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We Asked 13 Brewers: What Was Your First IPA?
Hoppy, hoppy, hoppy!
Photography courtesy of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
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Do we love anything more than an origin story? Especially when discovering the first IPA some of the best brewers around the country drank. Everyone’s love affair with those lovely lush bines started somewhere.
Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine the brewers we know and love today began just like us: making faces at tasting their first hoppy beer. However, hops won the day slowly but surely, jettisoning some of the now-renowned hoppy and hazy architects to astronomical heights.
But when their feet were firmly planted on the ground, they were just twenty-one-year-old (or, in some cases, eighteen-year-old) neophytes setting sail on the hitherto unexplored Cascade, Amarillo, and Centennial seas.
Think back: Do you remember your first IPA? What was your reaction? Did you even like it?
I clearly remember mine (although to be honest, it was technically a pale ale, but still hoppier than anything I’d ever tried)…but considering some of the names on this list, I don’t think my story stacks up.
So, let’s take a step into our time machines and travel back twenty or so years, getting a glimpse into the kaleidoscopic responses to the question: What was your first IPA?
Honestly, some of these answers really surprised us.
13 Brewers Share The Story of Their First IPA
Photography courtesy of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
Khris Johnson – Co-Owner & Head Brewer, Green Bench Brewing Company
St. Petersburg, FL
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA – My first (legal) IPA was Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA. I purchased a 12-pack of bottles from the grocery store on my twenty-first birthday and shared a couple with my dad. When I was in middle school, my father was a homebrewer and used to make all sorts of styles, but his favorite was IPA. By the time I was drinking age, I had a decent awareness of different beer styles, which was unique back then. So, when it was time for me to purchase my first beer, I decided to get one that I knew my dad would enjoy with me. And it was delicious.
Anthony Sorice – Head Brewer & Owner, Root + Branch Brewing
Copiague, NY
Southern Tier 2XIPA and Alpine Nelson – I vividly remember my first experience with IPA. It was an extremely dated bottle of Southern Tier 2XIPA. It was super earthy and astringent—like drinking grass clippings and dish soap. It was truly an awful experience that pushed me away from hoppy beer for a little bit. East Coast IPA was rough.
But I came around to the style in 2010 when I began trading beer with a good friend in San Diego. He sent me a box with fresh bottles of Alpine Nelson. That beer blew my mind open and hooked me into the style. I remember it being a grapefruit/sauv blanc bomb with super balanced bitterness and a really unique spicy note from the rye that rounded out the palate. I’m really glad that Mcilhenney Brewing is still brewing that recipe. It is still one of my all-time favorites. Root + Branch Infiltrator is my homage to that beer.
Kelsey McNair – Founder & Head Brewer, North Park Beer Company
San Diego, CA
Lost Coast Indica IPA – Ooh, that’s a tough one! It’s hard to remember exactly, but I want to say it was Lost Coast Indica IPA circa 2001, and I bought a 6-pack of it based on it being on BeerAdvocate’s Top 100 Beers.
I recall it being insanely bitter, and my twenty-one-year-old palate was not into it—at all!
When I started drinking better beer, I favored more malt-focused English styles, ales, stouts, and Belgian beers. Hoppy beers, especially IPAs, were super polarizing for me back then. I started to come around when I discovered fresh, locally brewed IPAs such as AleSmith IPA, Stone IPA, and Pizza Port Swamis.
Nicole Gray – Head Brewer & Owner, Garrison City Beerworks
Dover, NH
Harpoon IPA and Leviathan DIPA – This is going back to 2009, in college. I went to school in Boston, one of the homes of Harpoon Brewery. (The other is located in Vermont.) A pizza/beer shop called Penguin Pizza near my school in Mission Hill had a killer roster of beers, but Harpoon IPA was the first one I tried.
We’d come in after class to pretend to study and really just grab a beer and a slice of crispy pepperoni. That beer started me down the rabbit hole of hops and IPAs—when a malt backbone was considered a defining feature of the IPA, the more IBUs, the better!
Harpoon Leviathan DIPA was another go-to; I was obsessed with the bitterness and couldn’t get enough!
Read More About New Hampshire’s Best Breweries
Photography courtesy of Flying Dog Brewery
Zack Day – Co-Founder and Director of Brew Ops, Funkytown Brewery
Chicago, IL
Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA – I was sitting on the front porch of my parent’s house in 2008, enjoying some quiet time before the Pacquiao vs. Diaz fight when my Pops asked if I wanted a drink. I honestly can’t remember the drink, but at age 24, I’m 103% sure it was Hennessy mixed [with] something. I surprised Pops and said, “Nah, you got something else to drink besides liquor?” He smiled and said, “Be right back.” He handed me my first IPA, Flying Dog’s Snake Dog. Really being unaware of how to drink an IPA, I cracked it open and drank it…warm at room temperature.
