I thought I might write something about Friday’s horrific scenes from Paris. I thought I’d write about how we could use this to take events in the Middle East seriously from a humanitarian perspective without falling into the obvious trap the Islamic State group has set for us, whereby we abandon the very multiculturalism and tolerance that has made the West a place of relative peace and security. It’s these very attitudes the huddled masses who flee ISIS’ apocalyptic cruelty yearn for. And, while writing, I could hope in vain that far-right, Eurosceptic freaks won’t ride a wave of nationalist reaction and ethnic resentment into office, dismantling the diplomatic structures that have maintained relative peace in Europe for 70 short years (not counting a genocide against Muslims in Bosnia). I would also really like it if, when vicious goons like Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage lead their gangs into parliament halls, they wouldn’t plunge the world into a second Dark Age, complete with our very own crusades.
In addition, I could talk about the tasteless idiocy of our governor and his colleagues. They saw this crime as an opportunity to score points with a few paranoid, merciless people in their states by lashing out against the most vulnerable victims they could get their hands on. Funnily, state governors don’t have the authority to accept or deny refugees — legally, it’s not their decision. Gov. Rick Scott focuses most of his energy on trying to sell Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park to his chums in cattle ranching.
But, I won’t talk about that anymore. It’s exhausting and, frankly, I’m not in the mood. Instead, here’s something that’s far less important but still weighs heavily on my conscience: IPAs, and how awful they are.
What’s an IPA? The letters stand for India Pale Ale. It’s a style of beer. Beer, as we all know, is a delicious and wonderful beverage, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. According to an ancient German beer law, the drink can only be made with three ingredients: water, barley and hops (they didn’t know what yeast was in 1516). Hops are intensely bitter herbs related to cannabis, which are used as a spice to keep beer from tasting too sweet. Varying ratios of these ingredients give us the different kinds of beer, but all beer is made this way.
In short, IPAs contain hops in excess. The result is a deep, horrifyingly bitter flavor.
Don’t get me wrong: I like bitter. Most mornings I get by on nothing but black coffee and raw grapefruit, and I can tolerate a few IPAs. What bugs me about IPAs is not so much their bitterness (which is excessive), but that their bitterness is mistaken for good taste.
This creates the condition whereby any idiot who can dismount his fixie long enough to choke down a bottle of Knox Harrington’s double-barrel IPA gets to declare himself the most-cultured guy in the room — usually a competition no one else was having in the first place.
I think the reason for this is that, for so long, it was illegal to make or drink any beer at all in this country. When that ban was finally lifted, the beer market was flooded by the big brewers who churned out a cheap, uncomplicated and pasteurized-to-death product. Many brilliant minds have cleverly referred to these kinds of beer as "piss." Piss beers dominated American beer for decades; you couldn’t really find anything else out there. Then, craft beer was born in 1979, starting with Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. But that struck the association in a generation of future craft brewers: There’s either piss or not-piss, and the easiest way to make not-piss is to brew with too many hops.
Craft brewing is obsessed with IPAs. There are more than those two choices, but you wouldn’t know it by looking around gatherings of young people today. Personally, given the choice between smooth, unpretentious piss and overpriced, overrated IPAs, I’d gladly go with piss.
Hopefully, American brewing will mature, and our tastes with it. This IS a business run almost entirely by 30-something-year-old white guys whose dream is to make beer for a living. One company makes beer with yeast found in some guy’s beard. This industry isn’t exactly a hotbed of self-awareness. There are hundreds of beers in this beautiful world; can’t we do better?
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
