Do IPAs turn into pale ales over time?

While I found some of the comments above to be humorous, let's give the OP a break. He posted a serious question and deserves a thoughtful answer.


From my tasting experience, the answer is no. Like IPAs, I prefer my APAs to be fresh. IPAs with age on them don't weaken in terms of malt character or ABV. The hop profile starts to fade, meaning the distinct piney, fruity, dank, etc. smells and flavors of the hops start to lose their edge. They become less interesting especially to folks who really crave that strong, sharp bitterness.

Some people suggest that super high ABV IPAs (sometimes referred to as Triple IPAs) actually become more balanced when aged properly. I can't say as I have yet to try one with a significant amount of age on it.

 

I just want to address your last point, as it kind of relates to the OP's question.

A good triple IPA doesn't become more "balanced" over time; it's perfectly balanced fresh. Tons of hops balanced by tons of malt. In almost all cases, that's how the brewer intended it to be consumed (I'm not talking about 120 Minute here; that's a different story). As the hops fade, it becomes increasingly unbalanced.

Likewise, American IPAs and American pale ales are intended to be consumed fresh. So, OP, no, an IPA doesn't "turn into" an APA over time. It just turns into an old IPA.

 

As IPA began life as "Pale Ale as prepared for the India market" the OP is almost asking "does a poodle become a dog over time ?"
An IPA is simply a form of Pale Ale. So it doesn't become a Pale Ale over time, it was one from the outset.

 

I wouldn't know. They disappear from my refridgerator too fast to tell

 

Great answer, and what I came here to post. The amount of malt added initially was to balance out the beer due to the amount of hops added. You don't need an old IPA to see how this negatively effects a beer though. An older Boston Lager (a hoppier beer than most give it credit) becomes an unbalanced caramel-y mess once the Noble hops begin to fade.

Of course a brewer can alter their recipe when the beer is intended to be aged. The shining example of a hoppy beer that is destined to be aged by the brewer would be Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot. This beer is effectively a double IPA initially, the hops fade over time, and the complexity/nuances of the malt profile push through with each passing year.

 

ISO Imperial Stale Ale

 

The bitterness (IBUs) does indeed go down with time, just more slowly. Scroll down to the graph with multiple curves, the bitterness decreases with time, staling goes up.
http://www.thebruery.com/careful-cellaring-part-2-the-importance-of-temperature/

 

What do you mean a more "legit date"? I'm have a Sculpin in my hand now and the date is clearly on the label. It's in Julian date format, but really how hard is that to decipher?

 

I always associated the Pale Ale spectrum with alcohol content, not "hoppiness". Although I suppose both measures could easily be argued as equally arbitrary.

 

If I may sound awfully stupid for a moment, the real difference between the IPA and the Pale Ale is that the pale ale is a somewhat ambiguous style. There are 3 different classes of pale ales in the bjcp. All of those are english style bitters . The main difference between a bitter and a pale ale historically is that the bitter is drawn fresh on draught and the pale ale is bottled. Hence the india pale ale that travelled to india.

If anyone can help me with this please feel free =)

 

No.

There are fundamental misunderstandings here.... 1) age does not change a style; and 2) pale ales are not necessarily less bitter/hoppy than IPAs. Pale ales may (but not always) have lower IBU counts, but IBUs can be misleading because they do not directly correlate to percieved bitterness one actually tastes.

By the same logic, if you age a Double/Imperial IPA, it does not revert into a regular IPA.

 

I don't know about that, but I hear muscle turns into fat if you stop working out

 

If there were an absolute criterion for determining balance I'd agree with you here, but since one persons "balance" is not necessarily the same as another's it is relative to the taster's preferences as well as to the brewer's intent (which is part of the reason many larger breweries have tasting panels that have to vet a batch before it is released). Some people are more sensitive to the bittering compounds than others so what may seem balanced to one person may take a few weeks to seem balanced to another.

 

I popped a hopslam last night. Bottled 1/20 and it was a drain pour.

 

Not quite.Pale Ale was always the style and that is what the brewers called it. The customers colloquially referred to it as "bitter" to differentiate it from the less massively hopped mild.At the time, mild was a pale beer of around 6% ABV and by today's standards still highly hopped.I wouldn't be surprised if a pre WW1 mild would resemble a present day ESB.
Some Pale Ales were never called bitter , such as Burton brews like Bass and Marston's Pedigree.
As regards IPA , by 1800 the separation of ales and beers had settled down as between ales and porters.That's why a heavily hopped brew came to be called IPA rather than India Pale Beer , at this time beers were dark.

 

Agreed drain pours because with my experience ipas do not last long in my fridge they get that metal taste if you let them sit to long

 

I can answer this with scientific information, maybe not really but here in Mexico we get a lot of IPAs from de US that were brewed 7 to 10 months ago, and they taste like a very awkward APA, so they turn badly into something that resembles an APA.

 

Taking out Hi Res (and I'll note that Sixpoint does not even consider it a TIPA), I have never had a beer labeled as a TIPA that could remotely be called "balanced." Since most TIPAs are big, overly sweet, boozy messes, my assumption is that these traits are the hallmark of the style. It may be a brewer's intent to match those traits but that does NOT mean that such a beer is balanced in any way. TIPAs are unbalanced by design. You like that - and that is quite fine - but your enjoyment of such beers does not make them something they are not.

 

The darker ones do. If they're too pale and haven't worked up a good base tan, they turn into imperial reds.

 

Maria,

To address this from the perspective of the BJCP style Guidelines:

The English Pale Ale style has three substyles:

· Standards/Ordinary Bitter

· Special/Best/Premium Bitter

· Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale)

The principle distinguishing features of these three substyles are alcohol amount and level of hopping. The maximum ABV listed for a Standard Bitter is 3.8% ABV and the max for an ESB is 6.2% ABV. Commensurately the max IBUs for a Standard Bitter is 35 IBUs and the max for an ESB is 50 IBUs.

There is also another Pale Ale in the BJCP: American Pale Ale (APA).

There are two IPA styles in the BJCP: American IPA and English IPA. For both these beer styles the principle distinguishing feature is increased ABV and increased hopping levels as compared to the Pale Ale styles.

Cheers!

Jack