LOL, that was a fast start to a good night.
Bob Kunz – Owner & Brewer, Highland Park Brewery
Los Angeles, CA
Diamond Knot India Pale Ale – It was 2001, and IPA was both new to me and at the beginning of its stratospheric rise. Many of the terms we know today—West Coast, hazy, New England—either hadn’t been coined yet or were not in common use. IPA was IPA.
In Mukilteo, WA, near the ferry terminal ushering people to Whidbey Island, I experienced Diamond Knot Brewery and Alehouse. At the young age of twenty-one, I had been familiar with craft beer bought at the grocery store, but I hadn’t been exposed to fresh beer directly from the producer.
This beer transcended what I expected from a beer. It was thick, almost muddy. Pale yellow with a nearly green hue; dank, resinous, citrusy; bready and chewy malt; raw bitterness. The feral experience of this beer, I would later learn, came from them dry-hopping the beer directly into a Hoff-Stevens keg. The kegs had a side bung large enough to throw a hop sack into, seal, fill with beer, and then serve.
In some ways, it had the same untamed experience that comes from many modern hazy IPAs. Remembering my love for this beer and its impactful, turbid hop experience always makes me laugh. We humans love clear terms to define the thing, often thinking we have landed at the end-all be-all. When in reality, things are always evolving, sometimes cyclically.
For me, a lover of fresh, bright West Coast IPA, I try and keep an open mind, remembering my nascent IPA years filled with thick, fresh, Columbus-soaked, muddy IPAs, not yet called hazies.
Read More About Highland Park’s Iconic Timbo Pils
Maíra Kimura – Brewmaster & Relationship and New Business Director, Japas Cervejaria
São Paulo, Brazil
Darwin Brewery Rolling Hitch – My first IPA was called Rolling Hitch from a brewery named Darwin Brewery in Sunderland, UK. At that time, I was taking the Brewing Technology course at Brewlab, and Darwin was producing at the school’s brewery. I had heard about the exuberant American IPAs being produced in the US, but they weren’t as common in Europe yet, and I had never tried one.
The Rolling Hitch had Amarillo hops, maybe even a single-hop, and I remember being absolutely enchanted by the new range of flavors introduced to me. I recall tasting citrus, orange, lemon, and other fruits.
From that moment, I started to move away from my preference for Belgian beers (we’ve all been there) and entered a phase of IPA obsession—so much so that my second IPA was one I brewed myself soon after during the course.
Read More About Japas Cervejaria
Jake Keyes – Owner & Brewer, Skydance Brewing Co.
Oklahoma City, OK
Coach’s IPA and Sierra Nevada Celebration Fresh Hop Ale – In the early 2000s, when I was twenty-one years old, I worked and later became manager of a brewpub in Norman, OK, called Coach’s. Previously, I had been brought up brewing and drinking mostly German-style lagers that my dad and I brewed together at home.
At Coach’s, I noticed that our regular happy hour crowd had a section of very loyal IPA drinkers who would drink our Coach’s IPA by the growler full every day. I personally thought it was just a bitter mess when I tried it, but the customers insisted that when I got off work, I should force myself to drink a growler of IPA. I did that and actually went back for a second growler!
From that moment on, I was a hophead. However, a week later, one of my co-workers came up to me at a party and said, “Hey, if you really like that IPA, this beer will change your life,” as he handed me a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.
He was right. It changed my life!
Photography courtesy of Odell Brewing Co.
Betsy Lay – Co-Founder, Lady Justice Brewing
Englewood, CO
Odell’s IPA – I’ve been trying to think of what my first IPA would’ve been. I know for sure my first pale ale was Sierra Nevada [Pale Ale]. My best guess is that it was Odell’s IPA as I was living in CO in 2004 when I first started exploring craft beer, and that beer, along with Fat Tire, was consistently on draft and in stores throughout Colorado. The tap handle with the elephant on top was everywhere. Not the sexiest response. … But it’s been twenty years since my first IPA!
Lauren Van Pamelen – Co-Owner & Head Brewer, Tin Barn Brewing
Chester, NY
Tree House Brewing Co. Haze – It literally changed my life. I wasn’t a brewer or homebrewer; I was just someone learning that craft beer exists and has so many flavors!
I loved stouts. Back in the growler-fill-only days, I happened to be forty-five minutes from Tree House, but all of their stouts had kicked. They had to actually talk me into trying a sample of Haze. I had never had a New England IPA before, and I remember reluctantly taking the sample cup only because I was trying to be polite.
