Pale & Intresting

Pale & Intresting

Originally created in the days of the British Empire to keep the Raj’s ex-pats in beer, IPA is currently the world’s hottest beer style. Nigel Huddleston and a team of tasters brush the froth off their handlebar moustaches to discover what all the fuss is about

A beer originally brewed to survive the long sea voyage to the British Raj in the late 18th century seems an unlikely candidate to be the most fashionable on the planet. But India Pale Ale, or IPA, is just that beer, winning the posting on the back of the patronage of legions of American craft brewers who have adopted it as their own.
IPA was originally born out of a need to satisfy a thirst for beer among the British in India – the Indian climate was too hot to brew beer using 18th-century technology, so brewers hit on the idea of brewing a beer in Britain but bunging in loads of hops and raising the alcoholic strength. Both the hops and the abv acted as a preservative on the voyage, while the beer underwent a conditioning process that took the depth of its aroma and flavour to unprecedented levels.
With such a high hop content, bitterness is a key character of IPA but, appropriately for a beer with a considerable history, drinking a good IPA is a journey in itself, as the flavours of citrus, pine, fresh hops, and floral, grassy aromas bend and mutate as the glass goes down – sometimes with every sip. But the best IPA should also be balanced and coherent, displaying a natural flow between aroma and flavour.
Modern American craft brewers have since seized upon IPA, using native hop varieties to give their efforts extra citrus and floral vibrancy. It could be said that sometimes they overreach themselves in their desire to impress with over-the-top bitterness, but American IPAs can generally be credited for being behind a resurgence of interest in the style, with British brewers trying to cash in on their success.
Imbibe’s quest was to find the best that the market had to offer in the hippest beer style around.

How it worked
Our panel tasted 20 bottled beers blind in a round-table discussion format.
The line-up was a mix of British and American beers with one Belgian ringer thrown in for good measure.
The British beers included some modern interpretations by young microbrewers and a few long-standing examples from nationals and bigger regionals.
To avoid suggesting to our tasters that there was an upward scale of taste profiles they were being led through, a poll was conducted to determine the orders of the beer.
Judges were asked to mark out of 10 for aroma and 15 for flavour, with the total scores rounded to find a rating out of 100 for each beer.
See over the page for a full list of the judges and to read their comments on the tasting.

American IPAs have generally been behind a

resurgence of interest in the style, with British

brewers trying to cash in on their success

The top five
90 Hardcore IPA
At 9.2% abv, Hardcore is a strong beer by most people’s standards, but as it comes from BrewDog – the Scottish brewer that also produces a beer the strength of neat whisky – it’s been recast as something of a puppy dog, lately. The beer impressed the panel for successfully negotiating the awkward boundary between complexity and balance. SG got the typical IPA pine flavour and some sultana, while PH described it as, ‘a truly stunning beer whose aroma delivers into flavour’. CHL assembled a palate of flavours that included ‘candied fruit, butter, fruitcake, grapefruit, blood orange, treacle and brown sugar’. A similarly complex meld of flavours came from DE: ‘Peach, herbs, coriander, candied orange peel, peach purée, angelica, star anise, pine needles, grapefruit, medicinal treacle and brown sugar.’ We think he liked it.
9.2% abv, BrewDog, 01346 519009

89 Goose Island IPA
Chicago’s Goose Island IPA is one of the highest-circulation American craft brews in the UK and brewer Greg Hall has achieved stunningly fresh citrus aromas and flavours on a consistent basis for many years. The beer seldom disappoints, and this was the case again, with RT enjoying its ‘blossom fruit, pears and peach’, and finding it ‘soft, lush, floral, complex and long’. SG noted that it has ‘got a bit of everything, and it fades very slowly. The finish drops but never actually goes. It’s really pleasant.’
RD sagely spotted that it was American with the first whiff, and CHL thought that ‘for something with so much flavour it’s very drinkable, and refreshing’.
5.9% abv, James Clay, 01422 377560

