The only constant in the world is change. If we are honest, we little mammals, stood as we are on a spinning rock that is hurtling around a dying yellow dwarf star, don’t really like change. We like to think of the world as being settled and constant. If we are lucky enough to have had good childhoods, we yearn for the best elements of them to be reborn.
I came of age in an IPA revival. In 1990 Mark Dorber ran a Burton Pale Ale seminar at the White Horse at Parson’s Green. This sparked interest in brewers on both sides of the Atlantic and revived IPA’s were brewed as a result. The pub hosted pale ale and IPA festivals through the early 90’s. My relationship with beer was born through these same years and once I was legal and started to explore the world of beer, this renaissance for IPA was gaining momentum. These ideas (part real, part myth) about what those letters were, or what they should be, soaked into me. Even down here at the heel of the earth we knew about this new old beer.
For me IPA was strong, bitter, hop accented and with enough malt to balance it all out. My ideas about IPA were forged by Burton Bridge and Whiteshield, by Tuatara and Epic, by Sierra Nevada and Emersons. But that was just a moment in time. Oh, how we scoffed at Greene King and Tui. Oh, how confident we were that our view would persist. Confident that how we saw the world would endure.
We were wrong. The world doesn’t stand still. It keeps hurtling around the dying star. IPA changed. It became synonymous with a sweet, mild, rounded, tropical fruit, cocktail. Suddenly I was Bacon in Lock Stock staring at the refreshing drink in the Samoan pub saying “you could fall in love with an orangutan in that!”
And so for me, for Southstar, the term IPA is dead. We brew beers that I once would of described as IPA. Sceptred Warrior is in my head an English IPA, The Angel and the Fist is to me a Belgian IPA. But use those three letters today and people will screw up their noses, they will ask where the over ripe tropical fruit flavours and aromas are. They will tell you, you don’t know what you are doing. So for Southstar “IPA” is dead. We brew an “Old India Ale”, and we brew a “Belgian Bitter”, but IPA? Never heard of it mate.
