Constantly-updated fresh-hop tracker.   Thursday, January 27,
2011  Toward a Mass-Market IPA  Although beer drinkers have
apparently known about this for awhile, it's just making news
today: Walgreens is selling their own canned beer. Walgreens
opts for the classic "nouveau-antique" motif, styling it Big
Flats 1901 and plopping an old waterwheel on the can. (Memo to
Walgreens: using the word "flats" in your title was perhaps not
the stroke of genius your PR people suggested.) It's the color
of dirty water, sells for $3 a sixer, and is apparently awful.
But you don't care about Walgreens cheap new beer, and neither
do I.  Seeing the story, though, made me reflect on my post from
earlier this week, wherein I mused that there's no reason the US
couldn't become a good-beer country. If that happens, one of the
mechanisms might be the appearance of mass-market cheap-good
beer. Imagine if Walgreens had instead decided to market a $4
sixer of below-average but adequate IPA--let's say an
inoffensive 5.5%, 42-IBU beer