Was Tap 5 the original NEIPA?

Fort Point Pale Ale and Congress St IPA started it all - 2013. London 3 and dry hop in the fermenter - boom. For once I agree w/@JackHorzempa

 

Alpine nelson - also a cloudy/fruity ale always seemed NEIPA -ish. First reviewed on BA 2006. What a beer - I miss it greatly,

 

Yes, London III is a yeast strain. I have used Wyeast 1318 London III to homebrew Juicy/Hazy IPAs.

https://wyeastlab.com/product/london-ale-iii/

Cheers!

 

Alpine Nelson

 

When did Alpine Nelson go hazy?

Below are extracts from two reviews of 2009:

“A - Clear golden with a lasting white head.”

“A-Pours a very clear golden yellow with some orange tints. It has a small white head that sticks around. A tad bit of spotted lace is left on the glass.”

Cheers!

 

Is chicha from around 5000 BCE the original NEIPA?

 

OP don't worry there will never be consensus here on what was the first NEIPA. Heck, folks here can't even agree on what the style actually is, or the range of them have more flavors than other hoppy beers, or fewer, whether enjoying them means you have childish tastes or that you enjoy a beer with the flavors and aromas of multi hop additions in various ways and times. Fun to think about though since they have grown in popularity so greatly.

 

Thanks for the laugh there at disclaimer #3. I like your thinking and often used to say that Smuttynose Finestkind was an early outlier in the NEIPA effing craze. Finestkind has/had particulate and floaties and was really different and a great beer. People here scoffed at me I stick firm to my thinking.

 

I think one would have an easier time distinguishing Heady from a New England IPA like say, Julius, than they would from Tap 5.

I could dig up the article, but when they brewed Congress St. they thought they screwed up the beer (especially due to how turbid it was) then they drank it...lightbulb!

 

An extract from a Full Pint article:

“Trillium is so strongly associated with the New England style IPA it’s easy to forget that they launched with their namesake saison as a flagship beer. Soon after, they introduced two beers that changed the local and national beer landscape, Fort Point Pale Ale and Congress Street IPA. Trillium didn’t invent the NEIPA, these beers borrowed from work done by Vermont standouts The Alchemist and Hill Farmstead, but their beers were a revelation to many. The first thing you notice from a hoppy Trillium beer is the appearance, not just a little hazy but murky and opaque, nothing like the crystal clear West Coast style IPAs that dominated the market for many years. The deep haze is the result of adding copious amounts of hops to the beer at the end of the brewing process and during active fermentation, and this process leads to fresh beer with an amazing aroma and loads of hop flavor but low bitterness. The small brewery in Fort Point quickly had lines forming around the block every day for growler fills and 22 oz bombers of their growing stable of IPAs and pale ales.”

https://thefullpint.com/editorial/what-you-need-to-know-about-trillium-brewing/

A couple of interesting things in the above paragraph:

1. The first/flagship beer was a Saison.

2. The author, Ryan Brawn, explicitly states “Trillium didn’t invent the NEIPA…”

Cheers!

 

right - and he sited Heady - hazy west coast - incredible beer w/absurd aromatics - but lacking the ultra tropical/estery qualities that are the key characteristics of the prototype. As for HF - same thing - most of there early beers (Edward/Susan etc) where kinda cloudy -- minerally - fruity - incredible beers - but lacking the overripe tropical vibe. Actually - even today - the only HF beers that are estery/tropical are the S&S series which I don't think came into being until 2014 or so. The first truly turbid/milky eatery/tropical beers came from Trill.

 

Fair enough. As @cavedave posted above: "OP don't worry there will never be consensus here on what was the first NEIPA."

 

Congress St late 2014

 

Edward on cask around the same time - and wow was that a treat!!

 

Such a great beer, memorable for its time. I think of it like Heady, Ouroboros, Abner, Ephraim, plenty of others, on the way to today's versions. I guess Alchemist and HF used the original Conan strains, London III was Trillium. Both HF and Alchemist were big on dry hopping right from the start.

A delicious string of beautiful beer experiences all! I gotta say it certainly has been a very tasty and enjoyable ride getting from there to here.

 

Below is an extract of an article written by Connor Casey: “Connor Casey, cofounder of Cellarmaker Brewing in San Francisco…” with emphasis in bold by me:

“Locally, most brewers found what was happening back East to be some sort of fad, and they scoffed at it. The only hazy IPA from the West Coast I drank before 2013 was Alpine’s Nelson, a beer that holds a special place in the hearts of many California brewers and beer fans, myself included. I’ll never forget getting growlers of Nelson back in 2010 and seeing how intensely hazy it was—an appearance that, back then, was jarring. Then you smelled and tasted the beer, and it was one of the best IPAs you’d ever had, appearances aside.”

https://beerandbrewing.com/brewers-perspective-west-coast-haze/

Cheers!

 

Nelson was notorious back then for some batches being super hazy and some not so much. Personally the ones I thought were the best were usually brewed after heavy rains and the well would fill up and it added a ton of minerality and soft mouth feel to the beer. There was one batch of Bad Boy that was brewed one rainy winter that is probably the greatest beer I ever drank. Cheers.

 

So, are you indicating that the difference between super hazy batches and less hazy batches was due to variability of the brewing water?

Cheers!

 

Not really. It may have added some haze in certain situations but I meant that it added a flavor component I found complimented the beer. I think the differences were probably from a combination of chill haze create on the hot side, dry hopping early in fermentation which just wasn't done back then like now, and hop oils from the obscene amount of hops used to dry hop by Alpine. Cheers.