Northeast Haze through a microscope

Cones or Pellets? You lost 2 gallons to 2 lbs. You would lose 4 gallons to 4 lbs. In a 5 gallons batch that would net 1 gallon of beer out. Hops presses are a device used by some breweries to recover product.

 

Looking at the top IPA list, maybe the judges should adjust their criteria..

 

It was all whole leaf Centennial. It wasn't all lost to the hops. Some was lost in the boil and some was lost along with the trub when transferring to secondary, but I probably did lose at least a gallon to hop absorption. I hadn't considered squeezing the hops, but if I try that recipe again I'll definitely do it.

 

I'm completely twisting the intent and context of the line above, but the other side of the equation is that there appears to be consumers out there that don't subscribe to this... they interpret thick haze as a sign of "quality."

I wonder how much the visual nature of media like BeerAdvocate has contributed to the rise in popularity (and production) of beers like this. Where one attribute of a beer can be presented more objectively (or the illusion of). People see the picture of the beer and they evaluate the desirability or quality of that beer from the picture. Of course people do this from written words too and they evaluate the appearance of the beer in front of them, but would things be different if Smellevision replaced television just as Elmer Fudd imagined it would?

 

It's a chicken and egg question. I've been drinking IPAs since around 1990. Until the last 3-4 years they have all been more or less clear. Given my location, I have pretty easy access to some of the more well known "hazy" IPA producers, including Treehouse, Trillium, Alchemist & Hill Farmstead.

I must confess that the IPAs/DIPA's from those brewers are some of the best I've had. They also seem to be stylistically different, with low bitterness and strong hop aromas and flavors. I think some people simply note that they are hazy and associate that style profile with haze. Whether it deserves that association or not is an open question. I don't find Lawson's Double Sunshine particularly hazy, and it is amazing. I think PtE is a great beer and it isn't hazy. The risk is that brewers will make a "bad" hazy beer to gain association with those amazing hazy beers. But that won't last if the quality isn't there.

 

I remember Shane (@Sixpoint) commenting on a BA's IPA taste test last year that waiting at least one week after bottling/canning date was good practice to experience those beers at their ideal

 

You bring up a really good point there, especially the bit about shelf stability.
I admit, that I enjoy these super cloudy IPAs I think the flavors are great and I'll happily drink one if I come across it in the correct way.
That said, on a recent trip to New England I had the pleasure of visiting several breweries that specialize in this type of beer, and the one thing that I kept thinking... is this sustainable?
One brewer (who I respect a lot, and whose beers I truly enjoy) mentioned to me that they've never had a beer last more than two weeks...meaning that they have brewed what they could and sold the beer over the counter of their tasting room direct to consumers. Great. good for them. Nice profit margin, fresh beer...etc.
What happens, though, when that brewer is no longer the bell of the proverbial craft beer ball... When they have to rely on distribution and when beer doesn't completely sell-out in 14 days? Judging by some of the expansion movement, this is inevitably going to be the case.
At the aforementioned brewery I bought a case of IPAs. Now more than month after the fact, these beers have a serious amount of slurry on the bottom of the bottle and on the neck. The beers themselves look like snow globes with blobs of gelatinous goop (which I can only assume is yeast) bobbing around in the glass. Not a very appealing (to me) look. They still taste fine, mind you, but the appearance gets a ding in my book.

We do a lot of talking about appearance of our beers. Granted, being mindful of shelf-life and stability is of larger importance for us (as a national packaging brewer.) When we've decided that a haze is an acceptable appearance for a packaged beer, we make 100% certain that the haze comes from protein and not yeast. Protein haze results in a more uniform and controllable appearance and doesn't risk the more snot-like yeast left over in the bottle or the can. Even for a beer like Kellerweis, which is quite hazy, the majority of the haze still comes from protein. We make sure kegs are shipped upside-down from us to the bar specifically so that when the keg is flipped for tapping the haze will cascade back down into the beer and give a more uniform appearance.

If it is yeast in the NE IPAs (which I truly believe to be the case) that's fine, I get it. It makes sense. As yeast flocculates out, it pulls a lot of hop flavor with it. If you want a truly hop-forward beer, leaving a significant amount of yeast in the finished product is a sure-fire way to keep a lot of that hop flavor in the beer. If your customers are buying it fresh, and drinking it quick, there isn't going to be a problem. (aside from the odd gastrointestinal issue.) I'm curious about the future, though. If these beer become more widely distributed, it'll be interesting to see if the appreciation translates to the larger consumer base.

