Tree House NEIPA Dominance

Certainly could be, after all if I traded a premium for a beer I didn’t like in proportion to what I expected and what I paid , I might deflect and not be so critical in my reviewing. Wouldn’t make it bad, but bell and whistles wouldn’t go off, and the earth wouldn’t move. You hope for that, but it’s a tall order.

 

not sure if this has been said here, but a lot of the ratings for the Treehouse beers are from years ago where their slant on IPA's was super unique. I think nowadays there are many breweries producing the same caliber of IPA's that treehouse is (Other Half, Monkish, Electric, Hill Farmstead, etc).

 

How are these beers holding up when tasted blindly? I wish these traders would share their results. You never see many winning medals or attempting to. Very odd stuff.

I remember when I would trade for pTe. Local options then could get much closer to that than Th and Trillium. But local options now are very close. It's all coming full circle for most metro area residents now.

 

They absolutely are.

 

They're not winning medals because they're not sending it to competitions to be judged. They're selling everything out of their own place. They clearly don't feel like they need to win medals. I haven't seen TH beers in Paste Magazine's competitions either but I will say they are frequently listed on "beers you need to try" lists.

I have not done many TH versus blind tasting (the only one I did was Green vs Congress Street a few years ago) but I think that their beers would at least stand out versus the others if you put them against NEIPAs. I honestly don't know if they would "win" because I think other breweries produce more flavorful IPAs (Monkish, Other Half) or better feature the hops (HF). As I've said before, the TH house yeast blend produces a mouthfeel that has not been duplicated. It is their competitive advantage and how they stay unique in this ever homogenizing market.

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for TH because I don't think that their IPAs are the best. However, I do think that they have a very unique product that still stands out. I don't know if I posted in this main forum or the NE forum but I don't necessarily crave other breweries' IPAs anymore because I can get something locally (I moved to NoVA) that is comparable to most. I crave TH because their IPAs are distinct (but not necessarily better). I realize this doesn't really explain the ratings discrepancy because there's no "uniqueness category" for ratings/reviews though, but their uniqueness and the "wow, I've never tasted anything like this" factor could play into people's favorable view on TH beers.

 

Lines certainly don't equal greatness, but I am curious, do any other breweries that produce as much beer as Tree House have lines almost every day to get beer? I am not talking about special releases, but just the everyday open for business kind of business. And certainly there are times when Tree House has minimal lines, but in my visits over the years, (not sure how many but at least 100) I have only walked in to get beer without waiting behind someone twice. I am just interested in getting some perspective.

 

I don't think it's just the mouthfeel. Pretty sure it drives a lot of the juicy-bubblegum flavors they're known for as well. Didn't someone figure out that they're using like 5% hefe yeast or something?

Personally, I think the beers have gotten too dominated by the yeast/fermentation profile, they've really pushed that aspect in most of their IPA range and it makes everything taste the same to me. I sort of had this confirmed recently when a friend gave me a can of Bright (uses a "clean" yeast instead of the house blend), and it was the first Tree House IPA that actually made me want to get out there in years.

 

I don't know of any other large craft brewery known for matching Tree House's lines, but it's important to bear in mind that the lines are a huge part of its marketing effort. In the short term, Tree House could raise prices, which would reduce the size of the lines and generate more revenue. Of course, that would risk creating a backlash, and the lines are obvious visual evidence that their product is in demand. Thus, the lines generate buzz and hype and even bigger lines in a virtuous cycle (virtuous from Tree House's perspective; it's not so beneficial to customers who are wasting their time standing in lines while providing free advertising or failing to obtain the product because Tree House chooses to employ artificial scarcity tactics). I'll also note that many states' laws don't allow breweries to sell from the brewery in convenient sizes or in bulk, or the states have production limits for breweries selling without distributing, so many breweries are prohibited by law from attempting to mimic Tree House's model.

 

You're missing all the best NEIPA brewers in your back yard! Arvon (Jurassic Haze, DeTour Reef, basically everything they're making) and Transient (Permastank, Rainbows and Waterfalls, The Juice Is Loose, more) are making the best haze in West Michigan, and you'd do well to check out HOMES in Ann Arbor, making some of the best NEIPAs in Michigan as well. And of course, you should be drinking M-43, Boss Tweed, and really all the NEIPAs that Old Nation makes.

