There’s nothing wrong with a good, hoppy IPA, but perhaps it’s time to reappraise classic styles of beer again
The writer Vladimir Nabokov was extremely particular when it came to language, and rather more basic when it came to sustenance: “My habits are simple, my tastes banal,” he once told an interviewer. “I would not exchange my favourite fare (bacon and eggs, beer) for the most misspelt menu in the world.”
I’ve often thought of this as I’ve perused misspelt beer menus over the years, wondering what Nabokov would make of all the hazy dubble IPAs and triple brown mocha porters, because, over the course of what we might have to label the “craft era”, beer has become anything but simple. You may well have lamented this, too, especially if you’ve ever been cornered by an enthusiast at a party. India pale ale (IPA), for example, which was once a distinctly British style of ale designed for export, has, in the hands of American craft brewers, become a sort of standard-bearer for complicated beer: aggressively hopped, often startlingly bitter and/or sour, and redolent of a bygone era of millennial hipster striving.
