Caesar Cervisia: How Do Our Beer Scribe’s Favorite IPAs From 2009 Compare to Today’s Versions?

Fifteen years ago, I was living with my cousin Josh, and we were discussing our desire to make a batch of beer ourselves. This led me to research everything I could regarding the art of homebrewing in order to get through that first brew day.

We made an IPA; it turned out somewhat poorly. It was drinkable—but “just drinkable” wasn’t good enough for me. Josh, being a busy father of two small children, didn’t have a lot of time to continue down this homebrewing road, but I got the itch.

Google found me a Yahoo! group (remember those?) for the Coachella Valley Homebrew Club. I messaged the moderator (a gentleman named Micah, who was also the founder of the club), and I was invited down to Schmidy’s Tavern, where they were to have a homebrew competition.

Thanks to the club members’ help, I immediately turned around and made a rather good witbier. Although I’d been into craft beer long before then (what was termed “microbrew” in the ’90s), the club got me on the road to where I am today.

However, I never really made another IPA. For one thing, I didn’t have all the equipment or the proper conditions to make one with which I’d be satisfied. There were many commercially available examples on offer locally by that time—but they were different from most IPAs today.

Today, I’ll hop in my time machine and travel back to 2009 and taste the IPAs I remember.

Stone IPA: This is where I’d start once I stepped out of the time machine. Why? Because this was, to me, the ultimate “oh, thank Zeus this is here” beer on a random bar tap list when it came to IPAs.

The thing that strikes this older version of me sipping it now is the bitterness. All IPAs were like this. It was a hard barrier to people not interested in high levels of bitterness—but this and especially their Ruination Double IPA were in my life a lot. Stone, at their peak (again, to me), had Mitch Steele at the helm of the brewhouse, and he really pumped out some genre-defining ales—citrusy, piney and dank (before we were really using that last word in that context). And guess what? This beer holds up. It is still really good. This is coming from someone who has a lot of criticisms of Stone’s last decade, so that should tell you something. Find this fresh (which should not be difficult), and enjoy the late ’00s in your glass.

Sculpin IPA: Ballast Point was another brewery that kept ratcheting up what they were doing, with the beers getting better and better. Back then, you were so glad to find this on tap. I wasn’t aware of anywhere in the desert where one could, so my first experience was at the brilliant (and now long-gone) Barley and Hops Olde World Family Tavern in Temecula. (This was also where I had my first experience with Russian River.) Sculpin was in the same class.

Then the first sale happened. Then the second. Ballast Point seems to now be in decent hands, though, because their current version is not bad at all—solid, well-made, dank and citrusy. But from my memory, it’s different. It’s designed for more modern palates, with way less bitterness than I recall. (Bitterness, of course, was absolutely common and desired then.) The current owners seem dead-set on reclaiming their good name, and I wish them all the luck in the world, because the name was heavily tarnished after they sold in 2015 to Constellation Brands for $1 billion, which then dumped it in 2019 to its current owners.

Union Jack IPA: Firestone Walker made some of the most drinkable hoppy beers around back then. They had the ability to perfectly marry the hops with the malt base underneath it. They also used to contract-brew an IPA for Trader Joe called Mission St. IPA that was too good to not buy every week when I went food shopping, as it was selling for less than $7 a six-pack. The dank, citrus hop flavors in both beers floated over the caramel backbone. Much has stayed the same in the beer that is currently in my glass, and I’m very happy about that. It is much less bitter than the other examples here, but that was what I remember it being like 15 years ago—so this presaged modern IPAs a bit, now that I think about it.

60 Minute IPA: I hadn’t had any Dogfish Head beers for a few years; the ones I’d last tried made me feel like they were beginning to miss a step. But on a whim recently, I picked up a can of their 90 Minute Imperial IPA—and I quite liked it. Now, if you come to that beer, or the 60 Minute, and you’re desiring a modern, not-so-bitter, maybe-a-hint-of-malt IPA (of which I am a fan), you’re going to have a bad time. There is most definitely malt and most definitely bitterness, and those are what make the secret sauce in this style of beer. With caramel, toffee and a bread-pudding-like quality, this can be an intense flavor experience when the style is done well, and I hope it never gets forgotten. The 60 Minute has notes of grapefruit, orange and pine, with a nice, bready malt spine to prop it all up. I love how wrong I was about Dogfish Head.

I could go on, but a few of the other beers I would have included have been made consistently and continuously for decades. Swami’s IPA from Pizza Port Brewing is not only a classic, but it’s just as good as it ever was—and that’s very good. Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA is the same for me, and you can sometimes find very fresh cans of it at your local convenience store. I could have included Green Flash’s West Coast IPA, but I couldn’t find it. It turns out the packaging is wildly different than it used to be, and while the Total Wine website says our local store has it, it certainly does not have prominent placement. (Green Flash is a subject for a whole other column, but 15 years ago, you would be thanking your lucky stars if you walked into a bar with it on tap. It was once one of the shining beacons on that hill that is San Diego.)

All in all, I was very pleased with this trip through time. While these examples may be viewed as “your uncle’s craft beer,” he’s a really cool uncle with good taste. In addition, I’m ecstatic that none of these beers are pale shadows of what they used to be. They were all beers I would happily have in my fridge, although I’m more likely to buy a fresh pack of the above-mentioned Swami’s than anything here.

And would you look at that? I do have a pack of Swami’s in my fridge. Uncanny.