This post is in no small part due to a paste article i read on a certain facebook group about beer, and i couldn't agree more. (Disclaimer: This post includes personal opinions)

How One Beer Geek Fell out of Love With Hazy IPA

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Likewise, once you have a big menu full of hazy IPAs, it’s all the more likely that the consumer will begin to realize how similar so many of these beers end up being. There are several dimensions to the pursuit of juiciness, yes, but even those distinctions are increasingly lost as the hop rate on all these beers continues to climb. You’ll note that many of the breweries known for hazy IPA will talk a big game on their use of nouveau or experimental hop varietals as something that they’re hoping will give each individual IPA or DIPA more distinction, but this doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in theory—not least because these novel varieties are often being used in such ridiculous quantities that all that remains is overpowering “green” and vegetal notes. The result is a lot of supposedly exotic, “new” IPA that has a very hard time distinguishing itself from the exotic “new” IPA of last week, and the week before that. Everything simply blurs together.

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Case in point: A while back, I visited a nationally hyped brewery known for hazy IPA. Their menu? It had 11 IPAs and DIPAs on it that day. That’s eleven. Double digits, all on tap at once. And it’s all the more sad for the fact that I know this brewery can do so many other styles well, from lager and English mild ale to mixed ferm wild ales or classic German hefeweizen. They’ve produced sparkling examples of all those beers at some point in the past, but when 80% of the menu is slight variations upon a single theme—most of them limited releases that may never be made again—how can you not lament the missed opportunity to diversify? Would it really hurt so much to have merely 6 or 7 hazy IPAs on at once, rather than 11? Who wants to taste their way through a lineup where almost every beer uses the same descriptive language?

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I have an issue with the descriptive language used for the vast majority of modern hazy IPAs—they always have to be the biggest, the boldest, the craziest, the juiciest

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This kind of thinking is endemic to craft beer as a whole in 2020. It’s an era where seemingly every big stout must aspire toward absurd, desserty decadence and half a dozen adjuncts; where every fruited sour is basically pulpy puree with alcohol in it—and often not as much alcohol as is advertised. Tooth-stripping sweetness is the norm; something to be expected in all these styles as well, whether it’s stout, or a fruited sour, or hazy IPA. They’re the hallmarks of an era that has long since waved goodbye to any sense of proportion or dignity—the highest rated beers of our era have an uncomfortable tendency to sound like something a child would have designed if given the chance. If you let your 6-year-old nephew design a beer, would he not say “I want a chocolatey beer, with bananas, and blueberries, and maple syrup and vanilla!”

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On the most basic possible level, modern hazy IPA is increasingly defined by being hard to drink, especially in quantity. How this managed to become the norm, I have no idea, but drinkers have accepted that too-sweet, too-sticky, too-gritty, too-yeasty, too-vegetal, too-corrosive IPA is not only acceptable for the style, but the apex of the modern beer world.

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That concept is known as “hop burn” to some beer geeks, and describes the way the mouthfeel of these hazy IPAs loses the “full and creamy” texture that is desired, instead becoming harsh and acidic because of the sky-high levels of hop oils (or suspended yeast) left in the beer.

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Put simply, the best beers in this segment don’t have the hop burn—they finish cleanly, with perhaps a kiss of residual sugar, but they’re also dry enough to quickly promote that next sip. Hell, maybe they even have a little bit of (shudder) hop bitterness for balance! Increasingly, though, these beers leave your throat feeling like it’s been rubbed raw with sandpaper.

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e need to restart from the ground up, experiencing beers with descriptions that aren’t littered with bombastic adjectives and exclamation points. We need to proclaim an appreciation for those more humble, more balanced styles. Perhaps then, breweries will begin to acknowledge that not every hazy IPA needs to be made with the intention of being the be-all, end-all of the concept of “juiciness.” Perhaps then we’ll be able to admit that toning down the hop presence of some of these beers might actually help the “juice” come through more cleanly.

It’s a fantasy, I’m sure. But one day, I’d really like to count hazy IPA among my favorite beer styles once again.

I'll admit, as a beer drinker and home brewer, i've chased the haze limits and the sour limits of beer in the past. I used to flock to stores as soon as i found out something dropped (ghost used to be the rarity back in the day). But now, i'm almost to a point where i don't even like hazy ipa's anymore.

A few years ago (3 or 4), i was in Houston with my wife, accompanying her to one of her work conferences. While she was at conference, i was picking up beer from various stores. I ventured into the whole foods on post oak and they had a hazy IPA called Hop Exlorer XII. IT was the best NEIPA i've ever had, to this day. It wasn't overly cloying, didn't rest on your tongue until you had something else to wash it off, and mostly, you could distinguish different fruity characteristics from the hops. Nowadays, it seems that every hazy beer i buy tastes mostly the same. Far too often, some of these hazy beers are flat out awful. Either the beer is oxidized, or it's a brutal assault on your palete that leaves your tongue numb. Not to mention the ridiculous descriptors. I appreciate when brewers put the hops used...when they stand out, but far too often, is no matter the hops used, it's all a muddled mess.

I think the fascination with 2 (or 3 or 4) letters also seems to be a bit ridiculous. Dry hopping has become a cape for certain breweries. Whether its "dry hop" or "DDH" or "Triple DH" or "4XDH", it's all so ridiculous, especially since it's all a matter of the breweries opinions of what constitutes double or triple dry hopped. Breweries have to dry hop in multiple rounds, often due to the size of the fermenters and contact of the hops with the wort. But some breweries consider each addition of hops as "dry hop x 1". Now some, IMO, truthfully put DDH if the amount of hops doubled. But even double, triple, or quad hopping is meaningless when the hop burn is so bad that your tongue numbs up and you can't taste anything.

I picked up a couple NEIPA's last weekend in New Orleans, one was a rye one (i thought would be a nice differentiator). And both of them tasted pretty much the same. Different hops, slightly different grain bill, but the overabundance of hops, completely muddled the flavor. Maybe the 2 just need to rest and chill out for another week or so, who knows.

I still brew a hazy IPA. Nothing is better than a well made NEIPA/hazy IPA. But it's rare, commercially, they succeed in doing so. I'm to the point of giving up on the style completely purchasing hazy ipas, and continue chasing my goal of making Hop Explorer 12, in my homebrews. It was very drinkable, aromatic, and smooth without being chewy. I've learned, so far, that less is more, in terms of hops, and too many breweries aren't realizing that.