The New England-style India pale ale, with its juicy hop flavors and hazy look, has become a phenomenon among craft beer fans. They camp out overnight to be among the first to buy rare releases, and flock to hazy-I.P.A. festivals in New York City, Buffalo, Toronto and Portland, Ore., to celebrate the new vanguard.
Now comes proof that the groundswell is more than just a passing tremor: Two of the country’s largest craft brewers are making their own versions of the style. In December, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. introduced Hazy Little Thing I.P.A. in a few areas, and this month has released it nationwide. The Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams, has begun selling its New England I.P.A. in that region, and will go nationwide in February.
For these companies, the move is both a logical next step and a big risk. Much of the appeal of the hazy I.P.A.s stems from their origins as small-batch, indie brews that are sold at the source. And unlike any earlier styles, these beers require freshness in the extreme. After a few weeks, they literally fall apart — the haze disappears as their proteins fall out of suspension, destroying the hop flavors and, in most cases, rendering the beer fit for the drain.
“Hazy I.P.A.s are pretty tough to make if you’re hoping to distribute nationally,” said Bill Manley, who helped develop Sierra Nevada’s recipe for Hazy Little Thing before leaving the company in November. “The haze that’s in beer is, by and large, pretty darn unstable.”
But the big brewers think they can guarantee freshness, win over the skeptics and appeal to parts of the country that this young style hasn’t reached.
Continue reading the main story“There are still many drinkers who have yet to experience the hazy, citrusy brew,” said Meaghan Quinn, a spokeswoman for Samuel Adams.
The fervor around these beers is ripe with hyperbole, but in the best examples, it’s warranted. Hazy I.P.A.s offer lush, juicy flavors that beers have never had before. Brewers are harnessing the citrus and tropical notes of new hop varieties while eschewing their characteristic bitterness, a trick they achieve by loading their hops late in the brewing process, and in huge quantities.
These beers seem to defy large-scale production and cross-country shipping; many brewers intentionally keep batches small to ensure freshness through high turnover. But Sierra Nevada in particular has consistently made world-class beers in big volume, and these ephemeral I.P.A.s will be its biggest test.
The beers’ haze has traditionally come from hop particles that mix with yeast in suspension. The result is hop flavors that, rather than wafting up to your nose from the glass, burst in your mouth after each sip.
As the New England style has proliferated, breweries have turned to high-protein grains, like oats and unmalted wheat, to build a more stable haze for their beloved hops to nest in. Others use additives like pectin or even flour, igniting debate in the most fervent corners of the craft-beer world.
Sierra Nevada uses oats in its recipe for Hazy Little Thing. But it also employs other tricks for quality control, including one common among wheat beer producers: When sending kegs to restaurants and bars, the company instructs distributors to ship them upside down. That way, the bartender is forced to flip them upon delivery, stirring up the proteins and restoring the haze.
Today, an I.P.A.’s cloudy appearance has become its signifier, even a status symbol, flooding Instagram feeds and inspiring hashtags like #hazyipa and #newenglendipa. Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, has declared the New England ales “the first beer style based around Instagram culture and based around social media.”
But in the beginning, haze wasn’t the goal; it was a side effect. “We never set out to brew an I.P.A. that was hazy,” said John Kimmich, a founder and the head brewer of the Alchemist in Waterbury, Vt. “Our I.P.A. was hazy because we brewed it the way I wanted it to taste.”
Mr. Kimmich is the creator of Heady Topper, the ale that popularized the style and still sells out hours after a shipment hits New York City. His beer brims with flavors of tropical fruit and pine, balanced with a keen, citrus-peel bitterness. When he began brewing Heady Topper in 2004, his goal was to load up on hop flavors using “dry hopping,” or adding hops during fermentation rather than during the boiling process. This coaxes more aroma than bitter flavor from the hops; the sheer volume of hops happened to turn the beer hazy.
Like many brewers of this style, Mr. Kimmich is intent on keeping his operation and availability regional. In true Vermont fashion, it doesn’t take much to get him started about corporate greed and his allegiance to helping the local community.
Some might question the need to sell a beer this perishable nationwide. Fresh, locally made beer is readily available these days in most metropolitan areas.
But the hazy-I.P.A. trend hasn’t swept the middle of the nation yet, and Samuel Adams hopes to bring some people their first taste of the style. The company is keeping an eye on distributors to ensure that consumers get their beer fresh.
“No beer is ever going to be as good as it is five days out of the brewery,” said Megan Parisi, the head brewer at the Boston nanobrewery where Samuel Adams researches and develops new recipes. But the company is banking on the beer’s staying good for a while; it is setting an expiration date of three months for its New England I.P.A.
Mr. Kimmich is most excited about the new beer from Sierra Nevada, a company he idolized early in his career, as a brewer in the 1990s at the Vermont Pub and Brewery.
“Sierra Nevada? Those guys,” he said. “How many countless beers have they inspired with their pale ale?”
How the New Brews Taste
New England-style I.P.A.s walk a spectrum from bitter to sweet. This is a case where balance isn’t always preferred: If you already love I.P.A.s, there are many bitter ones to satisfy you. If you don’t, the sweet variety could be your gateway drink.
Now that two of the nation’s largest craft brewers have entered the scene, with Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing (6.7 percent alcohol per volume) and Samuel Adams New England I.P.A. (6.8 percent A.B.V.), how do they fit into that spectrum?
In terms of flavor, both are a tier below their small-batch counterparts, missing the vibrant fruitiness that distinguishes the best of breed. Samuel Adams’s beer evokes citrus but not in the literal, tastes-like-juice way that is the New England style; it’s scarcely different from an ordinary I.P.A.
The Sierra Nevada beer has more pleasant flavors of dried apricot and dried pineapple, and is the better choice if you can’t find something fresh and local.
But in many parts of the country, local examples will be more expressive and worth seeking out. In New York, Other Half Brewing is the king of hazy I.P.A.s, so much so that its cans are nearly impossible to find. But they are worth the hunt — lean, racy and sharp with hops.
Greenpoint Beer & Ale’s Instant Credibility (7.8 percent A.B.V.) punches with aggressive bitterness and an undercurrent of pulpy orange and mango nectar. Also lovely is its spiritual opposite from upstate, Industrial Arts Wrench (6.8 percent A.B.V.), which embodies the sweet end of the spectrum with a silky mouth feel and flavors that verge on pineapple juice. I.P.A. skeptics, start here.
As the originator of the New England style, the Alchemist’s Heady Topper (8 percent A.B.V.) has one foot in the traditional I.P.A. style, with familiar notes of pine, grapefruit and resin turned up in the foreground, washing over a background of fruit-driven hops.
Mr. Kimmich, Alchemist’s brewer, calls it “balanced,” and hopheads will attest to that. It won’t bring new fans to hoppy beers, but it’s a treat for the already converted.
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