I had always wondered why an India Pale Ale was named after India when it was clearly a British style. Beer doesn’t deal well with heat, so India was an unlikely source of a new beer style (at least, pre-refrigeration).
As it turns out, the heat is the key, but not for the reasons you might think. Since it was difficult to brew beer in the hot weather of much of India, a beer was needed which travelled well and held up to the heat. After all, beers brewed in the UK travelled almost six months around the horn of Africa …read more

As a follow up to my post on beers of the World Series, our little beer group (more on that later) decided to tackle some Colorado brews this month. And so it was, with a selection of 13 different beers from 4 different breweries across the state.
As a group we were very impressed with the beers of Avery, particularly the big bottle products (such as the The Reverend Quadrupel and the Czar Imperial Stout). That said, the beers were uniformly good. The Old Jubilation, a winter ale, didn’t strike us as particularly wintery, and I found the Out of …read more