What exactly is a West Coast IPA (WCIPA)?

Here’s my take.

• Color: Pale to amber is most common.
• IBUs: 50 sounds pretty low, but you definitely need a pronounced bitterness/acidity.
• Malt presence: Malt should be fairly neutral but malt flavor is essential (otherwise all you’d have is hop tea)—hop flavor/aroma is the focus but the malt should complement that.
• Pine: Certainly common but not essential. WCIPAs can be citrusy, resinous, piney, or any combination.
• Other factors: It needs to be clear.

 

Great question! I’m interested in how you answer all your questions.

Cheers!

 

I would add the malt ought to lean more towards grain than sweetness. An a touch of rye for added bite and dryness is always welcome too.

 

I wish we'd just drop that term. There were plenty of breweries along the west coast that were brewing an entirely different style of IPA when that name was coined. Now? There are plenty of breweries in San Diego making "New England" IPA. This isn't as bad as Italian Pilsner, but I'd like to see these regional descriptors go away.

 

I think you nailed it.

 

Well stated!

Just me, I think the BJCP covers the ground work for American IPA well…

I, too, look forward to how this most interesting discussion unfolds…

Cheers!

 

I dunno, maybe 60 or 65? I don't pay attention to numbers like that very carefully, I just think 50 sounds low.

 

Fair enough. Off the top of my head, here are IBUs for a few of what I consider classic/old school West Coast IPAs:

• Stone IPA: 71
• Sculpin: 70
• Blind Pig: 70
• Lagunitas IPA: 52
• Alpine Nelson: 45

So maybe 40 or 50 is reasonable for a minimum number, even if many go substantially above that.

 

Lots of hops in boil. La cumbre elevated has 100 ibu's for example. It is listed as an American ipa, but wcipa is considered a branch off of that category. I'm probably completely wrong.

 

This is a solid example, but more of a precursor. A lot of the characteristics are there, but it only has 38 IBUs...

To me a sweet caramel malt back bone specifically to slightly balance things out a bit is a hallmark, but that's just me.

I also agree that just using American IPA would suffice. There's varying degrees of American IPA that eventually blur the lines towards New England IPA, but those are really the two sub styles.

 

Put me in the camp that finds the designation increasingly meaningless. But if I were to try and recreate the attributes that lead people to make a distinction I would guess that the American ipa developed as a beer that was heavily hopped with C hops and balanced witha caramel malt body. It seems like the contribution of the "west coast" was to thin the body out and shift the balance of hops later in the process to maintain the sweet/bitter balance.

This is also the path that california ipa brewers have continued down in my experience. Most of the ipas I drink these days have a very lean malt bill that is definitely more grainy/biscuity than caramel sweet and they make liberal use of late addition aroma hops to provide the primary flavor with the pine/pith bitterness in the finish to keep things clean.

 

Yeah I looked up that info elsewhere.

 

If you were going to split off West Coast from American (and I’m not saying we should), then I think the wedge you would use to do it would relate to the malt. When you start using words like “sweet,” “caramel,” and “balance” I think you are talking about the more traditional American IPA, whereas when you use words like “dry” or grainy/biscuity you are more likely talking about a West Coast IPA. I’m fine keeping them all together under the American IPA classification, but then West Coast would be a sub-classification under that. But I also think that’s what they should have done with New England/hazy IPAs, and that horse is already out of the barn.