No love for malt

You can also season your beer with stuff other than hops. Just sayin'.

 

In an ideal world that would be true. This is not the ideal world and just because someone says their beer is something does not make it so.

 

Depends on the style though and the Brewers skill. Malty IPAs suck, but you need enough to avoid the terrible session label. A nice malt backbone in a Oktoberfest beer is the king, with a kiss of hops of course. Malt is like salt , used wisely and in proportion it's magic.[/QUOTE]

I disagree with this respectfully. Malt is the canvas that allows beer to shine and not a secondary player. If you've ever had a thin bodied IPA that tastes like boiled hop water you know what I mean. A perfect malt balance for the style is truely masterful. I'm more impressed by a brewery that understand malt and can make a balanced beer than someone who can just dry hop a beer to hell and call it an IPA.
If you look at what breweries are making the best ipas I bet it would be the malt that is making the difference for you. They are all using citra, galaxy, and nelson. But when you take a sip of that great IPA and you get a perfect balanced mouthfeel and flavor followed by a hop explosion. That is a special beer and that is all because of malt. I think a lot of people hate cloying sweetness from crystal malts and that's what is getting this all twisted.

 

Agreed 100%.

Malt is not just about sweetness. It's about building a foundation for the rest of the flavors of the beer, generated by the hops and yeast, to sit atop.

 

Agreed. This why I think the Sunny Delite beers shouldn't be called IPAs. But, There are clear differences between Malty IPAs and Hoppy Barleywines. They are not interchangeable.

 

Right, and there are styles of beer that don't use hops at all. Thus, my point hops not being "needed".

 

NEIPAs are to IPAs what Sunny D is to fresh squeezed OJ. I like that analogy.

I should just sit back and let you paint yourself into a corner with that one, as there is some SERIOUS overlap between the two and that's not even taking into consideration what breweries want to call certain beers.

 

Maybe not by the style guidelines, but those pesky brewers refuse to follow them!

 

This is in fact a terrible analogy. It would make sense if NEIPAs were full of artificial flavorings and sugar I guess.

 

Ehh . . . I'm gonna go with it anyway.

 

When I'm drinking an IPA I don't really want the focus to be on the malt but more of a casual wink like "I see what you did there". You made this perfect.

American barleywines and over crystalized IPA are pretty much my nightmare. Give me a nice English barleywine with its great malt backbone and nuances from the yeast and alcohol and I'm a happy man. As soon as someone starts making that a hoppy bitter mess I want to scrape my tongue. Same goes for American strong ale. I know this will seem like blasphemy but I really really REALLY dislike arrogant bastard.

 

I guess Stone was right when they said, "This is an aggressive beer. You probably won't like it."

 

"I'm not worthy" haha

 

Taste * aroma = flavor

I think when you get tastes and aromas that combine to create flavors that are incongruous or uncommon, most people don't like it. For this reason, I think caramel malts don't belong in bitter beers -- you end up with a flavor akin to burnt sugar. And regardless of the actual sweetness of the beer, people will complain that it's too sweet because it "smells" sweet (i.e. they associate caramel aromas with a sweet taste, but since the beer is bitter, they are thrown).

Too often it's stated that hop bitterness "balances" sweetness. To a certain point, this is correct -- in small amounts, bitterness and sweetness "cancel out" and you get something that is perceived as neither sweet nor bitter. But this only works in small doses. When you taste something that is both very sweet and very bitter, the two tastes stop cancelling and rather combine to become bittersweet, which can work for some styles of beer, but is usually not welcome in something like an IPA. I tend to prefer IPAs that choose to "balance" bitterness with hop aromas and leave the malts to provide subtle, aromatic background.

 

This is why some Brewers create magic , and the others produce another IPA.

 

Well they were right about me not liking it anyway.

It’s an aggressively marketed beer. You might not like it if you don’t have any thing to prove by sucking down a bitter mess of a beer.

 

I am not following you? If a beer such as an IPA is more malt than hops you will see people comment on this. As a whole I don't see a over the top opposition against malt? Can you give us an example of what your having issue with, it would help with your question.

 

I read the label, barleywine, yup tastes good. Not going to be confused with some kind o IPA. Going to pick up my case of bigfoot after work today. YRMV.

 

I dream of a world where someone modernizes English bitters where beers where the hops and the malt are the stars of the show. The complexity from both is just amazing when done right. I feel like if someone could figure it out with more modern and non-English hops and source some great complex specialty grains, it would be pretty amazing. I really do enjoy English hops, but I am definitely in that minority of modern craft beer drinkers.

 

I find that when a thing is already perfect, there is no need to improve upon it.