they are not the star of the show.

Two totally different approaches to beery goodness.

Two totally different philosophies.

Is it any wonder that I've yet to encounter a white IPA that made me want to go back for seconds?

Quick Sips: Flying Fish Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA

“What exit?” is a New Jersey thing, so it’s fitting that New Jersey’s largest craft brewery, Flying Fish, has a whole series of beers devoted to New Jersey Turnpike exits. For a brewery that has largely leaned on drinkable takes on traditional beer styles, the Exit series has been their opportunity to experiment with things that are a little more offbeat, almost always with a New Jersey twist.

Perhaps that's why it has also resulted in their very best beers.

Previously one-time beers only available in 750ml bottles, a few of those Exit beers have now made their way to six-packs. Exit 16 is one of them, a beer that sounds odd when you name it but one that tastes so right when you have it. This is a wild rice Double IPA – and yes, it’s actually brewed with rice. If that brings to mind tasteless macro lagers, set your fears aside. This is a complex yet utterly drinkable beer that gives off aromas of citrus and tangerine, and drinks far easier than an 8% IPA should drink. It has all the flavor of a great DoubleIPA, but with a softness on the palate that really makes it stand out, with subtle notes of brown grain behind the bright, orangy citrus. It's maybe the second best thing to come out of Jersey (after pork roll, egg and cheese, of course).

If you love IPAs, you simply HAVE to try this.

Portions of this piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Weekly and are reprinted here with permission.

Founders All Day IPA: 10 Beers of Summer

Look, hops are great. Hops are awesome. Hops are glorious.  But hop bombs are not necessarily the way you want to fuel your summer yard work. That's why the advent of "session" IPAs (which are IPAs in name only, they're actually bitter pale ales) is a great thing.

And it couldn't have been done by a better brewery than Founders, one of my very favorites.

See, the whole craft beer revolution has lacked in one major respect: providing tasty beers that are still low enough in alcohol that you can drink them all day. Hey, don't take my word for it. Look at the Data: The average ABV for beer is about 4.5 percent, but if you drink good shit the average ABV of new beers hitting the market jumps to 7 percent. Well farking hell, you can't spend an entire day playing cornhole and downing brews if you're drinking 7% percent beers!

(Well, I can't, at least.)

Founders addresses this with All Day IPA, a bright, hoppy brew that comes in at a modest 4.7 percent ABV. You'll smell tangerines and mango and pine in this bitter-but-not-too-bitter brew, a beer that has flavor enough to satisfy while being easy enough on the alcohol that you can keep at cornhole without getting smashed. Yep, this is a tasty beer made even better by the fact that you can quite literally drink it all day. In other words, perfect for summer.

Oh yeah, and COMMENT HERE AND ON FACEBOOK AND WIN SWAG, SWAG, SWAG! Yeah.

Portions of this post originally appeared in the Philadelphia Weekly.

Sierra Nevada takes us to BEER CAMP

For some years now, Sierra Nevada has been holding Beer Camp, an opportunity for industry people, contest winners, and others to visit their Chico, CA facility and brew some beer (on Sierra's equipment!) that would only ever be seen in the immediate Chico area. Over the years they brewed dozens of Sierra Nevada brews, often quirky, interesting beers that were never seen by 99.9% of Sierra Nevada drinkers.

In 2011, the brewery finally decided to make some of these beers available, releasing a Beer Camp mix pack that was, in my view, the very best mixer of the year. Every single beer was good, and several were phenomenal. Even something like the seemingly ordinary California Common, a style best known thanks to Anchor Steam, was amazing.

So needless to say, I was excited when it was announced that the Beer Camp pack would be back in 2012, this time with four totally new beers.