I just did a trip through Alchemist, HF, and Treehouse, and I think Treehouse stood out as having the best array of hazy juice bombs. HF was remarkable for the depth of flavor and the craftsmanship, but they're definitely different NEIPAs in feel, look, smell. The best Michigan haze definitely stacks up against the East Coast stuff that carries more hype. The Treehouse beers I've had are as good as anything, but the gap between them and the field doesn't seem gigantic to me, at least when comparing the breweries' best offerings.

 

Looks pretty "New England style" to me. Some of their IPAs aren't, but some are.

https://www.*.com/uploads/cache/Screenshot_2019-01-30Brandonchecked-inonUntappd-500x500-crop.png

Yup, all of this.

I'd be curious if they'd have such a huge dominance in the ratings if they were distributed.

Not great lighting, but they definitely brew New England IPAs now.



Here's another random one from the internet.

https://www.*.com/uploads/cache/Screenshot_2018-12-28KingSue-TopplingGoliathBrewingCoPhotos-Untappd-500x500-crop.png

Yup, they have been in Paste's blind tastings.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/07/324-of-the-best-ipas-blind-tasted-and-ranked.html

Green was #17 in this one. I think that might have been the only beer from TH in this tasting though. It's also almost a year old.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...t-dipaimperial-ipas-blind-tasted-and.html?a=1

This one's double IPAs, not singles. And it's from 2017. Bright was #6 on this list, but you can tell the difference even a year makes in terms of competition. The 2018 one had 324 IPAs, while the 2017 tasting only had 177.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...st-pale-ales-blind-tasted-and-ranked.html?p=2

This one is pale ales from last year. Lights On was #35. Although I'd argue "pale ales" aren't their wheel house, that's more Trillium's game.

I could go to older ones, but I don't think that would be representative of the competition in 2019. Seeing as the point of this thread is asking whether Tree House is worth the hype with all the competition in today's craft beer world.

 

Re: Toppling Goliath: That's exactly the type of "superficiality" to which I was referring. Turbidity alone does not a New England IPA make. I recently had a Toppling Goliath Scorpius Morchella. It was properly attenuated, bitter, barely "juicy," and didn't have a particularly soft mouthfeel. It had that classic Toppling Goliath grassiness. It also looked as murky-ugly as King Sue in that picture, as is unfortunately de rigueur among IPAs in general in 2019. Like many other Toppling Goliath IPAs, it's wrongly classified as a New England IPA on this site.

 

Some of those pictures from my post above didn't come out, this should fix it.

I've had multiple IPAs from Toppling Goliath since they were distributed to MA. We'll have to agree to disagree, they've all tasted like New England IPAs to me.

 

Ya it does seem that instagram culture has pushed a certain appearance to the forefront and that many people now think that a neipa is any hoppy beer that isn't clear. I haven't had anything from the most esteemed neipa brewers but I was under the impression that what distinguishes it from the rest of American ipa-dom is the soft, thick mouth feel and a flavor that lacks bitterness and is dominated by fruit juice flavors

 

And then there's VT ipas. I visit the area once a year and I see Vermont style ipas listed often. Many people/consumers have bunched them all together. Today's average consumer is left super confused. I tend to often take 45 minutes at beer stores when I visit. Is a VT IPA simply an IPA brewed in Vt? You don't see the NE moniker much out there.

Most VT ipas tend to be pushing a lack of Bitterness, with a bit more sweetness. No apparent softness or pillowy texture. Kind of a fruitier old
School east coast ipa vibe on a lot of them.

I did the whole HF and TH treks last year. I don't know if I'd do them again. Lots of comparable product all around. Just locally, I get enough of a solid fix that I don't crave the style when traveling. Trillium beer garden was amazing two years back. The prices and plastic cups not so much. The FOMO on stuff that you've had before is quite the addicting aspect of THs products. Even regular releases sell out. Prices were great for it's quality. I will give them that. You can really get caught up in everything besides the beer with many NE area breweries. They know how to sell the whole Package.

I did foam and Burlington bc and Foley brothers a year or two back. I don't see myself needing to travel back up to Burlington. Lots Of comparable options yet people still have that need to go to the 'mecca', be it HF, TH, TrIllium. Fun to try and say you've done it. But the beer world is vast.

