What’s in name? Read the label on this excellent IPA and decide for yourself.

Big Top Brewing Company, Sarasota, FL

Ashley Gang India Pale Ale

It’s not often that I get to write about a beer while drinking it, usually I'm drinking the beer in a bar or restaurant or while chatting with friends and have to recall the taste later, when I get to my computer.

Right now I’m sitting in the patio looking out across the veggie and flower gardens to the pond.  It’s a beautiful day in central Florida, there are a few fluffy white clouds wandering across the blue sky from west to east. It’s 88 deg F (31 deg C), and the overhead fan is keeping me cool. There are a few red winged blackbirds eating at the feeders and our resident ducks have just landed on the pond.  The hawks screeching in the oasis are keeping the rest of the birds away.

Mama Leny and I have just eaten lunch and I drank part of the Ashley Gang IPA during lunch, saving the rest to savor with some sharp English Cheddar to help my digestion.

This is not the first beer I’ve drunk from Big Top Brewing Co (www.BigTopBrewing.com) having previously enjoyed the Big Top Trapeze Monk Wit Ale.  I liked this beer a lot.  It went well with the blue cheese burgers we had for lunch and complemented the Cheddar cheese I ate for desert very nicely.  It’s easy to drink with a strong, but not overpowering aftertaste of hops.

The label is interesting in that it commemorates the Ashley Gang, a gang of outlaws who lived in the Everglades in the early part of the 20^th century.  By all accounts the Ashley gang  was rather inept ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashley_(bandit)) and gained their notoriety from being brazen rather than smart.  The gang appears to have no redeeming features which is perhaps why the movies about them did not resonate with the public at large.  John Ashley was no Robin Hood.

After the somewhat romantic notes of the Ashley gang the label goes on to say: “This high powered but smooth imperial defies what you thought possible in a 120 IBU 10% IPA.  It’s a reminder that you have to ignore the rules to make a statement and it always takes an outlaw to remind us that the bigger picture isn’t always the most important.”

I wish I hadn’t read that.  I like the beer, I like the taste, though I’m pretty sure that it’s not 120 IBU since most ways of measuring IBU stop at 100.  My guess is that it’s somewhere around 75 IBUs.  

But really, why do I need an outlaw that killed six or seven people to remind me of anything.

An excellent beer, spoiled by a name and label that grates.