Originally posted by pepsican
Yeah it’s been on my radar for a few weeks. Really excited to try that one and the others that keep rolling into the store every week.
Hopefully the quality level keeps going up as this style gets fleshed out. Really just want to get to the point that the larger breweries are fighting for shelf space and end caps and start rolling out 24 pack canned session ipas for $19.99.
Man, I traded MaxxxxxxxxxDadddddddy for some Carton Boat Beer and it was pretty awesome sauce.
I love that Founders is doing the 15pk of All Day for $17.99 around my city now. How amazing would it be for there to actually be 24-packs of session IPAs for $20? Not sure if that’s plausible with the cost of hops, though? |
Originally posted by joet
Originally posted by EdKing
There are already loads of brewers making beers marketed as ’Session IPAs’ in the UK. I’ve had some great ones. Siren DIPA being my fav. That’s not the point. The question is whether it is really a new beer style or whether it’s just yet another ’marketing style’ or subcategory to use to sell beer to consumers.
Ed, are you aware Stout and Porter went through a similar history?
The two styles were in the same market, their recipes were similar, then overlapped, converged and diverged over the years. Today there’s enough differentiation that RateBeer and others have them listed as separate styles. I’m sure there was as much hand-wringing over beers called "porter" versus "stout" over the years as there is now over "Golden Ale" versus "Session IPA". Ultimately, it’s marketer’s choice.
The marketer IS the style maker in most cases.
This is true of RateBeer styles and those used by other organizations as well. The producer’s name for the beer is not trivial. For the most part, it is what the world uses in adopting a new style.
But one flavor profile should have one beer style associated with it! Sorry, but that’s not how things work. There are beers brewed which can have two, three or four potential styles attributed to them. If you brew a hoppy California Common with a touch of wheat, is that a Cali Common? An American Wheat? A Pale Ale? An IPA? How about a gray/dark beer brewed with ale and lager yeast at 6% with a bit of hoppiness? Schwarzbier? Porter? Stout? Black IPA? Brewers pick one and move on. A flavor profile can’t command a single style.
The style name differentiated itself and was named in other markets. We now have a world brewing culture. This will happen more often. Whether a differentiated beer in one market is similar to another is also irrelevant. This should be obvious as well right?
Yes, I am aware of all this. Even India Pale Ale was originally just a marketing name. But now we have independent associations and groups like Ratebeer, CAMRA, Beer Advocate etc, and beer bloggers, beer historians and commentators documenting and able to make decisions about styles and what we call them etc. We don’t just have to follow what brewers and breweries decide to create for marketing. We can choose what makes sense in the broader picture of beer drinkers around the globe. I think in 20 years time we may find that a lot of these categories will fall by the wayside in the bigger picture, when we look back. That said, I really don’t care that much about this. I love drinking lots of these so-called session-IPAs. Call them what you want, I’ll keep drinking them. |
Originally posted by drowland
Originally posted by pepsican
Yeah it’s been on my radar for a few weeks. Really excited to try that one and the others that keep rolling into the store every week.
Hopefully the quality level keeps going up as this style gets fleshed out. Really just want to get to the point that the larger breweries are fighting for shelf space and end caps and start rolling out 24 pack canned session ipas for $19.99.
Man, I traded MaxxxxxxxxxDadddddddy for some Carton Boat Beer and it was pretty awesome sauce.
I love that Founders is doing the 15pk of All Day for $17.99 around my city now. How amazing would it be for there to actually be 24-packs of session IPAs for $20? Not sure if that’s plausible with the cost of hops, though?
It is possible. A wi brewery will do it |
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Originally posted by crossovert
Originally posted by drowland
Originally posted by pepsican
Yeah it’s been on my radar for a few weeks. Really excited to try that one and the others that keep rolling into the store every week.
Hopefully the quality level keeps going up as this style gets fleshed out. Really just want to get to the point that the larger breweries are fighting for shelf space and end caps and start rolling out 24 pack canned session ipas for $19.99.
Man, I traded MaxxxxxxxxxDadddddddy for some Carton Boat Beer and it was pretty awesome sauce.
I love that Founders is doing the 15pk of All Day for $17.99 around my city now. How amazing would it be for there to actually be 24-packs of session IPAs for $20? Not sure if that’s plausible with the cost of hops, though?
