Getting Juiced About New England IPAs

Denver-based Cerebral Brewing were early proponents of the merits of New England IPAs.

 

- Jonathan Ingram

Back in what could be described as the heady days of the emergence of the Northeast-style IPA, I was working as the editor of The Beer Connoisseur. We decided to expand the staff and in the post-recession era a large pile of resumes quickly accumulated on my desk. One went right to the top. In addition to self-evident writing skills and humor, this application stood out because an unsolicited goal was included: to drink a Heady Topper before the end of the year.

Heady TopperNot too long after this editorial assistant was hired, we actually had some Heady Topper delivered to our offices in Atlanta, although there was something a little odd about this four-pack of 16-ounce cans from Vermont. It appeared as if each beer had been hit with a hammer – so no photos were possible for our beer review due to the crumpled cans. In addition, there was a note asking us to please not review it as well as the suggestion we drink it straight from the can.

The year was 2015 and even then, The Alchemist Brewery was trying to avoid having its flagship brew photographed in the glass, which was standard with our reviews, due to the cloudy appearance of this much sought-after IPA. (There was also the consideration that such a wildly popular beer could only lose if a review scored anything less than 100; a lesser score was entirely possible since this beer did not relate well to accepted guidelines for an American IPA.)

How times changed. Is there any brewer not making juicy, hazy, over-hopped, high-gravity IPAs these days? Instead of shying away from the fact these beers can be cloudier than a rainy day in London, breweries are touting the presence of all that unfiltered yeast and sugary polyphenols previously considered to be something akin to floating debris, if not contamination.