History of the American IPA?

This is part of it. But the other part is HOW the brewer's are using these hops. Look at a Heady Topper clone and the hopping schedule is ridiculous. I mentioned Trillium's Fort Point Pale Ale, but their Double Dry Hoppy Galaxy Fort Point is rated even higher. These are beers that are consumed very fresh, otherwise they tend to lose much of that trademark "unfiltered IPA" character. A large portion of that profile coming from the dry hopping.

In fact, if left alone, these beers will actually become clearer with age. Sean Hill won't even bottle his hoppy beers, they're all growler only.

And the first beer I can think of brewed in this fashion was Heady Topper. I believe it was first brewed in limited quantities in 2003, so it took a few years for it to gain steam in terms of reviews/recognition.

 

Well I do still have a can of Heady Topper in my fridge from when I was in VT in September and have had HT many other times... I haven't had the others you mention, but they aren't the only brewers making unfiltered very citrusy beers these days and I've had things similar.

It's probably been 2 years since I had Liberty so my recollection might be fuzzy...or maybe my tastes are just off, but remember a lot of citrus. Keep in mind even Heady Topper has some pine in it, albeit slight. I should probably pick up some Liberty again though.

No offense to anyone, but I strongly suspect that many people's tastes are being swayed to some degree by the look of these newer unfiltered IPAs. The style variant is becoming common enough that we have expectations now as soon as we see them which can easily influence our tastes. (I'm a big believer in how our minds and biases play tricks on our tastes, because it's very well documented to be true in many instances. )

I'll also throw Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale out there too, although filtered and lower ABV (4.6%) it is very citrusy (dry-hopped with Simcoe) and dates to 2000, which is at least 2 years before alchemist.

While we're claiming IPA firsts I also hold that Philly Pale Ale is what all the citrusy session IPAs are trying to be, but they did it before session IPAs were cool.

 

Randy, a descriptor that is often used by folks who opine about what some refer to as New England style IPAs (aka murky/opaque IPAs) is "juicy". I have homebrewed many, many IPAs that are not murky/opaque that have a juicy quality; a hoppy beer does not have to have the appearance of murky/opaque to have an expression of juiciness.

I agree 100% with your statement that many people are being influenced by the appearance of these murky/opaque beers. I have seen numerous folks use the 'analogy' of orange juice when describing these sort of beers. It looks like orange juice so it just has to taste like orange juice, right?

Cheers!

 

@JackHorzempa , @jesskidden

The Frankenmuth brewery is like Gandpa's axe that is on the fourth handle and second head.

When I moved to MI it was Geyer's. The Frankenmuth Brewery I remember made some pretty nice beers under head Brewer Fred Scheer, a German born and trained Brewer. An F3 tornado wiped it out in 1996. It was rebuilt as a brewpub and reopened in 2003 or so, under an investment group's dollars. The packaged beers we get in MI are brewed in WI, and I forget who brews those.

Edit - Bell's calls themselves the oldest brewery in MI. I think they are correct on that, they did change the name from Kalamazoo brewing, but have been brewing and selling the Bell's line of beers at the downtown location for 30 years.

 

I agree with both of you, appearance can definitely influences one's opinion. Regardless, I think the flavor profile of many of these hop forward beers that are labeled as "juicy" are quite different than the old school hoppy beer. I had a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale recently (a beer I consider similar to Liberty Ale), and I personally feel the flavor profile is vastly different from these "juicy" IPAs. While Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale has citrusy aspects (a quality I personally get from certain "C-hops"), "juicy" would not be a description I would use for this beer. Nor would I for Celebration Ale, Liberty Ale, Harpoon IPA...etc.

I pose the question to both @Ranbot and @JackHorzempa, well I'm actually repeating it...

As far as appearance goes, the one that has held the top spot for the last few years, and the one I mentioned in Heady Topper, has explicit insructions to "Drink from the can". It's likely many beer drinkers are never even looking at the beer...

So, if Heady Topper wasn't the first, @Ranbot, you suggest it could be Liberty Ale? Maybe it's Pliny the Younger?

