For this IPA Monday, I’ve chosen to drink Mayflower IPA. If you’re looking for a “Pilgrim-themed” IPA to help you start off a shortened workweek, you would be hard-pressed to find a better beer. Mayflower’s India Pale Ale is 7% ABV, 69 IBU, and is brewed with four different types of hops: Nugget, Simcoe, Glacier, Amarillo.

Did you know that beer is featured prominently in the Pilgrims’ historic journey aboard the Mayflower? According to the Mayflower Brewing Company’s website . . .

“. . . beer was the staple drink on board the Mayflower. Unlike water, which quickly spoiled when stored in the hold of ships, beer contained no bacteria, and the then-recent introduction of hops made it keep longer. It was also a terrific source of carbohydrates. Men, women and children drank beer daily, and sailors aboard the Mayflower received a daily ration of a gallon.”

While searching for suitable land along Cape Cod, the Pilgrims grew weary and settled in Plymouth, due — it would seem — to dwindling supplies of beer! A quote by William Bradford’s firsthand account of the Pilgrims at Plymouth decorates the label: “We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.”

Upon arriving in Plymouth, the Pilgrims found sweet, fresh water — and today, that water is used to create craft beer by Mayflower Brewing Company.

The beer pours honey-amber, with a persistent off-white foam that clings tenaciously to the glass while receding. Citrus and herbal hops rise up to greet your nose with a scent that’s sweetly decorated — dabs of caramel malt and candied grapefruit.

I’m a big fan of IPAs that manage a drinkable balance between citrus hops and caramel malt. Mayflower IPA sails those sea perfectly.

Citrus bitterness splashes across the tongue before a undertow of pale malt pulls you out to deeper water — where it’s warm and caramel sweet. Soon, you’re crashing back upon the hoppy shoals and letting the sea drain away to a lingering, sticky-green hop finish.

Unlike my metaphor abuse, the beer isn’t too heavy. It has a medium mouthfeel and a pleasant warmth from the otherwise hidden alcohol.

And that reminds me — with Uncle Junior coming to the house this Thanksgiving, hiding the alcohol might be a very good idea.

Related posts:

1. Great Divide Titan IPA
2. Père Noël
3. Brew Free! Or Die IPA

In fact, 21st Amendment made headlines this year for brewing a “Twitter Beer” called Spring Tweet — like a Twitter stream, the beer is “unfiltered” and described by the brewmaster as “a little rough around the edges“. (The Twitter Headquarters are a short distance from the brewery.)

Cans of their craft beer have appeared on store shelves here in New England, so I scooped up their IPA called “Brew Free! Or Die”. Originally called simply, “21st Amendment IPA”, the brewery gave it a catchy new name to coincide with last year’s canned release.

The 21st Amendment website describes the IPA as the best selling beer at their pub:

Brewed with some serious west coast attitude. This aromatic golden IPA starts with a sucker punch of six different hops to the nose, quickly balanced by a solid malt back bone . . . this IPA starts big and finishes clean leaving you wanting more.

Popping the top on the can released an immediate wave of aromatic hops. I’m not going to lie, I couldn’t resist the urge to take a sip directly from the can. I’ll never get tired of tasting powerful beer in a can. It has a 70 IBU rating, and those strong hops were oh so tasty.

Brew Free! Or Die poured a hazy, pale, rusty gold. As the hop aroma seeped from the glass, sticky white foam piled up, as if futilely trying to lock in the scent. The towering head faded slowly, intricately lacing the glass as it receded. That aroma is resiny and piney, but also husky/grassy and a bit earthy. Sweet malt also manages to rise up to the nose, riding an piney coat tails.

Malt and hops play nicely together throughout the taste. Hops initially present as piney and slightly citrusy-tart, but the malt is quite sweet and slightly grainy. The beer has a medium body and is overall quite easy to drink, full of great IPA flavor and enticing hop aromas.

This is hands-down an above average IPA. I try not to officially “rate” beers on this site, but I’d give Brew Free! Or Die top marks for its rich and complex aroma. The beer has a very well-balanced taste, but the only remarkable taste element is the abundance of piney hops. I liked the taste, but when you combine the nuanced and robust aroma with a strong but easy-going taste, you get a very good IPA.

One more note before I leave you.

We’ve seen a few canned beers this year, but you may wonder what it takes for a brewpub or brewery to get into the canning business. The folks at 21st Amendment found the answer:

Building a canning facility from scratch is an expensive task. If we had to build our own canning facility, our beers would probably be in bottles. But once we decided we wanted cans, we were determined to make it work. We figured there must be some breweries in the Midwest who wouldn’t mind increasing the production on their canning lines, so we started looking. We found a fantastic partner in Cold Springs, MN who was willing to work with us to meet our unusually high standards for canned beer.

