Suggestions: add WCIPA as a style and notes when adding a beer

I am in favor of more styles; this is definitely one of them and I think many members will be happy about this call.

"Chill haze or hop haze is acceptable at low levels"

This might bring back up the "Is this hazy or cloudy" debate. Good to see another "clear" and what I consider to be an original American style added.

 

When I find a local beer has their own notes and/or description, I copy that and post it on untapped when I add beers there. That's something I do wish I could do here, but I understand that can be abused by some clueless users.

 

So if WCIPA will officially become a new style, what becomes of the American IPA style? Is that just anything that doesn’t fit under West Coast, New England etc.? Any specific examples (well known beers) of what this would be?

 

And what makes an imperial ipa?

 

According to BA, an imperial IPA IS 7%-12% ABV, with increased use of both malt and hops. What I want to know is will there be an imperial WCIPA, imperial NEIPA, etc., or will that classification just stay the same? Pretty much all the imperial IPAs I’ve had are just stronger varieties of the current “American” IPA style, meaning bitter and hop-forward, which in the future will become the West Coast IPA.

 

I've never considered Two Hearted to be a West Coast version of an IPA, and Founders Centennial would be like that too. So I think there'd be many in that American category.

 

So it sounds like a double or triple ipa….which most fall into the hazy style

 

Yeah, the first one I thought of was Two Hearted. It has a little more malt backbone than something like Stone IPA. I guess the danger is that a lot of beers could probably fit into either category based on more subjective qualities. So unless you said “any beer over X IBUs is a West Coast IPA” it could end up being a slippery slope.

 

Well maybe they do now but that wasn’t always the case. Pliny the Younger for example. Been around forever and definitely not a hazy or New England style IPA.

 

Well, that stinks. I always added the brewery's notes to beers I've added and like seeing their info.

 

They do?

 

I was giving @Bhubbard34 the benefit of the doubt, as I really have no idea what the predominant IIPAs are these days in most of the country (and I’ve more or less started avoiding most New England/hazy IPAs). Here’s a list of the most rated/reviewed IIPAs on this site—so we can judge for ourselves whether most of them are hazy or clear.

 

I’m saying if you look at the current “top” list of hazies, it’s a lot of Dipas and triples….which to me, sounds like the description for imperials.

 

I’m looking at this list of NEIPAs sorted by number of ratings/reviews (default view) and most of them are in the 6%-8% range … a few outliers at 9% or 10%. (Sort by ABV and the highest one is 16%!) But maybe an imperial NEIPA category is in order if these are being added to that style solely because they are hazy and regardless of ABV. I don’t think they’d fit under what is traditionally thought of as an imperial American IPA (e.g., Ruination, PtE etc.).

 

WCIPA is the default 'American' IPA, and needs no further qualifiers. The other subsets are the ones that need to be differentiated.

 

So, they're really just high octane NEIPAs, not necessarily branded DIPAs that look like milkshakes?