Photo courtesy Triple Crossing Brewing
This is the beer I WANT right now.
The beer I want with a steak off the grill. The beer I think about when I’m drinking other beers.
Let me tell you why — and why it just might change your mind about double IPAs.
Most double IPAs — Imperial India Pale Ales, as they’re infrequently listed on menus — are intensely bitter, the beverage equivalent of a tongue-scorching Szechuan dish.
IPAs have become trendy, however — going from 8 percent to 30 percent of the craft beer market in the past few years, according to the Brewers Association, the national organization that protects the interests of craft breweries — because brewers have been extra-dry hopping them.
Why would they add more hops to an already hoppy beer? To flood the nose with waves of floral or citrus or tropical aromas before you take your first taste, thereby relieving the beer of some of that palatal bite. (By the way, that’s the meaning of the term double IPA — it refers to extra-hopping and alcohol strength.)
Jeremy Wirtes, the lead brewer at Triple Crossing, is more judicious and thoughtful than many of his hop-mad brethren, and with Battle Creek, he has produced one of the most unusual extra-hopped IPAs I’ve ever had.
It doesn’t smack you with hops. It’s subtle, balanced, and creamy — oddly, wonderfully creamy. You might even think it’s a stout.
Most double IPAs are not really suitable for summer quaffing, but this one is. The ABV (alcohol by volume) is 8 percent, whereas many IPAs clock in at 9 or 10, and its citrusy notes are refreshing.
Posters in online beer forums in the city are working themselves into knots trying to figure out how Triple Crossing made it. I reached out to Wirtes, who, though reluctant to divulge all his secrets, did tell me that the “level of creaminess” is attributable to several factors, among them “a slightly lower than German lager-like carb level, our choice of yeast and the water chemistry we employ.”
