Indica, Lost Coast Brewery

Mysticism is the idea that truth or understanding can be attained via subjective means.  One way to think of it is as Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.”  Always go with the gut because books lie!  Another way to think of it is as a complement to concrete knowledge.  Much like Kierkegaard’s kennenschaft, implying discovery through personable intuition.  Or as any writer who tells you fiction is really nonfiction because it documents the human condition.  The bottle today’s beer comes in describes its aroma as mystic.  That’s not a common word used for the chemical compounds that waft from a glass of beer, but it very well could be merely a function of the India motif their label is going for.  Indica is an IPA so they’ve taken the I from the acronym and jumped on the western association of Hinduism with mysticism.  This association probably stems from the religion’s view of widely disseminated truth.  “May good thoughts come to us from all sides” being a common prayer.  Also because yoga and reincarnation can conflict with the dualism imparted on western religions by Greek philosophers.  I doubt the hops in Lost Coast Brewery’s Indica will unite my atman with the One, but maybe it can align my chakras or something like that.

Orange and cloudy.  Perfect IPA.

That mystical aroma is pretty leafy, but the bulk of the flavor doesn’t hit you until it’s in your mouth.  Another more colloquial usage of the word comes to mind.  That of something mysterious.  As in, where did Lost Coast get the zip file to transport such a hoppy flavor without puckering my face into oblivion?  It may even be on par with the inexplicably large cheese flavor in cheez-its.  Usually with a beer this bitter, my tongue would be having to brace itself for the onslaught of each sip.  Instead that aforementioned leafiness evenly distributes itself between my mouth and my stomach.  Good guy Indica gives you the hops you want without punching you in the face.

Perhaps this is the mysticism referred to on the label.  You can know there’s more to hops than bitterness and floral tones.  You can find beers with lots of IBUs that don’t shrivel your face.  But until you’ve experienced a beer that can deliver lots of bitter hops while simultaneously sidestepping lots of bitter hops, you can’t really know.  It’s a paradox of zymurgy.  Maybe I’m just overreacting.  Maybe I like beer too much to be objective.  Maybe I’ve just had too much.  What I do know is that my experience in this moment, as subjective as I must concede it is, is unquestionably positive.  Mystic, even.

Bedlam!, Ale Asylum

Today’s beer is described by its makers in avant garde terms.  “Chaos as art” is apparently its motto.  The brewery’s web page for it is mostly a copied and pasted entry from beeradvocate  where a user waxes poetic over astronautical rhetoric.  I’m imagining a barley and hops Jackson Pollock or Reggie Watts.  That sounds good to me.  Artistic expressions that stretch your mind can be quite pleasing.  But they can also go overboard.  Think of the enjoyable dissonance of Bartok on one hand and phrase words of annoyance reordering a randomly the on the other.  The question is which one this beer will be.  So as your beer blog curator, I present to you Ale Asylum’s Bedlam!.

Nice deep orange color!

The bottle claims the citra hops and belgian yeast create notes of summer fruits.  Even though that’s a common term used by a lot of breweries and reviewers, I’m not quite sure which fruits specifically count as summer fruits.  And what’s the alternative?  Winter fruits?  I'll have to look into it. Anyway, if that term refers to oranges and grapefruits, then it’s right on. Maybe a hint of apricot as well.  The taste doesn’t immediately strike me as being particularly chaotic, but not because its component parts do not clash.  The single minded hops of the IPA side and the nutty curveballs of the Belgian side are diametrically opposed.  But instead of spinning off each other into an ambiguous cloud of cognitive dissonance, they seem to bore directly into one another and cancel each other out.  It’s like the airborne streaks of paint of the aforementioned Pollock just happened to fall into the outline of a Hirst.  You’ve got random streaks of paint, but the big picture is of monochromatic dots.

As far as where Bedlam! falls in the avant garde, my mind likes the task of dissecting all its moving parts but unfortunately my stomach sees it as the annoying reordered words.  Out-there art can be good for the brain.  However, beer ultimately gets processed by a dumb mass of cells limited to chemical reactions and pressure variances as a means of communication.  Physiological forums are not particularly ponderous.

Update! Apparently there are winter fruits. And spring fruits and autumn fruits. Who knew? Aside from millions of people all over the world, that is. Oranges fall into winter and spring but grapefruit and apricot are summer. Two out of three isn't too bad, right?

Rampant Imperial IPA, New Belgium Brewery

Rampant.  What does that word make you think of?  Vikings?  Weeds?  An annoying social fad that is quickly engulfing all your friends?  While “rampant” has it’s own meaning regarding the leg position of a usually quadrupedal animal, the modern English usage of the word leaves it adjectivally tethered to its etymological sibling, “rampage.”  Think “rampagent” or “rampagey.”  That makes rampant the perfect word to describe today’s beer, a claimed Imperial IPA.  That combination conjures images of hops rampaging through an innocent mouth like Vikings through the North Sea.  I present to you New Belgium’s Rampant.

I even have the right glass!

