The unfiltered craze.

Not sure if it was already mentioned in here or not but I like the unfiltered look on ipas because it makes it look more like juice.

 

I know you're trying to avoid the standby comment of personal preference, but realistically that's what it comes down to.


I enjoy these beers because of the much fuller, smoother mouthfeel and the tropical fruit notes and low bitterness make it a lot more palatable for me then the piney, tree sap like hop bombs so many people were into for a long time. I'm a Lager drinker, and most ales I enjoy are plays off the British styles...hopped well, extremely flavorful, but easy drinking with a much lower bitterness aspect. It's just what I like. Very few IPA's make it into my rotation because they're just too jarring on my palate and I don't enjoy drinking them. The ones that do have very significant malt backbones and downplay the floral and pine aspects. These beers are generally a happy combination of the two, and are allowing me to enjoy a broader range of beer drinking and advocacy when just a few short years ago I vowed I'd never find an American IPA I truly enjoyed.

Also, I personally enjoy the haziness or turbidity of the NEIPAs. I think it looks cool and a bit different. To each their own. In two or three years some other trend will be out and all the NEIPA guys are gonna be posting threads wondering why everyone is drinking something they think sucks now cheers!

 

My three main criteria for most beers, not just IPAs are aroma, taste, and feel. These are the three characteristics of a beer that can really please my olfactory senses. I fully acknowledge that most NE IPAs don't look that great, but I'm willing to overlook that because of the aromatics, the taste, and the feel.

As far as juice, I'm not a fan of fruit addition IPAs (e.g. Sculpin). I enjoy the fruit character that these brewers are getting from the hops. I think that it's a great way to feature hops in a way that isn't just for bitterness. For me, it's something distinctly craft and innovative to find new flavors from these traditional ingredients.

Lately, I've found myself pulling away a little from NE IPAs. I do think that they're heavy, and I've found myself gravitating towards saisons and lagers. I probably still drink NE IPAs more than anything due to the fact that there are readily available great ones nearby. I don't see that changing.

To add, I hate the headless, "Iceman" pours. Those adjuncts in those beers should provide head retention and assist with aromatics. I just feel that the headless pours completely ignore that. I mean, to each their own, but my own is disliking them. Even visually, a nice frothy, pillowy head is much more appealing to me than no head at all.

Ok, I'll hang up now.

 

I always regret looking at the 'Houston Craft Beer" page on Facebook for multiple reasons. One is, it is loaded with pictures just like these. I don't mind that this is the new trend, even if it is not for me, though someone posted a picture from Monkish, with a note saying...exactly like a Piney Northwest IPA but HAZY.

I have never had Monkish so not sure about that statement. It just really seems people are obsessing over the appearance, and associating yeast slurry looking pale beer with quality. Haze is one thing, but many of these are not "hazy" imo at least.

Saw another post in the same page with a picture of JW Lees Harvest Ale. There was some yeast particles at the bottom, they obviously just poured the bottle all at once which agitated everything, and the post commented how horrible it was and they drained poured it. Mostly because of the particles. One of the same people that go crazy for the yeast slurry.

 

I think i'm on the other end of the spectrum. I actually think it's pretty awesome that brewers can emulate familiar flavors using hops only; no fruit or juices added. And when we review a beer, the descriptors are all about what we are reminded of, i.e. orange juice, mango, grapefruit, etc.. similar to describing wine. But i will agree that most of these hop combinations have been used and abused. A lot of brewers are tweaking the hop profile slightly and calling it a new beer.

 

It's first and foremost a taste thing. The well done one's just seem more rounded. That being said i also equate it to the "Can craze"

You had all of these brewers who were staunchly anti-canning. All of sudden it blows up and now they are all canning their beers. But rather than say our guests prefer, we get some cockamamie story about 10 years of research etc. etc..

We will also see this with breweries playing catch-up with the hazier side of things. "it took us 10 years to perfect this recipe."

Craft beer is also super-territorial.West coast OWNED ipa's for 15-20 years. Love alot of those beers. can't get em fresh, so i just prefer to get what i can locally in growler or just canned.

 

Ok. I'll play along. These beers are selling like hot cakes, and a brewery looking to increase sales right now would be stupid not to dial in one of these turbid & juicy IPAs.

That being said, there are now in CA a lot of examples of the style, but few that are well executed and even less few that are amazing. Having had Trillium and Treehouse examples, I can say that these are the cream of the crop in my experience. I do not feel however, that they are any better than the Pliny's, the Heady's & and the Alpine Bad Boys that are also highly acclaimed, just different.

As one commenter mentioned above, there is a new demographic of beer drinker that prefers juice flavors in their IPA, rather than a IPA that mirrors an actual hop bud. One softer, one dry and crisp. I do however, find the higher end filtered examples of the style "cleaner" and crisper when it comes to the finish, but that's just me.

There is obviously room in the culture for both styles.

 

I find that difficult to believe given the appearance of Trillium beers.

Perhaps @JCTetreault can provide more input on this matter.

Cheers!

 

I agree that the headless pours are strange, but obsessing over appearance is probably pretty unavoidable when you're dealing with what are essentially "hey look at me!" photo sharing apps such as Facebook and Instagram.

I don't use either myself, but if there was a 'Tastebook" or "Smellogram" I'd given them a shot

 

I'm convinced that the people who gravitate towards these beers don't like "beer." The same for those who only like the coffee, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, bourbon stouts. As a professional brewer, the appearance is embarrassing. But I've had a number of them, and I do enjoy them. However the flavors tend to blur after a couple. It becomes hard to distinguish the differences between different beers.

I don't support the argument on the short shelf life is alone due to the excess of hops. A lot of it has to do with the equipment these young breweries are using. Most of them can't afford canning lines that reduce DO (dissolved oxygen). Higher DO levels reduce shelf life due to oxidation.