Here are my impressions of the four brews in this pack:

Floral IPA - This one is made with rose petals and rose hips, giving it a soft floral quality that parts ways with the pine-laden scents of Sierra Nevada's usual IPAs. This was my least favorite of the bunch, but not for the reason you may expect. The floral elements were actually well integrated. Where it fell short was in the overall balance. An uninteresting malt profile did little to intermingle with sharp hop bitterness. Though do keep in mind, unlike many American beer lovers, IPAs are not a favorite of mine.

Imperial Pilsner - I'm not sure why they went with the "imperial" tag, as this one comes in at 5.6% ABV, stronger than your average pilsner but not that much stronger. Regardless, for this this was the standout of the pack, and I say that as a guy who traditionally doesn't care for pilsners. This beer was bright, crisp, and refreshing, with a nice hop bite that gave it an edge over most pilsners. Utterly delicious and stupidly drinakable, if this came in six packs I'd be buying more of it.

Imperial Red Ale - Not a big fan of red ales. I can think of very, very few I've liked. Sierra Nevada almost gets me to like one here, with a great bouquet of hops and a robust malt backbone giving this puppy a solid 8.1% ABV, but yeah, this style continues to not be for me. If you like red ales, though, this will probably be a standout beer for you. It has bold hops coupled with rich malts and surprising chocolate notes. It's a big, big red that will please fans of the style.

Oatmeal Stout - A pretty modest name for a hefty 9% stout that is black as midnight and richer than a double chocolate cheesecake. WOWZA is this ever a desert beer. It SMELLS like desert! Huge, rich chocolate notes with the pure velvet of a great oatmeal stout. You'll taste the alcohol, making this one a decent candidate for laying down for six months to a year, but even now it's tasting pretty fantastic. Calling it a plain old oatmeal stout doesn't do it justice. This beer is huge and delicious.

All in call, Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp 2012 isn't quite as good as 2011's -- I liked all four of last year's and loved three of them, while this year I like three of four and love two of four -- but it's still a worthwhile mix pack that will expand your taste buds in good ways. Check it out while it's still available, because this will be off the shelves soon.

It's National IPA Day!

Guess what, kids? Today is the second annual IPA Day! It's a day when beer geeks all across the world lift a glass and toast the style that just might be the most popular in craft beer today. While you're getting ready to crack a bottle and tip a glass, surf over to the official IPA Day website for some pretty fantastic recipes (because cooking with beer is almost always awesome).

When you're done, take a look at some of my favorite IPAs, including Bell's Two-Hearted Ale, Sixpoint's amazing Resin, and Stone's Japanese Green Tea IPA (which is sadly no longer available).

And then when you're done with that, take a look at this lovely photo gallery of just a few of the killer IPAs I've had the last year or so but haven't bothered to review. If you can't find one you love in there, you aren't trying hard enough.

Happy IPA Day, and cheers!

From the Cellar: Dogfish Head Burton Baton

When I pull stuff from storage for the From the Cellar series, I don't necessarily expect much. For personal reasons I'm pulling some of this stuff sooner than I normally would, so a few of these aging experiments are not showcasing the vintages I had hoped to showcase when I first stored them away.

So when I get a pleasant surprise like this one, I'm pretty damn thrilled!

Dogfish Head's Burton Baton is an imperial IPA blend made up of a fresh double IPA and an English-style old ale, both aged in oak barrels for about a month. Though old ales age wonderfully, IPAs are generally not good candidates for aging. Hops and bitterness tend to be among the first things to fade from a beer. In most modern IPAs, being as little as six months out of date can leave you with a beer that tastes like sweet cardboard left in a basement.

With that in mind, on the surface Dogfish Head's Burton Baton, made up largely of a double IPA, doesn't seem like the ideal choice for a beer to be set down for over 12 months.

Still, it's loosely modeled after -- actually, "inspired by" is the more accurate descriptor -- Ballantine Burton Ale, an ultra rare beer that had been aged for decades in oak. This beer may well have what it takes to age well.

