The Session #77: What's the Big Deal with IPA?

Ballast Point Sculpin. Bell’s Two Hearted. Weyerbacher Double Simcoe. Russian River Pliny the Elder...Russian River Blind Pig.

Just typing those words has Pavlovially created a shaker glass’s worth of saliva thinking about all that delectable, hoppy elixir. The reason is so simple. I, like most beer lovers who predominantly patron the smallest 99.8% of the brewing industry when and where I buy beer, enjoy hop-forward beers in much the same way oenophiles take pleasure in fruit-forward (grapey) wines. Hops are beer’s domain. Plenty of other drinks contain malt or have flavors nuanced by yeast, but only beer genuflects at the altar of hops. So it’s quite natural that the hoppiest of the hoppy—IPAs and Double or Imperial IPAs—get the shiniest pedestal.

But Justin Mann over at Justin’s Brew Review, who is a confessed IPA drinker yet has noticed a splintering in the craft beer world by some like Adrienne So who deem today’s craft beers “just way too hoppy,” asks for the July installment of The Session and in his best Jerry Seinfeld blog-voice, What’s the big deal with IPAs?

It’s a subject I’ve spent time thinking, discussing, and writing about, most recently over at The New School wherein I facetiously proclaim IPA is Dead.

Obviously, it’s anything but. In fact, here in hop heaven Oregon, the IPA category accounts for 25.2% of the Oregon beer market. More than 1 out of every 4 beers bought and drank in the Beaver State—total, not just among craft beers—is an India Pale Ale. Nationally, at the GABF, American IPA has been the most-entered category for a dozen years. No. 2? Imperial IPA. 4th? American-style Strong Pale Ale, which is scarcely different that IPA. And rounding out the top 5 is American-style Pale Ale, which, let’s admit it, is still more IPAesque than a British IPA.

Clearly, the IPA category is the behemoth of the craft beer industry, and is only picking up speed. Just as the three rules of real estate are location, location, location, it’s fair to say the three rules of craft beer are IPA, IPA, and IPA. For the sake of variety, maybe you could say IPA, Double IPA, and Imperial IPA. See, drinkers are hop-silly for IPA and as such, brewers make more and more of them. Maybe it’s due to the blessings of living in Beervana, but it’s not uncommon to enter a brewpub that has multiple iterations on tap, or walk into a beer bar and find out that it’s IPA tap takeover week where well over a dozen handles are devoted to IPAs. For serious.

To hop breeders, this is music to their beers. Despite dozens of existing magnificent flowers on the market ranging from classics such as Goldings, Saaz, and Cascade along with fresh new aromatic faces including Citra, Mosaic, and perhaps my favorite Simcoe, dozens if not hundreds more will become available and the result will be that hop-forward beers like IPAs will remain fresh. God bless all the single-hoppped IPAs that allow brewers to showcase the breeders' work and give consumers the chance to drink something educational and, ideally, tasty.

On the flip side, I wonder if the oft-hybridized style won’t sound its own death knell if too many producers obfuscate what IPA even means. I’m sure the BIPA (Bacon IPA) is in someone’s fermenter as we speak. But between that other BIPA (Black IPA) and White IPA and Smoked IPA and Coffee IPA and Apricot IPA and...it’s safe to say India Pale Ales can get out of hand.

But that’s to be determined in the future. In the now, IPA dominates the better beer biosphere. Every style says something different, be it stouts, saisons, or sour ales. (Stouts say “chocolate or coffee in beer is awesome.” Saisons say “sophistication.” Sours say “extreme in the way IPAs were years ago.”) And then there’s Pilsners, which say “easy-drinking refreshment.” Of course, Pilsner is also rapidly becoming the anti-IPA and I think its current surge in popularity (among craft brewers, not among global industrial breweries, mind you) is due both to newcomers to the craft beer table as well as wizened IPA drinkers who are ready to mellow out on over-hopped beers. But for now, and likely forever, IPAs say “hops! Because a world full of hopheads who love the citrusy, piney, fruity, earthy, resinous, and herbaceous flavors and aromas that are made possible through Humulus lupulus can’t be wrong.”

A limp reception to IPA Day. Hoppy beers make you flaccid

Rise up gruit drinkers, oh ye fans of unhopped ales. Lay down your swords IPA guzzlers, ye of the limpdicks. For you see, IPA producers, unlike The Church, don't want you to know about a medical condition known as "brewers droop."In my post today for All About Beer's Beer Soup blog, I examine this rarely discussed phenomenon that is particularly relevant as we celebrate IPA Day. It's one that Stephen Harrod Buhner saw fit to discuss quite often. Since I'm only alloted a limited word count for Beer Soup, I wanted to offer up some extra background from our friend Buhner not just on WHY hoppy beers produce brewers droop, but where such beers came from and why the Church actually had good reason--besides their own financial gain which is always the case behind any large entity's action--to oppose the implementation of hops. Excerpted from the full article found here.

