Pale Ale VS Session

In your opinion should we consider one brewery in one location (San Diego) as being 'representative'? In your opinion would the consistent performance of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale be a 'better' example?

Cheers!

 

Not to throw a wrench in what you have going on here, but it's worth considering that SNPA is iconic. No new, newer, or newish Pale Ale will have the same appeal.

 

I am not in the beer industry so I would prefer to not specifically opine here.

Hopefully @IceAce will share his thoughts on this topic.

Cheers!

P.S. Since we are chatting I will state that I am one of those beer drinkers that has negative thoughts on the label of Session IPA. I have had quite a few beers labeled as being Session IPAs and they have all tasted like "hop water" to me. I personally refuse to purchase beers that are labeled as being a Session IPA.

 

Potayto Potahto

Oh I also had this "Cimmerian Pale Ale" from FFF and couldn't find the style in any BJCP book. Where's Cimmeria anyways?

 

Am I wrong in how I think about the differences between these ales?

This is how I think about it:

English Pale Ale - pale malty ale with a mild hop presence

American Pale Ale - Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, same as above with an american hop presence that dominates the palate without being bitter in the least

English IPA - pale malty ale with large hop presence, with some hop bitterness and moderate hop aroma and flavor

American IPA - pale malty ale with an extremely large hop presence, some hop bitterness and a ton of american hop aroma and flavor, higher ABV than an English IPA

Session IPA - lower or same ABV as an American Pale Ale, with American IPA level of hop aroma and flavor

Obviously there are outliers/beers with poor style labels, but in general is this what you guys think?

 

Pretty much. But there is overlap. Some "Pale Ales" (Dales for example) are obviously American IPAs. Other APAs are much closer to IPAs than say SNPA (Mo, Zombie Dust, Daisy Cutter) but can still be legitimate APAs. Some Session IPAs are just APAs. Others really do taste like watered down A-IPAs.

So there is obviously a lot of wiggle room between the categories. The OP is making a beer that likely could fit in the overlap between APA and Session IPA and wants to know what to call it. I've got no idea, but one possibility is not to label it as one or the other, or to just describe it as a "hoppy pale ale". I'm no marketing expert, but I think many a Pale Ale can be rescued from sales obscurity by adding the word "hoppy".

 

As I wrote the post above I was thinking to myself, surely another brewer somewhere has tested this! Sales of more than 5 times just for a name change are way more dramatic than I was expecting. Thanks for the info.

I hope... and I agree there appears to be a "session" trend developing. I'm seeing many more beers/labels these days with "session <insert common beer style>" beyond the ubiquitous session IPA. It seems session IPA popularity has allowed "session" to become a beer name adjective similar to imperial, red, brown, etc. indicating a lower ABV beer.

At least our British brethren can keep rolling their eyes at our American beer name conventions [or "innovations" if you will] for many years to come.

 

Hah, in my opinion, every IPA should be renamed to something along the lines of "American Hoppy Pale Ale." This IPA moniker is far too restrictive, and in some cases stupid (Black IPA, Brown IPA, etc.).

 

Well since you are the brewer you can do pretty much anything you want to. I look at it like this, IPA isn't really a definite "style" anymore, it's more of a flavor descriptor, hence you get all the variations like "Belgian IPA" Cascadian/Black IPA etc.
And one of the worlds most popular beers by volume is Bud "Light" so why not go with something that tells almost every beer drinker out there what is in the beer? IPA Light.

 

Thanks for the shout-out Jack. I wanted to give a deeper explanation in my original post, but ran into time constraints. While one single brewer in San Diego is not representative of a national trend, it paints a pretty good picture of hop-crazy Southern California as a whole.

The story I related was the summer of 2013, the same year Firestone introduced Easy Jack and Stone quickly followed suit with their Go To IPA. It seemed that the bulk of the consumers in this region quickly shifted their demand from Pale Ale to Session IPA, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back to Pale Ale again. Not only do trends like this happen all the time; they arrive at differing parts of the country at different times. One needs only to look at the recent proliferation of turbid IPA's in the Northeast to see this in action.

