Double Knot with Spicy Buffalo Wings

When it comes to beer, I’m seldom adventurous. Most of the time, I gravitate toward the clean, crisp stuff you drink ice cold in a frosty glass. Anything much heavier, and I feel like I’m drinking bread.

As for IPAs, I’ve never been a fan — until a week or so ago when I tasted Hop Knot brewed by Four Peaks Brewing Company in Tempe. It’s classified as American-style strong pale ale, and it took the bronze at both the World Beer Cup and the Great American Beer Festival in 2006. So it’s been around. I just didn’t know it.

I took a sip of my buddy’s and was surprised to find that I liked it. Then I saw it on tap when I dropped by The Main Ingredient with a girlfriend last week. You know how that happens? You’ve never heard of a thing and suddenly, it’s everywhere you look?

According to the Four Peaks website, Hop Knot is made from American malt and four different kinds of American hops, each added at four separate times in the brewing process. I like it because it’s both hoppy and a little citrusy without tasting bitter.

Last week, I stopped at Four Peaks to have a Hop Knot and something spicy to go with it. Wings, I was thinking. But when I started telling my awakening consciousness story to my server – a darling girl who was kind enough to take interest — she suggested I try the Double Knot instead, a seasonal double IPA (which means, twice the amount of hops) that just came out the week before and only lasts about a month. She said she loved it.

And boy, do I get that. Served in a snifter, it’s a pale copper color with almost no head ($5). The nose is amazing — citrusy and pretty, almost floral to me. I absolutely love this beer for being clean tasting and well balanced. And it’s delish with the hot and vinegar-y Buffalo wings($8).

Apparently, it’s very expensive to produce, requiring 11 pounds of hops per keg. Oh yeah, and the alcohol content is 9.2, very high. So hey, let’s be careful out there.

Double Knot will be gone soon, so get over to Four Peaks while the gettin’s good. This is beer-drinking weather.

Four Peaks Brewing Company
1340 E. Eighth Street, Tempe, 480-303-9967, www.fourpeaks.com.