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№ 32 | November/December 2011 www.<strong>eatdrink</strong>.ca 47<br />
BEER MATTERS<br />
beer matters<br />
Battle of the West Coast IPAs<br />
Ontario Has Embraced Intense India Pale Ales<br />
By THE MALT MONK<br />
As we move from late fall into<br />
winter, I’m still enjoying the fall<br />
season fest beers in local circulation.<br />
We have a great selection at<br />
the LCBO, as well as from our local crafters,<br />
who are putting their twist on the traditional<br />
beers of the fall season — Oktoberfest Marzens,<br />
Amber Pumpkin Ales, Bocks, Stouts<br />
and Porters. I’m also in the midst of brewing<br />
my own special ale for the winter season,<br />
as well as undergoing my side-by-side taste<br />
tests of the West Coast India Pale Ales that<br />
have ooded the local market.<br />
When I say “ooding” the market, I mean<br />
it as a positive development. Craft beer<br />
fanciers can’t get<br />
enough of a good<br />
thing. For years,<br />
when the great<br />
West Coast IPAs<br />
rst exploded<br />
on the craft<br />
beer scene,<br />
we here in<br />
Ontario were<br />
missing out.<br />
Agents were<br />
too timid to<br />
import, and<br />
local crafters<br />
were too conservative<br />
to brew such an intense, huge-<br />
avoured ale — afraid of the consequence<br />
of consumer rejection, perhaps. Fortunately,<br />
the market was always here for intense<br />
IPAs — it just needed to be tapped. At any<br />
rate, the local market is now awash in this<br />
big hoppy ale style from local and import<br />
crafters, and the local craft beer culture is<br />
lapping it up.<br />
e West Coast Style of India Pale Ale<br />
First o, it’s probably worth mentioning how<br />
a West Coast IPA diers from traditional IPA,<br />
and how it evolved into its own discrete style.<br />
India Pale Ale evolved in Britain in the eighteenth<br />
century as a stronger, well-hopped<br />
export ale for the Indian subcontinent. West<br />
Coast India Pale Ale (WCIPA) is a more<br />
robust modern American version of this historical<br />
English style, brewed using American<br />
ingredients and boundary-pushing attitude.<br />
WCIPAs are brewed with hop cultivars<br />
developed and grown in the Pacic<br />
Northwest hop-growing regions of<br />
Yakama and Willamette valleys. e<br />
recipes usually include a blend of PNW hop<br />
varieties such as Cascade, Chinook, Centennial,<br />
Columbus, Simcoe, Amarillo, Tomahawk,<br />
Warrior, and Nugget. ese varieties<br />
impart the grapefruit, orange, citrus, lychee,<br />
apricot, mango and piney aromas/tastes<br />
unique to WCIPAs. West Coast brewers also<br />
add hops to their IPAs in at least four of the<br />
brewing stages — the boil, hopback infusion,<br />
dry hopped in fermenting, conditioning<br />
and kegging. As a result WCIPAs run<br />
about 60–70 IBUs in bitterness.<br />
Add to this a rich mix of semi- and fully<br />
caramelized specialty malts suited to a<br />
high original gravity wort from single-temperature<br />
infusion mashing, and<br />
you can start to understand the<br />
unique nature of the WCIPA —<br />
big hop presence (60–70 IBU)<br />
balanced with rich<br />
malting. It has an<br />
intense aromatic<br />
olfactory sensation,<br />
with pungent<br />
tones of grapefruitcitrus-mango<br />
and<br />
a toee undertone<br />
from a cara-malt<br />
base. e colour<br />
ranges from deep gold<br />
to burnished copper,<br />
and the huge puy<br />
meringue-like caps<br />
last well, with a rich
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