And it does. Fourteen months into the aging experiment, pressed for something to drink, I decided to crack one open. The beer did NOT pour as expected. First of all, it poured with a HUGE, thick, creamy tan head that lingered for the entire life of the beer. Completely unexpected for an imperial IPA that was over a year old. The head did not at all dissipate over the course of 45 minutes to an hour of drinking, remaining thick as a light cream throughout that time. Wow!

The aroma, unfortunately, left me worried about how this beer would taste. It was dominated with the musty, faded out hops common to IPAs that are out of date, in this case touched by notes of alcohol and wood.

Based on the aroma, this wasn't going to be good.

I was wrong.

In that first sip you get a mouthful of woody, creamy malt; it's thick and tasting of oak. You then get hit with subdued hops that are nonetheless nicely bitter, at this point perfectly in balance with the sweetness of the malt. I mean, perfectly. It's as if a year turned this into the beer it wants to be. Fresh Burton is a blast of pine hops, quite tasty indeed, but this ... this is just a damn good, utterly balanced beer with a lot going on in every sip. It's delicious. There are hints of oak in the finish, adding a pleasantly astringent edge, and, despite the big 10% ABV, nary a hint of alcohol.

I am impressed. After a little over a year, this. Beer. Drinks. GREAT. In many ways even better than it does when it is fresh. There is another bottle in my cellar, as well as a bottle of a much older vintage. I can't wait to see how they taste with a few more years on them.

Cellar this one? Absolutely!

BEER: Dogfish Head Burton Baton
VINTAGE: April 201l
TIME AGED: 1 year, 2 months (14 months)
NOTES: This aged brew would pair GREAT with a hearty seasoned fish

VERDICT: This aged FAR better than I expected given its origins. Grab a four-pack and put two away for at least a year!

Bell's Week: Hopslam

The beer geeks are going mad about this one, I'm sure.

Here's the thing about Bell's Hopslam. There is MADNESS surrounding its release each year. Madness! The beer is released once a year. Nothing special there, many craft beers are. Yet people buy it by the case -- bad idea, this is a beer best consumed within two months (8 weeks) of release -- drive miles out of their way to get it, and brag with abandon at having snagged some. The hype in beer enthusiast communities around this beer is INSANE.

The thing is, is this a good beer? Actually, hell YES it is. I've had it each of the last three years. With no Bell's available in New Jersey I've actually had to trade through the mail to get it. Glad I did. It's damn delicious. It really is.

But is it worth the insanity and hype that follows it? Is it one of the best beers in the world, as many would insist?

No. And let me explain, because it IS an excellent beer.

Hopslam is really really good. It's a double IPA released once each winter, usually around February. It's brewed with a load of honey, which gives it a wonderful sweetness, and it's also hopped to high hell. Tons of dry-hopping, I suspect, because while the beer has loads of hop character in the glass, it's got less bitterness than you'd expect in the taste. The aroma is wonderful. The taste is potent (backed by a huge 10% ABV) but very drinkable. The honey comes through nicely. It's super tasty, well-balanced, and overall awesome.

But dammit, this is NOT one of the world's top beers! Beer Advocate has it ranked in the Top 20, and Ratebeer has it at a more modest #26 overall. This IS a damn good beer, and if you can get it, get some. Drink it. Enjoy it. I have and I love it. But it's not so good that it warrants waiting on line (some people do), getting on waiting lists (ditto), or bragging as if you just snagged something super elusive like Westy 12 (considered by many the best beer in the world), because you didn't.

It's Hopslam. It's really good. But calm down, folks.

Bell's Week: Two-Hearted Ale

Two-Hearted Ale is Bell's flagship beer, their American IPA made with Centennial hops. You ask a Bell's fan which beers they like and this one will invariably come up. (The fish on the label? The name? It's a reference to the Two-Hearted River in Michigan, a popular fishing spot made famous in a story by Hemingway.)

So goes without saying you've got to have one of these if you have some Bell's.

