penguinbar

I said not all beers are available. No need to try and one up on this.

Pulaski

Sore head this morning?

lizzyq

I really enjoy a well flavoured IPA, but when I am in the US I find most of them are too alcoholic for me to consider drinking more than a pint.

Anian

IPA had a strict definition in the US of having a certain amount of alcohol, body, and bitterness. Many US breweries defy this and simply name any of their very bitter beers as IPAs, so the definition is less clear. In England, they seem to name anything an IPA if it uses a handful of hops more than their regular mild, so many are horrendously weak.

Pulaski

IPA is supposed to be stronger than ordinary pale ale, and flavoured with extra hops, so it could be exported by ship to India and still be drinkable. While it might not originally been 6%+ alcohol, it should certainly have been substantially more than the decidedly ordinary 3½% of most traditional beers in the UK. A few US breweries rather over-do the hops!

I happen to rather like American IPA, and about two thirds of the beer I drink is IPA. A bottle, or occasionally two, with dinner goes down a treat!

lizzyq

Do you really mean regular mild? Mild is a pretty rare beast in the UK these days, though still more common in the Midlands.

Nutek

lizzyq

Not my hat style

Nutek

Not even Minnie's?

Hiro11

Perhaps true 5-10 years ago. The current trend for the past ~3 years in microbreweries has been "sessionable" beers with ABVs of 5% or lower. Lots of good stuff out there in this range.

Pulaski

Maybe in Chicago. Round here most craft beers (whether local or from out of state) start at 5%, and 6%, or more, is not uncommon.

Hiro11

Here in Chicago, 5 Rabbit, Off Color, Capital (Wisconsin), Emmett's, Finch, Half Acre, Solemn Oath and Two Brothers are all specialists in sessionable lagers and ales. Most of the other breweries offer several sessionable styles.

I think several years ago, people started to a realize that a 10% DIPA or imperial stout can be great but isn't necessarily what you want in everyday drinking. I agree that the hop bomb "stunt beer" that brewers like Three Floyds pioneered a decade or more ago are still around and still the "marquee offering" of many of the more established breweries. However, increasingly the newer offerings, newer breweries and newer seasonals are lower gravity and a bit more subtle.

I agree American brewers have a way to go in these styles. I still buy lots of German and Czech lagers as there's really no American brewery that can compare in those styles (Capital gets closest).

S Folinsky

It pays to note that the Imperial Pint is different than the US pint.

The Imperial Pint is 568 ml; the US pint is 473 ml. So, 16 fl. oz will be a "pint" in the US.

A long time ago, some wag pointed out that cars got 20% more "miles per gallon" in Canada than in the US. One time, wife's BMW went for reflashing the ECU due to an emissions recall. I noticed at first that the car trip computer showed that it was getting much improved mileage and I then noted that the dealer had set the unit of measurement to imperial rather than US.

Anian

A lot of things that used to be a mild are now described as a bitter. My local (Hertfordshire) had McMullen AK, which didn't change taste (or barely) but turned from a mild into a bitter. It's drinkable, but tastes decidedly poor against more modern beers. A lot of the older breweries just named their beers whatever and it's only in more recent decades that people started classifying them. Guinness used to be more of a porter but is now described as a stout.

A "session IPA" will always sound contradictory to me, more so than a "dark IPA" even though the P stands for pale.

Pulaski

What? I have never read or heard Guinness described as anything but a stout, either in the UK or the US.