I wish I had a picture of my face as it registered the flavors—I had never tried anything like that before! Oranges? From hops? And, apparently, it changed my whole life! Ever since that moment, I’ve been obsessed with juicy New England IPAs, and they are one of my favorite styles to brew and enjoy.
Torstein Hoset – Co-Founder, Strange Brewing
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Orkney Brewery IPA* – I did a sailing trip with my dad from Norway to the Orkney Islands (Scotland) in 2010 in his homemade sailboat. I had just turned eighteen, so I was beginning to explore the world of beers, but I knew next to nothing about it except that I had started to appreciate slightly higher-quality lagers like Pilsner Urquell and the likes.
We reached Orkney after an arduous crossing of the North Sea, during which just about everything went wrong. Originally, the plan was to go to the Shetland Islands, but our engine conked out halfway across, and the winds were very northerly, so we were forced to aim for Orkney, a bit further south.
Once we arrived, a bit tattered and worse for wear after three days and nights at sea, we went to a restaurant and ordered dinner. We ordered beer and were served a Golden Ale from the local Orkney Brewery, alerting us of its existence. After conferring with the crew, we quickly decided to pay a visit to the brewery the next day.
At the brewery, we did a tour and were served their whole range of beers, with an IPA (*the name eludes me at this moment) stealing the show. It was a memorable moment, trying a beer that completely defied my conception of what beer could taste like.
It was staunchly bitter, reddish in color, rich, malty, and aromatic, and I fell in love. We brought a case of beer back to Norway, and I shared several bottles with my friends, none of whom seemed to share my enthusiasm for the bitter brews. But for me, it was a before-and-after, being my first interaction with both IPAs (which would later turn into somewhat of an obsession of mine) and with craft brewing as a whole.
Read More About Strange Brewing
Patricio Torres Díaz – Brand Marketing Manager, Strange Brewing
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Strange Brewing Islas Flotantes – I guess my first IPA was from Cossab when I was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. My friends and I were kind of against the new craft beer fashion in Buenos Aires and only drank copious amounts of industrial lagers such as Heineken, Stella Artois, Warsteiner, etc. We saw it as just another hipster thing that would fade away in no time.
One day, a friend from another group told me that if I really liked beer, I should try a craft one and learn about the process, styles, and so on. Fair enough.
We went to Cossab (one of Buenos Aires’s earliest craft beer pubs), and I returned the IPA pint to the waitress because it felt “warm” (it wasn’t ice cold, which was the only way we would have it) and pretty low in carbonation (I think I was right at this point).
Now, the funny part: Months later, I started a radio show with that same friend, meters away from Charlone (another craft brewery), and we began to drink there every week, endorsing our enchantment with hoppy styles.
After a few weeks, one of the owners told us that if we liked IPAs so much, we should try the new place, just a few blocks from there: “It has a raccoon humping a dog in the sign; you can’t miss it.”
That night, I had my first *TASTY* IPA. Its name was Islas Flotantes. The rest is history.
Amy Cartwright – Founder, Independence Brewing Company
Austin, TX
Bitter End Pale Ale – I was all of twenty-one years old, freshly arrived in Austin, TX, and working the first day of my new job at one of the city’s original brewpubs, Bitter End. I proudly walked up to the bar to collect my first “shift beer” and ordered the pale ale.
Skeptical, the bartender asked, “Are you sure? That’s a hoppy beer. Are you sure you don’t want the Eazy Wheat?”
I doubled down and took a long drink. That was indeed the hoppiest beer I had tasted up to that point in my life. But I’d be damned if I was going to let that bartender think I wasn’t able to handle it. I proceeded to enjoy that Cascade-heavy pale ale, kicking off a lifelong love of citrusy, danky beers.
About The Author
Grace Lee-Weitz
Currently Drinking:
Fort Point Beer Co. KSA
Grace is the Senior Content Editor for Hop Culture and Untappd. She also organizes and produces the largest weeklong women, femme-identifying, and non-binary folx in craft beer festival in the country, Beers With(out) Beards, and the first-ever festival celebrating the colorful, vibrant voices in the queer community in craft beer, Queer Beer. An avid craft beer nerd Grace always found a way to work with beer. After graduating with a journalism degree from Northwestern University, she attended culinary school before working in restaurant management. She moonlighted as a brand ambassador at 3 Sheeps Brewing Co. on the weekends before moving into the beer industry full-time as an account coordinator at 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. Grace holds her Masters degree in the Food Studies program at NYU.
