Never had a NEIPA

[redrocker652002]

I think golf could actually be enjoyable under the influence of beer. Forget that nonsense about keeping score, though.

For me, golf and beer go hand in hand. It is one of the only sports, other than maybe bowling, where it is OK to bring beer out with you, and in some cases encouraged. LOL. And scoring is optional when I play

 

[redrocker652002]

I tried drinking beers during a company golf outing.
It definitely did not help my game. At all

Cheers!

Never does mine either, but at some point you just don't care anymore. LOL.

 

[McMullan]

 

[Brewer Mike]

there is a fine line in playing golf and drinking beer. There is a buzz zone that keeps one loose and still accurate. but it is a small window and i usually over shoot it.

There's also a fine line between fishing and sitting on the shore drinking a beer.

 

[day_trippr]

Also, there's the line "between fishing and standing in the water looking stupid".
Particularly afflicts newbies learning to cast a fly
No alcohol required...

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

I envy freshwater fishermen. It's pretty tough to drink while fishing on the ocean, yanking furious dolphin over the side.

 

[Yesfan]

LMAO! at 1:49.

 

[OleBrewing]

I envy freshwater fishermen. It's pretty tough to drink while fishing on the ocean, yanking furious dolphin over the side.

You would really envy ice fishing, it's like sitting on the couch at home drinking beer. but your providing for the family (right...) with fresh fish.

 

[bwible]

Someday I truly hope this “hazy and cloudy” beer trend will finally die and go away. If your beer is hazy/cloudy, the Germans have entire textbooks on how to fix that. Seriously. This should not even be a “thing”

 

[Airborneguy]

Someday I truly hope this “hazy and cloudy” beer trend will finally die and go away. If your beer is hazy/cloudy, the Germans have entire textbooks on how to fix that. Seriously. This should not even be a “thing”

I don't care if others enjoy it, but it's certainly not a brewing style I will ever attempt. If one of my beers are cloudy, it's because I did something wrong.

 

[DonT]

Devil's advocate:

Technically, McMullan's right. Though barley and hops are organic, the yeast is the "only living thing" in beer.

Except, without yeast, what is beer other than hopped up sugar water? It's not beer, that's for sure.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

A man has to admit it when he's wrong. This has never happened to me, of course, but it happens a lot to people who argue with me, so I know whereof I speak. I will not say I was wrong about Hazy Little Thing, but I will say that I see more merit in it today.

I was thirsty when I got home from the world's largest and creepiest retirement community today, so I grabbed a can of Hazy Little Thing, thinking it wasn't actually a BAD beer, and I needed to get rid of it.

It turns out it's really nice when drunk quickly, cold, from a can. The orange juice aroma, which I'm pretty sure I never complained about, is great, and when you drink it fast, you don't mind the problems with balance. And cans seem to hide things glasses bring out. So I am thinking maybe it's a new form of lawnmower beer. If so, the kids with the tattoos and waxed moustaches may have created something useful instead of disgusting and embarrassing.

I would never want to drink this stuff slowly, because that brings the faults out, but, dare I say it, Hazy Little Thing and other NEIPAish beers may have revolutionized the lawnmower beer field.

I may have another one.

 

[mac_1103]

Get off my lawnmower beer?

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

As a former scientist, I can't resist a good experiment, so I just cracked a can of Dogfish Head 60 Minute as a control. I don't know what wrong opinions other people here may have, but I think very highly of Dogfish 60. I will present my findings, which may or may not be reproducible, so they can be peer reviewed.

I did enjoy the HPT, but the Dogfish 60 was perfect. Just perfect. It lacked the neat aroma face-punch, which I liked, but I never heard myself thinking, "If they only fixed this..." With the hazy beer, I kept thinking about flaws.

My feeling is that I should never turn down an HPT when better beer isn't around, but...wait...HLT...anyway, it's a good, if strange and flawed beer, but Dogfish Head was made for grown-ups.