To understand the radical change that is involved in the shift from gruit to the hopped beer we now drink, it is important keep in mind the properties of gruit ale: it is highly intoxicating - narcotic, aphrodisiacal, and psychotropic when consumed in sufficient quantity. The hopped ale that took its place is quite different. Its effects are sedating and anaphrodesiacal. In other words it puts the drinker to sleep and dulls sexual desire. Hops is extremely high in estrogenic and soporific compounds. The phytoestrogens make it great for women in menopause but never good for men. (In fact there is a well-known condition among inn keepers and brewers in England called "brewer's droop.")

When Hops began to be suggested for use as a primary additive in ale, the opposition was tremendous. Those who held a monopoly on gruit production in Germany (the Catholic Church) and on pure ale in England fought hop introduction through the legislatures, proclamations of the royalty, writings of the day's medical practitioners, and through church edict. Hops, until this time, was merely one of the plants used all along in the production of beer - the earliest mention of its use probably being in Hildegard of Bingen's (1098-1179) Physica, though she insisted that other than its preservative qualities "It is not much use for a human being, since it causes his melancholy to increase, gives him a sad mind, and makes his intestines heavy."

Perhaps the organizers ought to promote craft beer next year with another style of ale the macros don't produce: the historical gruit.
(And thanks to Motifake.com where I "lifted" the artwork from their Demotivational poster.)

IPA Day and everyday

I have a hard time keeping my Twitter tweets to 140 characters. And an even harder time keeping my posts for All About Beer's Beer Soup blog to 250 words (hence, they're often 350.) Here's what I cut it down from:

Whether it’s a litigious feud between those in the brewing industry concerning tap handles or an online flame war between those in the brewing community regarding label art, the collective beer world sure does seem to get up in arms a lot. That’s a shame.

The latest needling involves IPAs. Not who brews the best one or which part of the country makes them better. It’s about whether we should celebrate IPAs specifically or, in turn, craft beer in general. Or something like that. I’m not exactly sure. Somehow I fear these skiffs are less about I.P.A. and more about E.G.O.

Ashley Routson a.k.a. The Beer Wench is a co-creator of #IPADay, the twit-hop-love-fest scheduled for August 4. She says the virtual event “is about creating global awareness about craft beer through the celebration of one of our most beloved styles…There are more non-IPA drinkers in this world than IPA-drinkers… Maybe they don’t even know what an IPA is.”

And with that, beer-swilling tweeters were typing hashtags in front of the letters IPA instantaneously. Which is how soon Ezra Johnson-Greenough who goes by the nom de blog Samurai Artist, announced his boycott of social media on August 4 by snarking, “I was just starting to wonder how come there are not more IPAs, since I can never find them on tap.”

The kicker is that both beer personalities maintain Top 10 beer blogs, both are friends of mine, and both have made the issue about themselves (even when attempting to say it’s not), which is something only other diehard beer geeks would care about. Luckily, to put IPA Day into perspective, there’s a regular Joe.

Joe Tucker runs RateBeer.com and in his good-natured and unimposing way commented that, “beer is much bigger than us beer geeks.”

Nearly every one of us wears socks, but are we sock geeks? I’d wager that there are a few discriminating, passionate sock-wearers out there who scoff at those of us who buy pairs of socks by the dozen at big box stores. You may not even know what brand of sock adorns your feet. So Joe continued, “What we've found was that IPA is a sort of brandless brand to many beer fans across the United States. As a customer decides and drifts into brand confusion, the three letters IPA serve to inform his or her choice.”

Among beer drinkers who are not beer connoisseurs, such brand confusion does exist. How many times have you asked a waiter what’s on tap and heard, “Bud, Coors Light, Heineken, and Hefeweizen”? (Of course, it’s often pronounced Hefen-wye-zen or Hefer-we-sen.) Alas, these wait staff, and frequently the customer, don’t know that Hefeweizen is a style, not a brand, or that the majority of times it’s a Widmer Hefe. I suspect that most bars or restaurants that have an IPA on draft know—and clarify—which brewery made it.

In contrast to wheat beers, India Pale Ales are not gateway beers. The bold hops need to be acclimated to. My path certainly eased in with ESBs, then pale ales and so on until I now salivate at the mere sight of a Pliny the Elder or Sculpin. By contrast, Russian River Brewing doesn’t even bottle an entry-level beer and Ballast Point Brewing sells tons more Calico Amber than Sculpin IPA.

So if newbies to craft beer aren’t so much lured by the producer but by the product, it can be argued that IPA is the quintessential craft beer style. American IPA is the single largest category in competition at the Great American Beer Fest. I predict there will never be a Coors IPA or Bud Select 55 IPA or Miller Chill IPA. So by virtue of inspiring an uninitiated beer drinker and not a confirmed connoisseur to hoisting an IPA, truly the only thing to be gained on IPA Day would be to welcome new friends to the craft beer table. While you’re at it, let’s show them how nicely we play together.