Non-Hazy IPAs That Get Hype?

Locally, it's almost all casual drinkers or craft drinkers that just got started. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. People that want to try it once because someone told them it was the best beer in the world. The beer community doesn't talk about it and I don't really know anyone actively seeking it out beyond that desire to try it once or revisit it if they stumble upon a bottle. Then again, it's not like many people have anything negative to say about it. It's just kind of there. Around here, it's permanently on at the Falling Rock and in regular rotation at a few other places. Trick is, it's only for sale in a handful of markets.
When I think about hype, I think about beer geeks lining up at 6am, overrating limited items for trade value, buying crates, driving to the middle of nowhere, buying it consistently, etc. Pliny the Elder doesn't really have that. Your random uncle is probably more likely to perk up at the mention of it, but it gets a shrug from most geeks. The Younger still gets some legit hype, though. Probably mostly due to availability, but (again) it's not like people don't like it.

 

San Diego breweries have been making fruity ipas with these newer hop profiles for quite a while now. Since Before the NE thing. Alot of them are more fruity and less bitter. Some are clear some are unfiltered and some are murky some are bitter. There's also alot of pale ales that have some danker, hoppy, bitterness than an avg pale ale. Some call it SD Style. I don't really know. But I do know that there have been a lot of ipas from San Diego that are not classic west coast C-hop ipas for a while now. Using mosaic and Citra and new zealand hops that are now used in alot of NE ipas. IDK if I'm the first one to notice or point this out, but NE ipa is actually just like a San Diego Pale Ale with stuff added to make it look unfiltered or super cloudy.

 

Pliny is still one of the best but it's kinda hard to get. There are plenty of options almost as good as Pliny that are cheaper and way more available. I still think it's hard to beat. I think it's still hyped. They're just still trying to make it seem like its something exclusive when there are actually plenty of other beers now that are so similar.

 

My first experience with the "style" was Aurora Hoppyalis from Karl Strauss. It's brewed with all the fruity hops, two-row, and a bit of white wheat (for head retention, they say). I loved it at the time. It was fruity, but still bitter and dry. It inspired my first homebrewed IPA, actually. It wasn't long after that I received my first Trillium and Tired Hands beers in a trade, and I saw where this was headed. Then NE style hazy beers started showing up as special releases from breweries near me, and now I can find them on the shelf year-round.

I think once the haze craze dies down a bit, these fruity, clear IPAs will do very well again. I actually prefer this style, and am beginning to wish I could still find them.

 

When we were in Temecula last year we went to Electric Brewing and had a handful of beers that at the time I broadly considered NE IPAs (at least as opposed to classic West Coast examples). Are they one of the breweries you have in mind or are they newer to the game?

Whatever it was the beer was tasty and it was a really cool space as well. We also thought it was notable how excited the clientele seemed to be there. It had a very welcoming vibe and it seemed like the locals were very proud of the place.

 

Hop Drop and Roll is an incredible west coast style IPA from NODA in good ol NC.

 

Nice. I've never heard of that brewery but I am definitely interested now. Thank you. But yes you are right. A lot of these newer breweries out here are doing alot of newer style ipas that are more fruity and less bitter. Some are just a little unfiltered some are jumping on the super murky NE hype train. But even during the WCIPA craze and since at least about 2014 there have been breweries making ipas that taste similar to what alot of people are considering to be new. Or New England. Ive never tried heady topper yet but from what I gather is it has hop bitterness even tho it's unfiltered. I would think that heady topper would be considered what a NEIPA should be but im not sure if it's considered NE Style or not. Sounds like its just a good unfiltered ipa.

 

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to be making a claim as to what style their beers were, I was genuinely asking where you thought they fell (if you knew of them). I was actually kind of hoping they'd been doing it for a while and had predated being influenced by recent trends

Don't want to derail the thread but you're right that Heady is still pretty bitter and a lot of people would view it as a precursor (or the progenitor?) of the Treehouse/Trillium sorts of beers rather than another example of them. For whatever its worth, I thought the Electric beers reminded me more of Treehouse than of Heady Topper.