This is why the fine print on this California brewery’s can reads “Hand-crafted & Canned by 21st Amendment Brewery, Cold Springs, MN”.

Related posts:

1. Great Divide Titan IPA
2. DFH 120 Minute IPA
3. Mayflower IPA

“Titan IPA is a big, aggressively hopped India Pale Ale brewed for hop disciples. It starts out with piney hop aromas and citrus hop flavors, and finishes with a nice rich, malty sweetness that is balanced with crisp hop bitterness.”

Hey, that sounds pretty good. But I’ve heard lots of boasting about hops, and only rarely does the actual beer come through on those pre-built expectations.

I’m pleased to report that Great Divide’s Titan IPA has a fair amount of hop taste — but by no means will this beer induce a hop-attack. Instead, the emphasis in the description should be placed on the word “balance”; flavorful hops and robust malt push against each other like some sort of team-building, trust exercise.

The green label includes a silhouette of a Roman Guard. He’s standing above the adjectives “assertive” and “aromatic” — but I ardently hope that last description applies more to the beer than the soldier.

Alas, ours is not to reason why — ours is but to drink or cry. (I believe that’s from “Charge of the Light-Beer Brigade”.)

Titan pours a rich honey-amber that glows and shimmers in the light. This IPA created a fluffy, off-white foam that soon formed a thick, resinous collapse of bubbles and tenacious lacework. So far, so good — many of my favorite IPAs have formed heads that practically solidified.

The label insists the aroma will be filled with piney hops, but caramel malt is the dominant scent. I’m detecting herbal hops with a hint of pine. The combination of malt and hops smells warm and inviting.

Sweet malt slathers across my tongue, but the delicious hop taste is abundant immediately. I’m used to being disappointed in IPAs with a ton of caramel malt, but these hops almost overpower the malt. Alternately citrusy and piney — with a bitter herbal base — the hops expand as the malt grows sweeter. By the time you’re midway through the glass, that piney bitterness becomes husky and begins to burn at the back of your throat. The sensation is almost like a whiskey, and I wonder how much of the burn is aggressive hops and how much is the almost 7% ABV.

Don’t drink this beer looking for a tooth-tingling IPA. It’s not. But there’s a good deal of hop flavor and a strong, sweet malt — and there are very few IPAs that seem to strike that balance well.

It’s about 9:30 in the evening and my house is still about 84 degrees. A light, citrusy beer would have gone down well, but I’m enjoying this IPA quite a bit. It’s a medium bodied beer with lots of flavor — though I may be most pleased by how well it’s helping to ward off this summer evening heat!

Related posts:

1. Great Divide Hades
2. Brooklyn Lager
3. Mayflower IPA

I’ve indulged in Dogfish Head’s 60 Minute IPA and 90 Minute IPA already this year, but I had a fair amount of trouble tracking down a bottle of 120 Minute IPA. The IPA is brewed in limited quantities, and I spent many of my beer runs chasing Dogfish Head rumors and 120 Minute IPA sightings from liquor store to home brew supply house and back. This monster of a beer had nearly become my White Whale before I stumbled across several bottles stocked at my usual beer supplier.

If any beer deserves legendary status, it’s the 120 Minute IPA. This Imperial India Pale Ale clocks in at around 120 IBUs and between somewhere between 18% and 20% ABV. That range for ABV is because Dogfish Head has tweaked the recipe over the years — and from what I can tell, they’ve settled on about 18% ABV as the right balance. My bottle is young (filled May 2009) so I’m assuming it is 18% ABV. As for the IBU rating — don’t let that 120 rating intimidate you, because this beer’s sweetness overcomes just about every bit of bitterness.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

According to the label, Dogfish Head’s 120 Minute IPA is:

“…the holy grail for hopheads. This beer is continually hopped over a 120-minute boil and then dry-hopped every day for a month. Enjoy now or age for a decade or so.”

With such a high alcohol content and an enormous amount of preservative hops, that “decade or so” may not be such an exaggeration. But really, who could wait that long? I strained my patience just waiting for the beer to warm up on the counter for 30 minutes. (To enjoy its full flavor, that patience is strongly recommended.)

I poured the entire 12 oz bottle into a tulip glass, watching as a decent, creamy foam formed for such a strong beer. The liquid looked pale yellow as it poured, but what pooled in my glass was a clear, liquid amber.

