The Halftime Pint: Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA

One of the greater things about watching football in America is that most matches, especially those of the EPL, areearly in the morning American time, giving people an excuse to daydrink. This is part of our series discussing exactly what to drink when you’re at the pub, presented by our resident homebrewer, Keith.

The Beer: Twisted Thistle IPA, Belhaven Brewery- Dunbar, Scotland, United Kingdom

The Pub: The Queen Vic, in Northeast DC

What You Need to Know: I’ve covered the history of the Belhaven Brewery in a previous post. In that post, I also mentioned that the Scottish climate is also typically unkind to hops. Brewers of old in Scotland would then use whatever was handy to spice or preserve their beers- so Scottish brewers would often use thistle or heather. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with this beer; it’s just a clever name. But there are breweries in Scotland that still use heather for their beers. We’ll get to them at some point.

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The Halftime Pint: Widmer Rotator Spiced IPA

credit: Thebrewsite.com

One of the greater things about watching football in America is that most matches, especially those of the EPL, areearly in the morning American time, giving people an excuse to daydrink. This is part of our series discussing exactly what to drink when you’re at the pub, presented by our resident homebrewer, Keith.

The Beer: Rotator Series Spiced IPA, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Portland, Oregon.

The Pub: Stoney’s, in Northwest DC

What You Need to Know: Widmer Brothers planted the flag for craft brewers in Portland in 1984.  Brothers Kurt and Rob Widmer followed their passions into cobbling together a brewery in what would become the very hipster heart of Portland, the Pearl District, offering an altbier (a malty German ale that I’ll be sure to review sometime soon) and a weizenbier as their first offerings.  The brewery has consistently expanded, and moved to a new location in North Portland in 1990, while maintaining their craft beer roots.

Believe it or not, this is only the second IPA we’ve featured here on the Halftime Pint.  And like the Imperial IPA before it, this is something beyond your basic IPA.  Widmer’s Rotator series is where they take the basic sea-worthy and hophead-friendly IPA and jam on it, either highlighting a specific hop, a new technique, or, in this case, some additional flavors.  Widmer boasts a spice bill of Assam black tea, ginger, cinnamon, clove, star anise, black pepper and cardamom to go alongside the incredibly PNW hop combo of Galaxy, Falconer’s Flight, Alchemy, Zeus, Millenium and Teamaker.

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