So let’s recap. First IPA with George Hodgson in the mid 19thC. Revival in US in the 80’s. Quick jump to IIPA and IIIPA bigger, bolder. Then all color variations to white IPA, red IPA, .. and black IPA (or CDA if you want… because a black beer can’t be pale right?). Then a whole lot of single hop and hop blends with all forms of additions: unique or multiples, early or late,…
Time to bring it all to the center with a big wave of Session IPA clocking in at your everyday lager abv. I’ll skip the 250 hop varieties available in whole cones, fresh or wet or kilned, in pellets, in distilled oils, cryohop and lupulin powder…
Was there anything else we could try! Of course here come the New England style. Juicy, ton loads of hop, low to no bitterness, huge mouthfeel, and silky sweet. A juicy pleaser with a strong visual identity. Cloudy as a milkshake and with a rather poor foam. Well with so much hop oil… you can’t expect the foam to last very long.
I like them, a lot. But it’s a guilty pleasure. Big time. Your regular lager has maybe 40gr of bitter hop per hl and about no hop aroma. If you want your beer to have an aromatic hop signature you need at least 100-200gr of hop per hl in cold stages. NE IPA… go up to 5000gr/hl. Man, are we serious? How much water does it take to grow 1 kg of hop again? Without even talking about the 15-20% losses in beer. That, my friend , is a lot of waste. On top of that the shelf live of hop aroma’s is unfortunately low. Couple months in a can and you’re already so far away from the original fresh signature.
I had big hope that the “fruit IPA” would be a smart way to use fruits to amplify hop signature. After all, the best way to have a grapefruit character might be .. grapefruit peels right? Hop for the mouthfeel and some complexity, then peels (or spruce tips, peaches or …). But not really.
Let’s see how long it last before we all admit this is wasting precious resources.
In the meantime Brut IPA, dry, bone dry, hoppy-sauvignon style are progressively gaining traction, taking a bit of the sparkling wine space.
What’s next? Of course there’s a next…. Bellini IPA (Brut IPA with Simcoe hops), Hops and Herbs combined (CBD/Hemp…), IPA made from the deconstruction of hop (Caryophyllene, Farnesene,…) , Hop and bitters (I mean the world of bitter is much broader than hop… think Campari, Angostura, ….).
