Session IPAs

All Day is a college gameday staple. Not as good as most IPA's, but is that really a surprise to anyone?

 

I look at a session ipa as an ipa thats not hoppy hoppy and not too too bitter. I dont factor abv into it really. I mean an ipa thats got some decent hop presence but isnt smacking you in the face with hops is a session ipa to me.

 

The issue is IPA is a style that clearly benefits from higher alcohol. Clearly the majority of beer geeks, on the whole, think double IPA are tastier than regular IPAs. So why would a "session IPA" taste the same?

It's not like a pilsner, which is naturally a beautiful thing around 4.9 to 5%. No need to artificially create a style.

That being said, I think brewers can figure this out, it's simply going to take time. The art of creating great tasting beer at lower abv's is certainly something that many US brewers still need to learn, and I believe will learn.

 

So you would call something like Two Hearted a session?

 

Just drink regular IPAs and stretch out your sessions. Drink some water between bottles/cans.

Or drink a different style. I like Stone Levitation or Sierra Nevada PA for sessions.

 

i don't know how that could possibly be construed as ignorance, i can choose 6 different IPA's in a night whereas someone else can't, ergo i feel bad that they don't get to experience that. However, you have definitely succeeded in producing the ignorant statement by assuming that anyone who does this is a fat alcoholic.

 

I dont know anything about Two Hearted since they dont sell it here. I should amend what I said and mention that I rarely check the abv on bottles.

 

At 7% ABV ? The session version would be One Hearted.

 

Not a fan, if I want a session beer I'll drink an English Bitter or a Helles

 

When it's 1800's England again maybe I'll care about the historic versions of beer. Fact of the matter is that things evolve and change for good or for bad.

 

You miss the point though, the genie is out of the bottle.Evolution took place before the "craft" movement was even thought of.The term IPA has been used and still is used to describe low gravity beers with relatively modest hopping.These have been around for several decades and are firmly established by custom and practice.

 

So what's your point? You and I never see eye to eye on this. Calling a huge swath of beers an IPA simply because they are hoppy, or have high BU/GU ratios is silly. I'm honestly surprised nobody has called a hoppy barleywine a QIPA yet. Calling your example an IPA and calling DFH 90 min an IPA and Odell Red an IPA really is just reducing the name and description of IPA to nothing. If you handed me an all day IPA and an Odell red I would in no way equate the two as the same style, so why the hell should we call them the same?

 

My point is really that IPA hasn't any good definition if brews like GK and Wells IPAs exist side by side with massively West Coast hopped strong ones.IPAs have been around for so long in so many guises that it just became a name.

 

You really are missing the point. There has been huge variation amongst beers called IPA both over time and geography. Claiming that only one of these many variations is "authentic" is frankly ridiculous. Just as well, too, because the beer world is all the richer for the many-facetted nature of what is (and was) called IPA.

 

Founders all day was my go to session for a while, but I haven't had a session IPA as good as Kane Ripple. Its well balanced. The other Jersey beer, Boat by Carton, is just OK...a bit watery and unbalanced IMO.

 

And both of you aren't grasping what I'm getting at as well. So if there are so many beers that can be called an IPA on the market, why the hell should we muddy the waters anymore by calling them "session IPA", or "black IPA"? It's lazy and boorish on the part of the breweries to take a beer that is CLEARLY not an IPA (or historically called an IPA) and call it one simply to move product based on market trends. I'm not suggesting that we should stop calling IPA's by their name, I am suggesting that breweries and brewers should step up to the bar and use descriptors that adequately describe whats in the bottle. All day IPA didn't taste like an IPA to me. Odell red doesn't taste like an IPA to me. DFH 90 minute doesn't either, and my guess is that there are countless IPA's out there that I would find don't reflect what I expect and others expect as well when they buy a bottle labeled as such. I get that we are on the cutting edge of brewing styles here, but if it's a hoppy wit, just fucking say so, don't give me this white IPA bullshit.

 

session beer= low abv beer. India Pale Ale= not low abv.

That's like saying a Session Imperial Stout or something.

 

You mean clearly not what you understand to be an IPA.You probably won't find that Greene King IPA is like an IPA either.The simple fact is that there is neither a definition of the style nor an authoritative body to define it.If in fact it ever was a style.

 

i can"t afford to pound a sixer of 6%-8% craft beer in a night, nor would i want to. i drink craft for the enjoyment of great beer, not for the buzz.

 

Shaming someone for not being able to handle a six pack of 7% ABV beers is perhaps not ignorant, but rather immature.