Beer, booze and bars.

A13

Craig Pinhey

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I'm a "Hophead" which doesn't mean what it used to. I think old people used to use that term for people who smoked a lot of dope. "You crazy kids are all hopped up on somethin'!" Nowadays we hopheads are getting high on something green and herbal, but it's actually hops themselves, infused into our favourite bitter ales, especially IPAs.

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Picaroons recently released their new Yippee IPA, which certainly should win an award for its cheeky name, but is also quite a mouthful. It's not extremely bitter or alcoholic, although 6.5 per cent is nothing to sneeze at, but it's still an aggressive beer. As for all their brews, you can see the details at www.picaroons.ca, in their brewer's log book.

I probably don't have to go over this again, but, IPA means India Pale Ale, referring to the beer style that developed when England was shipping beer to its soldiers in India. They discovered that higher hopped beers lasted better, cleared better, and tasted better "" at least to the hopheads in the troops. These days the term IPA is thrown around loosely by certain brewers, who use it for low hopped, bland ales, but the traditional style has thankfully been revived, and in some cases exceeded, by microbrewers.

Greg Nash, one of the current brewers at Moncton's Pump House, gained notoriety last year at Halifax's Garrison Brewery when he brewed the Canadian Beer of the Year, an unfiltered Imperial Pale Ale, christened ImPA by Haligonian beer geeks. It's still brewed by Garrison, except now it's Daniel Girard, former brewer at Pump House, doing the heavy hopping.

Now, not to be outdone, Nash has released a new Pump House seasonal called Dementia Double IPA, which clocks in at a massive 8.2 per cent alcohol and over 100 IBUs (International Bitterness Units). That's a lot. A of a lot! Mainstream North American lagers and ales range from around 5-15 IBUs, while a typical bitter or hoppy European lager might be 25-35. Fifty is very bitter and 75 is dangerous. www.beeripedia.com lists an Irish Stout such as Guinness at 45-60 IBU, so imagine what over 100 means.

I normally hate quoting from brewery or winery descriptions of their own products, because they're inevitably full of exaggerations and sometimes horribly inaccurate, but in this case I have to. This is from Pumphouse.ca: "This is pure hop bliss brewed with insane quantities of west coast hops! Every sip of this beer is akin to diving into a truck load of freshly picked hops, directly before the hefty kick of alcohol begins to numb your brain. Big, bold and sticky! The insanity sauce is brewed with Cascade, Amarillo, Tomahawk, Northern Brewer and Columbus Hops!"

Dementia is a draught-only product (ask for them to bring it in to your local pub) that will surely test the limits of even the most dedicated hophead. It's so hoppy that when you take a sniff you'll swear you have opened a bag of fresh hops and rubbed your face in it. You'll feel like you need to pick the hops out of your nose and teeth, or that they've wormed their way into the very heart of your soul!

I'm drinking one now. It's extremely bitter and yet...strangely compelling. The alcohol, actually, isn't a distraction. In fact it's barely noticeable because the beer is packed with so much citrussy, floral hop flavour. It's not particularly full bodied and definitely not sweet and overly filling. This is the kind of beer you can sit and swill happily until someone sneaks up on you and hits you over the head with a...I don't know...bag of grapefruits?

Dementia is on tap at the Saint John Ale House, Marky's Laundromat (the best beer bar in Moncton), and Pump House's downtown location, until it's gone...which will be pretty soon! There are times when you just want to drink a few cold ones, and there are times for insanity sauce.

Craig Pinhey has about one insanity sauce batch worth of hops in his crop that is just about ripe. Visit Craig at www.frogspad.ca.