Which IPA is harder to brew well?

Given the number of less than stellar Juicy/Hazy IPAs out there it would seem this is a more difficult type of beer to brew for some (many?) commercial breweries.

I have homebrewed several batches of Juicy/Hazy IPAs and they all turned out very well so...

The aspect that is challenging for the Juicy/Hazy IPA sub-style is that these beers are very, very sensitive to oxygen (i.e., oxidation). If a brewery does not have very good packaging (i.e., low TPO at packaging) these beers have a very short shelf-life.

Cheers!

 

New England, I think. I've had plenty of bad West Coasters but even the worst ones weren't as bad as a poorly made NEIPA. NEIPAs that are overly green/have hop burn are revolting. Like drinking battery acid. Worst case scenario with WCIPAs is just that they're too unbalanced, usually skewed towards too much crystal malt and they're too caramelly sweet.

I hear that. When I left New York last year I was pretty disillusioned with the beer scene. Almost impossible to find good West Coast style IPAs with hazies and smoothie sours dominating shelves.

 

Depends what you mean by "well"...

 

Unrelated to this but not really

I'll tell you what IPA is hard to brew from a professional perspective.

Double Dog.

By law the abv has to be with a half a percentage of the labeled ABV. At 12% the amount of hoops to jump though to get that beer dialed in properly every single time consistently is meticulous.

 

I'll echo previous comments and say I feel like it's NEIPA, primarily for the shelf stability reason. It makes a fair bit of sense to me since the beers that originally influenced the style were brewery-only, with only Heady being an exception (and people tend to compare that more to west coast IPAs these days anyway).

Hell, half the reason I suspect the "Brut IPA" fad took off to the extent that it did a few years ago was precisely because it was a new sub-style of IPA that blew up shortly after hazies and offered a lot of the bigger craft breweries a greater deal of shelf stability than the NEIPA trend. I feel similarly about the nascent cold IPA movement, though that hasn't been nearly as widespread so far.

Finally, I'll add that in spite of this general observation, it's still quite difficult to make a solid west coast IMO. I've been frequently underwhelmed by the clear offerings from juice/haze factory breweries over the years, especially compared to what I regard as classics of the style like Pliny, Head Hunter, and the like (doubly so since those hazy specialists tend to charge the same NEIPA prices for their WCIPAs).

 

Instead of using the word 'well' I'd prefer to use 'likable' because if it doesn't use hops that I like, then it's not brewed 'well'.

To me the west coast IPA can use the full range of all of the hop varieties, but a brewer needs to be a master at choosing a combo of which bittering, taste and aroma hops that will work right. With DIPAs especially, too often I taste a muddled mess of hop flavors that aren't taste friendly, so packing a bunch of hops together without some skill shows me a brewer who doesn't have that mastery.

When brewing a NEIPA the brewer only needs to use the hop varieties that are known for being juicy, thus less of a challenge to get it right. I admit to not drinking enough NEIPAs to know how often the combo isn't right, but the good probabilities are on the side of the brewer.

 

I'm sure it's a challenge to be able to do both styles well and consistently and even harder to make a world class beer consistently whether it's NE or WC. They are literally the same beer (IPA) with different qualities imo. We tend to get caught up in the styles and think they are so much different but they aren't. If you can brew 1 style you oughta be able to do the other.

Iv had more shoddy NEIPA's but that's what's being brewed more.

 

While better equipment always helps, TH was clearly playing above the rim well before they became the massive juggernaut that they now are.

 

I think there are lots of good WCIPAs and lots of good NEIPAs. I think there are very few GREAT WCIPAs and even fewer GREAT NEIPAs.

I think there are more--oh so many more--poor NEIPAs than there are poor WCIPAs.

My take: It's hard to make a great WCIPA and just a little bit harder to make a great NEIPA. It's not too hard to make a good WCIPA or a good NEIPA, but apparently it must be a lot easier to make a poor NEIPA than a poor WCIPA.

 

Why does that beer come in 19.2 oz cans?!?
That’s fucking ludicrous!

 

I hate to admit it, but you're right. My usual approach is gratitude, that haze factories are willing to make a WCIPA, in salutation to the old IPA that the brewers themselves (used to?) love. But most of them aren't that great, in fact, Lagunitas IPA is usually better than any of them, despite being about half the price.

This...this is the correct take. A great NEIPA can be better than most WCIPAs but almost any WCIPA is better than a less than great NEIPA.

 

Lol. Everyone likes to believe it's because there are people who like to get drunk on the bus and train and Flying Dog knows it. Large majority of it contract brewed goes to New York.

 

Must be pretty difficult for both styles as most of them out there either taste the same or are just awful.
Sorry, but I am Soooo WAY over this whole IPA thing already.

 

I have been noticing more high ABV beers in the 19.2 oz cans and this has to be the reason.

 

I spoke to the owner of Abandon Brewing in Penn Yan, NY prob 4-5 years ago and he told me NEIPA is not a good test of who’s a good brewer. He told me unskilled brewers can still make a good NEIPA.

 

I have absolutely no brewing experience but I’ll answer from a consumer perspective;

I’ve had more bad NEIPAs than I’ve had bad WCIPAs. I’m not sure if that’s because it’s hard to make an excellent NEIPA or if it’s easy to make a bad one. Purely anecdotal evidence from my experiences. Cheers.

 

I have the slightest brewing experience, but this one seems easy to answer. NEIPAs must be way easier to brew: there are so effing many of them, QED. However, if the question is "how well", then they appear to be harder.
Not to get spiraled into a confusion loop, but WCIPAs are relatively harder to come by. So when I get ahold of one...its good.
A few years ago I kind of split the difference, decided there was something I called a Midwest IPA (Great Lakes, Fatheads, Bells...). These were what I was looking for. Batches varied, but usually very good.

 

Curious question.

Mediocre brewers make mediocre beer. Regardless of style. A crappy brewer is not made better because of the style. It's that simple. Brewing beer is a process. Getting the process right does not depend on style, at all.

It's like making scrabled eggs. Easy. Until you see Jacques Pepin do it, and then you understand your egg cooking skills are shit.

Cheers