 

I'm thinking from what I've been reading that maybe Heady from 2002-03 timeframe does get the credit for being the first fruit/juicy hopped bomb. Yeah when it was told to "drink from the can" I think that was protection against people not being on board with the appearance of murky orange juice looking IPA when historically they were all quite clear looking in the glass.

 

I agree with the reasoning behind the "Drink from the can" slogan. Ironically this is now the appearance many associate with a world class double IPA.

 

I've homebrewed too and regardless of the quantity of hops my beers always fell bright quite quickly if I'd done things right.
At a brewery visit a few years ago we were treated to their Pale Ale (already pretty highly hopped) to 18 gallons of which 6 or 7 pounds of West Coast hops had been added.It wasn't bitter but highly floral and despite being unfiltered it wasn't murky in the least.

 

FWIW, my personal brewing experience is similar to what you have posted. One week ago I bottled a DIPA that I brewed were I dry hopped with 4 ounces of hops for a 5 gallon batch. Below is a photograph of the beer from my hydrometer sample. As you can see the beer is a bit hazy (from the dry hop polyphenols) but it is by no means murky/opaque. For some reason the beers from Trillium, Tree House, … are murky/opaque but I am uncertain what that reason is. Folks like to opine that these beers look that way due to large use of hops for dry hopping but that explanation is inconsistent with my brewing experience.

Cheers!

 

Have you ever dry-hopped with the amount of hops these breweries do? (If these recipes are available).

I know Pliny the Younger is quadruple dry hopped, but from pictures that beer still looks more like your homebrew than a "chunky IPA".

 

I have a clone recipe for Trillium Fort Point Pale Ale from the September issue of BYO that I will be brewing next spring. That recipe calls for 4 ounces of hops for dry hopping; the same amount that I used for the DIPA I just brewed.

I will be able to report on my Trillium Fort Point Pale Ale clone in about 5 months.

Cheers!

P.S. I have a batch of what I call an Alpine Duet IPA inspired beer that is fermenting right now.

 

Nice. I'll be curious to see/hear your results.

My experience with Fort Point Pale Ale is like this...

-I've had it in Boston on draft multiple times, none of those times was it chunky, it was hazy at most. I never found it to be mind blowing, simply a very good pale ale, but it definitely leaned towards "juicy/fruity" in its hop profile. That being said, the last one I had was likely a year or two ago, maybe longer. It's possible Trillium has evolved since that time.

-My first experience purchasing directly from the brewery, I purchased two bottles. One of their Galaxy Double Dry Hopped Fort Point Pale Ales, and another of their Congress Street IPA. Thinking because it was unfiltered, I carefully poured the beer as to not disturb what was settled at the bottom. This IPA was good, but again nothing mind blowing. Certainly not over the top "juicy". I inquired in the New England forums, and realized everyone was pouring normally, allowing everything to mix into the beer. This is how I consumed the Galaxy Dry Hopped Fort Point, and it may still be the best beer I've had from Trillium to date. Very juicy, murky body...etc.

-Two months ago I swung by the brewery again, and this time I purchased a growler of their regular Fort Point Pale Ale, and a bottle of their Congress Street IPA again. Both were poured in their entirety into my glass. And both were fantastic, perhaps every bit as good as the Galaxy Dry Hopped Fort Point I had previously. Both were also very murky, and had that "juicy" quality to them.

You could say it was all in my head, but during my first experience purchasing from the brewery, this whole "New England IPA" thing hadn't become popular. So I wasn't influenced into thinking murky translated to "better". Quite the opposite at the time in fact.

 

I still don't see murky as 'better'...to me, it still represents faulty (or even sloppy) technique, at least with regard to some 'styles'.
However, I know full well that there are many who disagree. To each his own.

