Juiciest West Coast IPA?

Juicy is the new Dank.

 

Probably Sam Adams Rebel IPA.

 

My opinion on the word juicy is usually that big orange juice or grapefruit flavor that works perfectly with the bitterness of the hops. I'm in New York and try not to miss an other half release be it on tap or in a can, I make my Vermont and Mass rounds, drink sip regularly yada yada... and I believe that my best recommendation in this style in California breweries is (obviously already said in this thread but...) Cellarmaker and Societe, Overall these breweries IPAs were excellent and remind me of my favorites out here on the east coast, Noble Ale Works also deserves honorable mention they did have SEVERAL good IPAs (nose candy was my favorite), just not on the same huge juicy level as Societe and Cellarmaker. Man I miss Cali.

 

Just had Half Hitch and will concur with that recommendation as well as The Coachman mention. Mo' Nelson from Cellarmaker qualifies as well. Kiln & Cone from Holy Mountain. Hoppy Birthday from Alpine. Lots of Lagunitas beers.

Honestly, to achieve a juicy IPA you need only take Mosaic, Citra or occasionally Nelson (and actually a number of newer/experimental hops) and make them explode in a beer while making the malt take a back seat. The beer ends up chockfull of orange and grapefruit, pineapple, mango and passionfruit (which initiates the juicy connection) and with the light body, zestiness, slight stickiness and sweetness, you've got something that tastes and feels juicy. The East Coast versions seem to use only less malt and achieve more sweetness and more aroma, which I think creates the perception of being juicier.

And just because I'm here, I'll mention that Project Dank (constantly changing recipe) can occasionally be juicy as hell (Elevated too, sometimes, despite generally being a more piney, malt-present beer). Also, Yellow Rose is my favorite juice bomb and like Dank and Elevated doesn't fall in the West Coast IPA category by geography. Yellow Rose, at its best, tastes like an agua de melon (Cantaloupe juice) and I could drink it by the gallons.

 

Chico is actually not very flocculant for an ale yeast, especially compared to most "English" yeast strains. You can make a muddy Chico beer as easily as any other strain. Yeast is pretty irrelevant when you are talking heavily dry-hopped beer and appearance. This is about brewers giving zero fucks about appearance. Any of these beers could be made at least mostly clear with some effort but they are not. That's a stylistic choice. I think that you can make better looking beer that tastes and smells just as good, but it takes more effort, time, and resources to accomplish.

I didn't say that these beers are made "cheaply" but that the process is less expensive. After using all those hops, it doesn't surprise me that they would find it advantageous to cut some cost in the cellar. They have to be profitable and people will only pay so much for an IPA...

 

Compared to Conan, Chico falls like ball bearings dropped from an airplane.

It also is finicky when it comes to temperature, as opposed to Chico which is forgiving, and it doesn't give you as many generations of predictable results as Chico, so it is harder to use, so it requires more skill every step of the way.

I suggest New England IPA spend no less time in tank than any West Coast Chico IPA you can name, in fact probably more time, on average, due to the preponderance of beers out here being made with double dry hopping. Additionally, Chico finishes faster, so add this as opposition to your charge.

And, as far as looks go, the cloudy suspension of particles is 1. What folks around here, and many others on your side of town too, apparently, consider to be a good look (I know every friend I have and myself too drool for that look in our IPA), and 2. A part of the flavor that adds to what we like about our IPA around here.

It is in the eyes and palates of the beholders, perhaps you have noticed this thread was started as an homage to NE IPA, and you and few others are the ones sensitive about appearance. Unless you want to complain that hefe's have a bad appearance too, I suggest if most folks think cloudy looks good for a style, then cloudy looks good.

I drank Heady back in the brewpub days when it was less cloudy than now and it tastes even better nowadays with its thick and cloudy, breautiful appearance.

Again, just my .02., based only on what I and all my friends feel about the IPA we love, and experiences we have had with Conan and some other English yeasts in our homebrew club trying to recreate our favorite NE style IPA's.

 

Good point I'm not sure what it means.

 

Mega Fortunate Islands - Modern Times! Juicy as fuck!

