Catching up.
Never really understood the IPA thing either. Love me some Pilsner...
As we learned from Heater, it's pronounced ''ippa''.
The way I understand it, beer is made from barley malt and a blend of hops (and water and yeast of course - plus whatever other crap they want to throw in. A wheat beer substitutes wheat for some of the barley. Bud, Miller, Coors, etc are made with rice). Different varieties of hops are more and less bitter, the comparative sweetness of the malt is supposed to balance out the bitterness of the hops, and different flavors of beer are supposed to be on a scale from less bitter (say a stout, like Guiness, pilsners, etc) to something hoppier (an IPA). But even IPAs, towards the more bitter end of the scale, are supposed to be balanced - they're not supposed to end up being a nasty, bitter swill. It's not always easy getting the recipe right, and especially the precise steps, temperatures, and timing in the brewing process, and there are only a few that really do. Add to that the dumb he-man types who think it's cool to drink the nasty shit, so of course brewers will cater to that purposefully.
Around here Lagunitas puts out a very good balanced IPA. Drakes here in Berkeley has a double IPA called Denoganizer that comes in at 9.75% and still manages to be a good beer while camouflaging that alcohol taste. Those are a couple of my go-to IPAs, I'm sure there are other breweries around that put a decent IPA out. Same deal with barleywines and other flavors on the hoppier end of the scale.