Once in the glass you'll get citrus on the nose, but it's laced with mild pine and a somewhat clinical herbal quality, as if it was a bag of illegal plants dunked in mango juice. As for taste, well, it tastes like it has been dunked in mango juice, and in the best way possible. Unlike most beers, this one is made with just a single hop; all the bitterness and hop flavor comes from that one hop instead of the usual blend of 2-4 in most beers. It's amazing the flavors this one hop can dish out. Very fruity. There is orange and mango and a touch of pine (but not much).

Two-Hearted Ale is bitter but not overly so, balanced so that it never veers into sweet but also doesn't merely blast the mouth with bitterness. You'll find few IPAs that manage to be both as hoppy yet as balanced as this. Bell's Two Hearted Ale is a highly regarded American IPA for a reason. It tastes damn good.

Quick Sips: Founders Centennial IPA

Michigan may have given us Detroit, Kid Rock, and Davie Coulier, but they've more than made up for those sins with Christie Brinkley, Col. Potter from M.A.S.H., and Founders Brewing Company, for my money one of the better widely available breweries operating today.

Centennial IPA is their flagship IPA, single-hopped with Centennial hops (duh) for a distinct, clean-but-potent bitterness. I've posted before about hops, and have even posted about some single-hop beers. This beer is one of the better showcases of using a single hop instead of the traditional two-to-four hops used in most beers. (Interestingly, Two-Hearted Ale the flagship beer of Founders' Michigan neighbors, Bell's Beer, is also single-hopped with Centennial.)

The nose on the Founders give you a nice, floral burst of pine. It's not pungent and resiny, it's crisp, dry and clean. A medium body and subdued malts mean the hops take center stage. The beer is strongly bitter. Folks who don't like hoppy beers will be put off by this one. Those who do should enjoy it.

I wouldn't call this an essential pickup. Founders does better beers. But anyone who enjoys a good IPA is likely to enjoy this one.

Quick Sips: Sixpoint Resin double IPA

Want to be punched in the face with pungent hops? Look no further than Resin, a double IPA from New York's Sixpoint brewery.

Hopheads will love this beer. The aroma is all earthy, heavy pines, very damp and musty. You could roll this smell up and smoke it, that's how pungent it is. The taste is a blast of bitter, bitter hops laden with forest pine. Your mouth is so flooded with cleansing hops it feels like mouthwash (in a good way). Let me say again, hopheads will LOVE this.

And holy crap, this beer is 9.1% ABV? You would never know. I've had many Double IPAs, but few that have masked their alcohol content as well as this. It is so well-hidden it's scary. The malt backbone avoids being sticky sweet like you'll find in many double IPAs, but has a nice, full body that works well with all that hopping. Frighteningly well-balanced and drinkable.

For fans of the style, I can't recommend this beer enough. It's one of the best double IPAs I've had in some time. Seek it out. You'll be glad you did.

Quick Sips: Founders Double Trouble DIPA

First things first: If you are a lover of big IPAs, go get this NOW. The fresher the better. It's seasonal. Limited run. GO BUY IT.

So anyway, at the moment, Founders is among my favorite breweries. Pretty much everything they do is good, and much of what they do is world class. Double Trouble, an imperial IPA, is no different. While half the craft beer community goes gaga over Hopslam, Double Trouble quietly blasts the hell out of palates everywhere.

Crack that bottle and pour it. The aroma is all pungent piney hops, like a forest in the mountains of the western U.S.

Drinking it, you get swift bitterness, BIG, yet not harsh. This beer is well-balanced despite the massive hopping. Must be a big malt body, but can’t detect it. Unlike other imperial IPAs -- Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA comes to mind -- this beer isn't big on sweetness.

Overall, another outstanding entry in Founder's already great roster.

Quick Sips: River Horse Hop-a-lot-Amus Double IPA

River Horse is very quietly one of the best breweries in New Jersey. For my money, Flying Fish is the best, but only by a hair. River Horse is nipping at their heels. It helps that River Horse has a double IPA like Hop-a-lot-Amus and Flying Fish (as of this writing) doesn't.

