A Shining West Coast Failure

Welcome to the first in a series of my beer reports from my mini-vacation to the Pacific Northwest. I encountered this beer in the fine city of Seattle. Thanks to Trevor at Bottleworks in Wallingford for his indispensable help in selecting West Coast beers.



If there is one thing California knows, it's how to make hoppy beers. Somewhere along the evolution of brewing, everyone out there up and decided that they liked things hoppy and they were damn well going to do something about it. Embodying the same "can-do" attitude that birthed Silicon Valley, silicone movie stars, and Journey, California brewers went wild, stayed up far later than most civil people, and began hopping their beers to the Nth degree. West Coast brewing would never be the same.

As luck would have it, for every brewer like Stone or Green Flash who succed in utterly obliterating one's palate with a hop punch of epic proportions, there is at least one other brewer whose ad copy can't live up to the reality of their product. Port Brewing of San Marcos, CA is one of those failures.

Port describes their Wipeout IPA as "...a massively hopped India Pale Ale with enough substance and body to overcome even the worst and most tragic of on the water spills." It is so hopped in fact, that it contains "a tidal wave of hops". The wave is more of a swell and the hopping is not so much massive, as it is perfectly adequate. Wipeout falls flat on its face for all its extreme posturing and I couldn't be happier.

While not a rousing success as an extreme beer, Wipeout is one of the best IPAs, and indeed beers, I have ever consumed in my time on this little blue-green rock. The lack of over-hopping produces an IPA that is refreshing but not without a little of that punch we've come to know and love from our friend the IPA. Closer examination reveals a beer that is not only complex for an IPA, but far more drinkable than most.

Wipeout pours the usual strong orange-yellow that one would expect from a solid IPA. There's not much head of which to speak, likely owing to my lack of "proper" glassware and my sub-par pouring technique. Carbonation is present but seems a bit low for a beer of this sort. The strong hop aroma is nearly overpowered by floral, lemon and orange bouquets. It smells a bit like what would happen if you thew a bunch of hops into a Bath and Body Works and mixed the whole place up. Odd aromas aside, I move forward and take a sip.

*ZAP* Go my neurotransmitters. Dendrites are catching happy charges like Obama's catching flack for his middle name. Alcohol may be a depressant but the overwhelming joy I feel while drinking this beer more than negates it. Gone is the melange of overpowering aromas. In its place there is a taste that can only be described as well-balanced and supremely drinkable. A smooth (malty even), slightly lemony front end gives way to a hop finish that is both pleasant and and dry. Hop aromas do color the entirety of the body in a small way, but the actual hop flavor does not gain any solid footing until about halfway to the finish. There is no evidence of alcohol bitterness, which is no small feat considering this is billed at 7% ABV. This is a beer that, despite its brewer's claims of wildness, is fully controlled and a fine example of what other brewers could emulate to create appealing IPAs that do not rely on brute force to rope in adventurous drinkers.

In short, this is a beer for nearly everyone, barring those allergic to hops or malt. If you like DIPAs and other absurdly hopped beers, you've found your new lazy day six-pack. For those of you like my friend who is on the fence about IPAs due to poor flavor balance, well, this solves that problem. For those people who just like beer, you'll be hard pressed to find such a good American take on the IPA from anywhere else. As for East Coast aficionados of beer AND heresey, I'm going to say it: this is better than any Dogfish Head IPA to date. Should the angry mob need help finding me, I'll be here at home, looking for some place in Boston to buy this wonderful beer.