You're Sippin' On: Westbrook Brewing's IPA

Welcome to Beach Week, ladies and gentlemen. You’re hours away from any sort of place you can call home, it’s hotter than hell, and the humidity is making your freshly ironed shirts reek thickly of salt and mildew. Are you here with friends? Good on you. Are you here with family? You’re absolutely selfless. But regardless of how you physically got down here, it’s time to get away: so grab a cooler, a towel, and some knock-off RayBans, because you’re going down to the warm, white sands of Charleston, South Carolina.

Upon your first sip of Westbrook's flagship IPA, you’ll understand completely why it’s sitting in your foldout chair’s cup-holder. Mild sweetness set way, way back by thick tropical fruit—pineapple, mango, grapefruit—and exiting the palate almost gin-dry. Low bitterness and a mild citric acidity makes this beer perfect under the ever unwavering Summer sun—carbonation stays balanced even as the beer warms up to 55, 60 degrees (which, believe me, are unreasonably high temperatures considering this beer’s amazing drinkability). Taking a sip of this and closing your eyes, shaded under the UV400 lenses of your boardwalk sunglasses, is an open door into a gorgeous, redolent world filled with the sweet, swirling scents of tropical fruit under palm trees you've never actually seen as you, the drinker, are transported to an island that you've never been to. Hopefully there are no seagulls.

So your taste buds have adjusted, and you finally reopen your eyes. Just look at the waves: crashing syncopated on the shore, washing sand dollars up to your ankles, teasing you with a mighty, sapping pull as they recede. Now, if only there was something you could set this scene to. Poetry, noncommittal as a read, would be preferable, right? But a poet set not so much on romantic movements or landscapes of foreign nature, but maybe a poet with sights set more on the importance of the individual: the individual experience. And of the contemporary poets who focus on that, maybe one with less domineering wording to accompany that crisp, clean finish of Westbrook’s IPA—to linger on enjoyment and think only momentarily of bitterness. Who better than the United States’ 2001-2003 Poet Laureate from Billy Collins?

 

Billy Collins, noted for his impeccable handle of imagery and conversational, unimposing voice, is a shoe-in for this pairing. His collection Sailing Alone around the Room would be my personal pick: the poems in this collection being centered mainly on charming, beautiful scenes--ones that bear striking resemblance to those forming in your mind as you drink down the nectar that is Westbrook Brewing's IPA. Open up to the first poem, take a soothing, meditational sip from the sweat-beaded can, and let yourself escape into that vast blue horizon, that burning bright light set so beautifully before you. 

Westbrook Brewing Co., besides making some of the highest-ranked and sought-after beer in the nation, is up to its neck in wonderful employees and a striking dedication to its craft. I learned this yesterday after taking a long-overdue trip to the brewery and tap room—meeting some of the tap room employees and Morgan Westbrook, truly one of the liveliest and most inspiring people I've met in a long, long time. Any pairing using Westbrook Brewing Co.’s beer has been approved and used with permission from the brewery itself--and with the utmost gratitude.