By Iron Chef Leftovers
Pliny the Elder is going on trial for the crime of hubris. Pliny the Elder the beer that is.
Pliny the Elder is a double IPA brewed by Russian River Brewing that has a huge cult following – it sells out quickly and places have limits on how much you can buy and it recently became a 3 time “best beer in the world” in an online (and really unscientific) poll by a distinguished beer magazine. I have had Pliny several times, and while I think it is a nice IPA, I wouldn’t even consider it the best IPA, let alone the best beer in the world; nor do I think it is worth the effort that people make to get their hands on it. As a result of this, I am putting my money where my mouth is.
Pliny is going up against a list of heavy hitters in the IPA world in a blind taste test to determine who is really the King of IPA. The panel is going to include dignitaries from the IPA world (not really, it will just be a bunch of my friends who like IPA) and will be poured in a random order by Mrs. Iron Chef (who is not an IPA fan), so she will be the only one who knows each beer’s true identities.
Pliny gets to do battle against my favorite IPA’s (and a few of my not so favorite IPA’s) – from the Pacific Northwest we have Boundary Bay IPA, Diamond Knot Industrial IPA and Anacortes IPA, which I consider to be the best IPA out there. From the Non-Northwest division, we have Laughing Dog Alpha Dog (hey, for the purposes of this, Idaho isn’t part of the Northwest), Avery Maharaja and Harpoon IPA (which was considerably tougher to come by than Pliny, at least in Seattle, and is the beer that I said Pliny is no better than). From the overrated division, we have Pliny, Firestone Walker Union Jack (although I may switch this one to Double Jack) and Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (I really hope my friends at DFH are not reading this – I really do like you beers, but your IPA doesn’t hold up to the acclaim it gets). I am really not a fan of the Pliny, Firestone or Dogfish Head IPAs, so this should be interesting.
All of the beers will be in bottles except for Anacortes, which will come from a growler, and the list is subject to change if I decide to change it.
My prediction – for my scorecard, I predict that I will be able to pick out the 3 Northwest IPA’s and that Anacortes will be my top pick. I also predict that Pliny will not finish higher than 5th on my card. Overall, I predict the winner will be Diamond Knot with Pliny finishing 5th.
Let the trial begin…
FlatbreadGarden 