The aroma is sweet with brown sugar, muscat and apricot; softly spicy and more than a little boozy. It’s a warm, satisfying smell that conjures to mind the afterglow of a decadent meal dispatched amid good company.

120 Minute IPA isn’t the kind of explosively bitter beer that makes your taste buds cry uncle. It takes a lot of sugar to ramp a beer to 18% ABV, and this Imperial IPA shocked me with its sweetness. My first sip snaked around the front and sides of my tongue, lashing out with a daring sweetness that left my tongue tingling. Brown sugar mixed with juicy apricots and grapes to form a clique that completely excluded the hops promised by the label. The sweetness subsided slightly as I sipped, and its alcohol warmed my throat and belly. Whether the bitter sensation at the top of my palate and back of my tongue is caused by bitter hops or mere alcohol, I dare not guess. Nor do I care, at this point in the experience.

The promise on a “holy grail for hopheads” had be expecting a strong hop taste or an extreme bitterness. But once I accepted the 120 Minute as a sweet, boozy, circus mirror version of an IPA, I began to enjoy how rich, unique, and — well — deliberate it tastes.

Stone’s Ruination IPA is perhaps my favorite 100 IBU beer, balancing both bitter hops and citrusy malt. Lagunitas’ Hop Stoopid is 102 IBU, and it also used sweetness to balance out the hoppiness. But where Ruination dares the drinker to keep up with its bitter hops, and where Hop Stoopid comes across as a gimmick, the 120 Minute IPA bypasses those arguments completely and challenges the very notion of what an Imperial IPA should taste like.

The 120 Minute IPA is the very definition of extreme beer.

To hear Sam Calagione discuss the 120 Minute IPA for three minutes, click play on the video below!

Related posts:

1. Old Chub – Oskar Blues
2. BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran
3. Southern Tier Mokah Imperial Stout

The 750 ml bottle has an arresting logo, an inky black-on-white image of a clipper ship. If the funky design with throw-back text reminds you of a surf-shirt, that’s because Squall is a collaboration with Rogues Gallery, a surf-clothing shop in Portland, ME. Brewery founder Sam Calagione “fell in love” with Rogues Gallery and since the clothing company was “down with getting their chocolate in Dogfish Head’s peanut butter“, the two companies worked together to create a beer — Squall IPA — and a line of clothing “to wear while drinking beer at a sunset beach bonfire”.

Seriously. Cool.

Squall is a Double/Imperial IPA. The beer poured a copper-amber color with the thickest, creamiest head I’ve seen on an IPA. I had to practically chew through this protective meringue before I could even taste the beer — it was well worth the effort, but before discussing the taste I should focus on the aroma.

This beer has a delicious if elusive aroma. I could smell citrus and floral hops the moment the bottle was opened, but it was difficult to pull in the aroma after pouring the beer. That blanket of foam seemed to guard the scent jealously; only after slurping away some of the head could I really appreciate the aroma.

Squall’s aroma is simultaneously warming and refreshing; citrusy, floral, and sweet with crème brûlée and sticky pine. Complex aromas can come across as jagged or confused, but Squall’s elegance is smooth and beautifully at ease.

Its taste shrugs off a surprising amount of sweetness for such an aromatic IPA, with plenty of honeyed, caramel malt and brown sugar taste. There doesn’t seem to be much bitterness here at all, though hops they-are-aplenty, exerting an herbal, piney, resiny, citrusy, tropical fruit taste.

The beer has quite a full mouthfeel. The sweetness and resinous hop oil create a nearly-creamy sense, compact and warming. Squall’s 9% ABV is nearly as imperceptible as its bitterness, except for the warmth it engenders as you sip and savor.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m gulping and swilling this sweet and flavorful IPA! Only some deep reserve of control is preventing me from guzzling the whole bottle before I can take these notes — and thank goodness for that, because savoring this beer is absolutely required.

When first poured, the coppery body was translucent but largely without imperfection. For a bottle-conditioned beer, I was expecting some sediment — but that only began to appear toward the finale, with tiny suspensions appearing 3/4ths of the way through the bottle and small clumps of yeast slipping out with the final pour.

This IPA Monday beer has inspired me. I can’t wait to taste another hoppy brew, so I hereby announce that I’ll be drinking an IPA every day of this week.

And IPA Week? I can’t believe it took me more than six months to think of this!

Related posts:

1. DFH 120 Minute IPA
2. Mayflower IPA
3. Brew Free! Or Die IPA