This Week On Tap: Carson’s RIPA

When I reflect back to my time in Evansville, the memories are always chalked full of youthful optimism – a strong sense of nostalgic longing. Those were the days that I now, at 32, live vicariously through. Inside those memories I can still see the world as a half-finished canvas through the eyes of a, to a certain degree, naive 21 year old. Naïve in the sense that I wasn’t fully respondent to the tribulations that lurked in the world. And by tribulations I mean, “real world shit” – jobs, mortgage, bills, water heater going kaput, etc.

You see, back then my only stressors were in the form of portfolio deadlines and student teaching. Oh the agony! Of course now I’d consider offering up one of my toes (goodbye pinky) to only know those pressures again.

But as Blink-182 sang in their ode to the loss of youth and the chick, “Dammit,” “I guess this is growing up.”

During that last year of my “youth-as-I-knew-it” I would often find myself down off Franklin Street at Sportsman Bar on most Thursday nights throughout the year. There, I’d have a few domestic beers and laugh along at the silliness of others collegiate escapades while sharing some of my own. Other nights would find my cohort of friends hanging out off of Mt. Vernon Avenue at the seedy little (and aptly named) Corner Bar, where profound conversations teetered around such outlandish ideas that a few of them might have actually saved the world had we actually known how to look past Friday nights and follow through with them. (Damn that portfolio!)

I write about this past life because this week I was reminded of it as I dove into a Carson’s RIPA. The ale poured like a rich red sea and flooded my tastes buds, similar to when Moses orchestrated the biblical body of water like a marionette playing havoc on that dastardly Egyptian Army. And just like that, all of those iconic remembrances of Evansville and nights we spent as kings came flooding back into my skull.

RIPA clocks in at 7% ABV with an IBU of 70. The hops aren’t overpowering, as the malt profile really shines upfront. I really got a nice hop punch upon the finish. This is an intriguing beer that, in my humble opinion, begs to be enjoyed at any given time throughout the year. However, as the nights start to cool down and fall begins its ascent, I find myself looking forward to drinking RIPA around a bonfire with friends as we continue to invoke reflective ideas that just might one day save this world – or ourselves. But finding time now proves to be a bit trickier than it did back in the days of old because somewhere along the proverbial yellow brick road those dreaded stressors became “real”.

If Carson’s had been around back in my philosophical college days I’d like to think that my friends and I would have been there a time or two. And I’d bet that the ghosts of those world saving ideas might still haunt a corner of the taproom. However, since I’ve already been captured by “the man” and my ideas are now confined to a backyard fire pit, perhaps YOU can enjoy a pint or two with friends on my behalf at Carson’s and conjure up your own heroic endeavors.  

Until next time, this is where I leave you.