Is it Good? — Beervana

I was able to scratch a couple itches on my recent trip to New England—drinking Notch’s tremendous pilsner at the source in Salem, and sampling a broad selection of Fox Farm’s beer.* Em Sauter delivered the latter batch when we met in Worcester for lunch. I’d placed an order and she graciously agreed to pick it up and bring it with her. She threw in a bonus beer as well, and within days it caused me to slide into an epistemological black hole.

The bonus beer was Tree House’s King Julius, one of the most sought-after IPAs in the world. Many breweries now practice the model Tree House perfected, in which very expensive IPAs are dispensed in four-packs to throngs who gather hours early for the chance to spend their small fortunes—often after long drives. Of the spiraling number of IPAs Tree House makes, King Julius, a double IPA, has one of the highest ratings among the crowd who rate these things. (A couple one-offs have scored higher, but 46,000 people agree it’s awesome.) I probably could have paid for my trip East had I put it on the secondary market. (Exaggeration. I think.) I shared it with my family over Thanksgiving, and it caused a stir appropriate to the beer’s status. Not necessarily the one the Untappd faithful had, however.

We have to back up. What is “good” in the context of a hazy IPA? I confess I don’t really know. Assessing quality begins with shared agreement about the acceptable shape and form a beer should have. A more subtle aspect is accomplishment and harmony, which demonstrate a brewer’s skill, but even on these matters we have some accepted norms.

Hazy IPAs, especially ones like King Julius, confound these agreements. It is one of the most exaggerated examples of the New England hazy—insane levels of hopping, thick, cakey body, and heavy alcohol. Everything is over the top. These beers were engineered to deliver a huge fruit wallop, and this one does—tremendous sappy mango and that orange hinted at in the name and hue. The alcohol acts as a solvent—that’s why fans love their hazies boozy—which further concentrates the fruit flavors and volatilizes the aroma. But they flavors go past the point of being pleasant—you go into a sugar coma almost immediately, and the cloying sweetness seems to ball up like tar on your tongue. In exchange for that blast of fruit, you get a lot of hop burn and that quality I call chlorophyll—a weedy plant bitterness that shadows every sweet sip. They don’t balance each other, either—in my mouth they seem to scratch and claw like fighting cats.

As with extreme examplesthat exist on the frontier fringe of most arts and crafts, these qualities alienate regular folk. My family was shocked by King Julius, which tasted nothing like beer as they understood it. They all abandoned it after a sip, smacking for minutes as they tried to get that fruit tar off their tongues. They had no explanation for why such an obviously unpleasant beer could be so prized.

We just don’t have those agreements about how to relate to beers like this. Hazy fans are certain they can recognize genius, but what do we do with everyone else? My family happily guzzled less baroque IPAs, which remain the most popular craft style. On the other hand, how do you argue with success like this:

Leaving aside King Julius, it’s hard to know how to evaluate any competently-made hazy. With an ever proliferating supply of new hop varieties and hop products, flavor is in the mouth of the drinker. Years ago I was invited to go to a cocktail event. After a local mixologist served us some of his newest creations, I looked around nervously and asked the drinks writer next to me how you could tell if it was a good cocktail or not. I was looking for all those benchmarks we have in beer evaluation. She looked at me with wonder and confusion and when she answered I could tell she thought it was a trick question. “Well,” she said slowly, “do you like it?” It was time for me to be baffled. Surely we need more to go by than that. As I navigate the world of hazies, I feel the same way. A good one seems to be whatever you like.

I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that; it just makes me nervous. I like being able to discuss beer at the level of shared appreciation. We may be entering a brave new world where beer is more like cocktails.

*Notes

Since I mentioned them, let’s go a bit deeper on Notch and Fox Farm. The night before my event, Sally and I arrived in Salem and stopped into Notch for a few beers. I’m really glad we did that because at the event the next day I started with their flagship pilsner, The Standard, and never turned back. It’s the highest compliment I can pay a brewer to drink three pints of their beer rather than sampling the menu. I’ve done that maybe ten times in my life at a new brewery. Its one of the best Czech pils I’ve had in any country. It has loads of rustic quality (double decoction, open fermentation), with a hearty malt backbone to support the stiff dose of Sterling hops. A beer with říz!

Fox Farm makes a lot of great beers, and I really liked their helles, The Cottage, one of the IPAs, Burst, and their gueuze-style spontaneous blend. But what really knocked my socks off was Tiddly, a slightly robust (3.8%) dark mild. What a gorgeous beer. With waves of roast and nuts, it was more like a wee porter than an invert-sugar mild, but those malts gave it depth and density. Cleverly, the brewery partially nitrogenated the can, adding silkiness. It drank like a beer of five or six percent. I would love to have a fridge full of that to get me through the winter.

I may not know how to evaluate hazy IPAs (yet), but I know my way around a pilsner and a mild. These are excellent ones, so track them down if you can.