-Bill

 

I think that you raise excellent points (not a surprise) and that shelf life is definitely the issue I think about the most here as well. I see this as a reflection of the move toward a more hyper-local brewery model. You simply can't make beer like this and ship it around the country with a 120 day shelf life, but that doesn't seem to be the goal here and I see the romanticism of prizing ultra-fresh, low-intervention beer that has a poor self life. It may only work with a narrow distribution model, but I think it might find a sustainable niche going into the future.

 

I'm glad you mentioned that. The brewery we contract for yesterday was saying that their wheat (now a month in kegs) has too much haze on the first pour. I suggested sending the next batch of draught upside down, but I wasn't sure if that was something that is done often. We are also doing our first hefeweizen for distrobution and I had that concern as well.

 

Great post. I wonder if @brewgentlemen could weigh in on this topic as well?

 

That is why John Kimmich says: "Drink it from the can! Drink it from the can!"

Cheers!

 

Good stuff here, man. Just wondering what you think of your brewery's hoppy stuff pre-filtration. In a perfect world, where shelf life/stability/distribution/etc. wasn't a concern, would you prefer it unfiltered? How does it change because of the filtration? Kinda cool to have someone on the inside's perspective here

I tend to lean w/ @zid on this one, and I also happen to think it may explain at least a portion of the blowback on the haze bombs from industry vets, old school IPA drinkers, etc. There's a sense that some folks are so rabid in their love of haze-heavy breweries that there's now a) an assumption that any hazy beer is "juicy", "tropical", etc. and that b) clear beer can't provide those characteristics. When you see a bunch of IPAs rocket up the ratings around here, and every last one of them is hazy, I'm sure you can imagine why some of us are casting a skeptical eye. Not so much that hazy beer can't be good, but that every hazy beer can't be that good.

Good discussion here, and I think @bulletrain76's suggestion of a different production/distribution model is probably what will happen (is happening) to mitigate some of @sierranevadabill's concerns . Even with places like Trillium/Tree House doing big expansions, they're still not anywhere close to the scale of a SN/FW/etc., and therefore not having to think about the logistical issues that those types of breweries do.

It makes it hard to even compare the two models in some ways. I mean, how many people have ever had Torpedo fresh at the source, straight off the canning line, a la Tree House? How many people have had a bottle of Union Jack 5 days old, bought at the brewery, refrigerated since bottling, a la Trillium? Ironically, these small breweries almost certainly have had way more people drink their beer uber-fresh, in uber-controlled environments, than national brands like SN or FW. They're just fundamentally different models. To that end, I think it a little unjust when people write reviews about the 3-month old UJ or Torpedo they found on a warm-stored shelf 3,000 miles from the brewery and talk about how inferior it is to their hyper-local operation. It is what it is, though, and I think there'll always be a place/need for regionally/nationally-distributing breweries. Just as there will probably always be a place for super local, narrowly distributed breweries. Just not surprising the beer geek hype machine will prize one over the other.

 

"I wont buy an ipa on the shelf from a random store anymore. I can get fresher hop forward beers from the local craft brewery "

I completely agree.

I'm tired of hunting for fresh, refrigerated beer. Beers without dates, or with dates in weird formats that I have to remember. Fresh stuff coming in and going out within an hour. Beer that ended up sitting in a warm truck for longer than expected. Stores marking up unfairly. etc.

When asked about expanding to other geographic areas, JC from Trillium said something to the effect of, hey, there's more and more awesome stuff being produced at a small scale in every area nowadays.

From my point of view as a consumer, the existing big brewery + distribution model is completely broken. I'm sorry if it's not fair to the big brewers that I can't taste their beer the way I can taste my local offerings, but that is the way it is. Maybe it's just time for a change.

 

Midwest Haze. A simple 2HAle that is hazy and turbid, I can't see my hand thru the glass. Only thing missing is the floaties.

 

On the topic of shelf stability and yeast in suspension, I have had 6 month old Tree House Green that remained very hazy and very hop flavorful but also have had 2-3 month old Tree House Eureka and Alter Ego that dropped clear and tasted significantly different a couple months down the road so I've seen both sides of the coin and there is merit to this argument for sure. In the case of Tree House most of their cans say "Drink Me Now" lol

In terms of cause of haze, I've made a few IPAs at home that turned out significantly hazy. It's my current hypothesis that the biggest attribute to this is the temperature of the wort when a large load of hops are added as the common denominator in these Homebrew beers has been large whirlpool addition below isomerization temps. These beers have not cleared at all during fermentation or conditioning. I haven't had kegs long enough to see if they ever drop out. I also brew w 5-12% oats or wheat but I've been able to brew pretty clear beers with oats and or wheat so I don't think adjuncts have tremendous contribution. Anyone have thoughts to water profile contributing to the haze? Don't know If there is any merit of science in that just a thought...