Bottom line is that a massively hopped ale (even if early, late, and dry hopped-- for bittering, flavor, and aroma respectively) most definitely doesn't have to be murky or 'cloudy', even if it is unfiltered. There are brewers that choose to release their ales looking that way either by design, a lack of knowledge of how to prevent it, or even ambivalence about it. They might even insist that it's normal for hoppy beers, and that's how they spin it.
But I guess as long as folks like it, buy it, and the brewer is making money on it, his primary goal is achieved.

And as we are clearly seeing nowadays, taste and fashion do change (just as they did a few hundred years ago when purists expressed outrage at the notion of hops being introduced to the brewing of ale ).

 

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to purchase two bottles of the same Trillium beer and have somebody serve them to you blindfolded. You should conduct a triangle test where you drink three beers with two of the beers being the same and see if you could identify the odd beer. I would suggest that you take this one step further and provide an assessment of the murky/opaque beer vs. the other beer.

Make sure that the beers are all served at the same temperature and in the same type of glass.

Nothing beats a blind beer drinking evaluation and in this case it actually means blind as in blindfolded.

Cheers!

 

This is my understanding as well, that it's simply lazy brewing, but if it sells and it's what the consumer wants you can't fault them for it right?

This sounds like a solid idea, if I try this I will report my findings.

Even though you're brewing a clone, have you had Fort Point Pale Ale?

 

A more interesting and more recent change in fashion involves expecting beer to be clear. Once upon a time, when drinking from a traditional German beer stein, for example, one couldn't tell if the beer was clear or not and with the lid closed most of the time to keep flies out lots of folks wouldn't be looking into the stein much anyway.

Then advances in glass making technology reached the point that the wealthy merchant class, for example, could afford clear glassware for use when serving dinner to one's guest (which might just include one or more members of the nobility who would have been able to afford such luxury items long before). So there is reason to argue that at that time there was a dramatic increase in the desirability of having clear beer to serve in the glassware.

 

Below is something I posted previously concerning the history of drinking beer from clear glasses:

According to Martyn Cornell the use of glassware to drink beer in Britain was not popular until the later part of the 1800’s:

“However, in Britain glass remained relatively expensive until the abolition of the glass tax in 1845, which caused an “immense” increase in the production of glass of all kinds. But even after that date, the evidence suggests that glass drinking vessels remained rare in pubs until the end of the Victorian period.”

Note: the end of the Victorian period is around 1900.

https://zythophile.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/more-notes-towards-a-history-of-the-beer-mug/

Michael Jackson wrote:

“By the 1870s, golden lagers had spread from the southeast of Germany to the northwest, where the city of Dortmund, in Westphalia, was developing its own style. The classic Dortmunder lager is firmer bodied and drier, with an alcohol content of around 4.4 percent by weight, 5.5 by volume. Golden lagers began to gain popularity when opaque stoneware steins gave way to mass-produced glass.”

It appears that glassware for lagers become popular in the later part of the 1800’s (e.g., 1870) and glassware for British Beer became popular towards the turn of the century (circa 1900).

Cheers!

 

FWIW, I personally would never say citrus is the predominant flavor of SNPA, Harpoon IPA, or Celebration or comparable to Anchor Liberty, other than they come from a similar time period. Certainly I taste some citrus in those, but the balancing malts and pine/earthy hops make them very different to my tastes - they are more well-rounded classic examples of APA/IPA than the citrus dominated "New England" variety. Your results my vary of course.

Also, I definitely need to grab some Liberty again, because I'm second-guessing myself now...

Yesterday evening I was musing about other classic IPAs with a dominant citrus flavor and Bell's Two-Hearted and Hopslam came to mind. Again they don't have the murky cloudy look, but to my tastes the C-hops on the sweet pale malts are all citrus to my tastes. When I first started drinking craft beers (2002-ish) I avoided all IPAs because of the piney bitterness of so many. But it was an accidental encounter with Bell's Two-Hearted and it's unexpected grapefruit citrus intensity that made me do a complete 180 on IPAs and I still love Two-Hearted today. Hopslam is a bit sweeter to me, but I get a similar citrus-dominated flavor profile. So, I'll also nominate Two-Hearted and Hopslam as possible original citrus bomb IPAs.