Ben Edmunds, brewmaster at Breakside Brewery in Portland, Ore. (Photo courtesy John Foyston)
Earlier this week, I was sitting over a pint of gose with Breakside brewmaster Ben Edmunds, and he asked a question that helped crystallize something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
“What,” he wondered, “do you call a low-ABV lager made with a bunch of late-addition hops and dry-hopped?” (This is a paraphrase—we were just drinking beer and I wasn’t taking notes.) Breakside, like a lot of American breweries, makes many beers that lean heavily on the word “IPA” to communicate juicy hopping to customers—a session IPA, a session golden ale, a regular IPA (for which Breakside won a gold medal at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival) and even a kettle-soured beer that could be called a “sour IPA” if he wanted to call it that. There are of course many more IPAs out there: double, triple, white, black, red, fruit, rye, Belgian, Brett and even India pale lagers.
In one way, it’s really not a problem. From the consumer’s perspective, it works. Those three letters indicate a pretty specific basket of qualities: vivid hop flavors and aromas, possibly bitter, but certainly juicy, fresh and alive. That those flavors come from certain hop varieties and particular techniques (late-addition, post-boil, and dry-hopping) is probably largely unknown to them. Instead they go by the Judge Potter Stewart standard: they know it when they see (or rather taste and smell) it. For the average consumer, “IPA” is completely disconnected from the historical style—it just means juicily hoppy. So when you attach it to any other adjective (session, white, Belgian, etc.), all it does is designate the presence of the juicily hoppy character.
So yes, if Ben made a 4.8% lager made with pilsner and Vienna malt, infused it with that juicy hoppiness, he could probably call it a helles IPA. (The helles part would be a lot more confusing than the IPA.) But the implicit point in his question is evident—by the time you’re making a helles IPA, you’ve stretched that poor adjective so far it hardly has any meaning left.
(It’s worth pausing to acknowledge something profound about this conundrum. It arises because, for the first time in hundreds of years, a new national brewing tradition has arrived. I mentioned to Ben that in Europe this problem is a lot easier to address. There they just call these kinds of beers “American.” Everyone instantly understands what the sense of the word means, and it can be applied to any beer style. Use “American-style” to describe a beer, and people immediately expect those saturated American hop flavor and aromas, just as surely as the word “Belgian” causes people to expect a beer with loads of yeast character. It’s not that the techniques are entirely new, it’s that they’re used to create flavors that are; in the history of brewing, no country has ever gone to the lengths we have to infuse beer with the flavor of hops. It has become the “American” way of brewing, and it has sparked imitations across the globe. Which is pretty cool, when you think about it that way.)
Breweries in the United States inherited brewing terms from other countries. Before we completely bent them out of their original shape, we brewed bitters and pilsners and kölsches and saisons—and IPAs. Now we brew things that don’t look like beers in other countries and yet we’re left with that inheritance, and the more and more we develop our own style of brewing, the less those terms serve us. The problem is not purely academic, either. Ben posed the question because it’s starting to become a real problem in communication. We lack the language to describe the place American beer has arrived. He’s not sure how to tell customers what to expect when he makes a new beer.
Here we arrive at the point of the post toward which a cleverer blogger would have been building—the big reveal, where I tell you what the new term should be. But I haven’t a clue. It works brilliantly outside our borders, but “American-style” just isn’t going to cut it at home. We need a better term.
Fortunately, I’ve learned the Internet is smarter than I am. So what say you, oh wise hive mind? Is IPA the best we can do, or is there a better term to describe this new, native style of brewing we’ve invented? I (and Ben, too, I think) await your wisdom anxiously.
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Jeff Alworth is the author of the forthcoming book, The Beer Bible (Workman, 2015). Follow him on Twitter or find him at his blog, Beervana.
Easy, India Pale American
Cascadian maybe? though the east coast brewers might have a problem with that since they don’t like Cascadian Dark Ale, but it could work since most of the US’s hops are grown/developed in Washington/Oregon.
Otherwise, maybe something incorporating the word Wolf because lupulus means wolf (sorta)?
Basically, in the USA just about all commercially produced hops come from the Pacific Northwest, so instead of saying IPL or Helles IPA, we could say Northwest Lager, Northwestern Helles, or something like that. Around the Northwest it’s not uncommon to use the term “Northwest” or “Northwestern” to indicate an especially pronounced hop character. Not sure it would catch on in other parts of the country where they may suffer from hop envy. Not sure the nation is ready to give the Northwest that much credit. Maybe they don’t know the origin of the hops they crave, in which case my point is moot.
In the end, the beer is what really matters anyway.
Native American?
Native American ________ Ale/Lager
To me, what you are describing would be called a Pilsener in New Zealand. Unless it has the alcohol as well, it is nothing to do with an IPA. But why not just Hoppy XXX? Hoppy Ale, Hoppy Lager?
