What beer started the turbid/cloudy IPA trend?

Can I digress for a second?

Who started the heavily fruiited. Smoothie/slushy trend? Tons of people are doing it now but my guesses would be 450 or Mortalis.. Interesting triva.

 

Just to complicate this matter.

Even though I am not from Vermont I have enjoyed a LOT of Heady over the years, including at the pub, and for a few years (not proud of this) I was recipient of quite a bit at cost from someone who picked up at the Blush Hill brewery and sold in Brooklyn for 10.00 a can. My group of friends loves Heady, we have done lots of runs for it, even though it is 7 hours round trip from here to Waterbury, and we always pick up for each other. So...

Some of the most chunky, turbid NEIPA I have had in my life have been some batches of Heady from the Blush Hill Brewery. I know it is a cloudy beer now, and it wasn't all chunky the times I had it at the pub, but I'd put some batches of Heady in the same league as any NEIPA you can name for this characteristic.

Just my .015 cents

 

I commonly hear Heady as the genesis of this. While Heady may have been out in front in terms of process and flavor profile, it wasn't the hazy/orange juice/murky beer that pretty much anything considered a NEIPA is? Right?

So, is the question 'which beer got this NEIPA ball rolling?' or 'which beer seemed to have popularized the hazy/murky appearance that NEIPA is not known for?'

Or is the answer to both - Heady?

 

Not sure but I would throw The Answer in there also as a possibility for starting the Smoothie/Slushy Trend.
And Tired Hands/Omnipollo gets credit (or blame) for creating the Milkshake IPA.

 

I thought about throwing Answer in there but was to lazy to google its age relative to 450.

 

h

Yes, the earlier Hill Farmstead beers (e.g., 2010 - 201x) were pretty much clear in appearance.

Sometime around 2015 Shaun Hill purchased new brewing equipment and he had expanded production. At some point in time (thereafter?) the appearance of Hill Farmstead beers changed. Was this change due to the changes of brewing equipment/processes? Or maybe in the 2010 - 2015 timeframe he took steps to produce clear(er) products but there was a demand from consumers for hazier beers so he changed things to serve that demand?

Regardless of the reasons there is no doubt in my mind that the appearance of Hill Farmstead beers have changed over time.

I was able to drink a lot of the earlier (non-cloudy) Hill Farmstead beers since kegs were regularly shipped down to Philly area craft beer bars. At some point these keg deliveries were completely stopped and nowadays there are shipments but very limited in quantity and they occur infrequently. I personally have never consumed an Abner as depicted in the second photo (i.e., murky/turbid).

Cheers!

 

Heady was probably one of the first hazy IPAs but Treehouse seems to be who really pushed the hazy IPA to the next level and 100s of breweries have since followed trying to mimic their success. I find Heady to be more middle of the road than full on hazy/turbid/murky as well.

 

In the OP the question posed was: "What single brew deserves the most credit for staring the turbid, cloudy IPA trend?"

I disagree with your 'interpretation' here.

Cheers!

 

I know you guys are all focused on the NE, but, when was pseudoSue first brewed, and what is TG's relationship to the NE brewers at the time?

Were TG's hazy, hoppy beers independently developed? Influenced by what the NE brewers were doing? Influence the NE brewers?

It seems to me a bit amazing that a brewer in near-rural Iowa would be in the middle of this timeline (perhaps even pre-dating some or most) and yet be outside the discussion altogether.

But, then, I'm not familiar with the history of the principals at TG, who they worked with or knew, and when they began brewing the hazy highly-hopped beers rather than the clear beers they still have in their lineup.

 

Probably Treehouse Julius. The first beer I personally had that I would classify as turbid was Trillium Vicinity. Man what an ugly beer (it's good though)

 

Not sure the first hazies they made but Pseudo Sue was first added to the site in 2011. Oldest reviews suggest it was hazy out of the gate.

 

Here are some questions:

• Weren't the first few batches of Julius clear? It's changed/evolved a lot over the years.
• Where does accessibility play into this? Tree House was in growlers for a long time before they got into cans. Trillium, in the middle of Boston, was putting out bombers pretty early on. I also feel like Trillium was very forward with why their beer was hazy.
• Given accessibility, which of these beers were people across the country getting access to?

Between the two, I lean Trillium, but I also had much more readily available access to Trillium versus Tree House during the come up. I voted Heady because that is the right answer.

 

OTHER - Hodson's in the late 18th century?

--- M. Jackson, "Giving Good Beer the IPA Name", Zymurgy, Spring, 1996

 

ISO

 

I can show you a picture from 2012 of Julius and it is not a hazy beer

 

The 2016 BA article dove into the “murky movement” discussion a bit, with Trillium and BB being “forefront”

Bissell Brothers Brewing Company: Pushing Limits in Portland

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Toppling Goliath was/is one of the few breweries to collaborate with Tree House, which may have had an influence/impact on recipe(s)

 

Yes, I do. HopHeads early on was notably clearer than how that beer appears today.

I still recall the first turbid HopHands I had, it was at a beer festival at Yards Brewery in Philly. I don't recall the specific year but I do remember that when the beer was served to me my thoughts were: what the heck happened to this batch/keg of HopHands? It looked very ugly and at that moment very unappealing for me. Maybe this was around 2015 since that is when Jason described his HopHands as "extremely cloudy and a mess to say the least. Staff at the pub should not be pouring it."

It would seem that there is more than one brand/brewery where their 'NEIPA' beers were initially not very murky/turbid but a number of years later the appearance changed to murky/turbid. It would seem that this phenomenon makes this discussion murkier.

Cheers!

 

Influence isnt the question is it? The question is what IPA was the beginning of turbid ipa. Since heady is not turbid, the first cloudy or hazy ipa I remember was indeed Nelson. Yall lsid out the semantics, dont be mad at the results.

 

Please post that photo. That would be helpful to the discussion.

Cheers!