 

For the record, Toppling Goliath IPAs predate New England IPAs (though not Vermont IPAs). Like Vermont IPAs (which seem to be a mostly independent evolution that arrived at a similar spot to Toppling Goliath's output), they're spins on a particular subset of unfiltered West Coast IPAs that date back to at least the 1990s. Indeed, "hazy" IPAs long predate The Alchemist let alone Tree House, although admittedly few were as murky as has become the contemporary fashion.

Toppling Goliath IPAs, like a lot of other non-New-England IPAs, in recent years have been influenced by NEIPA-correlated consumer tastes to become more turbid and, to a lesser extent, juicier and less bitter, but, again, that's the new industry standard for IPAs broadly. Toppling Goliath IPAs never have relied on the sweetening effects of residual sugar, on "pillowy" palates, or on a remarkable eschewal of bitterness (while most Toppling Goliath IPAs aren't as high in bitterness as the best of typical WCIPAs, they're far more bitter than the vast majority of NEIPAs, and some Toppling Goliath IPAs, such as Gamma, Gamma Ray!, are in fact outstandingly bitter to this day). Toppling Goliath IPAs most notably share a distinctive grassiness or a combination of herbal and grainy flavor qualities that almost never are present in NEIPAs.

"New England" shouldn't just be an inessential appendage to "IPA" now that the majority of newly released IPAs are hazy in appearance and at least somewhat juicy and lower in experienced bitterness than most of their pre-NEIPA predecessors. You can call Toppling Goliath beers "pre-NEIPAs;" they certainly were a large influence on Tree House. You can call them "post-NEIPAs" in the sense that they've become backwards-influenced by NEIPAs and have shifted to suit tastes shaped in concert with the NEIPA craze. Calling them "New England IPAs," however, shows ignorance, albeit a very common one, of the history, characteristics, and appeal of various IPA subcategories.

 

Well the plastic cups are because you can't drink in an outdoor beer garden in Boston with glass.

And the prices are just Trillium prices...even at bars in Boston those are what their beers cost.

No worries, in a couple years there will be different "beer meccas".

 

I think you're splitting hairs here.

If you put King Sue/Fire Skulls and Money in a blind tasting with DDH Congress Street/Heavy Mettle from Trillium I would bet one couldn't easily pick out which were from Toppling Goliath and which were from Trillium.

Throw in Heady Topper or Sip of Sunshine though and I think you easily could tell the difference (with opaque cups of course). And throw in something like Stone IPA and you DEFINITELY could.

 

I'll flip that on you: I think if you did an extra-blind IPA tasting in which you used opaque drinking vessels and didn't look at the liquid, the aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel differences to an experienced palate between most Toppling Goliath IPAs and any actual New England IPAs would be vast, albeit not as vast as that between more traditional WCIPAs and NEIPAs.

I think the more interesting question with regard to Toppling Goliath IPAs isn't "Are they NEIPAs?" but rather "Are they WCIPAs?" I'd tend to answer no in both cases, but there's more room for debate with the latter question.

 

Honestly the classification of anything that's simply not immediately recognizable as a NEIPA as a WCIPA instead is far more annoying to me than what you initially complained about. It seems like for some consumers, all IPAs that contain non-juice notes, clarity, or predated NEIPA as a style get called West Coast by default.

 

Sure, I hear you. Vermont IPAs and Toppling Goliath IPAs both derive directly from the California/Oregon/Washington brewpub (i.e., non-distributed) unfiltered IPA tradition of the '90s and '00s, so both do represent evolutions of a certain type of West Coast IPA. But "West Coast," like "New England," certainly gets slapped onto beers to which it does not apply.

The Northeast, with its tradition of relatively low-bitterness, malt-forward, English-hewing East Coast IPAs, never took to non-Vermont-style WCIPAs as much as most of the rest of the country did, so the Vermont IPAs stood out there more than other WCIPAs did elsewhere. Those beers were made more palatable to northeastern tastes with their juicy flavors and slightly toned-down bitterness. New England IPAs took things several steps further by taking the Vermont IPA base and dialing up the juiciness and, most notably, the sweetness and dialing down (way down) the bitterness.

I live in the Midwest, where we have our own proud but sadly waning tradition of simultaneously highly hoppy and highly malty Midwest IPAs that tend to be relatively dark in color by IPA standards. Toppling Goliath IPAs, despite Toppling Goliath's quintessentially midwestern location in the northeastern corner of Iowa, aren't "Midwest IPAs" by any means.