IPAs aren’t really seasonal? I always associate fall with Marzen style lagers for Oktoberfest, and big winter warmers like barleywine and sweet stouts.
It can be quickly summarized to the line in the article, “marketers have an insatiable appetite for turning human enjoyment into target-based profit”. Couple that with the fact that females tend to receive more ridicule for their consumption habits, and you’ve got this article.
Food has a cultural component tied to its manufacture and identification. And IPAs are food that probably shouldn’t exist and which only does as a byproduct of market capitalism. They’re the Lacanian ‘object a’ - an empty, manufactured falseness. We don’t desire the thing itself, but the thing whose absence it symbolizes. What you’re really consuming when you drink an IPA is its innate mechanical predictability.
(Thanks to the thread last week arguing about pumpkin spice lattes for giving me a new copypasta to use about anything I personally dislike.)
If you like IPAs, that’s fine. If you’re buying someone, like me, a beer at karaoke, trust me when I say that I want the cheap Modelo or Milwaukee’s Best on tap. Don’t buy me an IPA that costs twice as much, but I won’t drink it cause it tastes bad.
Oh, ew! Why would it cost more than a dollar more than Pabst? You’re not in the Northwest are you? I assure you there are fantastic ones that are palatable to any palate and don’t cost a fortune
Oh, you can still be simple and find an IPA that has such a pleasing and effervescent flavor that it drives you to make bad life decisions.
I feel you on the hoppy part, though. Not every IPA needs to be dry-hopped (the process of running the fermented beer through hops again to impart flavor).