89 Port Brewing Wipeout IPA
Less well-known in the UK than Goose Island, but equally flavour-packed, this Californian craft brewer’s flagship IPA was correctly identified as being in the American camp by SG, who found it ‘easy to drink, fresh, well-balanced’, and noted its ‘marmalade and orange flavours’. RT also got ‘marmalade freshness upfront’, which was ‘succeeded by delicate citrus floral and hoppy flavours’. All the other tasters cited oranges, with PH arguing that it was ‘probably the most full-on marmalade-tasting one we’ve had – and incredibly moreish’.
7% abv, Cave Direct, 01622 710339

79 Great Divide Titan IPA
A lot of American IPAs get criticised as being more a display of the brewmaster’s daring with hop quantities rather than aspiring to be something you might actually want to drink. That wasn’t the case with this IPA, which DE didn’t think was ‘too heavy and showy’. He added: ‘Some of them are disappointing on the palate because the nose is so extreme, but that’s got a big US hop aroma and
it’s got the balance right.’
7.1% abv, Pangaea Beer Co, 020 7378 9461

79 Worthington’s White Shield
Brewed at Molson Coors Burton-on-Trent microbrewery, White Shield is to many beer lovers the closest thing to an authentic British IPA still on the market. Complex was a word used by more than one taster, with RD adding that it was ‘very together, integrated and long’, with ‘restrained’ hoppiness. PH spotted ‘melon, apple, fresh-dough aroma and kiwi’, and wasn’t alone in his observations.
5.6% abv, Wells & Young’s,01283 511000

Top five beers by aroma
90 Hardcore IPA
90 Goose Island IPA
85 Port Brewing Wipeout IPA
70 Worthington’s White Shield
80 Thornbridge Jaipur IPA

Top five beers by flavour
92 Port Brewing Wipeout IPA
89 Hardcore IPA
88 Goose Island IPA
80 Dogfish Head 60 minute
80 Dogfish Head 90 minute
80 Great Divide IPA

Top five UK beers
90 Hardcore IPA 90
79 Worthington’s White Shield 79
78 Moor Brewery JJJ
74 Thornbridge Jaipur IPA
64 Punk IPA

Top five US beers
89 Goose Island IPA
89 Port Brewing Wipeout IPA
79 Great Divide IPA
78 Dogfish Head 90 Minute
78 Dogfish Head 60 Minute

The rest of the top 20
78 Dogfish Head 90 Minute (USA)
9% abv, Vertical Drinks, 07831 581171

78 Moor Brewery JJJ (UK)
9% abv, Cave Direct, 01622 710339

78 Dogfish Head 60 Minute (USA)
9% abv, Vertical Drinks,
07831 581171

75 Brooklyn EIPA (USA)
6.8% abv, James Clay,
01422 377560

74 Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (UK)
5.9% abv, Thornbridge,
01629 641000

74 Flying Dog Classic IPA (USA)
5.5% abv, James Clay, 01422 377560

67 Great Divide DPA (USA)
5.4% abv, Pangaea Beer Co,020 7378 9461

64 Punk IPA (UK)
6% abv, BrewDog, 01346 519009

62 Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA (Belgium)
9% abv, Cave Direct, 01622 710339

