Nov 27 Mo’ Bitter, Mo’ Better!

THE MIGHTY HOP RETURNS EN MASSE TO PRODUCE BEERS THAT ARE PERFECT PARTNERS TO A WIDE VARIETY OF FOOD.

BY STEPHEN BEAUMONT

How bitter is your beer? A mild tang? A moderate bite? Or perhaps you prefer a full-blown, peel-the-skin-from-your-cheeks assault?

Whichever your preference, if you’re a fan of craft beer, chances are your brew will be getting more bitter in the future. Because just as hoppy India pale ales, known as IPAs, have become the dominant flavour force in premium beer south of the border, Canadian craft beers are now breaking free from their historically maltier moulds to grow more prominently, assertively or even aggressively bitter.

For evidence of this shift, you need look no further than this past fall’s Canadian Brewing Awards, where out of a field of more than 475 beers from 84 breweries, the brew chosen Canadian Beer of the Year was Fat Tug IPA, a hoppy, spicy-citrusy ale from Victoria’s Driftwood Brewing. And the winner of the North American Style Pale Ale Category? A beer called Crazy Canuck from Toronto’s Great Lakes Brewing, which even a decade ago might have been deemed overly bitter for the style.

Before we get to how this hoppy revolution has come to pass, perhaps we should first look at what makes a beer bitter, namely the flower of the vine Humulus lupulus, or the hop.

Although records are sketchy, it is thought that hops became a common ingredient in brewing sometime between 600 and 1000 AD, around the same time that Bavarians began storing their beers in ice caves at the foot of the Alps. Like this rather basic form of refrigeration-which also marked the start of cool temperature lager fermentation-hops were found to help preserve the beer during the non-brewing months of summer, and thus assured thirsty workers of a reliable, year-round supply of beer.

The key part of the tiny, pine cone-shaped hop is a resinous yellow substance found within its leaves, called lupulin. In addition to providing a hop’s preservative power, lupulin also contributes a drying bitterness to beer when added during the boiling stage of a brew.

As pasteurization took off in the 20th century and breweries grew bigger and better at keeping infection out of their beers, however, hoppy bitterness gradually fell out of favour. (Some suggest that Prohibition, with its sugary soda pops disguising the roughness of contraband liquors, also contributed to a sweetening of the North American palate.) By the ’70s, most beers were as smooth drinking as a glass of water, and about as bitter.

The micro brewing, now craft-brewing renaissance changed all that, of course, but even through the ’90s, most Canadian breweries were reluctant to produce overly hoppy beers. Then came what might be described as the “lupulin shift” of the mid-2000s and suddenly pale ales, IPAs and even potent, highly hopped so-called “double” IPAs came to the fore.

Today, steadily increasing numbers of ale aficionados, and even many craft beer “newbies,” are swooning over IPAs like Driftwood’s award-winner and Red Racer IPA from last year’s Canadian Brewery of the Year, Central City Brewing of Surrey, B.C.; even bigger brews like Nova Scotia’s Garrison Imperial IPA and Tree Brewing’s Hop Head Double India Pale Ale from the B.C. interior; and heavily hopped American imports such as Rogue Dead Guy Ale and He’brew Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A.

While many such beers find favour purely on their own, the more bitterness-adverse of drinkers are discovering that they also partner well with meals, particularly spicy, salty or fatty dishes, as the hoppiness moderates the intensity of the foods while not diminishing their flavours, as would a mouth-numbingly cold lager.

With all this to recommend them-boisterous flavours, food-friendliness and style-stretching allure-it’s hardly any wonder that Canada seems to be turning bitterer by the week!