 

[day_trippr]

Jackassery is getting hella deep here

 

[McMullan]

So, in conclusion, the main impact NEIPA’s had on beer generally is like:

 

[Alan Reginato]

... was made for grown-ups.

Grownups usually prefer bitterness over sweetness... Except ladies, in that period (completely understandable, biologically speaking).

I'm not just talking about NEIPAs, but IPAs (American), when overly dosed with crystal malt, and any kind of sweet stouts.

Hopefully I didn't hurt anybody's feelings. Be kind!

Cheers!

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

 

[iandanielursino]

American IPAs? Yes, there might be some kind of “hop-industrial complex” thing going on. I can’t imagine why else anyone would take a perfectly decent beer and ruin it.

See, to me the NEIPA is a welcome change from the just plain old IPA days. More of a Pilsner, Pale Ale, and Amber drinker myself though but I like Silver City

malted barley, water, hops, yeast... some people might consider that a definition of beer but I guess YMMV.

Am I the only guy who's ever wondered just how clear a 19th century ale that spent several months in a cask with a huge dry hop load would have been by the time it was served?

I would argue there's no clear definition of Beer, or even "Craft beer" that is widely accepted.

I accept the historical notion that an ale without hops is not a beer that makes sense (altho what would a pine needle and no hops lager be called?), but I think if you wanted to make a more clear definition it would probably involve having some % of the mash be made up of malt. A beer that is more adjunct than malt should not be considered beer IMO (as bourbon is not whiskey) and therefore makkgeolli and sake are not rice beer. But what about the type of malt is a 100% malted wheat beer a beer? What about barley + wheat ones where the largest thing on the grainbill is a wheat malt? Is millet beer beer? What if it contained equal parts barley, corn, wheat, and millet, all malted? etc. Isn't the only reason we use barley because wheat was more expensive and governments passed laws banning using wheat for strategic reasons? Sometimes I think when people say "beer" they mean "barley beer", which IMO is a useful term we should use more. Barley beer would be basically, classic german rules beer with maybe some very small % of adjunct allowed.

I definitely would say infusing a fruit makes it not beer, or rather, not just beer, it is "flavored beer" IMO. But dryhopping doesn't seem like "flavoring" any more than Kavalan Distillery aging their whiskey barrels in the humidity and temperature of Yilan province somehow adding mango notes would be considered flavoring. The ingredient list is still the same.

I could see making a case that going over a certain threshold of amount of dryhopping is no longer a beer though, as the chemical makeup of the thing is quite different at that point. Personally I like subtle NEIPAs especially more resiney and herbaceous ones, or just not over the top ones like Silver City Tropic Haze, but not ones that just taste like fruit. Similarly I like beers that are sour, but most "sours" are just flavored beer and I don't like them.

You could also define beer purely subjectively as being a malt beverage which emphasizes the character of the malts in balance with the hops I suppose but a lot of people would disagree.

Incidentally one of my frustrations is having never had an American Malt Liquor made with very little adjunct and a sort of resiney flavor, like basically a trippel but more pilsnery. "Craft" I usually assume means no adjunct or low adjunct, but apparently "Craft Malt Liquor" means nothing.

But my main frustration with this subject is, "IPA", if it isn't English style or kind of Anglo-American (like the APA) dry hopping should not make something an IPA. It makes no sense that IPA has a million substyles, just call it something else. Can we just call it "India-" maybe, because most of them have nothing to do with the "english pale ale" style, tho to be fair much of ale is "pale ale" in a certain sense. I would just call more "pale ale style" ones IPA, anything sweet or roasted simply "Indian ale", and NEIPAs simply "New England Ales".

 

[whoaru99]

"Lawnmower beer" LOL. LOL not because I haven't heard it, rather the suggestion it is.

Sure, I've seen a few lower ABV hazies or NEIPAS, but most I've had are in the 6%+ ABV. Doesn't really fit the class as my understanding of "lawnmower beer".

