![]() Though branded a session IPA, Down to Earth is not all that different from Bitter American. Despite its popularity, the beer was dispatched to the dustbin, replaced by Down to Earth. Moreover, the word "bitter" is a bit misleading, as the beer was never all that bitter. ![]() Bitter American was never branded a session IPA. From a marketing standpoint, I understood the move. Until this spring, when news came down the pipeline that 21st Amendment was killing the brand. At 4.4 percent ABV, Bitter American was a beer that you could polish off by the six-pack. First released in early 2007 at the brewpub, the golden "extra pale ale" was an easy-sipping tango of nuts and biscuits, grapefruit and pine, lemons and flowers. The company’s canned beer line-up (all featuring quirky, graphic-intensive artwork) includes the summery Hell or High Watermelon wheat beer spiced Fireside Chat strong ale roasty and lightly resinous Back in Black IPA and until recently, Bitter American. The proximity to 81 annual home games helped the brewpub survive in the lean early years-thanks, dotcom crash!-and it’s since grown into one of the country’s 50 biggest craft breweries. The San Francisco brewery was born in 2000, when writer Nico Freccia and paralegal-turned-brewer Shaun O’Sullivan opened a brewpub right by the Giants' new baseball stadium. Happily, the last few years have seen brewers give IPAs an alcoholic haircut, dropping the ABV while keeping flavor and aroma cranked high.īefore session IPAs became all the craze, there was 21st Amendment’s Bitter American. The list stretches into hop-scented infinity. Ever since Founders debuted its massively successful All Day IPA in 2010 (it went year-round in 2012), breweries have rushed to roll out lower-alcohol IPAs. Session IPAs-as in, you can sip several in a drinking session-have become a screaming phenomenon. Happily, the last few years have seen brewers give IPAs an alcoholic haircut, dropping the ABV while keeping flavor and aroma cranked high. Many IPAs top 6, 7 or 8 percent ABV, meaning two or three pints would make me a baby-dropping butter fingers. Socked with aromas of lemons and oranges, mangoes and papayas, medical-grade marijuana and pine trees, IPAs are delivery vehicles for full-throttle aroma and flavor. Like most every craft beer consumer, I love a good IPA, the bitter symbol of modern American brewing. During the daylight hours-and while on dad duty-I’d sip the likes of lower-strength lagers, witbiers and session IPAs. After Violet went to bed, I could sample heavy-hitting imperial stouts, double IPAs and other eyesight-blurrers. As a solution, I developed a boozy system of checks and balances. After all, drinking was key to properly doing my job. The opposite extreme, teetotaling, was totally unappealing. I didn’t want to be a cliché, dropping double IPAs and then my daughter. The messy fumbling was my first introduction to this unwavering formula: strong beers + parenting = disaster. The hard part was changing a diaper after sipping the better part of a six-pack. To celebrate I sipped Sierra Nevada’s citrusy, piney and decently potent Celebration Ale, chased by multiple rounds. The importance of restraint was underscored one day in November 2013 when, at midnight’s stroke, my daughter, Violet, squirmed into the world.
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