This is a pretty straightforward DIPA, with a pine-laden aroma and a fat malt backbone. The malts are maybe too much a part of this beer, however, but it's hard to tell. River Horse doesn't date its bottles, and that is ESSENTIAL to knowing if you have a great pale ale/IPA or not. For real, date your damn bottles.

Bottom line is, this is a good beer that could be better. What I got had decent citrus hops and strong malts, but who the hell knows if I got it in optimal condition? Come on, people. Date it. Balance it. And date it again so us beer geeks know when we're getting an old bottle.

Quick Sips: Samuel Adams Third Voyage Double IPA

Discounting the Longshot entries, which aren't technically beer recipes by Samuel Adams, this big beer is their first foray into double IPA territory, and comes courtesy of their new small batch series.

The aroma is a heady swirl of pine forest and canned peaches. Other double IPAs are more pungent, but for their first effort Sam Adams does it nice. So a pour and a taste? Strong bitterness. Not harsh, but bitter enough to smash through any other tastes lingering in your mouth. This one is a palate cleaner -- which is exactly what you want from a DIPA.

That said, the 8% alcohol by volume is not well masked. This is a strong beer and you can taste it. Even at refrigerator temps some alcohol heat cuts through, which is unusual for modern American craft brews. As it warms, the alcohol becomes even more prominent. Proceed with caution.

Overall this is a good beer, not a top tier double IPA but quite respectable and likely to impress anyone who is a Sam Adams aficionado.

Quick Sips: Avery Maharaja Imperial IPA

Big, big beer with big, big hops and big, big malts and big, big flavor that doesn't stray into being a burning hot alcohol despite its robust 10.24% ABV.

So yeah, Avery's Maharaja is a pretty intense beer. It's produced during the warmer months of the year, features aggressive doses of hops, and certainly puts the "Imperial" in Imperial IPA.

You want a mega IPA? This is it.

Not that Avery Brewing is a stranger to big beers. This is what they do. Their absurdly huge Mephistopheles stout and Samael's oak-aged ale and Hog Heaven barleywine and The Reverend quadruple are all gigantic, delicious beers. (And yes, friends who are reading this, all four are in my cellar; maybe you can coax me to break them out one night?).

Maharaja is a heavyweight champion at over 10% ABV, yet doesn't feel like it in the drinking. It's BIG, yes, but beers this big usually get strong hot alcohol as they warm. This one never did. Instead, it just felt like a massive sipping drink with a complex, pine-laden flavor, chunky but smooth malts, and an aroma that might as well have been oranges hanging from Christmas trees.

Quick Sips: Stone Japanese Green Tea IPA

Japanese Green Tea IPA. By the name alone it's probably easy to tell whether or not you'll like this, because it is exactly what it sounds like. An IPA -- a huge double IPA, actually, clocking in at 9.2% ABV -- dosed heavily with green tea.

Stone, brewers of the well known Arrogant Bastard, brewed this in conjunction with Ishii Brewing Co. in Guam and Baird Brewing Co. in Japan as a collaboration beer.

But with its giant malt profile, big hopes, and overall largeness, it's all Stone.

Despite its name, this beer doesn't overwhelm you with the taste of green tea -- which would be hard, since green tea tastes pretty mild. But it's present and detectable if you're a green tea drinker (which I am). The more it warms the more noticeable the green tea is, but even when it reaches room temperature -- at 9.2% ABV it's a sipper, so it will eventually reach room temp if you're drinking slow -- it never takes over. It's an accent that makes it just different than your usual double IPA.

This beer's high alcohol content is fairly well masked, getting a bit "hot" as it warms but otherwise not stepping all over the taste. If the alcohol content is noticeable it's in the lack of a head. Even poured down the middle into a tulip glass, this beer generates very little head that quickly dissipates. What's left is a beer that looks like a light-colored syrup or cooking oil.