Of course, alcohol content is just part of it, but definitely not a shoe in on that part of it.

Then again, this thread seems all about trying to redefine things.

 

[iandanielursino]

Isn't the main thing that makes it a NEIPA that the level of dryhopping relative to boil hopping is so extreme it is more fruity than bitter.

But what makes a hazy beer hazy is that they add adjuncts such as flaked oats right? Is there some way to make a NEIPA that is not hazy?

EDIT: I guess I should learn to google; Make Juice, Not Haze: Refining the New England-style IPA, but I'm not sure its as simple as they make it hazy to fool people, is it hazy to try and cut the bitterness?

 

[Yesfan]

Lawnmower beer?

Sure, I've seen a few lower ABV hazies or NEIPAS, but most I've had are in the 6%+ ABV. Doesn't really fit the class as my understanding of "lawnmower beer".

Of course, alcohol content is just part of it, but definitely not a shoe in on that part of it.

Then again, this thread seems all about trying to redefine things.

Maybe it's commercial mower level lawnmower beer.

 

[McMullan]

Then again, this thread seems all about trying to redefine things.

To be fair, the hazing craze is an attempt to redefine things, to reinvent beer, but it went too far and invented something closer to a hop cocktail than a beer. I don’t understand what the big deal is and why some people reject this idea. The only shame in it is pretending it’s more like beer.

 

[iandanielursino]

To be fair, the hazing craze is an attempt to redefine things, to reinvent beer, but it went too far and invented something closer to a hop cocktail than a beer. I don’t understand what the big deal is and why some people reject this idea. The only shame in it is pretending it’s more like beer.

I'll agree in any case that high-dose dryhopping does begin to resemble an infusion (ie. grapefruit beer, strawberry beer) as much as it does "hopping" as we know it. I'll happily admit a NEIPA is "like" a beer cocktail. Or more accurately, hop flavored beer. Which sounds weird to say.

 

[McMullan]

Is there some way to make a NEIPA that is not hazy?

A well-brewed WCIPA.

 

[iandanielursino]

A well-brewed WCIPA.

I should actually give those another try, I used to have to avoid anything high IBU when I was heavier (have GERD), but my stomach is harder to upset these days.

But I have to play devils advocate and say, if dry hopping is basically "flavoring" the beer with hops as in a fruit beer, then WCIPA are also not beer.

 

[mac_1103]

I've seen a few lower ABV hazies or NEIPAS, but most I've had are in the 6%+ ABV. Doesn't really fit the class as my understanding of "lawnmower beer"

Inflation.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

When I said it was lawnmower beer, all I meant was that it was suitable for swilling down in a hurry on a hot day.

 

[iandanielursino]

Linguistically speaking a common word like beer has no reason not to have various senses, unless it's being used as a technical term. Philosophically speaking a technical term is just a specific sense of a word that is more strictly defined in order to express a concept. A technical term is as specific as necessary in order to convey the level of detail the technical user requires, and for this reason different fields can have different technical definitions of the same word.

For example a dining table could be anything you put stuff on when eating, or it could be anything that is manufactured to put stuff on. In different circumstances you could define it either way depending on what the goal of your inquiry into the matter of whether something were a "dining table" was.

Like McMullan says, altering the ratios and stuff can easily invalidate the definition of a product, so the ingredient list is not sufficient to declare two things equivalent. Adjunct is a good example. half a pound of flaked wheat in a 10 lb grain bill is beer, but 8 pounds of flaked wheat in a 10 lb grain bill, most people would not consider that beer I think, so you could say that the ridiculous amounts of hops in some NEIPAs could disqualify them from being beer, if not having that much hops is important to how you define beer, that is, if you have a practical need to distinguish "NEIPA" from "beer".

