"Vermont-Style" IPAs?

@AlohaStyle..... My man, in all honesty you might need to give up this pursuit until a Seattle area brewery decides to ease up a little on the bitterness with the quasi NE style IPA's. It's like a dog chasing it's own tail.

A few local Seattle brewery's claim they are able to mimic the New England style, but choose to not to cross the line completely. The various twist on the NE style NEVER fully produce what is found in New England. The closest thing I've ever had to a Trillium or a Tree House would be Portland Oregon's Great Notion. If you haven't done so, do yourself a favor and drive to Portland if this is the style you're seeking.

IMO, the first Washington State Brewery that goes all in with a low bittered, hazy, juicy, milky, smooth beer will EXPLODE!!!!!!!

Remember, Great Notion was and is still highly criticized in Portland. Yet again, they're popularity grows with increased demand, along with the recent announcement of expanding operations from large influxes of cash! Reminds me of the Trump phenomenon........tons of supporters that are somewhat forced to hide in the shadows.

All that being said, if you just want the appearance of a NE style IPA, but not fully abandon this areas style, look at occasional releases from Holy Mountain, Fremont, Reubens, Cloudburst, and a few others in Oregon. Good luck.

 

Astral Projection 2016 is full on juice and reminds me a lot of Trilium. I wish it were more bitter, honesty.

 

Which is why he told you Structures sucks. He's trying to keep it under the radar. They make some completely non-bitter AOAs. I much prefer their Saisons and funky things.

 

Yup, Astral Projection killed it.

I would love to see a WA brewery nail a NE IPA, much like GN, simply for the fact that I love choice and variety. There are an ungodly number of bittered IPAs up here, I wouldn't mind being able to reach for a pint of 6% orange juice every once in awhile.

Reuben's Double Crush is probably the closest to Great Notion's Juice Box I've had up here, and fantastic to boot.

 

Skookum is also producing hazy IPAs, and doing a darn fine job of it.

 

I think what Jason was getting at is that even thought there are a great deal of WA brewing hazy IPAs, the majority of those IPAs still have a lot bitterness that isn't present in a lot of NE IPAs. The newest batch of Astral Projection, Claim 52's Juice Station Flash! and some Great Notion beers are the only ones I've had that really try to mirror that.

 

Fremont's new Phantom Chair is very fruity and hazy, but still has a clean bitterness. I think it's great that more breweries are branching out, as I was never a fan of west coast IPAs in the first place with the exception of Pliny the Elder.

 

I'm personally happy that brewers out here are retaining the bitterness in their hazy/NE IPAs. I get burned out after too much juice.

 

Tried Matchless: Hops! The new fruit! last night. Rumored to be NEIPA. New brewery out of WA, I think that just hit PDX and OR distro. Was fruity but more bitter, like the hazy NW IPAs described above. As most of us are craving a little more bitterness with this style, perhaps it's time for the PNW to improve upon the style. NENWIIPA anyone?

 

Having bitterness to balance out sweetness is good as long as it doesn't overpower other aspects of the beer, which is why I like the NE/NW hazy hybrids that have popped up around here recently. They combine the best of both worlds.

 

Great Notion's Pineapple Express is ridiculously good. Love that beer and could drink it all day.

All Fluff by Matchless (former brewer from Three Magnets) is more like a NE IPA. Hazy, low-ish bitterness. I found Hops The New Fruit to a pretty standard IPA.

 

Just my two cents, but I would say even VT IPAs (thinking of Heady, SoS, and perhaps even some of Hill Farmstead's) are notably different from some of the juice flowing outta breweries like Tree House, Trillium, and Other Half. Make your way down to Philly, and Tired Hands is kinda doing their own thing w/ those super bread-y IPAs.

All of that said, I'm a big fan of variety, and the more breweries in the PNW that explore less hop-forward, STR8 Juice IPAs, the better, merely for the sake of diversity. I long for the day when I can get my Astral Projection as easily as my Vortex when I hit my local bottle shop.

 

Color me confused. Isn't it the hop forwardness of these styles that makes them so juicy?

In other words, hops and more more hops seems to be the preferred style these days. It also seems to me that the only difference between the NE IPA and the NW IPA is that the NE breweries aren't adding any (or very little) hops in the bittering stage of the boil. They add hops only in the late stage. What am I missing?

 

And the choice of hops, using low alpha, and more fruit oriented strains.

 

Also the use of an English yeast strain with high flocculation (WY 1318 for you homebrewers) . . .

 

So true. Most of these hazy beers are fine and some are truly great, but overall if I'm in the mood for an IPA, it should have at least SOME bite to it.

 

Apologies for the confusion – when I said hop-forward, I was primarily meaning the bitterness. I'm not in the brewing-game myself (only done home brews a couple times), so I'm not always down w/ the proper lingo. My craft beer upbringing largely began during the years of the dreaded 'Hop Wars', where everyone seemed to be going after higher and higher IBUs, making beer so bitter it (arguably) became undrinkable...

Obviously the juiciness in both aromatics and taste is indeed coming from the hops, just a different type of hop-forwardness, I'd say. Long story short, gimme more juice options alongside the bitter ones!

 

What I find is I'm more interested in the aroma hop character and type (I lean towards citra, Amarillo and simcoe vs the danker mosaic and galaxy hopped beers) so what matters to me most is the hop used in the IPA, not so much how hazy it is. As such, I've had citra hopped NE IPAs I loved and mosaic NE bombs not so much. One mans humble opinion though. I love variety so I'm all about the new style. My palate shifts frequently, however. This time last year galaxy was my go to hop... so it goes.

 

Tried an Ex Novo Cloudy Future the other day. Probably the haziest IPA I've ever seen, borderline murky. Aroma and flavor didn't really live up though, so it was a little disappointing for what I was expecting.