Skipping over the bulk of IPA’s existence, I would note that many who try to pinpoint the first American IPA usually overlook Ballantine IPA, which was still being brewed even as the first microbreweries appeared. If anything, the research of folks such as Ron Pattinson, Martyn Cornell, and Peter Symons has made it very clear that such styles were aggravatingly variable based on complex formulae of taxation laws, ingredient availability, and the force of lunar tides. Years of dedicated writers trawling brewery logs and newspapers for actual research haven’t cleared the picture all that much. I won’t go far into the historical back story of IPA-that morass of half-truths, lies, and drunkenness. How did we get here, and how is the style looping back on itself? If you look at the latest guide, including the “provisional” styles, there are 11 different variants outlined, including a grab-all category to cover things they haven’t thought of yet (i.e., no milkshake IPA category). Even the venerable Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)-those adjudicators on high for homebrewed beer styles-has thrown in the towel on the idea of a single meaning for that money-printing acronym. Looking at the leader of the craft pack-the IPA-clearly shows this process in play, especially accelerating over the past decade. Our delicious subjects loop and whirl around and away from those little numbers we’ve attached to them, caring little for our attempts to capture them in bottles. Style definitions butt up against each other terminologies and meanings shift. Yet the very nature of drawing chalk outlines around a beer fixes it in place instead of recognizing the messy process through which our pint has evolved. To be able to name a thing is to understand it. Given the wonky nature of beer enthusiasts, it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve laid a procrustean taxonomy over our pursuit and understanding of beer.
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