Photo by Ed Rudolph

On a sunny January morning, shortly after Great Notion Brewing opened the doors to its Portland, Oregon, taproom for the first time, it had a visitor. He was an employee from a brewery a few miles away who had come to sample the newcomer’s wares, and he chose a pint of RIPE, a 7% American IPA. But when Great Notion co-founder and brewer James Dugan set the beer before him, the visitor seemed incredulous. He lifted the glass high in the air, squinting at it. “I just want you to know,” the man told Dugan, “This style of beer is not going to fly in Portland.” He went on to tell Dugan that Great Notion needed to work on its filtration or no one would be willing to buy its ales.

The problem? The IPA Dugan poured for him was cloudy.

Now, cloudiness absolutely can be a sign of a low-quality beer. If there are issues with yeast and its fermentation, certain adjuncts or, yes, filtration, tiny particles remain suspended in a beer, murking it up and contributing off-putting flavors. But, Dugan says, that’s not what had happened here. RIPE, along with most of the IPAs he produces at Great Notion, is an example of a new permutation of the most popular style in the country—one with less bitterness and (gasp!) a hazy glow—that’s poised to become IPA’s new ideal.

There have always been variations in IPAs, of course: Some shine and shimmer in translucent gold while others have a deep, caramel hue; some wallop the nose with citrus and pine needles whereas others caress it with soft melon and mango. But this new breed of IPA differs from its forebears in more meaningful ways.

First, the most obvious: It’s cloudy. Far from the superclear IPAs that you could read a book through, this offshoot sports haze that ranges from early morning fog to extra-pulp Tropicana. This “glow” isn’t a bug, however; it’s a feature. Brewers add massive amounts of hops to beers late in the brewing process—while they’re fermenting, usually—that packs them with haze-causing compounds called polyphenols. When they choose not to filter the beer completely, these compounds remain suspended in the liquid, fogging it up.

But cloudiness isn’t the only departure these IPAs take from the norm. “To me, it’s always been about the yeast,” says Connor Casey, founder of Cellarmaker Brewing Co. in San Francisco. “The yeast sweetens the hops and gives these fruity, peachy notes that work really well with them.” While many examples of classically bright, bitter IPA use an American yeast strain that lends a dry finish and contributes few fruity flavors, this new IPA is most often brewed with a modified British ale strain that’s like the devil-may-care cousin from across the pond: It eats less sugar (leaving the beer sweeter), throws off a ton of fruity flavor and sticks around inside a beer well after the party’s over. In this new breed of IPA, bitterness is of secondary importance (Great Notion’s imperial IPA, Juice Box, clocks in at just 60 IBUs) and grains that can contribute additional haziness and body, like oats and wheat, are welcome. In an effort to avoid any loss of hop aroma and flavor, many brewers are choosing to cut short the several days usually allotted for yeast particles to settle out of a beer, and some are skipping any form of filtration altogether—appearances be damned.

“I don’t really understand the importance of serving a crystal-clear pint of beer,” Dugan says. “What’s more important to me is serving a beer that, when it’s put in front of you, the aromas of mango and papaya and pineapple are just jumping out of the glass at your nose. If you close your eyes and it tastes amazing, why worry about how it looks?”

Why, indeed? As a quick glance at any current list of top-ranked IPAs will show, most beer geeks (save a few staunch holdouts) have embraced IPA’s newfound opacity. Eight of the 10 best-rated India pale ales on RateBeer, as of this writing, are part of this new breed of cloudy, flavorful brew; that number jumps to nine on BeerAdvocate. The Alchemist, Trillium, Tree House and other breweries that specialize in IPAs of this nature can hardly brew them quickly enough to keep up with consumer demand. Which is sort of the point—even the bitterest, brightest, West Coastiest IPAs lose some hop character during the days spent in bright tanks or during filtration; the natural evolution of a style defined by its freshness and hop character requires that brewers skip these steps, crafting their beers to get from kettle to keg in a shorter time than almost any other beer. As a result, they’re often as fresh and flavorful as IPAs get. Which brings us back to Great Notion’s nay-saying RIPE drinker. After listening to his arguments against hazy beer, Dugan refunded the dude’s pint but gave him one directive. “I told him, ‘Go out back, and close your eyes, and sit in the sun and drink that beer.’” The cynic did, and after he finished his pint, he returned inside and apologized. His judgment had been clouded. The IPA had been, too.

Four To Try:

The Alchemist Heady Topper
“I am not reinventing the wheel of IPA,” Alchemist brewer John Kimmich says. “The British wrote the song of IPA; I’m just making a cover song.” Give the man a Grammy; this insanely popular, intensely resinous imperial IPA brewed in Vermont has a hop character that blends liquefied marijuana and grass blades with sugar-dusted orange slices atop a crackery malt base. Consistently ranked among the top beers in the world, it’s considered by many the beer that forecasted the cloudy IPA trend.

