“You could kind of see the snowball rolling down the hill and becoming more prominent. “Back in the 1990s, Harpoon IPA was the standard beer, and there were beers like Wachusett purple and Redhook’s Ballard’s Bitter, but there weren’t many IPAs that were flagships or year rounds,” said Ben Roesch, brewmaster at Worcester, Massachusetts’s Wormtown Brewery, known for IPAs such as Be Hoppy and Hopulence. India pale ales and their bigger brothers rule supreme in world of New England breweries, with breweries such as The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead, and Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Vermont Trillium Brewing Company and Tree House Brewing Company in Massachusetts and Bissell Brothers in Maine being responsible for some of the most sought-after beers in the country. Compared to today, the Harpoon IPA is like a pale ale.”
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“Nowadays, people expect it to be hops-forward and not too bitter. “I think people’s palates have changed,” says Mott, the veteran brewer who now owns and operates Tributary Brewing Company in Kittery, Maine. Harpoon IPA is still a popular beer, but IPAs in New England have changed significantly in the twenty-plus years since Mott first poured the hops into the boil. It was clear and balanced, and-for its time-it was an aggressively hopped beer.
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Tod Mott brewed the first IPA in New England in 1993 for the Harpoon Brewery (Boston, Massachusetts, and Windsor, Vermont).