Brewer’s Perspective: West Coast Haze

Hmmm I just call these "modern west coast ipas".

I don't like the use of hazy as a beer style (even though I use the term " hazy IPA" regularly) just because it has a ton of baggage by now.

Its.been a while since I've had any but cellarmaker does make some tasty ipas

 

Nelson was arguably the first hazy ipa. @TheIPAHunter

 

I thought, now I know, we're just gonna have to merge this thread with the controversial opinions thread

 

Drinking fresh Green Flash WCIPA way back was a fun exercise and pleasure. The warp speed of beer style and regional evolution has changed beer forever. Let us please archive this evolution carefully, without regional prejudice, and celebrate just beer, while noting time.

 

I suppose we could come up with yet another nickname for this particular type of IPA, but the fact of the matter remains that not every brewer's IPA is going to fit into a precise box. However, on a positive note, this is exactly what I would describe as my ideal type of IPA--if I ever become a brewer I'm going to brew IPAs like this. My ideal vision of an IPA is:
- Unfiltered, hazy appearance. Not necessarily opaque or murky, but a nice haze.
- Huge aromatics
- Tropical fruit/citrus dominant flavor, with some underlying dank/pine notes
- Simple pale malt bill, maybe small amounts of wheat and/or oats
- Well carbonated
- Pretty darn dry. Not bone dry like a brut IPA, but still quite dry. Clean and crisp.
- Some amount of bitterness. The tongue-destroying bitterness of old-school West Coast isn't necessary, but I want an IPA to have a least a little bitterness.

This is the best way I can imagine elements of both West Coast and New England being combined where the ultimate goal is pure expression of hop character as well as maximum drinkability.

 

This seems to be more and more what some of the bigger guys are trying to offer, with varying degrees of success. Trying to extract as much from the hops in flavor and aroma as possible while keeping the malt bill simple and lighter than what most would consider a "traditional" NEIPA.

Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing seems to have pinpointed that mark. Elysian tried the same with Contact Haze; unfortunately it has a crazy good aroma but literally none of that translates to the palate as it's watery and severely lacking in flavor. A local example is Abnormal's Hazy Dreams, it's got a great tropical/citrus aroma, some juiciness on the palate but more assertive bitterness akin to a WCIPA.

I think that might become the spin that eventually changes the term from "hazy" to "modern WCIPA" as @unlikelyspiderperson uses. I've had to explain to customers a lot more recently the difference between a "real" NEIPA/hazy and a "hazy" that we're talking about; it's getting out of hand.

 

A bit of a side note and I assume this has been covered somewhere, but I guess I’m still unclear why this site lists American IPA and New England IPA as separate styles. Seems to me New England is in America and thus it’s a sub-style within American IPA, with West Coast IPA being another major sub-style. I think there are others in addition to these two (the maltier and nearly extinct “East Coast IPA,” for example), but in my mind NEIPA and WCIPA are the Coke and Pepsi, the Fender and Gibson, of American IPA.

Carry on. Cheers!

 

I think its always easier to classify dead things. When you're dealing with an active and vibrant aspect of a particular culture it tends to get.harder to pin stuff down.

I think that conversations about things like the "Italian" pilsner highlight that. When our perception of "pilsner " is mostly a handful of old traditional brewers and some upstarts attempting to respectfully replicate them, its easier to pin any given sample into a solid category. Once a style is being brewed by more and more brewers with varying knowledge of, connections, and atrachments to the "official" traditions — as well as their own unique tastes, experiences, ideas, and brewing traditions, you're bound to have way muddier waters.

That most volatile space has been the IPA in the US brewing scene. Its been so heavily riffed on that you could probably line up samples of IPA from US breweries in an even gradient fr crystal clear to fully opaque, bracingly bitter to cloyingly sweet, all across the flavor wheel, etc...

At a certain point though, you do have to stop amassing adjectives.

Side-side note, did anyone ever brew a brut neipa? If not, why not?

 

This is actually the type of beer I hope I get when I order someones Hazy IPA. When I do get it, I am usually a very happy person.

 

I am 100% behind this. Most of the NEIPAs are too heavy for me, and some of the old school WCIPAs to balance the bitterness with caramel malt sweetness.

Really and truly, if I could get a beer with the malt profile and bitterness of Two Hearted, with the hop aroma and flavor of Heady, I'd be pretty happy.

 

I would love to taste this style, sounds like just how I would like an IPA to be. It also sounds a lot like many of the IPA being brewed now at Industrial Arts. Guess a taste test would clear that up, hope to get one

 

Nah to the first part of the above. There's no need. "Hazy" already spun off of "NEIPA"... as this thread illustrates... and as illustrated in the second part of your bit above.

Despite the need for people here for the opposite, the NEIPA didn't universally embody the characteristics that people used to define it from the beginning. Then as soon as we hit the point of NEIPA acknowledgment, brewers were going to simply take whatever characteristics they wanted from the wide range of colors on their IPA palette to make the beer they wanted to brew. The NEIPA idea would get diluted at the same time as other brewers were more willing to adopt the term "hazy" rather than "New England." That was a perfect storm for the hazier idea of a "hazy" IPA taking hold. That's where we've been for a while. "West Coast Hazy" is a term that doesn't need to exist as an item of differentiation from NEIPA at all. "Hazy" has been doing that job for a while.

 

A few years ago I homebrewed a clone of Weldwerks Juicy Bits from a recipe in Zymurgy (the AHA magazine). A month ago I decided to brew a west coast version of this beer:

• The grain bill was 100% Pilsner Malt
• I used the US-05 yeast strain (aka Chico yeast) instead of London III

I hopped this beer exactly the same, featuring Mosaic, Citra and El Dorado hops.

That batch is presently bottle conditioning and I will be popping a bottle later this week. I am not expecting this beer to be too hazy since I did not use any higher protein grains (e.g., Wheat Malt, Flaked Oats) in the grain bill or use the London III yeast strain but I did use a boat load of hops in making this beer so they may provide some haziness?

Cheers!

@jzainasheff

 

Making nwipa the gretsch of beer

It seems comrade and Melvin have been doing this for years

 

Another submission for early West Coast Hazy IPA: Hair of the Dog's Blue Dot. When properly brewed and in 22 oz bottles, it was very similar to Heady Topper back in the day. Sadly, it hasn't been a good beer for a long time due to issues within the brewery.

 

Could you please expound on this topic? For those of us who are not PNW natives, what issues have they been having?

Cheers!

 

I haven't posted on here in a while and this is an incredibly specific example, but the IPAs I had at TRVE Brewing in Denver last month were quite possibly my favorite I've had in my entire life. Granted, they weren't quite like the aforementioned descriptions by OP and myself, but their IPAs were truly unique, flawless, and extremely to my liking. Their IPAs were mostly clear but used malted oats, were well carbonated, extremely aromatic, had no bitterness whatsoever but were very, very dry. Tunnel of Trees and Show No Mercy. If anybody else has tried TRVE's "no coast" IPAs you'll know what I'm talking about. They were exactly to my liking!