At this point, the Seattle beer scene and the IPA are inextricably linked, for any number of reasons: our close proximity to the world’s largest hop-growing region; traditionally dark and gloomy winters that lend themselves to brooding, intense beers; and a generation of brewers who came to view hop-laden beers as the style to aspire to.
While I’ve written before about my dislike of IPAs, I’d never thought about them through the lens of Seattle’s beer history. For reasons I can only guess at, the second and third wave of home and microbrewers turned their back on our tradition to strike out in a different direction, and they’ve never really looked back.
It started with Rainier. The iconic brewery adjacent to I-5 may now be condos and the beer might be brewed in California, but our beer identity starts there. Like many other regional macrobrews, Rainier is at its heart a simple American light lager, designed to be served cold and enjoyed without much in the way of actual thought.
It’s that style and its oppressive ubiquity that pioneering home brewers sought to challenge in the early 1980s, and few did it with as much success and style as Paul Shipman and Gordon Bowker, the co-founders of Redhook. In our era of hundreds of micro- and nanobreweries, it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary Redhook’s ESB was. For one thing, it prompted a million “What’s an ESB?” questions; for another, it showed people that beer could actually taste like something.
Bitterness became a badge of honor: No more did your beer have to taste bland and generic. You could refute the common assertion that American palates cared only for sweetness, and so from the ESB’s initial success, which relied on its balance of hoppiness and malt, you saw the birth of the modern IPA: hop-laden, often high in alcohol, and as much a test of character as an actually enjoyable drink.
Yet now Seattle brewers appear to be in a rut. Of late, most local innovation seems to be about just how big a hop load a beer can take before it’s undrinkable. The recent “Washington Hop Mob,” featuring 30+ Triple IPAs, most over 10 percent ABV and 100+ IBUs, is just the latest example of the ridiculous fetishization of bitterness. I wrote recently about the trend in Washington wine toward balance, but in the words of one local brewer, “Balance is for pussies.”
Well, count me as at least one person who wishes that the local beer scene would remember its roots as a counterforce against the prevailing tide. Perhaps some local brewers could take a chance on beers that don’t nuke your taste buds and render you drunk after one. Rainier and Redhook might not be on anyone’s list of great Seattle beers, especially since neither is actually made here any more, but they’re still important touchstones in our city’s brewing history, and we’d do well to learn from their examples.
thebarcode@seattleweekly.com