ETA: We didn't get to the brewery but we also picked up a 4 pack of Refuge Brewery's Grapefruit IPA and I thought it was awesome. And I say that as someone who never much cared for Ballast Point's version. Some good beer going on out there in what is otherwise a wine town!

 

Yes. I agree with you so much. Thank you. Ive been needing someone who actually knows whats up to clarify. I noticed this even before the Aurora hoppyalis but I think I was kinda late to the Karl Strauss party anyway.

 

Yea I get what ur saying. I agree. Ive never had tree house or any of them. I've only had NE ipa that were brewed by west coast breweries. I like them. Not sure if there are any actual guidelines of what a NE Ipa is anyway but I am curious if the Electric brewery you speak of... Are their ipas just unfiltered or do they look like orange juice? Do they have dankness, mild bitterness, or no bitterness? I'm also wondering about their malt profile but to start i really just wanna know about hops and bitterness compared to a WCIPA. And how they compare to NE IPA brewed by a west coast brewery.

 

Odd side ales has a line of " dank juice" ipas with different flavor profiles and a dipa version. I had one of the dipas, frank dank juice the other day. It's somewhere between two hearted and a NEIPA in my opinion. Good beer from a good brewery. They also do normal ipas, stouts, sours, etc.

 

Yeah I was a little late to the party, since my formative beer drinking days were in Indiana. Three Floyds is great, but Indiana is not exactly a trend-setting place. It wasn't until I moved out west that I discovered there were a lot of different styles of IPA.

 

Fire Skulls & Money, MoZee, Hopsmack & DDH Psuedo Sue are all opaque haze bombs. Source: my eyeballs on fresh bottles.

 

I'm hesitant to offer too many details about a brewery I drank for a weekend more than a year ago so I don't want to get too far down into the weeds here. None of their beers would have been confused with anything from Ballast Point (which had an outpost just down the road that we also went to).

They broadly reminded me of the soft, hazy, hugely aromatic, mild to moderately bitter, fruity beers that I associate with Treehouse. I remember thinking they were somewhat more bitter than the average TH beer, but for me that's a feature and not a bug.

At the time I was surprised and thought "wow, these beers have even caught on all the way out here in the belly of the WC IPA", which is why I was curious if they were the sort of brewery you were mentioning that was making beers roughly along these lines before the latest trends took hold nationally.

 

I participated in this tasting, and while it did provide interesting results, I don't know that it's really indicative of anything. We had water and unsalted table crackers. Palate fatigue had set in pretty greatly during beers 10-20. There was discussion about the samples amongst the tasters.

I think a better test would be the same recipe clarified vs. non-clarified and the tasters don't know what the difference is in the beers and why they are tasting them.

 

We brew a beer called The Great Oatdoors. It is an oatmeal IPA with Idaho 7 & Azacca hops, both bringing forth great citrus notes. The beer is completely clarified. We've received very positive feedback thus far. Come try it out!

 

I seek out Highland Park west coast ipa can releases when ever they do them. That to me is the closest to 'hype' I've seen. Also tend to gravitate to El Segundo day one releases, anything Beachwood, and some smaller spots like Chapman crafted and green cheek. Hoping to see some west coast cans of the latter two, but crowler and growler fills work for my consumption needs

 

I agree with you here.

I wonder how this could happen? I don't think a commercial brewery would be willing to do this. Some homebrewers could do this by brewing a batch of a so called 'NE' style IPA but the ultimate way to "clarify" for this sort of a taste experiment would be to filter the beer; I do not know of any fellow homebrewers who have the ability to filter their beers.

Maybe Weedy (@honkey) has some thoughts here?

Cheers!

@SierraTerence @Sixpoint @MostlyNorwegian

 

Disagree with the filter thing. I know a couple of the clear beers in that list use clarifying agents only. Many breweries are using centrifuge only. However, with the heavy protein and polyphenol content in the some of the NEIPA, clarifying with fining agents only becomes more difficult.

I actually have a recent batch of the Dry Dock IPA with two different finishing treatments.

 

Moonraker's "All Hops On Deck"
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45975/246284/
Gottalotta hype in Hayward recently