A cold and windy winter night in the mountains outside Santa Fe, I’m drinking a Brut IPA from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. I have some hazy IPA stashed in the back room but I’m feeling refined tonight and what better than an IPA that behaves like Champagne. Why am I drinking this? There is much to celebrate like ample snow on the mountains and good legislation for the environment in the Roundhouse so why not.
I don’t know about you, but it seems the beer world is dominated by all things IPA (India pale ale) for the last decade. Years ago, we had a hard time finding IPAs and I figured it was because Americans like softer flavors with fewer edges as in pilsner and golden or pale ale. Then IPA began to proliferate and since around 2015 brewers have been competing to see who can do the most interesting things with IPA. There were black IPAs and fruit flavored IPAs and Imperial IPAs and malted IPA. Most recently the New England style IPAs or “hazy” IPAs that critics suggested would be short lived are instead proliferating (long live hazy!) and are spawning an opposite reaction; the Brut IPA.
Brut means dry in the Champagne world and dry means not sweet. You can find sherry that is dry as opposed to Port which is super sweet. Same thing with Brut IPA, born in San Francisco from master brewer Kim Sturdavant, at Social Kitchen and Brewery in San Francisco. He was experimenting with his apparatus and decided to add glucoamylase enzyme a beer with corn, rice and wheat to pull down the sugar content and dry out the result. He only added as much sugar producing ingredients as could be completely fermented and the beer is dry hopped, meaning the hops are added late in the brewing process when the beer is conditioning.
Thus the dry beer. Little if any sugar and some brewers are able to push up the carbon dioxide level so it has nice bubbles rising up like birds. Less sugar means you can drink more of it without ill effects.
So far I haven’t found any New Mexico Brut IPAs but Ska Brewing in Durango is making “Moral Panic” Brut IPA and New Belgium in Fort Collins has a Brut offering as well. For people in the Santa Fe area we could keep our eyes on the offerings at New Mexico Hard Cider Taproom on upper Cerrillos Road or Desert Dogs taproom on San Francisco Street where regional beers are offered.
There are some good Bruts IPAs in various brewpubs in the Denver area also if you want to make a trip up there. The easiest one to find for those of us in the boonies is the Sierra Nevada Brut IPA which is being sold in bottles. Be sure to pour it in a glass so you can see how clear and bubbly it is.
Which reminds us, if you want real bubbly, the Gruet Winery in Albuquerque makes one of the few real Champagne style sparkling wines in the US and it is excellent. Imagine excellence in a New Mexico winery.