Tired Hands PUNGE
Mimosalike in appearance, this Pennsylvania-brewed imperial IPA gains a soft, creamy body from an infusion of oats, while hops from New Zealand provide a garlicky, sesame seed-speckled bouquet. Ginger, scallions and fresh broccoli initiate the sip, fading to soft, herbal bitterness— lemongrass, sweet basil—that lingers long after the sugar cookie finish.

Tree House Julius
The nods to a certain citrus fruit in this IPA from Massachusetts aren’t coincidental; the peel and juice of oranges are everywhere in the aroma, filling out notes of freshly mown grass. A smoothielike flavor leads with more orange andwheatgrass, while soft marmaladeand onion jam slide into pulpy tanginess at the swallow.

Maine Beer II
India Pale Ales and double IPAs aren’t the only hop-forward beers becoming clouded. Beer II is a 4.7% session IPA that swells to the nose with a gorgeous aroma of onion, dried mango slices and honeysuckle. Delicate straw like and sweet tropical hop flavors lead each sip; dried orange peel emerges and relinquishes to a faintly bitter, remarkably even finish.

The post The new IPA appeared first on DRAFT.

Each month, as part of a regular online support group of sorts called The Session, beer bloggers and writers unite to tackle a single topic related to the beer industry. This month’s topic, presented by Oliver Gray over at the Literature and Libation blog, has to do with Gray’s malaise with craft beer as a hobby. Whether due to the politics of aftermarket beer sales, changes within the subculture or some other diabolical development, he says, his interest in beer has waned.

“The thing I have embraced so fully and spent so much time getting to know and love suddenly seems generally, unequivocally: meh. It’s like I’ve been living a lie, and everything I’ve done is for naught. I’m having a beer mid-life crisis, yo.”

Gray asks whether he’s alone in feeling this way. We doubt it. In fact, I’m confident that his beer-life crisis is as common among drinkers as actual mid-life crises, and that the lull he’s experiencing is simply a natural stage in the life cycle of a beer geek. Here are all the stages, as we see them:

Birth
Ignore the image of a bawling baby that just popped into your head; the birth of a beer geek can happen at any age. For some, the incubation period stretches over many years—a taste of IPA here, a small sip of a sour beer there—as they gradually steer away from mass-market lagers to more flavorful options. For others, it occurs all at once, usually induced by the so called “epiphany beer” that opens one’s eyes to the breadth of innovative ales and lagers crafted by brewers across the globe (mine was Russian River Consecration).

Adolescence
This is the stage the traders and truck-chasers inhabit. Every brewery trip is exciting, every beer brand new, and so the adolescent beer geek seeks out bottles and brewery experiences with reckless abandon. Beer geeks who live in this stage will travel cross-country for the hottest beer release and wait in line hours to get it. They tend to favor brews with high alcohol content and intense flavors: imperial IPAs, long-aged sour ales, barrel-aged stouts. Friendships with other drinkers are forged in this stage through the shared struggle of finding rare beers or sharing bottles.Like physical adolescence, it’s a time when emotions run high and every new memory seems more important than what came before it. It’s a fun part of the beer geek’s life cycle, but also an expensive one. And it’s a lot of work, which after a time can wear one down and lead to…

The Crisis
It happens with almost any human endeavor: You dive in headfirst, investing yourself fully in a pursuit and expend a whole lot of energy doing so. But after a time, the truck-chasing, beer-rating routine becomes tiresome and dull; the love is gone. When you’re doing anything all the time, how are you not going to get burnt out? And what’s one to do when burnt out on beer? The natural response in an actual mid-life crisis is to try reclaiming lost adolescence—you get a haircut and new clothes; you go skydiving; you buy a hot car. But I think you have to approach beer differently. You have to rekindle the love of beer by reevaluating what excites you about it, and generally that’s not driving across state lines to try a few sips of draft-only, no-growler whalez.

Maturity
Maturity comes with the realization that craft beer is maybe an integral part of one’s life, but not the only part. The mature craft beer geek treats beer not as the goal of a social interaction but, as has been said many times, as its lubricant. He or she understands that the best drinking experiences usually occur locally and happen organically. He incorporates good beer into his lifestyle but doesn’t spend his weekends chasing down the newest hotness—in fact, a quality pale ale or pilsner is fine most of the time.

What do you think? Where do you find yourself in this cycle? Are you, like Oliver Gray, experiencing your own beer-life crisis? Did we miss any stages? Let us know in the comments.

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Courtesy of Jester King Brewery

Austin’s Jester King Brewery announced in early January that it had purchased 58 acres of Texas Hill Country surrounding its current location from the brewery’s landlord, and planned to begin ambitious project including farming, wine making and even a restaurant. Unsurprisingly, founder Jeffrey Stuffing has been busy since then. We caught up by phone to discuss what the land purchase means for his beer and the farmhouse brewery’s future.

