Lagunitas: IPA - Of Beer and Greatness

Lagunitas IPA. Love.

Oh, oops. One Woman recently wrote a piece about that already. Today's post won't be about love, but an equally perplexing thought that comes out of a loving relationship with beer--greatness.


Since late February, One Woman had been saving this great beer for the perfect occasion for it (seriously, I love this beer almost as much as the Brooklyn Lager). A late Sunday afternoon BBQ with a friendly posse after a serious scholarly grill-session seemed to be that day (okay, it wasn't that scholastic or serious). Catching the last rays of the sun for the day, sitting around an ancient picnic table, and waiting for farmers market fresh asparagus spears, green garlic, foil baked garlic, haloumi cheese, turkey burgers, rosemary lamb sausage, and Beef BEER Brats (!!) on the grill... it was quite the joyful affair, fit for this happy beer.

Lagunitas IPA: Brewed in Lagunitas CA, the IPA is their flagship beer. 46 IBUs, and 5.7% ABV. Hoppy, a hint of grapefruit zest, and orangish in color. For an IPA, it's on the not-too-sweet side of things, and well balanced to enough for the gently toasted malted flavor to still have a meaningful presence. Sipping on this cool, zippy Lagunitas IPA, One Woman decided that this was a great beer.

But wait. It's not the beer that critics declare a "great" beer. It's a kind of B+ student in the beer world. That basically means, really drinkable, pretty good, but nothing extraordinary. In other words, it's not brewed by monks, or super small batches, or claims to use ancient techniques, a super rare type of difficult to manage yeast, and it's not a strong beer. This last point is quite silly. Bigger, stronger, better... really? To Lagunitas' greatness cred, they actually do mention on their website that they use "43 kinds of hops and 65 various malts." Wow.

But what makes a beer great?

A "great" Elizabethan author writes about greatness: Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state; servants of fame; and servants of business (Francis Bacon). Poor great men :( But not of much use to One Woman trying to write about beer and greatness. 

Is an imperial IPA better than a regular IPA because it's imperial?

What makes Budweiser the "great American Lager"? Their status as "No. 1 brewer in social responsibility in FORTUNE Magazine's “World's Most Admired” beverage companies' list."? Oh wait. They also just held the "world's largest pool party" in Vegas. Duh.

And then there was that caustic debate between LA times film critic Kenneth Turan and director James Cameron about what made (or didn't make) Titanic a great film. In This One Guy's words, the debate basically comes down to something like, "is McDonald's a great restaurant because it's succeeded in reaching so many parts of the world"?

And this whole post was inspired by an esteemed composer asking me, "Is Beethoven's Fifth a great piece?"

Here's my problem with these kinds of identifications of greatness, whether it's an aesthetic criteria, or number of IBUs (international bitterness units): they all seem to come at the cost of excluding certain kinds of music, or beer, or films based on some set of criteria that defines greatness, or a canon, or an anti-canon (aka the avant-garde, and you know what happens to those guys). Worse, these sets of criteria --which are actually, no more and no less than values held by some legitimating authority--allow critics to write about stuff as if they were absolutes.

But the fact is, a cool bottle of Lagunitas IPA delights the senses. It doesn't inspire a list of metaphors or even subtleties of a million flavors masterfully crafted together, but it inspires a feeling. At the right moment, at least. This is why awesome is such a great  wonderful word. Even though it's not often appreciated for its awesomeness, which means something that inspires a sense of awe. Unlike "greatness," it's not about status or power. (No rulers were called Alexander the Awesome--maybe the closest thing to that would be Thorfinn Einarsson, 7th Viking Earl of Orkney, who was popularly known as Skull Splitter).

(Oh shit. now One Woman isn't going to be able to write about a great beer next time she comes across one.)

Anyway, have a great day, everyone.

Musical Pairing: Symphony No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Ba-na-na-naaaaaa. Ba, na, na, naaaaaaaa~ (click on the link to hear a great work conducted by the great Herbert von Karajan).