I thought our variety had already adopted the moniker APA – American Pale Ale.
Touche!
It’s my understanding that an American Pale Ale is just differentiating itself from British Pale Ale, but it’s not going to be as bitter/hoppy as an American IPA.
keep it simple and descriptive – hoppy.
What’s wrong with American Pale Ale? We all know the reason for the I in IPA and that obviously was the origin but is no longer relevant.
I thought “american” style already covered the formerly “steam” once a certain brewery took ownership of the word “steam”. On a global perspective I think there is enough difference to warrant 2 or 3 names much like a single dubel and tripel. West coast, northern, and maybe east or standard. A session ipa is more or less a contradiction from the original definition. Higher alcohol was part of the equation to making the journey to india. How about HFA (hop forward ale) “do you have any west coast HFA’s on tap?” “I’d like a northern HFA if you have any”
Do not include me in the conversation of American, I brew by the German purity laws that was Written by Bavarian noblemen in the year 1516, the law says only water, barley and hops may be used to brew beer. Yeast was added to the list, known as the beer purity law or Reinheitsgebot, when scientists discovered the fermenting agent centuries later.I very much try to stay true to style as I was taught by my fellow Milwaukee BeerBarons. Staying true to the style will take all of the confusion out of your naming process.So be creative and stay true to the style and the names will come naturally.
Beer nomenclature is in a mess. We now have useful descriptors like Black India Pale Ale, like a beer can be black AND pale, in the official Beer Judging
Certification Program (BJCP) style guide. Admirable but misguided attempts to broaden judging guidelines to include all the beers people are actually brewing have been the impulse behind the inclusion of confusing or oxymoronic beer styles. That said, “India” is a useful & historically derived label denoting big hop character, & high alcohol by volume, in an ale or lager. So, as well as IPA, we would have an India Red Ale (a strong, hoppy Irish Red), an India Pale Lager (a strong, hoppy Helles) or an India Black Ale. “Hoppy” might work, but fails to capture the high alcohol component. The problem is, beer titles are entirely arbitrary & unregulated, & it’s hard to wrestle some beers into any given category.
Personally, I like the approach of brewers like Sixthpoint who give a beer a brand name but no style descriptor. This gives the retailer the task of educating the customer, but it’s risky marketing strategy. Or you could just make up a style, like Australia’s Stone&Wood who essentially invented the Pacific Ale category.
An American Pale Ale is NOT an IPA – it has not been “Indianed” with high gravity & big hop additions, but is the American iteration of the traditional English Pale, using New World hops to impart more tropical fruit or citrus.
Of course, the American IPA is a distinctive style famous for its dominant New World hop aroma, high bitterness & dry finish. The incredible rise in popularity of IPA in America is probably the most influential factor in the craft beer resurgence, globally. The commercial success of American IPA paved the way to other traditional & innovative styles for many consumers. The sometimes outrageous or overzealous hop additions of American IPAs changed flavour expectations & rewrote the rulebook for brewers around the world.
AHA- American Hopped Ales.
-It explains the land of origin.
The region (Pacific Northwest, West Coast, East Coast) could help the consumer discern the intentions of the brewery as they release their beers.
-American and hops are synonymous with the intensity and increased use of hops.
-Ales is an all encompassing term.
I think at this point IPA is a ubiquitous term that will stick for a long, long time. The various types IPA’s have gained notoriety under these pretenses. I could see maybe brewers being concerned with this concept, but consumers not so much.
Thanks all for your replies–sorry I’m slow joining the conversation.
Vasili–“Native American” may not take off, but it’s the best I’ve heard yet.
David and Matt–American pales are a particular type of beer. They don’t encompass all the stuff breweries are doing to make modern hoppy ales. The huge late/dry-hop additions are what characterize the “American,” and this can be implemented in any beer style.
Randy–The beer Ben describes is Reinheitsgebot-compliant. It’s absolutely not German.
Dean (1)–I agree that if I were a brewery, I might skip going for a style name. But that doesn’t help the rest of us talk about what these beers are.
Thanks all–
Why not just allow beer-language to evolve organically over time? When someone says they’ve just brewed a Black IPA, Red IPA, Double IPA, Triple IPA, etc., pretty much everyone knows exactly what they’re talking about. IPA has slowly become more than an acronym. It has a descriptive meaning that stands independently of its origins as India Pale Ale.
That said, I think there are really only two (somewhat) reasonable options:
1. Allow IPA to continue being what it has already become – namely, an indicator of a *dominant* juicy American-style hop character.
2. Try and correct this organically developing trend in favor of the word “India” indicating the same *dominant* juicy American-style hop character. This, of course, doesn’t really solve the problem – as virtually none of the beers that could be described this way are being exported to India.
In either case we have a style of beer that is disconnected from it’s historical roots. One already exists and is widely accepted and understood. The other is a relatively unknown alternative that doesn’t actually solve the problem.