Categories
American beers

Memorable Beers #1: Goose Island IPA

We first tried Goose Island IPA in the Rake, probably around Christmas of 2006.

We never spend Christmas together but have always compensated with a sort of ‘office Christmas do’ a week or so before. When we lived in London, that usually meant taking a day off work, Christmas shopping for as long as we could bear it, and then chasing beer from midday onwards.

Borough Market is like the set of a Dickens adaptation at Christmas: roasting chestnuts, carols and mulled wine on the air. Expensive apples.

Were we just in a ‘peace on Earth and goodwill to all beers’ kind of mood, or was drinking that IPA really like tasting in Technicolor? We said wow a lot and marvelled at its slight haze. We may even have giggled with excitement. We declared it our favourite beer for some time thereafter.

These days, though we still enjoy it, we find GI IPA muted and too full of crystal malt — not Seville orange marmalade so much as seaside fudge.

If we write another fifty or so posts in the next twenty-five days, we’ll hit 1000 by the time we hit our fifth anniversary of blogging; as that date approaches, we are also feeling nostalgic. Hence this series. Yeah, we like round numbers — sue us.

6 replies on “Memorable Beers #1: Goose Island IPA”

I was in Chicago back in November visiting friends and drank a shed load of GI Honkers, made for a decent session beer.

“…not Seville orange marmalade so much as seaside fudge…” Excellent pinpointing of the condition. Do they sit around the brewery tea room saying “it’s time to get rid of the marmalade” so save money?

Alan — we thought it was us rather than the beer, but you might know otherwise..?

Maxwell — not a beer it’s really worth drinking in the UK, though — we’ve kind of got the hang of bitter/best bitter/ESB, haven’t we?

I only discovered this last year and, while I’m sorry to miss it’s heyday, I use it as a ‘go to’ beer now and try and always have a bottle in the fridge.

Comments are closed.