My Eighth Entry - Ballast Point Brewing Company Sculpin India Pale Ale

Time to get serious.

So far, my assessment of beers have been the definition of a lay opinion:

lay (lā) (adj.; Middle English, from Old French lai, from Late Latin lāicus, from Greek lāikos, of the people, from lāos, the people.) - Not of or belonging to a particular profession; nonprofessional: a lay opinion as to the seriousness of the disease.

There's nothing wrong with a lay opinion.  Life is full of them, most of them valid (except when they come to sports or politics).

If you tell me that the tacos are good at Torchy's or El Rey (and they are), I'll take your opinion seriously, even if you've never written a word about tacos and have no idea how they make them (and I don't).

If you tell me that Shudde Bros. Hats makes great hats (and they do) and that you should buy there because they support the amazing Brookwood Community just off of Exit 731 at I-10 in Brookshire (and they do), I'll believe that too, even though I don't know the first thing about how a hat is made.

Beer is different, however. Knowing what goes into a beer, knowing how the beer is made, makes the tasting experience more meaningful. It also helps you have a better sense of what the brewer intended, and whether he (or she) succeeded.

Also, you just sound more intelligent talking or writing about beer if you start with first principles.  So, I am going to educate myself (and you) with a basic understanding of the beer varietals, so that I will be able to intelligently discuss them with you.  In theory, once I know what I'm drinking, I will be able to ostentatiously tell you what kind of beers you are drinking at any time.

(Pop quiz! What are Budweiser and Miller Lite? NO peeking.)

(Jeopardy theme plays: Do do do do do do do … do do do do DOOT do-do-do-do-do … do do do do do do do … DOOT do do do do … do … do … bum bum.)

(Did you know?  They are both Pale Lagers. I always just thought they were Beer.)

So, to begin this tour, let's start with a beer that seems to be a favorite of craft brewers, as evidenced by its ubiquity in the Fifty Beers that Jay and Lisa gave me: the India Pale Ale (or IPA).

Turning to the North American Brewers Association webpage on IPAs for guidance, we find that IPAs were the product of a revolution in beermaking in the late 1700s that led to the creation of the Pale Ale:

Throughout Great Britain's early brewing history beers shared one characteristic - a deep colored murkiness, and it was caused by an error made during the most fundamental step in beer making.

The problem was rooted in their method of malting, the process of converting a grain's starch to sugar. Brewers made their own malt by soaking barley and allowing it to germinate (sprout), but to prevent the embryonic plant from consuming all the fermentable sugars as food, they needed to halt germination. Brewers stopped it by "kilning," a process of drying the wet grain in an oven. Unfortunately, their ability to control the oven's temperature was primitive and often the grain was kilned to a darkish hue, which was then imparted to the finished beer.

By the later part of the 18th century the malting process was becoming more controllable and grains weren't as deeply kilned. Brewers took advantage of this breakthrough and although the beer was still a deep copper color, it was comparatively "pale." Thirsty Britains lapped up the newcomer with abandon and pale ale was soon king of the beers.

So imagine: you're a Brit who has spent your whole life drinking some kind of muddy swill to take the edge off of a day serving your liege, and one day, the barmaid brings you a flagon of pale ale, transparent and golden and watery and refreshing.  (Porters and stouts are lots of things, but they ain't refreshing.)  You think, "I can drink four of these for every one of those flippin' porters they've been servin' me," and you proceed to spend the next twenty years at the pub, telling your bar mates that if you had been at Lexington and Concord and - what's that other one? oh yeah - Yorktown, the colonies would still be the King's property, I tell you what.

So we now know where the pale ale side of an IPA comes from: the lightly kilned barley grains, cooked at usually 95 to 105 degrees Celsius, which yield a pale sweet malt which is steeped in hot water to become the mash, which eventually separates into the wort, which is, in turn, bittered, flavored, and finished by the sequential addition of hops, and then fermented with the addition of yeast. Variations, intentional or accidental, on the sequence or the ingredients yield different varietals.

(I think that's right. I'll check with my friend Brock to see if this basic description of brewing is accurate and report back.)

