The wave of New England IPAs has arrived

I was curious when this would happen locally. Now, so many of these have popped up in the last two or three months that it’s becoming a true copycat trend.

What do we think of all these beers? How they compare to the benchmark examples in the northeast? Of the approach in general?

Having not tasted in a good while any of these outside of what has been made locally, I’ve been thinking about how to measure quality in this style, and would like to hear opinions.

I personally am a fan of the tropical leaning hop flavors, low lingering bitterness, absence of heavy malt sweetness in favor of cleaner malt flavor. I don’t care for the milky thickness that often accompanies this and also don’t consider that element to be a foundation of the style.

I enjoy Todd well enough and the Dream Yard too. Many of the others have fallen short for me.

Originally posted by Stine
I personally am a fan of the tropical leaning hop flavors, low lingering bitterness, absence of heavy malt sweetness in favor of cleaner malt flavor. I don’t care for the milky thickness that often accompanies this and also don’t consider that element to be a foundation of the style.

Black Stack has brewed the best so far but it is $8. Modist did an excellent example as well. I thought both were better than Todd. I brought a can of Todd to London where others thought it compared well to the Trillium beers.

So far Wicked Wort has done my favorite in the Metro. 56 has one, it was a decent IPA but not really a NE.

Wicked Wort made a good beer????

Todd is tits. Consistent as hell. Excellent.

Malty IPAs should be a thing of the past. No one can tell me differently.

NE IPAs are cool. I went to trillium, Bissell brothers, Alchemist, Hill Farmstead and Maine Beer Co all in the same week (honeymoons are cool) and I am sure others as well, but this was a lot of the main ones. Anyway, the local NE style IPAs I’ve had don’t compare favorably in terms of drinkability and hop quality. Being hazy doesn’t make it a NE IPA

Trillium @ ~$5 a 16oz can brutally dunks on anything that BlackStack has put out at a 60% premium.

I’ve made my feelings on New England IPAs clear in other threads and many of my reviews (summary: I’m con). I actually think the substyle has its place, but that place is next to beginner craft beers like ambers, brown ales, and wheat ales (which are inoffensive and accessible like New England IPAs) rather than at the top of beer rankings boards, and I’m worried about the possibility of New England IPAs to some degree crowding superior expressions of the IPA style out of the market place. I want my IPAs more bitter and substantive in the palate, and New England IPAs are taking the IPA style far in the wrong direction for my tastes.

Todd the Axe Man is a West Coast IPA in both intent and effect. I wouldn’t call it "juicy" or "tropical" at all, thankfully. Please don’t tar arguably the best IPA ever brewed in the Upper Midwest with the "New England IPA" brush. Citra and Mosaic indeed are common in New England IPAs, but they were widely adopted among brewers of West Coast IPAs first. I don’t want to see every tasty, Citra or Mosaic-hopped West Coast IPA being rebadged a New England IPA because the latter is the flavor of the month. Of course, New England IPAs, originally called "Vermont IPAs" and now veering toward "Northeast IPAs" in the vernacular, trace their roots to slightly shifted takes on the West Coast substyle brewed by northern New England breweries, but the New England substyle has mutated into something notably different ("turbid," "juicy," "pillowy") as it has invaded southern New England and New York.

The actual New England breweries mentioned in this thread are by most accounts excellent breweries even ignoring any IPAs they’ve made. It shouldn’t come as a shock that a beer brewed by HeadFlyer isn’t as good as a beer brewed by Hill Farmstead. Sisyphus, my second highest rated brewery in the state, has made my two favorite New England IPAs, Cloudy with a Chance of Yeastballs and The First Beer We Distributed (a.k.a., Citranox), but 1) neither of these beers was particularly cloudy in appearance or soft in palate, so many would dismiss them as not really New England IPAs at all, and 2) literally every Sisyphus IPA has been good to great. I.e., good breweries tend to brew good beers, even in lesser styles and substyles.

Modist Dream Yard (which I keep trying and failing to get merged with the Deviation #002 entry), is quite good, but it’s a 100% wheat beer (Edit: Perhaps they added oats when they changed the name, but there’s no barley), and it drinks to me like an IPA / saison hybrid, in which the lack of bitterness and soft mouthfeel read more natural and not as if something is missing.

Otherwise, my local New England IPA ratings tend to go "the further in the New England direction, the worse," so they’re probably not helpful to fans of the substyle.

Added: Re: Wicked Wort: Motueka Keller Pils is superb, however you care to classify the style. I was surprised too because Wicked Wort otherwise has been quite unimpressive.

Wicked Wort, Disgruntled, and Lupulin are doing the style the best in MN right now, for the ones I’ve had. I haven’t had Forager’s yet. Black Stack and Modist are behind those, by a fair margin. Insight’s version was awesome on tap at the Gnome, and for some reason wasn’t quite as great (but still very good) at Insight and canned.

Is hop quality a more important variable given the focus on lowered bitterness but greater hop expression? For example, the Citranox from Sisyphus checked all the boxes of the style, but there was a cheese-rind funk of old hops to it that I don’t think would be as noticeable or harmful in say, a Furious.

Oh yeah, Disgruntled is killing it. I go to grizzlys in Plymouth all the time and only order those pretty much. Their newest APA was hazy but boring. A rare miss for them.

I know nothing about brewing beer but when you’re focused 100% on a certain aspect (in this case hops) of a beer then the quality has to be important.

Sisyphus doesn’t check many boxes for me in general and I haven’t had that particular beer.