A lot of the time a term is accidentally integrating a bunch of separable but related things with varying degrees of separability. For example you can say someone is "Japanese" and you probably mean both ethnically and culturally (as well as speaking the language), but you could rarely mean just one of those, whereas if you're talking about someone being "Italian" in an American context anyways its relatively more likely that you only meant ethnically even though "Japanese" and "Italian" are both ethnonyms with analogous structure and derivation.

In this vein, the vast majority of malt liquors are beers, the vast majority of ales are beers, the vast majority of beers contain mostly or exclusively barley etc. There was a time where in the US "beer" probably meant a lager, but we don't say that "ales aren't lagers", and even the Germans have Hefeweizen, which is the OG hazy and fruity beer and I have never heard anyone say "Hefeweizen is not beer". IMO, as for example, porter, hefeweizen, amber, pale ale, Budweiser, and pilsner are all quite different, so asking someone to "give me a beer" if you are picky would not be a good idea in much of the anglosphere or Central Europe.

I don't see a practical reason why NEIPA isn't a beer, it may have a lot in common with beer cocktails and other "flavored" stuff, but it also has a lot in common with beer. It comes in a beer can (pre-mixed as it were) and unlike say flavored malt liquor or wine coolers is not cheap or disgusting. Personally I am not picky so I would be fine with asking someone "please get me a beer" and wouldn't complain if it happened to be a WCIPA or a Hefeweisen, or a NEIPA, although I may be cross if it was a super crazy sour. For those of you who feel otherwise, perhaps we need a term to describe "regular beer". "Barley beer" would mean in the sense of not being wheat, "Reinheitsgebot" would mean in the sense of having zero adjunct in addition, and you could think of other things like "pre-NEIPA" or "boil hopped" to distinguish ones without a ridiculous amount of dry-hops. Or for those who hate everything hipster, "non-ipa" may suffice.

Like I said before, what REALLY sucks is that "IPA" is such a watered down term. I don't know why you should not be able to say to the waiter "I'd like the IPA please" without having to break out a style guide.

I think it also bears pointing out that in antiquity most beer was flavored, and the way they made it was totally different, they made it out of bread, although it also was not called beer, the Latins didn't have a consistent term for beer in antiquity instead referring with different terms to all the various forms out there much as mostly non-malt rice liquors are referred to in English separately as sake (nihonshu) and makkgeolli and not together as any consistent term (such as rice liquor). Along the same lines, you could malt up some nice malted corn and call it "Chicha" or "corn beer", and nobody would question you, since chicha is the only major kind of corn beer, but if you served it to someone from Peru they would be liable to remark "esto no es chicha!".

Generally, people should use as specific a term as they need, bearing in mind where they are when using it and what the people there would assume they mean by it. But what's probably more important here is to consider why someone may care about these matters.

It is not generally well received to tell someone they aren't allowed to like what they like merely because it diverges from what other people are doing, if it has nothing else bad about it, however it's also the case that going into an established field and re-defining terms and telling people they have to accept the new ones is not very well received either. In such situations its best for people to add a bit of nuance to their language so that both the purists and the non-purists can make themselves understood.

When I said it was lawnmower beer, all I meant was that it was suitable for swilling down in a hurry on a hot day.

Here we see "lawnmower with regard to ABV" contrasted with "lawnmower with regard to drinkability".

 

[mac_1103]

How many sharks can one thread jump?

 

[iandanielursino]

To put it more succinctly, nobody here is particularly saying that it's a crime to like NEIPAs, or that it's a crime to think NEIPAs are very different from other kinds of beer, so we ought perhaps to add nuance rather than dispute existing terminology.

 

[Whisky River]

To put it more succinctly, nobody here is particularly saying that it's a crime to like NEIPAs, or that it's a crime to think NEIPAs are very different from other kinds of beer, so we ought perhaps to add nuance rather than dispute existing terminology.