 

As someone that's been drinking Tree House, Trillium, HF & other NE beers for years, I find this line of thought pretty silly. Tree House has created some of the most flavorful, defined, hoppy beer on the planet. They're also relentlessly consistent.

Folks that stubbornly cling to a previously agreed set of standards for what hoppy beers *should* be seem to miss the entire point of the American craft beer explosion. I'm happy hoppy beers can be more than clear, amber, grapefruit/pine bombs.

If TH and others could create the same world class beers with a crystal clear appearance, I'd enjoy them just as much.

 

Sierra Bill pointed out some good points, but I think size really plays a huge role here. Sierra Nevada could do what Trillium does if they decided they weren't going to expand to be one of the largest craft brewers in the US. I WANT more small-scale places like Trillium, Hill Farmstead, Tree House, etc that have a small footprint and move their product. I don't want to be buying bottles that have been sitting on the shelf from large-scale craft brewers. It isn't a knock on Sierra Nevada, it's just realizing that not every brewer wants to expand endlessly.

As for the "What the hell does Juicy mean", I think of Juicy in terms of bright, tropical fruit flavors that make my mouth water. That last part, 'make my mouth water' is important. NE style IPAs have a very soft mouth feel that I think helps cut through the hop bitterness. Heady Topper, Hill Farmstead, Trillium, etc have just an incredible mouth feel. I drank a ton of amazing DIPAs over the course of 3/4 days recently and found that Hop Juju, Enjoy By, PTE/PTY, were very astringent, oily, and hard to 'session'. Following those up with Tired Hands, Hill Farmstead, and Trillium, they were all 'juicier' in that the hop flavors were much more vibrant and bright (not just like oil extract that the west coast styles tasted like) and the mouthfeel was on another planet. I could crush these NE IPAs all day and night without my palate turning into a pine tree.

That said I do like my west coast IPAs, I'm just trying to explain how I see the differences and the terminology I use.
Recap: Juicy = mouth watering, not dry-your-mouth-up-hop-extract-pine-needle-perfume = west-coast. I can quench my thirst with a Trillium IPA. I don't even want to look at a PTE if I'm dying of thirst. That's 'juicy'.

 

Honestly, I hope so.
To be clear, my note isn't a knock on those beers or their business model... I think it's great, I think these brewers are catering to the needs / wants of their local consumer base. Really, it's the way neighborhood breweries were meant to be. All I can do (frankly, because it's my job to do-so) is to look at what others are doing and apply that thinking to my own business model which is what my thoughts here represent.

 

To be fair, you have to put this into a little bit of context. When Sierra Nevada started there wasn't a market for locally produced beers. The customers simply weren't there. There was no way to make a limited amount of beer and sell it only in Chico. Even if there were, the laws largely wouldn't allow it.
For us, distribution was the only model possible. As people heard about what we were doing, they asked for beer too. As a brewer, it sucks to have people want your beer, and have no way to get it to them. We expanded because people asked us to. There was never a vision for Sierra Nevada to be a national brand, or have a large footprint. We've always felt that as long as people wanted what we were making, we would do our best to give it to them.

This isn't an us vs. them argument. We're not against local brewers serving local markets. We're not even against local brewers expanding to serve national markets. Frankly, there are as many "right" ways to go to market, as there are brewers pursuing different business models. Both beers serve a different purpose, and both are equally "correct."

For those lucky enough to have excellent brewers in their back yard, by all means, support them. God knows, when I'm in their back yard, I will too.

For us, there are lots of people all across this country who are still excited and interested in what we're doing, and as always, we're going to do our best to deliver it to them. If that means we have a different level of scrutiny we have to put on our beers, so be it. For what it's worth, we've spent decades trying to improve what it means to have fresh beer on a national scale. We hold distributors, store owners, and restaurants directly accountable for keeping beer fresh, cold and in good shape, and overall those efforts have paid dividends not just for us, but for the entire craft beer industry as a whole.

 

You guys were among the craft pioneers and your success is well deserved. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts here.

I think this local trend is nothing more than a reflection of what is occurring with produce and other food as well. Five years ago I wouldn't find a restaurant advertising burgers made with local grass fed beef, rolls from a local bakery and local cheese. Now I come across that regularly. I tend to agree that none of those beers from Treehouse, Trillium or HF that have recently climbed into the BA Top beers list, would work well under wide distribution. I have no doubt in my mind that SN, Brooklyn, Boulevard, and many others could make beers in that style. I doubt that they would hold up to national or wide regional distribution.