The iconic Canadian musician Stan Rogers crooned in dulcet tones of the fabled Northwest Passage, which was sought in centuries past by explorers trying to find a navigable trading route across Canada that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Your humble narrator has long been seeking a less momentous, although more satisfying item from the Northwest, namely pints of delicious beer from the Pacific Northwest.
The west coast of our fair country has long been on the vanguard of Canadian beer culture, with Alberta just now catching up to where British Columbia’s beer industry was a decade ago.
Our Yankee neighbours to the south have similar aspirations, with the Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon setting the standard for the rest of the country.
It certainly helps that 80% of the beer hops produced in North America are grown in Washington and Oregon,so it is not altogether unexpected to expect their craft beer industries to be heads and shoulders above their neighbours.
We can thank the mad geniuses that staff the breweries of the Pacific Northwest for singlehandedly bringing the American IPA style of beer to the top of the charts.
The American IPA style rose like a phoenix from the crumbling ruins of the old English India Pale Ale style, which had been made for centuries in the UK, and elsewhere in the British Empire.
The IPA style started in the days of the British Raj in India, while the Indian subcontinent was under the rule of the British Empire from 1858-1947. In those pre-refrigeration days, beer was stored in wooden barrels, and would spoil on the long sea journey to India.
Since each British soldier stationed in India was accorded a ration of beer as part of his wages, it became increasingly difficult to stock the larders in the military barracks. India Pale Ale was the answer to this dilemma, which was created by brewing a high-alcohol beer (usually 6-8% ABV) with a generous portion of bittering hops. The higher alcohol content prevented bacterial contamination, and the hops possess natural preservative and antiseptic properties, which allowed the beer to remain fresh during the long sea voyage.
The Alexander Keiths brewery in Halifax was the first to bring the tradition English style IPA to North America, although changes to the recipe over the centuries have left it a pale harbinger of its former hoppy self.
The American IPA style uses American yeasts and hop varietals, which generally have a much more floral aroma, and a noticeably more bitter hop flavour that leans heavily towards pine resin and citrus overtones.
Indeed, it has been something of an escalating arms race between craft brewers in North America to out-bitter one another, leading to more and more extreme examples of the American IPA style.
Luckily, we have local examples of both the English and American IPA styles right here in Alberta. Local success story Big Rock Beer makes an English-style IPA that you will find in pretty much every booze merchant across our fair province. Essentially a hoppier version of the Big Rock Pale Ale, this beer is made with a blend of Fuggle hops from the UK, and American hops from Washington, so it straddles the line between the English and American styles. The hop bite is fairly subdued, so your humble narrator considers the Big Rock IPA to be closer to the English style.
At the other end of the spectrum, that scrappy little Wild Rose Brewery that started up 20 years ago on the old Currie Barracks site in Calgary makes a shining example of the American-styled IPA. Wild Rose IPA was originally brewed in the English style using Fuggle hops from the UK, but they switched to American yeasts and hops back in 2013, and are now brewing their IPA in the American style.
The Wild Rose IPA has long been one of my favourites, and the switch to hops from the Pacific Northwest gave it a shock of citrus and pine-resin on the tongue, with plenty of aromatic hops on the nose. You’ve got to be a fan of bitter beers to enjoy it, but the beer nerds of Alberta can’t get enough of this!
So, if you are a fan of bitter beers, you will find them in abundance, both on tap at your local saloon, and on the shelves of your friendly neighbourhood booze merchant. Compare both styles to see which you prefer!
