This aged pretty well...

Haha yeah you nailed it. It's pretty funny reading the response back then. I especially liked this one from @Todd

Really drives home how different those beers were than what was around. Even dedicated, professional beer nerds were dubious that they would have any staying power.

Personally, I don't know if I had even heard of the style yet. If so, it was something I had just caught wind of. I specifically remember making a friend who had just moved from the Boston area around that time telling me how much he missed these ipas they were making over there. He specifically called out trillium and treehouse (I'd never heard of either at the time) and described them as "being almost like juice". I remember being so confused about what he meant.

 

I was always firmly in the camp that they should be their own style since the beginning. Just because the brewing process is so different, as with the grain bill. I feel like the NEIPA craze kind of finally broke the camels back for this site(for the style listings), what with all of the much more specific style separation from the Brewers Association. Even the experimental/hybrid category is pretty huge now.

https://www.brewersassociation.org/edu/brewers-association-beer-style-guidelines/

 

Just browsed that thread. Quite an amusing read.

Enjoy

 

Why does it matter? None of those people are really left on the forums anyway.

 

Man, that's fucking hilarious. Sounds like Tree House needs to brew a beer in your name for your forward thinking

 

Yeah, whatever happened to @Todd - I miss him!

 

I liked the bit about the American Revolution

 

Well you know what I mean.

 

I think that’s a valid post by Todd. I believe at that time it hadn’t caught on. Of course looking back it did catch on. he does have some personal bias that he’s not a fan of the style but I do think his reply wasn’t totally wrong.

 

My Homebrew club wasn’t in the know on this style. I recently traded for some treehouse and loved it. There wasn’t anything like it in my area. So as a Homebrewer I tried to replicate it and brought my take to a Homebrew club meeting. On a recap of our homebrew meeting Via Facebook the poster called it a white ipa because it was soft and I used wheat.

the good news is the two most common descriptors where tropical and rounded.

 

Yeah I didn't mean to imply that he was incorrect at the time. Simply thought it was emblamatic of how fast that style has moved that a mere 7 years ago a man who's job is basically managing the aggregation of beer reviews was not sold on the idea that these tweaked ipas were anything more than a passing fad.

Fast forward to today and about 63% of site traffic is people whining that there's no other style available and another 13% complaining that there needs to be an imperial neipa style added. I wouldn't knock anyone for not seeing the moon shot trajectory the style was on, as I said I didn't even know it existed despite being a dedicated beer consumer back then. Although, props to @palma for seeing the style for what it was before the general beer-o-sphere recognized the storm that was brewing

 

valid point. It is crazy to see how big WC ipa breweries like Sierra Nevada where torpedo was their biggest seller to now hazy little thing. Probably at this time torpedo was the biggest selling ipa in CA. I could be totally wrong but I vaguely remember hearing something like that.

 

exactly. 2015 would have been the tail end of the IBU wars. I'm sure SN still had Hop Hunter selling strong, Hop Stoopid was moving well for Lagunitas, I remember feeling like the wc ipa was sort of settling into something reasonable after all that madness. I do recall stopping into Cellarmaker sometime around this time and thinking their IPAs were interesting, but I was honestly more into Coffee and Cigarettes on that trip and their IPAs were way to soft for my poor abused palate.

 

He kept the receipts!
Perhaps we can learn from this and create more styles #SplitUpSaison #GetAleInspired

 

What difference does that make? The evidence of the opinion differences from then to now is interesting regardless. As well as you know, Todd’s pretty apparent 180 concerning style updates. Cheers.

 

Some of the ‘push back’ comments in the 2015 thread were directed at called the new beer style New England IPA. I think it is worthwhile noting that the Brewers Association chose to not use geography when entering the new style: Juicy or Hazy India Pale Ale.

Cheers!

 

That is an interesting aspect. And now we have the whole block of people who insist that juicy/hazy and North East ipas are two separate sun categories.

Personally, I was introduced to the style as "neipa" so that's how I'll likely always think of it. And looking at the landscape now I feel like there's still a concentration of the style in the north east compared to the rest of the country.

 

And a few years ago that was another proposed name for this sort of beer: Northeast IPA.

“The Northeast IPA style evolved somewhat organically. Many point to breweries like Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist in Vermont as pioneers of the style, and since those early, unfiltered beers first found an audience, the profile has spread quickly throughout the region and beyond, with notable versions now coming from breweries such as Tree House, Trillium, Night Shift and Finback. “It’s not really a response to the West Coast IPA, but the style is different in a lot of ways,” says Night Shift head brewer Joe Mashburn. “One of the most important characteristics is the haze. They’re meant to be drank incredibly fresh, so there’s no filtering, no pasteurization.”

https://imbibemagazine.com/defining-northeastern-style-ipa/

My first experience in drinking a Juicy/Hazy beer was from Tired Hands which is located in Ardmore, PA. Below is how Jason Alstrom reviewed Tired Hands HopHands back in 2015:

“Reviewed by Jason from Massachusetts

2.74/5 rDev -33.7%

look: 1 | smell: 2.5 | taste: 3 | feel: 3.25 | overall: 2.75

Not feeling it with this brew, extremely cloudy and a mess to say the least. Staff at the pub should not be pouring it. Milkshake beers are not a trend or acceptable with traditional or even modern styles... No excuses. Carbonation seemed off, a muddled mess.

Jan 15, 2015”

Cheers!

 

Are you trying to distinguish that from North East ipa?