Yes, beer industry people love Lagers. Straight up beer drinkers love Lagers. And I think Lagers are good. Cool. Fine.
They are “easy to drink”, aren’t they? That is a good thing…except when it is not:
Lagers go away too fast!
I just drank the Bridalveil Lager above, from Tioga Sequoia Brewing, and it is gone REALLY damn quickly. Way faster than when I have an IPA. That kinda sucks, yeah?!
Maybe I just have a drinking problem.
The sad news of a Bay Area staple closing, Marin Brewing Company, brings the feelings.
These kind of places may be over. The 80s 90s era. When brewpubs and breweries were a small underrated community.
Friend and Marinite, Paul has some words about it:
It’s bad enough that Iron Springs had to go down, but the ‘Brew Co’ – as all the locals referred to it – was iconic; one of California’s original pioneering brew pubs. I blame the haze craze more than anything. I’m sure the pandemic didn’t help, not to mention the a-hole landlord that kept jacking their rent. But ultimately I think it’s the fact that people’s taste in beer has changed, and it is getting harder and harder for these old school establishments to survive. I am in the minority. I am getting old and stodgy, and I long for dark and cozy brew pubs where you can get a stout and a side of mashed potatoes all for under 10 bucks on your lunch break. Sadly, those days are long gone. Please take a moment of silence to mourn this loss with me.
Thanks, Paul. It’s the ‘dark & cozy’ that gets me. There is not a lot of cozy left. Being a beer nerd used to be that: a small cozy community.
Find a malty pale (if you can) and pour one out for all the brewpubs and coziness we have lost.
Last week I made fun of Beer Cruncher seemingly being the only one out there trying to make “Cold IPAs” happen. Then I ran across my first one in the wild.
A colab between Central California’s Alvarado Street and Figueroa Mountain Brewing called “Acapulco Cold”.
It is actually pretty good. I enjoyed it.
If I am to use this one example of the style, I do think there is a slight difference between this beer and an India Pale Lager style beer. Small, but there. The Lager side is very hidden, but still present.
Good if I don’t want the Lager feel, bad if I do.
Is it enough of a difference to give it its own style name like Cold IPA? Well, if I didn’t care about the marketing side I would say this is a sub-genre of IPL – definitely in the IPL family but enough of a difference to acknowledge it.
You can’t blame them for trying to attach it to the Ale side instead of the Lager side, but they are cheating a bit.
Hey, this particular CIPA is a nice beer. If they want to keep trying to make this style work, go for it – I definitely recommend trying one out if you see one, especially if you’re into a hoppy Lager. Honestly, I would have rather had this beer with Ale yeast though. ??
Beer Twitter regularly bashes Untappd for everything, especially the people that don’t like the style of a beer and rate it poorly.
While I agree if you REALLY don’t understand the style you are drinking you should refrain from rating it and just leave some comments to your future self like “Don’t drink this again, ya dummy!”
BUT. Untappd is whatever you (and I will die on this virtual hill), whatever you want to use it for. If I want to rate beers on how it actually tastes to me and not what a Cicerone trained geek thinks of it, then I will. I paid zero cents for the app just like you, I’ll do what I want and that doesn’t make me better or worse than Beer Geek Twitter.
While we are here, where does this want for Untappd ratings to be 100% accurate end?
The beer pictured at the top, Bottle Logic “Machine Learning” was a total label-buy. Love the label. Love IPAs and usually Hazzies. The beer? Not really. I won’t get it again.
This is my rating:
Basically if I rate something under a 3.75, I was not into it. Nobody is going to grill me for the mediocre rating. But maybe I don’t know what the hell a HDIPA featuring Galaxy, Idaho 7 & El Dorado is supposed to taste like.
Should I have NOT rated it? Of course not. So leave Untappd ratings alone, yo. Make it how you want. ✌️?
