Daredevil an IPA guy? No, but Happy 50^th anyway

Happy 50^th Birthday to my childhood hero, Daredevil.

Marvel Comics celebrated a half-century of The Man Without Fear this week with a special over-sized issue (appropriately numbered 1.50) featuring three separate stories from some of the character’s best creative teams, past and present.

One such story, from the current team of writer Mark Waid and artist Javier Rodriguez, took a look at Matt Murdock at the age of 50 and his relationship with his not-like-him nine year-old son. Which, as DD fans would know, mirrors Matt’s own upbringing at the hands of his hard drinking, prize fighting father. It was Battling Jack Murdock’s death at the hands of the mob that fuelled the transformation of young Matt – blind, but with his other senses operating at superhuman levels – into the crimson-garbed crime fighter known as Daredevil.

But does he drink beer? This is a beer blog after all, so I better find some sort of connection.

A quick Google search later and I’m reading a story from Quirk Books about pairing comic characters with beer, and I find the writer choosing India Pale Ales to match up with our man.

IPAs, man!

The writer notes that the “flavourful and aromatic IPAs engage the senses more than the average beer, and will encourage you to rely on more than just sight, like Daredevil himself.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The story goes to point out that IPAs are known for their bitterness and “as anyone who’s ever read a Daredevil comic can attest, bitterness and aguish run rampant in the life of Matt Murdock.”

Harsh, but true.

The fact that Daredevil doesn’t actually drink beer or do any kind of drugs at all – he being a supremely tuned ninja athlete with hyper senses and a dedication to his craft, not to mention being the son of an alcoholic – shouldn’t get in the way of a good story.

Because if he did love beer, our Man Without Fear with his sense of taste so refined he can tell you the number of grains of salt on a pretzel, would make a helluva beer competition judge. His sense of smell is even better and, well, I’ll let Marvel Wiki describe it:

Daredevil's sense of smell is so acute that he can distinguish between identical twins at twenty feet by minute differences in smell. He can detect odors of an atmospheric concentration of thirty parts per million. Further, his ability to remember smells enables him to identify any person he has spent at least five minutes with by smell alone, no matter how he or she might try to camouflage his or her natural odor. His powers of concentration are such that he can focus upon a single person's smell and follow it through a crowd of people at a distance of fifty feet.

With those mad skills at his disposal he’d be a whizz at identifying malt profiles and picking out the citrus subleties of a hoppy West Coast IPA. In his sleep.

The last time he DID drink beer, however, he ended ended up lip-locking with a sketchy woman in a seedy Hells Kitchen bar who turned out to be Mephisto, also known as the Devil. The real one.

Awwkward.

Better stick to judging.

*

My first day back from Florida made for an easy transition, with temperatures in the mid-teens and plenty of sunshine, so I had no worries about leaving the shorts on. Day two, however, took a turn for the worse and I ended up doing winter work, salting the sidewalks of our mall properties after our little mini-blizzard.

I missed Florida that day, but the shorts stayed on.

Day three wasn’t much better, as temperatures dropped well below zero and we spent Wednesday morning cutting up tree branches; the last (I think) of our clean-up from the early winter ice storm.

And still the shorts stayed on. If I have my way I won’t be putting on big boy pants until Christmas.

*

And now on to some more beers. I tried so many new IPAs on my trip I still have a backlog that will take me several MORE blogs before I’m caught up. So lets start with another brew from California’s Ballast Point Brewery: Big Eye. This seven per cent classic west coast IPA pours a deep copper, with a thick creamy head. With lots of grapefruit on the nose, this beer doesn’t tickle your palate as much as pummels it. Excellent IPA.

I tried a Pegasus IPA from Argus Brewery of Chicago as well and I was not as impressed. Very malty, with the malts (Cascade, Magnus and a special variety grown for the brewery) overpowering the hops almost entirely. Not bad, but not to my taste. Tastes like a black IPA.

The Small Batch 417 from Colorado’s Breckinridge was also underwhelming. This was also very malty (seems many of the larger craft breweries can’t get away from malt-forward beers) and again, I can’t smell much in the way of hops. Certainly not any citrus aromas, anyway.

And finally, because I want to end this blog on a high note, we have the Lagunitas IPA from Petaluma, California. This poured a nice copper colour with a thick head and there was plenty of citrus on the nose to satisfy me. A damn good beer.

Shout-outs to Steve, who hasn't written a blog in a bit, and to Don (Euro beers ain't so bad), and to Cat (Bad, bad Beer Store ads), who have.

Cheers!