Thursday, May 27, 2004

The NY Times reviews India Pale Ales.

And does a fair job of it, although no better than fair. They give some history of India Pale Ales - accurate, to my knowledge - and then review some. Well, they claim to taste 21, but give reviews on only 10 (and the video review has even fewer). The top-rated ones were the Smuttynose Big A IPA, Stone IPA, and Dogfish Head's 90-minute Imperial IPA. Can't really disagree too much with those choices, but I think their methodology was suspect: they were missing Pacific Northwest IPAs - such as Bridgeport's IPA - and they included non-IPAs in their tasting (Imperial IPAs - IPAs on steroids - and Imperial pale ales, where "Imperial" in the style designation indicates a lot more barley in the mix, resulting in more flavor and about 2% more alcohol than is normal for the style). And they were missing standard East Coast IPAs, as well - I can understand their not having Cottonwood's Endo Pale Ale, but leaving Tupper's Hop Pocket Ale out of their tasting?