Hopped Up On Caffeine

In some ways, it seems that the craft beer movement is over. By that, I mean it’s no longer a ‘movement’ as much as it is now a fact of life. One no longer needs to sell others on the beauty of well-made beer. Quality suds can be found in the most generic of bars, restaurants, gas stations, and even small towns now boast a brewpub or two.
Given the ubiquity of craft beer, it’s not a surprise that more and more often, along with making an excellent product, many breweries are attempting to stand out with bizarre creations, concoctions with growing numbers of unusual additions, and style line crossing is becoming less rare.
I’m not arguing that craft beer has jumped the shark, but when one of your beloved west-coast breweries begins making numerous versions of its year-round brews with increasingly ridiculous ingredients, it may be time to rethink just what we want. A dry-hopped pale ale is one thing. But an orange vanilla India pale lager is just gross. It’s unnecessary. It’s bloat.
Not to say that beers with a grocery list of adjuncts are inherently bad, I’ve had dozens of these and many have been fantastic. But the new trend from small to mid-sized breweries wanting to stand out in a packed market is to throw a ton of junk into one of your existing beers and bring it to market.
A beer rep stops me in my local shop and aggressively urges me to pick up a 6-pack of Stone Brewing Co.’s new Mocha IPA, a double India pale ale brewed with cacao and coffee. I’m skeptical and I say as much. I’m not the biggest fan of super bitter malty beers; think overly-hopped porters and stouts. They regularly don’t work. And on this occasion, I pass.
However, a week later, the beer in question appears on tap and I bite. First impressions are strange, like your original introduction jazz or an exotic ethnic restaurant. It’s not bad; you’re just not used to it. Yet sip after sip, this additional ingredient beer is winning me over.
Mocha IPA hides it’s 9% double IPA ABV well, acting more like a mid-gravity beer. And the flavor is where this one excels. Having had several new releases and classic updates from Stone which were all sub-par (think the disastrous remake of their Pale Ale), this beer is excellent. The flavors, amazingly, blend perfectly. Chocolate, coffee, massive citrus and spice hops all meld into a beautiful merger of modern beery goodness.
While Mocha IPA is still a hoppy beer, the bitterness doesn’t dominate like many of its contemporaries. I liken the beer to a tart orange or grapefruit slice, covered in dark chocolate, and dusted with fresh roasted coffee grounds.
From Stone’s website: “Clearly, style lines have been crossed. Is it half-IPA, half-stout? Not quite. It’s definitely all IPA, but it’s also the best of both styles, making this love child of a beer simply just a beautiful, pleasure-seeking meld of imperial IPA and mocha indulgence. How did we come up with this inexplicably delicious creation? Well, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it exists and that it’s here for you now, thanks to our deliberate disregard for brewing norms. Some things are not meant to be known, just enjoyed…thoroughly.”
Although I’m quickly bored of the “…with blank blank blank added” development in beer, it’s not always a bad thing. Be diligent and you just might find a gem. Enjoy the brews … Cheers.
Gene’s Haufbrau has at more than 200 beers in bottles or on tap. While they don’t have every beer the Beer Snob writes about, they probably have most. Gene’s is located at 817 Savannah Hwy. 225-GENE. E-mail the Beer Snob at publisher@westof.net.