Yeah, I know, not doing a good job selling this, am I?

But it's worth trying if you can find it. (Quantities are limited, especially here on the East Coast.) It's got a fresh, "green" taste that is a nice change from your usual double IPA, well balanced and drinkable despite being potent enough to knock you on your ass. Give it a whirl if you see it.

Quick Sips: Fort Collins the Incredible Hop Imperial Black IPA

You'd forgive the awful photo if you could experience the gigantic hoppy goodness of Fort Collins' fantastic Imperial Black IPA.

So what the hell is an Imperial Black IPA, anyway? The name and style are both relatively recent inventions (and even the name is in dispute; the style is also called a Cascadian Dark Ale). Imagine a beer that has the dark, fat, malty, roasted body of a stout, but has the huge, aggressive, floral hops of a big India Pale Ale. That's a Black IPA.

In the case of this beer by Fort Collins, "big" is the right word. It clocks in at 10% ABV. You'd never know it, though. There is so much taste going on here that the alcohol doesn't stand a chance. The hops are GIGANTIC, smelling like a musty old forest of citrus and pine trees -- and I mean that in the best way possible. The bitterness is big, too, but the malty backbone of this beer stands up well to the assault of all those hops. There are tastes of roasted chocolate and coffee throughout, and plenty of murky blackness for folks who like their beer black coffee-dark.

If you want an aggressive beer that will blast your mouth with flavor, this is it. Highly recommended for hop heads and malt addicts alike.

Quick Sips: Fegley's Brewworks Hop'Solutely Triple IPA

The folks at Fegley's Brewworks have been around for a while, brewing up beers in the Leigh Valley of Pennsylvania (quietly one of the best beer states in America). They brew some very adventurous beers and have won local accolades. Their best known beer is Hop'Solutely, touted as a triple India Pale Ale (IPA). At least one beer writer named it his Beer of 2010.

I can't say I agree. Hop'Solutely hits you with high bitterness on a hefty malt body, but it's got hints of mild sourness that just don't blend well with the rest of the package. The hopped-up bitterness here bordered on was medicinal and antiseptic rather than floral and cleansing. Little pungent aroma, no piney or citrus-laden notes in the taste.

On a positive note, though this beer boasts a huge alcohol content, the alcohol taste wasn't hot or off-putting. It drank surprisingly well despite approaching 12% ABV. It takes a skilled brewer to craft a beer this big that doesn't taste like it.

Though my initial impressions were lukewarm, I'll give this another whirl one day. Big beers like this can vary from batch to batch. At the moment, though, can't recommend it.

Quick Sips: 21st Amendment Hop Crisis Imperial IPA

Yes, you can get great beer in a can. The 21st Amendment Brewery has been doing it for over a decade. Despite the stigma against cans, it's actually better for your beer. Cans protect against light, and since it's light exposure that causes beer to skunk (temperature has nothing to do with it; that's a myth) that's a good thing. And as long as you're pouring your beer into a glass -- you ARE pouring your beer into a glass, aren't you? -- you won't taste can, since modern cans are lined. No metallic taste.

Anyway, back to Hop Crisis, 21st Amendment's imperial IPA (India Pale Ale). This is a big, bitter, hoppy monster with loads of bitterness riding on a fat body of sweet malts. The brewery slams it with a mess of different hops. At just under 10% alcohol you won't encounter many bigger beers in a can. It drinks big but well, never tasting boozy, and the big malts are hefty enough to balance well with all those hops. There are better DIPAs/Imperial IPAs out there, but this one holds its own pretty damn well.

Huge IPAs are a dime a dozen these days, but huge IPAs in a can aren't. You want to impress some non-beer snob friends with what canned beer can be, grab a four-pack of this. Perfect for bringing to a BBQ, camping, a party, whatever.