 

It's specifically citrus/juicy tropical fruit flavors with the yeast/malt profile that enhances the juice comparison in both flavor, texture, and appearance. It's not apple, pear, banana, or fruity in the normal beer sense that usually relates to yeast esters (so people don't say fruity so as not to be confusing). Think of biting into a peach, orange, pineapple, melon or mango. It's like that, but with no fruit added. You could also say "So an IPA with lots of citrus flavors is juicy?" To which I would say sometimes yes, but as this thread makes clear 80% of IPAs out there are citrusy, especially in a grapefruit kind of way (so people don't say just citrusy so as not to be confusing). The malt and yeast in most IPAs don't interact in the same way to get that juicy effect, though. I'd welcome a more specific or unique term, but juicy has kind of stuck organically.

 

Anything and everything hoppy from Boneyard!!

 

I'd say it's brewers prioritizing flavor over appearance instead of just not giving a fuck about it, first off. Secondly, all you have to do is head to the last 2 Trillium threads in the New England forum to see what happens when these beers get less hazy. Perception or reality on a taste difference? I'm not sure. http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...pany-december-2015.359947/page-2#post-4320021 (skip the Parenting Advocate comments)

 

It sure seems like you are suggesting that not only are suspended yeast and particulates a 'necessary evil , but actually beneficial? I believe that's just going too far. My own experience with Heady is that it's better decanted. There's a big difference between hazy and turbid; and when things are influencing the flavor then I'd say something like a centrifuge can be beneficial.

 

I don't know if I've ever have had a "juicy" IPA, but I've had some damn good ones

 

A peach does not taste like an orange or pineapple or melon or mango. So juicy just means it tastes like some combination of fruit? People realize the definition of juicy has nothing to do with tasting like fruit, right???

 

Part of the trouble is that like many other terms that are used on this board there is no set definition of juicy. Many poster seem to make their own definitions. As "ding" used to say "definitions are important"!

 

What I am saying is Julius, Congress Street, Heady, Double Sunshine, All Green Everything, Higher Standard, Ephraim, Susan, Divided By Zero, and a bunch of others all are very cloudy/turbid to varying degrees, and are the most delicious IPA I have ever tasted.

I find the idea that these beers could be more delicious if made a different way improbable, but perhaps you are right.

I sure have had a lot of less cloudy/clear IPA that weren't as good.

Edit: And we all in this thread realize there are hop particles in the cloudiness of NE IPA's, not just yeast and protein?

 

Tastes like orange juice. Grapefruit juice. Combination of the two. Really. Stop torturing yourself and procure one.....

 

It's like "dank"--one of those things where you just know it when you taste it. To make it very simple, for me, it's that the beer tastes a lot like citrus juice. Not just hints of it, but full-on juice. The first beer I tasted it in was an early batch of Mastermind--I swear it tasted like lightly carbed Tropicana OJ. As others have mentioned, this quality is extremely present in Trillium, Tree House, and, for whatever reason, many other turbid beers. I don't know enough about brewing or chemistry to explain it any further, but I can tell you that this simply is not the taste I find in Boneyard beers, or many of the beers mentioned on the first page. Boneyard fits the piney/resinous end of the spectrum where many WC IPAs lie, including Pliny as the most famous example.

I don't know . . . the more of these discussions I come across, I wonder about individual palate differences. Maybe some people can't tell the difference between juicy and piney. I say that with total objectivity, and I wonder about my own palate sometimes. For example, for the life of me, I've never tasted the onion that many people find prominent in Enjoy By. (I can, however, recall exactly one batch that tasted more juicy to me--ha.)

To flog a dead horse just a little, I laughed out loud at Simtra being called juicy; that might be the most piney, boozy beer that's ever crossed my lips. Also, I'd say pre-Green Flash Nelson and Duet were much more "winey" (in a great way) than juicy, a quality that's been completely lost in GF versions.

EDIT: Another super juicy beer is fresh Captain's Daughter . . . almost like the Mastermind I mentioned.

 

Yes I realize different fruits taste differently, and different beers use different hops to evoke different flavors... The rest of your questions are answered in the rest of my previous post. It's not as simple as tasting like fruit, the interplay of the hops, yeast, and malts tastes succulent, as in the definition of juicy.

 

100% correct here... the only West Coast ones that I have ever had that compare are Noble Ale works "Showers" ones.. Mosaic-Citra- and Galaxy were more East Coast style.. and they were a step down from the NE but still really awesome...