61 Gadd’s India IPA (UK)
8.3% abv, Cave Direct, 01622 710339

54 Harveys IPA
3.2% abv, Harveys, 01273 480209

53 Greene King IPA
5% abv, Greene King, 01284 763222

51 Meantime IPA
7.5% abv, Meantime, 020 8293 1111

46 Marston’s Old Empire IPA
5.7% abv, Marston’s, 01902 711811

39 Sharp’s Atlantic IPA
4.8% abv, Sharp’s, 01208 862121

CSi Parsons Green
Nigel Huddleston puts up the yellow tape and gets all Horatio Caine on us, as he analyses the IPA results for incriminating traces of DNA
Scores for the higher-placed beers were consistently around 10 points higher than in previous Imbibe beer tastings, but at the lower reaches of the chart, they were about the same amount below the norm. Perhaps because of the level of expectation that modern IPAs have created, the style seems to throw up beers that either delight or disappoint.
For many of the beers, there was also a surprising disconnect between aroma and flavour. The session-strength Harveys IPA, for example, scored 7th overall on aroma, but just 19th – one place off the bottom – for flavour.
Surprisingly, not many of the lime and pine flavours that are often regarded as typical of IPA were in evidence. Oranges – with a tendency towards marmalade and Sevilleoranges – were the most common citrus notes recorded.
Another typical comparison made with IPA is Sauvignon Blanc, because of a sometimes grassy, aromatic nose – but this didn’t resonate with tasters. Instead, Donald Edwards felt that many of the beers were closer to Muscat, because of ‘a slight disconnect between pungent aromatics and then a lack of them on the palate’.
Many of the more experienced beer tasters found it easy to pick out American and British beers. Some surprised, though. The American Flying Dog Classic’s smoked cheesiness drew comparisons with Bavarian wheat beer, while the Scottish Punk IPA duped two tasters into believing it was American.
The Belgian ringer stood out a mile. One panellist called ‘a bitter wheat beer’ and Richard Dinwoodie even identified it as Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen.
The biggest-selling beer, sold under the name Greene King, was included to gauge whether or not it manages to live up to the historical notion of a big-flavoured strong beer – many experts suggest not. Phil Harding – tasting blind, remember – said it was ‘like a draught best bitter, but I wouldn’t say it’s an IPA’, while Dinwoodie thought it was ‘more down the line of what British brewers are calling an IPA’.
One of the big surprises was the relatively poor showing from London’s Meantime IPA, a beer many of the panel professed to be fans of ahead of the tasting. There was nothing much wrong with it in most panellists’ eyes, and it delivered lots of fresh hop flavour – but the general feeling was that it was rather one-dimensional, lacking the ‘journey’ element of many of its rivals.
While the winning beer was British, the next three were all American. Many of the higher-scoring British ones were modern takes influenced by the US craft beer trend, including the overall winner, although the spread of scores on the top three was so small that if we’d done it again later the same day, we might easily have ended up with a different order.

The Panel

Richard Dinwoodie
Co-owner of The Rake in London’s Borough Market and beer wholesaler Utobeer
‘Generally, I don’t think the beers have been too bad. It can be a bit frightening when you say IPA because there’s no real definition. Anyone can stick IPA on the bottle and see it as marketing tool but fortunately, I don’t think they were quite as bad as they could have been. There’s a difference between what was originally meant by IPA and what is actually a pale ale that’s being labelled IPA just to get a route to market.’

Steve Gray
Cellarman, The White Horse, London
‘IPA’s very exciting because it’s so diverse, and that’s shown by tasting so many together. Some are really weak, and some strong; some of the flavours go on and on and some just fade. There’s so many different flavours, like manure, apples and pears, plus the oiliness of beers from the hop oils, that it’s easier to be more specific with food matches than you would for other beers. Some things that you wouldn’t imagine going together match up well.’

Phil Harding
Manager of Lowlander Grand Café, London
‘I was disappointed with a lot of the beers – I felt some of them didn’t taste lke IPAs at all. The traditional English IPA is around 7% abv, really well-balanced but less zippy than the American beers. Some of them had the aromas all there but when you came to drink it, it just fell apart. Having said that, there was an amazing diversity of style and there are a lot that would go very well with food.’

Camille Hobby-Limon
Co-owner of 69 Colebrooke Row and The Charles Lamb, both London
‘I found this tasting interesting because I’ve not drunk that much bottled IPA as opposed to cask. It was quite an eye-opener. The diversity is the strength of IPA, because it would be sad if someone put a stamp on it and said it’s got to have this amount of hops or this abv. Everyone’s doing what they want, which makes it a more exciting area.’

Donald Edwards
Sommelier, Le Bouchon Breton, London
‘For me, the tasting was a bit hit and miss. The IPAs I liked, I liked a lot – and there were some that were just a bit too much and that I certainly wouldn’t want more than half a pint of. On the other side there were quite a few that were a bit nothingy, and I thought “why has this got IPA on it?”’

Rupert Taylor
Sommelier, Trinity, London
‘There were one or two that were disappointing but overall, I was quite impressed. The ones that showed a balance between aroma and the palate were the most interesting. There were a few there that really stood out and a few that were underwhelming, but all in all, it was a really interesting tasting.’