Agreed. All this NEIPA bashing reminds me of when people bash golf by saying it’s just hitting a ball with a stick and chasing after it. They both look really easy from the outside but in practice they are incredibly difficult to do well. I’ll admit NEIPA is not my favorite style by a long shot, and if they got all those fruit flavors by just dumping in a bunch of orange juice, I would be the first to call it a lazy gimmick. But given that these folks can create a variety of bright citrus flavors from a small green flower by choosing complementary varieties, precisely timing dry hop additions, and carefully controlling oxygen exposure to a level we had never seen before, it seems to me you have to at least give them some respect just based on ability. Wether you want to drink the juice cocktail or not

 

[mac_1103]

reminds me of when people bash golf by saying it’s just hitting a ball with a stick and chasing after it. They both look really easy from the outside but in practice they are incredibly difficult to do well.

There is nothing easy about chasing a golf ball after I've hit it.

nobody here is particularly saying that it's a crime to like NEIPAs, or that it's a crime to think NEIPAs are very different from other kinds of beer

Did you actually read the whole thread? Because there are in fact people saying exactly those things.

 

[whoaru99]

Here we see "lawnmower with regard to ABV" contrasted with "lawnmower with regard to drinkability".

Yeah, lawnmower with regard to drinkability. ABV is a factor.

In my parlance, a lawnmower beer is one of which you can "mow down" copious quantites. Generally light, lower ABV types you can pound down a bunch of on a hot day. 6+% beers regardless of style don't fit that in my liver.

 

[Airborneguy]

Like I said before, what REALLY sucks is that "IPA" is such a watered down term. I don't know why you should not be able to say to the waiter "I'd like the IPA please" without having to break out a style guide.

This is the best sentence in the entire thread (at least that I have seen).

It's going to have to happen eventually. Most of what we call IPA today is not at all related to traditional IPAs. The acronym has come to mean "anything hoppy", which recently doesn't even necessarily mean bitter.

Next time they update the styles, they should revert IPA back to the traditional English style and come up with a new category, and sub-categories, for all of the "hoppy" beers that are totally distinct styles.

Think of "Black IPA". One of my favorite styles. Back when it first became popular you had people arguing over "Cascadian Dark" because it really wasn't an IPA. As much as I still call it a black IPA, they were right.

If we're going to have styles for judging purposes, they should make more sense than "IPA" which has become almost as big an umbrella as Ale and Lager.

 

[mac_1103]

a lawnmower beer is one of which you can "mow down" copious quantites

My lawnmower has a cup holder. Just sayin'.

 

[whoaru99]

Mine too. Although on hot mowing days it's more likely to have a water or Gatorade in it. LOL.

 

[OleBrewing]

ok just had to

 

[InspectorJon]

Perhaps we need the style gods to set a definition of what is a proper lawnmower beer is before the whole style gets perverted.

And then there’s the question of when does it stop being a lawnmower and become a tractor?

 

[McMullan]

The internet is sufficiently mature nowadays (in some respects, ) that we can run a simple in-silico experiment to test what a ‘beer’ is supposed to look like. Google ‘beer’ then review the images. There are tens of thousands randomly uploaded images of ‘beer’. It’s obvious that the vast majority of people prefer clear beer. Visually mainly. There’s not much convincing evidence bright beer gets stripped of flavour at all. None we can’t compensate for in recipe design. Craft beer’s slow drift away from bright beer had more to do with propping up the idea (visually) craft beer has more flavour, avoiding the time, costs and hassle of producing bright beer and, perhaps for some, lack of skill as a brewer. Then NEIPA brewers punched the marketeering to a ridiculous level to max out ‘new’ flavours in ‘craft’ hop cocktails without typical beer-like qualities. The next big thing in craft beer is going to be lager and fine English cask ales, which require skilled brewers as much as marketing. It’s just a matter of time before Millennials learn some brewing skills. Hopefully. What’s a NEIPA? If we want to call it a ‘beer’, it’s a lazily rushed hazy brew dry hopped to hell and back to be anything but ‘mundane’ bright beer. It’s a Millennial rejection of beer.