Where does the India part of the IPA come from?  Again, from the NABA page, we get this cool example from history of how capitalism bred innovation:

In the late 1700's [George] Hogdson was the most popular ale brewer in London. With easy access to shipping from the capital, Hogdson was in position to supply beer to homesick English colonists around the world. Of these, none felt so removed, nor thirsted more for the pleasures of English breweries, than the troops garrisoned on the sub-continent of India. Hogdson rightly believed it a huge market waiting to be tapped, but how could beer survive the trip around Africa? 

Hogdson used three brewing methods to ensure his ale weathered the journey. First, he knew hops were a natural preservative. Indeed, it was this property that first motivated brewers to use hops. Hogdson reckoned an increased hopping rate would help in transit. Next, he took advantage of another natural preservative in beer, and he brewed one with an exaggerated level of alcohol. Finally, he used abundant dry hopping as an additional preservative, and he rightly thought it wouldn't harm the taste because it would mellow during the long voyage. He couldn't have guessed better, the measures not only ensured Hogdson's modified Pale Ale arrived intact, the recipients considered it an improvement. 

Hogdson's modifications resulted in a variation both closely related to, and distinctively different than, pale ale. To differentiate it from pale it was bestowed with the name of its destination, thus the birth of what's known as India Pale Ale.

So to summarize: Hodgson's innovations were to increase the rate of hopping to enhance its preservative qualities; add more alcohol (also a preservative); and adding dry hops when casking. As a result, the beer survived the trip to India and tasted better.

(Here is a more detailed discussion of the IPA genesis by Thom Thomlinson, and here is an interesting dissent on the historical origins of the IPA, which argues that IPAs were being brewed long before George Hodgson started brewing them at his Bow Brewery in London.)

Regardless of who invented them, what do we look for in an IPA?  Higher than usual alcohol concentration, a strong hoppy aroma, and fruity notes.  According to NABA, the hops used in American IPAs are Northern Brewer, Cascade and Chinook (not available in your local grocery store).

Whew.  That's enough beer scholarship for today.  Let's take a break and drink a beer.

_________________________________________

This week's beer is the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, brewed in San Diego, California. According to the website's tasting notes:

© JDurfee99

A trophy beer that’s a testament to our homebrew roots. Our Sculpin IPA is a great example of what got us into brewing in the first place. After years of experimenting, we knew hopping an ale at five separate stages would produce something special. The result ended up being this gold-medal winning IPA, whose inspired use of hops creates hints of apricot, peach, mango and lemon flavors, but still packs a bit of a sting, just like a Sculpin fish.

The bottle design is interesting: it's dominated by the brewery name, then a colorful drawing of the sculpin fish (new to me), and then in teeny-tiny type, the varietal (India Pale Ale).

I've found that this is not unusual for craft brewers - I guess they're marketing brand-loyalty first, then assigning a distinctive name or label to catch the eye of the browsing imbiber, and then rewarding the repeat customer with what amounts to a password establishing yourself as one of the cognoscenti:

You:  "I'll have a Sculpin."  (Wink.) 

Bartender (nodding with approval):  "Ah, you know your IPAs, sir."

Random Dude:  "I'll have a Bud." 

Bartender (spitting in the glass and muttering):  "Go play in traffic, you simpering vegetable."

© JDurfee99

The Sculpin itself does hit you with that apricot flavor from the first sip. (I'm proud to say I caught it before I read the tasting note!)  The hops are strong but not unpleasant, the alcohol is warming (7% ABV), and it finished in the glass with what seemed to be a citrusy lime note.  I liked it and you should try it.

Better than last week's Bittersweet Lenny?  Not quite.  I think the Sculpin could have had a long run as the champ if we had seeded the beers, but we didn't, so it won't get the chance. Bittersweet Lenny remains the king.

Next week: I look for something - anything - in the Fifty Beers that isn't an IPA.  Will I find it?  Only Jay and Lisa know.

___________________________________


And just because this is my blog, I'm throwing in this picture of me and my son Josh from the 2009 State Bar Convention in Dallas, where he attended a speech I gave and we had breakfast with Channel 13 investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino.  He was a dashing ten-years-old in this picture, one of my favorites.

(Love you, dude, and always will, even if you talk a ton of smack at the ping pong table.)