Bridgeport Hop Czar

The first IPA I ever tasted was a Bridgeport IPA, back in the early nineties.  It was a memorable experience, and when I think of traditional IPAs, I still have that first Bridgeport in my head.

Hop Czar takes that well-balanced traditional IPA and just turns it up  a couple notches.  It's got more hops and more malt and alcohol to balance it, but it's still very drinkable.  It is deceptively strong and I've been known to have a few pints of this and then be surprised at how difficult it was to stagger in a semi-straight line away from the table.

Nice floral hop nose, excellent flavor with good malt and a proper  amount of bitter finishing hops to clean up.

Damn good stuff!

Oregon Hops

There's a good article in Willamette Week about the future of Oregon's hop industry and how it relates to craft brewing. It's nice to see people working toward getting the local industry going again, especially now that the "big boys" that usually dictate what varieties will be grown all being big foreign megacorps now. I hope the new hop efforts are successful and that we will end up with a thriving local industry and lots of great new varieties of hops available for home brewers too.