Trends ebb and flow...taking market share temporarily and then giving it back (Black IPA anyone?). Heck, in 24 years in this biz I've watched the rise and fall of an awful lot of change in domestic beer, only to see a return to the norm;

• Dry Beer
• 'Red' Beer
• Clear Beer
• Beer w/ Energy Drink
• Tequila Beer
• Ice Beer

My gut feeling is that we will begin to see the same trendsetting issues in the Craft segment as well. The $64,000 question for @lakecharlevoixbrewing is this; what name and style representation will resonate with their audience and generate the largest number of trial purchases? While great beer will always get people to come back, how you get the trial (and how many trials you get ) is truly the name of the game.

One of our SoCal Brewers had a Belgian Single named Tafelbier (Table Beer). Sales were generally uninspiring because most beer drinkers do not know what an Enkel truly is. The beer was renamed Monks Lunch a year later and the brand took off since it was easy to pronounce, told a quick story, and developed a positive perception.

So, I have opined and rambled for quite some time. Hopefully I have been able to paint the appropriate picture without being accused of talking down to anyone as that is certainly not my objective. I'm heading out to grab a pale ale now...

 

Session Ipa: Something sort of new? Late high aa hop aditions. Light-ish in color. Mostly under low 5%
(British) Pale Ale: What Session Ipas' are not. Balanced. Mostly middle 4's and 5's in value.
(American) Pale Ale: What British Pale Pales Are not. 'Murica! i.e. hops. Lighter-ish in color, with a mid 5's as its starting point.

 

FWIW that makes sense to me from my casual observations in my local beer market.

Cheers!

 

I get the same general sense. I think it is helped here locally by beers like Trillium's Fort Point Pale Ale. Honestly, there is probably no beer I'd rather have available at a good price in cans than Maine's MO. Either way, lower abv is making a comeback of sorts.

 

I will be homebrewing a clone of this beer in anther few weeks.

I am a fan of the quality of all of the beers from Maine Brewing Company. Whenever I see that a Maine beer on tap I order one. I personally refuse to buy their packaged (bottled) beers since they are just to darn expensive for me.

Cheers!

 

I splurge on the bottles now and then, if very fresh. But yeah, the pricing is absurd. On tap it is nearly always the best choice.

 

SNPA is iconic to some in this crowd, but I doubt most of it's sales are a result of it being an icon. Having great presence is a different thing. I'm with Jack in that the category clearly isn't "dead" (assuming Jack would agree). The obstacles that might make it difficult for a new pale ale to become popular are another story.

It sounds like you have issues with "session IPAs" rather than issues with the label itself. Since you are making an observation about what those beers are like, the label is appropriate.

SNPA is quite bitter.

I get what you're going for, but you really can't discount all the outliers... especially when they're more than just outliers. For example, Greene King IPA is a "session IPA" at 3.6 ABV but it's not marketed as such... it's marketed as an IPA. Greene King considers it balanced, hoppy, and bitter. It's classified as a "bitter" on this site... probably because it doesn't resemble an IPA by most site users idea of the term. What's important to note is that this beer is one of the best-selling cask ales in the UK... so it's not possible to just dismiss it as an outlier entirely. I know you are wise enough to already account for the limitations of using such boxes, but I think people really don't appreciate how big those limitations are.

 

It's the same situation as trying to put Marzens into little boxes. If you put all the marzens in Bavaria in a line, you end up with an almost continuous color and strength spectrum. The lines don't really exist.

 

IPA Light for the Summer crowd.

 

If you treat 4.9% ABV like a session beer you will have a bad time the following morning

 

Maybe I just have an iron-clad liver! Tempered with all these strong American beers. I put down a bottle of 17.5% beer the other night and was still thirsty.