Beer Reviews From Odd Places

I'd like to kick off a new series that was inspired by one of Chrisstout's messages on the listserv. She reviewed Anchor Steam and Blue Moon while in the field in San Francisco, and I followed soon after with a review of Amstel Light while getting my haircut (a sweet little perk from my barber). I do think that, as my friend Duncan once pointed out, beer is contextual: it matters a lot where you are and what's going on as you drink it. So anyway, about the Amstel Light in the barber shop, I wrote: 

The choice was Corona or Amstel, and I chose the latter because I was sure they didn't have limes. It was kind of warm outside, I was for sure overdressed, and the unexpected offer of a cool beer when I checked in at the cash register felt great - but then I thought to myself as I killed off the first bottle, "but is it good?" There's a reason it's at every catered event ever. It is good enough for you not to complain, but not good enough for you to want to drink more for taste alone. Thus, you only drink a couple. Catering dilemma solved. So, it is for sure a light beer, inoffensive but not memorable. Slight caramel taste on the front end, simple bitter finish. Halfway through the haircut, some hair got in my second bottle, and I stopped drinking it. For sure, a sideways. BTW, do they even make a regular "Amstel"? 

Well, in that spirit, here's a beer review from an odd place - not beer brewed in strange places, like the middle of the ocean or Antarctica, but beer tasted in places you usually don't drink. First up: Ska Brewery's Modus Hoperandi IPA, tasted at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

So my friend Duncan and I were hiking in the Grand Canyon this Tuesday, going down to the Colorado River and back up in a day, and we decided to bring along a couple of good beers to sample while we ate lunch and rested at the bottom. There's a place down there called "Phantom Ranch" that the park service operates, and it has a little cantina in it that serves some meals and, of course, beer. Last year we did this same hike and drank a Tecate. Needless to say, we felt such a momentous occasion deserved a much more memorable brew, so we hiked down with the beers in my pack, like so:

So the hiking plus the heat are probably not too good for the beer, but amazingly it held up ok. We chose the Modus Hoperandi because it was in a can (less breakage) and it was an IPA - enough flavor to revive our tired taste buds. When we got to the cantina, we were ten miles into the hike, five thousand feet down, three hours in, and already tired. We bought a bag of ice and chilled the beer as we sat by the river, like so: 

Then we enjoyed ourselves. 

Now I think there's a reason people don't really encourage mixing extreme hiking with alcohol. It was really hot hiking out of the canyon, and I felt pretty weird on my way up; I am sure the beer didn't help. But it was great for morale. I think the context was perfect: a great little stream, a cool breeze, a shady tree, a giant western national park, and a whole day of being outside in a beautiful place. 

The piney cascade hops seemed right at home, and the bold IPA style seems such a western thing these days. It had a good, sweet caramel malt to back up the pine-resin and grapefruit hop burst, a firm bitter finish, well-hidden alcohol (at 7% this is probably more high gravity than I'd bring on a tough hike again), and a good mouthfeel (slightly sticky, as a good big IPA should be). Maybe I was just delirious from the heat and exertion, but I think it gives the Stone IPA a run for its money. On the way back up, I was still tasting IPA for a while. When the sun started to bake out on the rocky trail, that wasn't nearly as exciting as it was under the shade tree.