So You Think You Know What An IPA Is, and Other Games & Stories

Upcoming events:

How about that game! We’d like to congratulate the winner of the Super Bowl, the clear victor with so much post-game interest and attraction, Mr. Kendrick Lamar! Yes, the spirit of competition lives on. Young man has a bright future ahead of him.
Closer to home, we have our own competitions we’re interested in, namely So You Think You’re Smarter Than Your Bartender and Third Tuesday Trivia! Tomorrow, my friends, Ditty Wish will be pitting various contestants against two of our most esteemed bartenders to see who comes out on top: the general public or that friendly face behind the bar. Much like the game’s television predecessor, the bartenders will have an advantage with potentially knowing more about the categories, whereas the public’s advantage will be strength in numbers. Be here, in the Klockow taproom, Thursday, Feb. 13, to see who gets crushed into their beer!
Once that’s over, for everyone who would rather get in on the action rather than watch contestants in a game show, Third Tuesday Trivia continues next week on Feb. 18! Though we had fun doing things auction style (it’s much more action oriented, as you can imagine), we’re going to change the structure so that the game is more fair to the less tenacious. Answers will from now on be written out, so don’t worry if you’re not the first to wave your paddle. Just worry whether or not you have a well-rounded trivia team! 
Though, we have to admit, one of the things we’re most excited about is already sitting in our parking lot. Stonegrove Saunas will be beginning their residency at Klockow Brewing on Thursday, Feb. 13, from 4 to 7 p.m., and returning next week at the same time! This will be one of the best times to have a sauna too, because it’s freezing ass cold out this week! If you’ve never experienced negative temps while taking a break from the sauna, you’re in for a treat. How often can you stand bare skin to such conditions and have it feel good?? 
Walk-ins are welcome if space is available, otherwise be sure to save a seat for yourself on their website. It’ll be good for your health. As the Finnish say, if a sauna can’t cure it, it’s fatal. 
Speaking of health, good or bad, that is the theme for this month’s Storyteller Sunday, coming up this weekend on Feb. 16, at 2 p.m. The more we think about it, this theme could yield any number of different stories… might we hear about someone’s battle with cancer? Or maybe someone training for their first marathon? It’s more than possible someone could share a story about how they finally quit smoking. I know my first thought when posed with the topic of health was a story about the lack thereof, but there’s no reason for that! Hell, even being in love is good for your health, so maybe we’ll get a Valentine’s story or two as well. 

Ok, What Is That?
We addressed the hoppy elephant in the room last week, but what about the whole herd? That’s right, we’re talking the big hop head this week: The IPA. 
For better or for worse, the IPA has become a symbol for the craft beer movement over the past two decades. Indeed, we often get people in the taproom, new to breweries, in whose eyes we can see the trepidation in even being there, telling us that they don’t want an IPA and knowing in their heart of hearts that they just committed the cardinal sin of microbrewery etiquette! For every craft beer is an IPA!! 
Of course, that’s not exactly true, though they are crazy popular and every — and I do mean EVERY — craft brewery has at least one IPA. So these newbies aren’t entirely wrong in their estimation. But we’re getting off track. 
What IS an IPA?

For starters, the acronym stands for India Pale Ale. Secondly, it originated in England, and so begins our story: Imperial jolly olde England had a little problem with shipping their popular pale ales via sail ship from Great Britain to India. Much of the time, the beer went bad without any type of modern stainless steel kegs, let alone proper refrigeration. What’s an empire to do? One fairly obvious option was more preservatives. And wouldn’t you know it, but it happens to be that hops, in addition to being a flavor adjunct, are a preservative! So a practical solution to a logistics problem turned into an epicurean revolution! Turns out the people had a taste for these bitter buds! 
This is the story that many a craft beer snob has told over the decades to the perceived neophytes at the bar. And… it’s surprisingly accurate. Without getting bogged down in boring details about the East India Company and Napoleon’s blockade, as well as tangents like the fact that porters were also quite good at being shipped long distances, the story is short, sweet, and pretty spot on. 
Despite its long history, it wasn’t until the recent craft beer boom in the U.S. that the IPA became the powerhouse in world beer that it is today. And why, you might ask? Perhaps because it is the flavor antithesis to the light lager. Maybe coffee-swilling Americans have that much more of a passion for bitter drinks. Maybe one of the gods got sucked into a bet, story of Job style, and now we all have these hop-bombs packed onto our liquor store shelves. Regardless of why, they’re here to stay, and they’re proliferating. Now we have West Coast IPAs (classic American style), Imperial IPAs (higher alcohol and hops), Hazy IPAs (unfiltered and more citrusy), and Session IPAs (lower alcohol but still very hop forward). And this is to say nothing of the styles that have come and gone from popularity, like the Black IPA (darker malt but still hoppy) or the Milkshake IPA (be thankful that you don’t know). 
Maybe this is why so many people think that all craft beer are IPAs! There’s certainly a lot of them.

~

Thanks for checking out our humble little brewery! As long as you keep coming by, we’ll do our part by making the best damn beer possible and serving it in our always inviting atmosphere.

The Klockow Staff

Beer drops this past week:

Local, etc -

  • Pokegama Plaza Liquor - Grand Rapids

  • Dutch Room & Mad Dog’s Pizza - Grand Rapids

  • Boulder Taphouse - Grand Rapids

  • Pickled Loon - Grand Rapids

  • Zorbaz on the Lake - Grand Rapids

  • NoPo Coffee - Grand Rapids

  • Smoke On the Water - Coleraine

  • Bear Ridge Pizza - Cohasset

  • Sammy’s - Grand Rapids

St. Cloud, etc -

  • Westside Liquor - Waite Park

  • Westside Liquor - Sartell

  • Westside Liquor - Little Falls

Westworld, etc -

  • First City Liquor - Bemidji

  • Bemidji Curling Club - Bemidji

  • Happy Tree - Emily

  • Remer Municipal Liquor Store - Remer

  • SuperOne Liquor - Crosby

  • SuperOne Liquor - Baxter

  • Beehive Offsale Liquor - Bemidji

International Falls, etc -

  • Bootleggers Liquor - International Falls

  • The Rocky Ledge - Kabetogama