 

I've gotta be honest, between the claim here that Trillium filters all their beers (if true), and the fact that unfiltered beers can be completely clear, as a brewing-theory noob, I'm completely lost.

While I would partially disagree with the first portion of the statement (I love adjunct stouts and non-adjunct stouts alike, and also enjoy both really traditional and really non-traditional IPAs), I agree with you on the last part. A lot of the breweries making these trendy beers do seem to blur the hop profiles together, which makes me tire of them very quickly. They're still tasty, but many are tasty in the same way (please again note that I'm not talking TR/TH, as I've had neither).

 

Great point. I read a few books and forum searches before starting home brewing a couple years back, so thats the extent of my knowledge. But aren't some of the more turbid beers technically "flawed"? I get that there is chill haze, and how one should quickly cool down wort, and then there is clean fermentation, using irish moss etc. and often times, its just a timing thing. An unfiltered 5 day old beer may not clear up until about day 15 or so. Many of these beers are being drank so quickly, nothing has time to "drop".

As far as the craze, I am personally seeing many newcomers jump straight to the holy grails. There was no journey for them. They love only the extremely low bitter juice bombs. They technically like "hops". But it's in the new sort of way. I guess we have to learn to adapt. Just like with anything that gets popular, you have the followers who tend to make others feel jealous. Taking photos of beer for instagram or FB groups sake will be the downfall of everything lol.

I like both styles. My favorites combine BOTH factors, Juicy hop flavors and smells, yet a true bitter bite.

 

I might be wrong, but during this podcast at 17:30 JC talks about the centrifuge. They definitely use it on their beers but maybe its not all of them.
https://soundcloud.com/allaboutbeer...eers-with-jc-tetreault-of-trillium-brewing-co

 

Needless to say but I have my doubts about 'truth' here.

I homebrew and all of my beers are unfiltered. Depending on the batch the beers are either pretty clear (almost crystal clear) or just a bit hazy. The only homebrewed beer that wasn't clear or a bit hazy was my clone of Trillium Galaxy Fort Point Pale Ale since that beer was turbid/murky/opaque. The vast majority of beer styles will drop bright even if unfiltered.

Oh, other homebrewed beers which were not clear: Belgian Wits and Hefeweizen since these beers are brewed with wheat which adds a lot of protein to the beer.

Cheers!

 

Once I learned that all Half Acre's beers (generally clear) were unfiltered, and Two Hearted is unfiltered, my mind was opened to that possibility; I just don't know enough about the processes to have any knee-jerk reaction other than "how could something unfiltered not be murky looking?" But clearly I'm not thinking in beer terms, I guess.

I listened to that portion, and yeah, he definitely implies that you can't tell they're filtering beers. Weird. I'm curious what's behind the look, then.

 

I'll preface my comments by saying that I have not had any of these beers and my knowledge regarding the NEIPA style comes from reading these forums. I'm also not a commercial brewer, but have homebrewed plenty of IPAs and PAs over the years. My experience is that they are not much different from any other style, brew it right, and time plus cold equals clear beer every time. Dry hopped beers have a slight haziness that will persist for awhile, but will eventually drop.

I don't know if I would call NEIPAs "flawed". If they are achieving what the brewer intended I won't call them that. I'm also not sure that it is "flawed" brewing practices causing the phenomenon. I would guess that even following normal brewing practices adding massive late hop and dry hop additions, plus a malt bill high in high protein grains/malts, plus the right yeast strain selection gives these intended results.

 

I can believe that Trillium utilizes a centrifuge but I am skeptical about your statement of using a filter.

I listened to a short portion of the podcast you linked (17:00 to about 21:00). In that section JC mentioned that he operates the centrifuge in a different way than most breweries.

There are a couple of control points that dictate the performance of a centrifuge in a brewery:

· Amount of G-force applied (e.g., High G-force vs. Low G-force)

· Number of cycles being applied

At around the 19:00 mark JC discussed his objectives for using the centrifuge in terms of solids he wants to separate from the beer:

· Hop particulate

· Coagulated protein

· Flocculated yeast

The bottom line is that you can centrifuge a beer under the proper operating conditions such that the ‘big’ stuff is separated but there is still some finer haze material remaining in the beer. I suspect that JC does not want to eliminate all of the haze forming material because that would have negative impacts on flavor and mouthfeel.

Hopefully JC will respond to my tag and elaborate here.

Cheers!

 

I really don't see anything "craft and innovative" in these modern juicy IPA's.

Maybe in making a filtered beer really hazy and turbid.

But there is nothing innovative about going to a hop merchant and buying a pallet of Galaxy hops. Then throwing in a handful during the boil and a few pounds during and after fermentation.

You may say there is innovation in the hop breeders... But that isn't innovation either. All they did was allow a male Perle vine to get freaky-deaky with a female vine called J78. Then test the hops from all of their offspring until they found one that happens to have very similar oils to passonfruit and other tropical hops.

It takes much more skill to figure out how to use an actual passionfruit to make a really juicy beer. There are a lot of considerations on that in making sure its sanitary and how to keep the flavor without the yeast transforming the compounds or the volatile aromatics from boiling off.

IPA's are just about buying a bunch of hops and adding them through multiple additions. Most brewers don't even work on using different mixes of hops to get an interesting interplay of types of flavors... So many of the fad brewers just buy a ton of Citra, Galaxy, and/or Mosaic.

 

Doesn't hazy taste a lot like purple? Well, to me it does! There is really no beer style that I detest. Those full pours look odd. These thick unfiltered IPAs are very interesting, but visually sometimes they remind me of a laxative, milk of magnesia, or calamine lotion. But, mostly I like them.