Heady hysteria comes to San Diego

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2013, file photo, cans of Heady Topper roll off the line at The Alchemist in Waterbury, Vt. As craft brews gain an intense following, a black market has bloomed. A Burlington woman was charged with illegally selling five cases of Heady Topper for $825 on Craigslist. Heady Topper, which retails for $3 a can and $72 a case, was recently ranked No. 1 by Beer Advocate magazine out of the top 250 beers in the world. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)

May 24, 2018

2:51 PM

Cans of Vermont’s most sought-after beer, Heady Topper from The Alchemist, landed in San Diego last week and I was fortunate enough to snag a pair at O’Brien’s pub in Kearny Mesa. On first sip, this marvelous double IPA is an easy-drinker despite a slamming 8 percent alcohol content, as zesty carbonation counters the booziness. Fresh hop notes wrap around mango and pineapple flavors, then reassert themselves for a sharp finish.

Delicious? Yes. Over-hyped? Absolutely. At some outlets, 16-ounce cans sold for more than $20.

This Heady Hysteria is reminiscent of the Coors Cult. In the 1950s and ’60s, Coors was hotly pursued by California beer drinkers for one reason: you couldn’t buy it here. Once “the Banquet Beer” was distributed on the West Coast, it lost much of its sheen.

Heady, a world-class double IPA, is no Coors, a leader in the global quest to make beer taste like water. But if Heady were as available as Coors — or Alpine’s Pure Hoppiness, Societe’s The Pupil and many other hop-forward San Diego ales — I suspect we’d see it for what it as an excellent beer, but not the world’s finest.

Read more from Peter Rowe’s weekly column here.

Craft Beer

Peter Rowe

Peter joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984. A native Californian who grew up in Encinitas, Rowe is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Northwestern University. He is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former Fulbright scholar. He has won a few journalism awards, but would trade them all for a chance to avenge his 1994 “Jeopardy!” loss. Married to a terrific woman who has saved him from errors in writing and in life, he has three sons. At the U-T, Rowe writes profiles and features and is even paid to review beers, which hardly seems fair.