Last Night's Tipple

One of the major problems with beer is that it spoils easily. Before the days of refrigeration, this was a major problem in any climate but especially in hot and tropical regions. Shipping beer to India was particularly problematic for British brewers. What to do, what to do? Well, ever-resourceful, British brewers developed a style of beer called India Pale Ale. Beginning in the 1780s, various brewers began to make a high-alcohol, heavily-hopped variant of a pale ale (which, to modern sensibilities, isn't particularly pale). This makes sense: both alcohol and hops inhibit bacterial growth, and bacteria are what cause beer to spoil.

Every microbrewery that has pretensions to quality has an IPA in its repertoire. There are two reasons for this, I think. First of all, it's relatively easy to make. Secondly, hops are to beer what peat is to Scotch: many of the customers who inhabit the high end of each market are of the opinion that more is better. Saint Arnold Brewery, not wanting to disappoint the hopheads, came out with their Elissa IPA in 2004. It is named for the sailing ship Elissa, which is a museum in Galveston and which is a ship of the sort that would have transported IPA to India in the 19th Century. My overwhelming impression of it is that it's very hoppy, as it should be. I liked it, but I can't give more extensive tasting notes because I drank it with some spicy (for me) Thai food and was consequently sucking it down rather than savoring it.