It is possible. A wi brewery will do it
I think you mean a UK brewery has already done it and an American brewery will just steal the idea/take credit. |
Is it time to kill the thread, I cant see no purpose in it anymore. We all have one thing in common that many dont appreciate or understand. We love beer and all the baggage and history associated with it. For me ratebeer, its makers and users only add to the whole enjoyment of it. |
Originally posted by SarkyNorthener
We all have one thing in common that many dont appreciate or understand. We love beer and all the baggage and history associated with it. For me ratebeer, its makers and users only add to the whole enjoyment of it.
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Originally posted by SarkyNorthener
Is it time to kill the thread, I cant see no purpose in it anymore. We all have one thing in common that many dont appreciate or understand. We love beer and all the baggage and history associated with it. For me ratebeer, its makers and users only add to the whole enjoyment of it.
Cheers dude! Couldn’t have said it better myself. |
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I’ve recently written an article on the subject (in the West Coaster Southern California spring issue) and have a lot to say, but at this point, this has just turned into a mess. |
Originally posted by SarkyNorthener
Is it time to kill the thread, I cant see no purpose in it anymore. We all have one thing in common that many dont appreciate or understand. We love beer and all the baggage and history associated with it. For me ratebeer, its makers and users only add to the whole enjoyment of it.
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Funny little thread that’s popped up here, coincidentally whilst I was away in Florida for nearly a week, where I was indeed able to find a couple of the famous "session IPAs" on keg draught, for the first time. (Was my first US visit in 8 years, FWIW.)
As has been hinted at, there’s a bit of talking past each other going on. Golden ales arose, according to my recollection of what my CAMRA guides say, in the early 80’s, as traditional ale breweries tried to capture the lager drinkers. These were accordingly bland, and neither hoppy, nor bitter. Probably less than 4.5% abv. Later (or around the same time in the PNW), the new brewpubs arose in the US, many of whom offered blond or golden ales for exactly the same reason.
Thing is, breweries in the UK started adding hops to theirs, and as citric hops became more popular, they started becoming more like what we have over there today. They became what Gazza describes as "trans-Atlantic PA", that is BRITISH grists free of crystal malt with American hops. They ain’t just low-gravity APAs, since APAs are loaded with crystal malt.
They started out with the likes of Harviestoun’s Bitter & Twisted (which was quite bitter when I last had it in York in 2011, though not *citric* hopped) and Hopback Summer Lightning, but have ended up as Thornbridge White Swan (3.5%), Hawkshead Pale Ale(3.6%), Fyne Ales Jarl (3.8%), any number of the plethora of Mallinson’s <4% single-hop beers, and of course Gazza’s own somewhat stronger Steel City offerings. Also, these are overwhelmingly cask-conditioned beers, and those who haven’t been to England for proper c-c beer will have a hard time understanding the effect that lively condition has on such a beer, compared to a "dead" keg product.
Those in this thread who keep insisting that they aren’t being offered examples of such hoppy, low-gravity British blonde ales to compare to the new American-brewed session IPAs are simply being obtuse. Those who have responded that there are simply too many to list are telling the truth -- they are literally everywhere in Britain. Finding them in bottles or kegs to export to the US though...let me know, so I can get some to me in Krautley.
I discovered these beers when I started visiting the UK in 2006. The first that I can explicitly remember was the Summer Lightning, which is of course, decidedly English-hopped in nature. Then, Phoenix Spotland Gold was an eye opener, and it was my first ever glass of the utterly sublime Hawkshead Windermere Pale in 2009 that convinced me I needed to start brewing such beers at home in Franconia, to save Mrs & me from a life of beer boredom. And so I have, to the tune of 162 20+ litre batches of 3 - 3.5% hopmonster (okay, some of those have been hoppy dark milds, and there was the one 1.060 IPA), taking Gazza’s gentle admonitions to forget the crystal.
And so it was interesting to me to see the discussion of Yankee "session IPAs" arise. There is absolutely NO QUESTION that the Britons have been brewing what could be called "session IPAs" for many years. Whether the new Yank beers are modeled after these or are simply stripped-down versions of Yank IPAs was a question I wanted to answer for myself.
So I was delighted to see the local Irish pub (The Field) round the corner from my sister’s place in Ft. Lauderdale pouring Founder’s All Day IPA last week. It is a fabulous, hoppy, dry, light-bodied IPA. It’s technically too strong to fit the "session IPA" guideline though, and is too strong to be compared with the likes of 3.5% Buxton Moor Top. It’s too strong for me, too, for an "all-day" beer, but it was nice to have...and though they don’t have the CO2 mix so abominably high at The Field, it does suffer in comparison to British cask-conditioned transatlantic half-IPAs.
In England, I’m sure this beer would do quite well.
[to be continued]
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