Why Pale Ales?

You should've just said it this way in the first place.

 

everyone loves a good bold hoppy ipa, but a well made and balanced apa is hard to find i think...

 

I didn't realize there was a shortage of Hop Notch. I love it too, but I never have a problem finding it.

 

Hop Notch is indeed a fine (and in line with current standards) IPA; I've got the dwindling remains of a fresh sixer in the fridge right now.

But in re: the present topic, pales are a home base style for me, in that I'm always coming back to 'em, and I tend to think of IPAs as wonderful derivations of pale ales rather than thinking of pale ales as incomplete IPAs.

 

it's what's selling. hop forward beers are the craze and i'm not ashamed to admit i'm right there in the middle of it.

 

Agreed. Not a big Lagunitas Pale Ale fan but I love DayTime.

 

It's really simple. People like hops. If you can put a lot of them in a beer that has low abv. that's appealing to a lot of folks like me who are hopeless hop heads, but really couldn't care less about the buzz.

 

I love Victory's new session double IPA Dirt Wolf.

 

Production breweries use the same source water and adjust it (if they know what they are doing). Most use a house ale yeast for all beers, but some will haves German wheat strain, a Belgian strain and a Lager strain, for example. The base malt comes from the big silos, so usually the same for a big batch size. Specialty malts are often the same, some breweries use one crystal malt for most beers to minimize labor and mistakes. Other malts are added by the sack, not fractions of sacks. Hops are easier to have a variety of, but some breweries use a limited number that they like and contract for.

Equipment and process are also big players in how a beer tastes. Lagunitas is said to mash at a high temp for a short time, which will give good body for all of their beers. Fermentation equipment and procedures have a very big influence on taste.

A breweries house flavor will be a combination of all the above, so yes, I agree with what you said.

 

Dale's Pale Ale is really good, but at 6.5% ABV it's easily pushing into the IPA catagory. But these lines are never hard and fast of course.

This is totally conjecture, but I'll bet that if Oscar Blues had created Dale's Pale today, they would have labeled/marketed it as an IPA. Hear me out... Oscar Blues and Dale's Pale is one craft beer's older, established brands from years before IPAs surged into popularity. Back then people were not clamoring for super hoppy IPAs, so it probably made more sense for Oscar Blues to downplay the hoppy character of the beer by marketing it as an pale ale.

Now that IPAs are all the rage, brewers today are doing the opposite and labeling/marketing their hoppy APAs as "session IPAs". It's kind of funny actually.

 

And all varieties of hops do the same thing to every beer they are used in not matter whether they're used in the boil, a hop back or used for dry hopping. Brilliant!

 

So the answer is to troll people who just happen to enjoy the IPA and its' many variants?

 

Well....that and whether or not they can sell them. And based on the sales estimates people post here and the choices most brewers are making, I think it's safe to assume that PAs, IPAs and the variants of both are minting major coin for the breweries that do them well. That's not to say that's all that reputable brewers should, or do, produce. While there are definitely a lot of hoppy beers on the shelves to choose from, I have no problem finding outstanding beers that fall well outside the PA/IPA categories. As long as the industry as a whole isn't ignoring other styles (and I think it's safe to say that it is not), then I see no harm in throwing a wide range of PA/IPA versions against the proverbial wall and continuing to brew the ones that stick (so to speak).

 

A few days ago I was at a Firestone Walker tasting event where flights of four beers sold for $10. They were Wookey Jack, Double Jack, Parabola and Pivo Pils. Which one of these is different from the rest? I overheard someone tell the barkeep, "this Pivo tastes like Corona." Lighter beers with nuance get less attention these days. Granted you should not taste 9% and 10% abv's then expect a lighter taste profile to give your palate much to notice. Breweries must find their way on the fly after consumer tastes pushed an upward swing in massive flavor profiles and ABV's.

Clearly there is a swing the other way with the rollout of so many "session" ales. As the IPA category got hot I tasted many awful ones that others think are great. Now the same thing will happen with lighter, lower abv ales since beer drinkers are looking, at least part time, for a tamer version of the delicious heavier beers they enjoy. It is interesting that, as others have already mentioned, the hop profile in these ales would have been considered adequate not so long ago.

 

That's what I was thinking. Titling a thread "Why Pale Ales?" doesn't sound so much like "Uinta brews two beers that are barely distinguishable from one another", but rather seems to question people's enjoyment of (and brewers' decisions to brew) a rather broadly-defined group of beers.

I think the attitude you are picking up on is because your chosen thread title doesn't seem to match the subsequent clarification. It sounds like you are questioning the entire group of ales brewed with pale malt. And fair or not, people can get a little defensive/chippy when they feel like their opinion is being criticized, much like you did not appreciate your opinion being criticized.

 

That's fine, but the point I was trying to make was that I don't see the situation as being an either/or scenario. Take your own example of Sierra Nevada. Sure you can get your SNPA, but they also throw stuff in barrels and experiment with a range of styles, just like countless other breweries. Which is how it ought to be IMO. Maybe YOU want Summerfest in June, but I'll be drinking my imperial peanut butter porter aged on cocoa nibs.

 

Another reason i love the Bruery. All their beers are different. With little to no hoppy beers.

 

If Pivo Pils tastes like Corona to that guy, his taste buds are broken. It is called a hoppy Pilsner, it is around 40 IBUs, which is probably 4 times the bitterness of Corona. The hop aroma and flavor are very nice.

Did he taste the Pivo last? That would do it, as his taste buds would be saturated and on tilt. I have had things like Racer X, then to throttle back on the alcohol a Racer 5, which then tasted like water.