Ipa what is

But what do you actually know about IPAs? These are terms that can applied to any style of beer, not just IPAs. Session: Less alcohol! Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your lifestyle. With lower alcohol comes a thinner body, so these are the types of beers you can drink on repeat.

Dry-Hopped: Dry-hopping is the process of steeping hops in fermenting beer, instead of adding them while the liquid is boiling. It makes the beer smell better, without adding any bitterness. A single-hopped IPA, however, is brewed exclusively with one hop variety. That means that in a Citra single hop IPA, Citra hops are used in the boil, on the finish, and in dry-hopping if dry-hopped.

Fresh-Hopped: Fresh-hopped IPAs, also called wet-hopped or harvest ales, only come around once a year, at the peak of hop harvesting season in late August and September. To qualify as a fresh-hopped IPA, the hops have to leave the vine, travel to the brewery, and end up in the boil in under 24 hours. The closer to the brew date you drink it, the more intense the brilliant, fresh flavor of the hops will be.

As the story goes, the drink earned its name during the British colonial era. It was too hot and humid to brew beer in India, but the British sailors still needed a drink. So they devised a heavily hopped beer hops are a preservative that could survive the months-long journey from the British Isles to India. The style has evolved far from its roots in terms of taste — hello, American IPA — but it kept the name. IPAs may have initially had hops added for preservation, but the beer can go stale.

For optimum flavor, you should drink an IPA within three weeks from its production date. Why does anything get popular? Union Jack is aggressively hopped showcasing pineapple, citrus and piney aromas and dry hop flavors of grapefruit and tangerine.

West Coast IPAs are typically brewed with higher amounts of hops in the boil kettle, which leads to the high bitterness and mid-palate hop flavor in the style. Hops are still added post-fermentation to the beer to add more aroma and little bitterness, but the proportions are more equal between the two, while hazy IPAs tend to have more hops added post-fermentation and little or none in the kettle and a smaller amount in the whirlpool, which leads to less bitterness and -mid-palate flavor and more aroma.

They tend to be lower on the bitterness scale with tropical and juicy flavors. New England IPAs also have a fuller or creamier mouthfeel and are usually sweeter. This can have a lot to do with the perception of bitterness and how it affects the balance with sweetness. The haze craze is still underway, and most breweries are now offering at least one hazy-style IPA to stay current with the trends and give the people what they want.

Insert Mind Haze. Mind Haze is a free-spirited beer made to elevate your perceptions — juicy yet balanced, hazy yet lasting and loaded with an imaginative array of tropical hop flavors. One of the main differences between the two styles is when hops are actually added to the beer.