The unfiltered craze.

Definitely. I posted this in the Mid-Atlantic forum, about messages a PA brewery (Sole) was posting on social media:

 

I'm 37 and I thought I sounded old. I'm glad I'm not alone.While I will pick up and enjoy a "juice bomb" I sure as hell will not stand in line for any, especially with a bunch of trendy, whiny,under worked hipsters. I think the haze craze is just something different for beer drinkers who have been around the block a few times. Throw one in here or there with a SN, a local, and readily available small brewery stuff and move on. There are TONS of good Pilsners out there, Jacks Abbey is producing incredible Lagers, and l'd like to see more craft Lagers come along.
I'd love to see some of these kids put down a 12'er of Old Milwaukee before they are allowed to wait in line for the newest "thing".

 

RIGHT? I know so many rich yuppies who skipped straight from macro to refusing anything other than Tree House/Trillium/Bissell because of some bullcrap GQ "10 Craft Beers you need to try" article or some other nonsense.

 

I'll stand in a line as long as it's not too long. I'm an overworked blue-collar 50 year old guy. I don't understand the comment about the 12 pack of Old Milwaukee. Back in the day, would not phase me a bit.

 

If the hops have a fruity character and the beers taste like hops, then the beer tastes like fruit. Yes if you drink it side-by-side with actual fruit juice you can tell the difference. But they taste way more fruity than any other beer that's not actually brewed with fruit which is what I believe is a large part of their appeal.

 

Few things.....

Was excited to see this. But upon the smell, was sour cream like smell


The taste had a sourness to it. Sharp. Then intensely sharp hop and the finish of a Greek yogurt.

It seems that this is a yeast problem or an infection. And the beer had been pulled from being sold due to brewery error.

Sadly, if not releasing excess yeast from the tank was done purposefully, it did not work in favor. I enjoy all ipas but it's not always a good thing to skip that task.

 

That's what I was trying to say. Twenty years ago Old Mil didn't bother me either. You couldn't pay me to drink it now. I was suggesting that trendy twenty something's have not had a lot of beer drinking under their belt to look down their noses at good beers like SN, that some perceive as "old". Don't get me wrong if I was in the right place at the right time, I'd wait for certain beers,but not for hours just because it's the in thing at the moment.

 

I well remember in the late 90s and early aughts having to tell folks the little bit of sediment in those tasty English ales was yeast from bottle conditioning and no cause for worry; that the beer was indeed alive and in perfect shape. I had a number of customers concerned about the variable "sediment" and "haze" in the ahead of its time Smurttynose Finest Kind IPA. Customers also often had difficulty with the cloudiness" and "funkiness" of great French ciders. There is no new"ownership" of cloudy haze, it's always been here. Once it (cloudy/hazy) was a by-product of careful brewing/fernenting, now it can be a goal.

 

Vitamins are only healthy if you are suffering from a deficiency of them in your diet.Having too much is also a health risk.

 

I don't think I would wait 20 minutes for a beer. I'm lucky to have a place nearby that has pretty good examples of it. I don't think it's caught on here like it has elsewhere. I just hope prices don't keep creeping up the way they are now. It's expensive to go out to eat, have a couple beers and a growler fill and leave a nice tip. Not a cheap hobby.

I was lucky to get in on the start of the craft beer scene in St. Louis when Schlafly started out. My have things changed since then.

 

I imagine the craze will get to you soon enough. Things tend to originate on one coast, jump to the opposite coast, then work their way in toward the middle. Those in the middle tend to get in on things a little late. I say this as a born Hoosier!

 

Yup, I hate waiting in line for beer, but it's basically an either or in a lot of cases in Chicago. Either you want the beer bad enough to wait for it, or you don't get it.

(or you have to get really lucky and stalk the right shops )

 

I hadn't seen this post when I made my last one, but to be honest, your claim that brewers brewing this style can't produce clean, crisp, "filtered" IPA's is very narrow minded.



This first pic is an IPA I brewed at my last brewery. Not only is it unfiltered, it did not even use fining agents. This sample was pulled directly from the fermenter 9 days after brewing.



This is my IPA at my current brewery, pulled this morning, kegging tomorrow with the same level of turbity. The turbidity is allowed to stay because the haze contributions come from particles that benefit the flavor and aroma. No head because it only had 1.5 volumes of co2 at the time of sampling.



For comparison, this is my Helles which was filtered through a coarse media lenticular filter.

A good brewer can make ANY style, including a hazy IPA. To write off brewers that intentionally brew them hazy is a very ignorant stance to take.

 

I think tdizzle was more trying to say that you shouldn't brew beers that appeal to the hipster crowd. That in of itself is a false statement, since NEIPAs appeal to more than just hipsters.

And hell, plenty of hipsters have been drinking West Coast IPAs before there were NEIPAs.

 

I think you will find that there are two kinds of breweries. Those that brew beers customers choose because customers like them. Those that are out of business.

I think you will also find that historically there have been two eras of beer brewing. One era when brewers constantly tried to make different styles in new ways. And the other era when... Oh wait, never mind, there is just that one era

 

Was only a matter of time...

 

Yeah, but like the Unfiltered Stone Enjoy By, I seriously doubt this is in the NE style; same beer, just less processed.

 

I think it is a natural development of something we have been seen happening, even in the WC. That is, the hop wars are over, brewers realized using fewer hop varieties, and having leaner malt bases, one gets a more aromatic and full hop experience, than your old school big, malty, 100ibu, 12 hop kinds, IPA.

We saw this with the session IPA rise, with new wave Pale Ales, and with single hop IPAs, the focus on Mosaic, Galaxy, Simcoe and Citra hops to extract huge aromatic profiles, particularly tropical notes...

What the NE style does is take this basic intuition and then make it a richer, juicier, fruit dense mouthfeel to go with this aromatic bonanza. It works, I think, amazingly.

There are some hybrid IPA's, standing between the NE style and a less hazy profile, drier in character: Sante Adairius, Highland Park and Kern River play this game amazingly well.

 

Not sure where everyone else stands on this, but I wish all IPAs would go this route. Don't care if they're NE IPAs or not, but anything that gives me super fresh, strong hops is greatly appreciated.