Imperial of course is a reference to the imperial stout and its massive size.  It’s a more self confident way of saying double IPA.  That tells me I should prepare myself for the American style kick of hops popularized by the guys at Stone and others of their ilk.  But I also know New Belgium is most famous for following the zymurgic traditions of Belgium, so I should also be ready for a hint of fruity funk.  As I get my first whiff of the stuff, the imagery is of dry hopping a beer while the dregs in the primary are right there next to you.  So floral hoppiness mixed with grains and bready yeast for the non brewers.  Once it hits my tongue I instantly know this is nothing like Stone bitterness.  It’s firmly in the set of IPAs I like to call grapefruit beers.  Not bitter, but tart like citrus.  At 8.5% ABV I know there has to be a sizeable amount of malt in there, but it plays a purely supportive role.  I guess it’s busy counteracting the bitter punch of the hops.  It’s hard to believe the three varieties used (Mosaic, Calypso, Centennial) are all in the double digit alpha acid camp.

I was wrong at the beginning of this post.  That other meaning for the word “rampant” is a much better descriptor of this beer.  The aforementioned leg position is the well known stance of the lions in several European crests, so it has a strong connection to royalty.  New Belgium’s Rampant is a beer of the great power and sophistication you would expect from a king.  But it is also benevolent.  So what if I don’t have any democratic freedom?  If it tastes like this who cares?

Long live the king!

India Pale Ale, Avery

Today’s beer has a penchant for the non-sensical.  I say penchant because it isn’t non-sensical itself, but only has a faint wafting of weird.  It is an IPA from Colorado, making it a traditional sea-faring beer from the mountains.  It is a fine beer that you can easily find in cans.  It is very bitter yet has a creamy head.  The Avery employee in this video claims to drink it 500 days a year.  In the words of almost anyone who works with small children, “That’s silly!”  But we don’t care how silly a brew may be, we’ll drink it nonetheless.  Therefore I present to you, Avery’s India Pale Ale.

Darker than your average IPA.

The first thing you encounter is a huge hop aroma veritably billowing out of the glass.  Like the Israelites’ pillar of smoke leading them to the promised land, it leads you into an oddly creamy head and a biting hop flavor.  It is certainly easy to believe three of the four hop varieties used clock double digit alpha acids.  Bitterness isn’t the whole story though.  Floral notes get an assist in too, enabling you to take more than one, painful sip.  The balance is, well, angled.  While neither side of the scale is touching the base, the slope of the line between them is probably close to 4 over 5.  Of course that’s just a guesstimate.  I didn’t have graphing paper to plot it nor a protractor to measure it nor a scale to weigh it.  I had to use the grid on and Andy doll shirt and visualise the angle with the shaft of a pen.  Plus, a weight comparison is meaningless between malt and hops anyway because of the differing matter densities in each.  Okay, I’m sorry!

My mathematical tools.

Anyway, this beer is heavy on the hops with not much malty sweetness to level the playing field.  If you’ve really been craving an IPA, Avery’s India Pale Ale is perfect for jolting you back into the world of bitter beer.  On the other hand, if you just kinda want something hoppy, only plan on drinking one before moving on.  I would hate for you to be in a position where the strong bite stopped you from being able to enjoy such a tasty beverage.

Ruthless Rye IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

What did the baker say when his loaf came out darker and denser than he intended?  “Something has gone a rye!”  I went to hear a comedian and found out he was just mutated grass, but it was all good because he had a rye sense of humor.  What do you call a beer with sharp, earthy flavor and hoppy bite?  A RyePA!  Actually, that one’s true.  I’ll lay down these ryeitous puns and review Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye IPA for you.

The aroma entices you with a playful hint of sharp, hoppy bitterness.  Just enough to get you excited about drinking an IPA but not so much that it smacks you in the face and says, “I’m an American!”  Upon meeting your tongue, the true lesson of this beer hits you; rye and hops are meant for each other!  And just like when you learn how to properly use a semi colon, you feel enlightened by this new information.  Instead of the malt and hops balancing by cancelling each other, they work together like the congress for which we all yearn.  Of course the double teaming on the bite increases the drying effect on your mouth, so you’ll probably want to move on to another beer after a couple of these.  Or maybe alternate between two beers.  This is all starting to sound like quite a bit of beer.  Maybe it’s time to drink some water.  Some people may not like the dryness of Ruthless Rye IPA, but even for them the tasty notes of pine and, well, rye should be more than enough to overcome any shortfalls this brew from Sierra Nevada carries.

Full disclosure, the bottle I had was quite old and that very well could have affected the taste.  The longer beer sits around, the more mellow the hops get.  Since IPAs without their hoppy bites are pretty much just slightly darker pale ales, they generally don’t make good candidates for cellaring.  I can’t say if the bottle I drank for this review was noticeably different from the original but if it was, I would guess it enhanced the product rather than detracted from it.  IPAs are great, but sometimes they can be a bit much, am I ryeght? Okay, okay, I'm leaving.