DRAFT: How did this purchase come about? 
Stuffings: I got a call out of the blue in 2009, when I was looking for a place to start Jester King, from a rancher: “How would you like to build your brewery out on my ranch?” That was about six years ago. Last year, our landlord came to us and said “I’m looking to sell off a portion of my ranch. Are you interested in buying it?” It never occured to us that buying a big parcel of land would be something we’d do, but we figured if we didn’t do it, who might buy it and what might they do with it? Secondarily, something we did have interest in long-term is getting into agriculture and livestock and farming.

What does the land look like now?
It’s mainly open, and there’s a fair amount of live oak trees.

What’s going to be the biggest challenge with this purchase?
I think it’s twofold: One, just finding the money, frankly. After having now bought the land, we’ve had a number of farmers approaching us. It’s been cool to get talented, experienced resumes but, well, we don’t really have a budget to hire a farmer. That’ll solve itself over the long term as we can find money to start farming. Since buying the land wasn’t really something we’d planned on, we burned through a lot of our dry powder financially. The other challenge, as I see it, is just our climate; it’s variable. There is a good track record here for fruit, especially grapes and peaches, but we’ll see what nature will allow and what it won’t. We’re cautiously optimistic for growing some, if not all, of our own grains. There’s a good track record for wheat but not for barley, and a very poor to non-existent track record for hops. Fruits, spices, herbs, vegetables are something we can definitley make. We’ll let the seasons dictate what we make; we’re under no pressure to consistently pump out a flagship beer or anything.

Philosophically, why was it important to do this as a farmhouse brewery? 
Being a real farmhouse brewery to us means making beer with a sense of place, unique to a location and time that would not exist but for being made at that place, where the flavors and aromas are directly tied to the land around us. The rise of pure culture and fermentation has made making very consistent beer anywhere attainable, and there are lots of positive associated with that, but negatives to us would be that uniqueness has been slightly diminished along the way. Right now, beer with a sense of place really stems from our microflora and well water; we use locally malted grains, however, at this time, barley is not grown in Texas. It’s grown in Colorado and malted in Texas. It’s a really high quality product but hopefully going forward, we’re growing more of our own raw ingredients.

Courtesy of Jester King Brewery

Can people really taste locally grown grain in a beer? 
I think we’ll find out. There are so many variables at play given the weather, the process. I do feel strongly that there are differences. I think there will be much more individualty. You can get grain form the big malt houses in the Pacific Northwest or the UK or Germany, and its the same grain everyone is using; it’s really high quality but I think there is something to having something more small scale that has that randomness involved. It’s allowing natural variation to occur: the way microorganisms work with or against each other, or the way a sudden temperature rise or drop can affect fermentation. These are the variables outside of our control.

Someone once told us, and I think it’s really true: “I feel, with your beer, you’re not trying to be avant-garde or intentionally achieve odd results, but you’re trying to do the same thing twice with a rawness with your process that will naturally arrive at variation.” So I’ll quote him on that.

You mentioned an orchard and vineyard. Do you aspire to make wine and cider?
We do endeavor to make wine and perhaps cider. At this point, I think we’re a little more intent on making wine. My five- to ten-year vision is that we’re planning to plant about an acre of grapes this spring—Blanc du Bois, a white varietal, and Black Spanish, a red varietal—which tend to be hardy, thick-skinned grapes that can stand up to very hot summers and rocky soil. Our wine-making friends around us have said to expect three to five years for fruit that will be in good shape. My vision for Jester King is not to grow in terms of volume but to focus inward on a place where it’s this kind of really great spot for fermentation across both food and beverage.

I bet that will contribute pretty nicely to your native yeast.
We’ll see where that goes for sure. I certainly know our mixed culture was derived from fruits and berries, but now our spontaneous fermentations are inside of our barrel rooms. You hear the Belgian lambic blenders talk about the importance of the room itself and the microflora that exist on the plant life around the brewery. We will get a little window of insight this winter with a couple experiments we’ll do with our koelship, putting it out in the fields in a vineyard about half an hour away that supplies our grapes, and also out to an orchard that supplies our peaches and see what overnight inoculations will do in each place to the same base beer.

Courtesy of Jester King Brewery

Any plans for bee keeping or pollinator work?
A friend of mine—from when I used to work at Austin Homebrew Work—does beekeeping. This is a thing we can start doing, using the land, breathing life into it and without a ton of money, having him set up some beekeeping here. So yes, that will practically be the first thing we do.

What sort of livestock are you looking into?
There’s a cheesemaker down the road from us, Pure Luck Farms. They’re starting to build a little brewpub out there and we’re trading notes right now, helping them with brewing and they’re helping us learn to raise goats and milk them and make goat cheese. We currently have horses and chicken and then we’re thinking cows and maybe pigs as well. We have a lot of land, but at the same time we do have a lot of neighbors. So we’ll see about the pigs.

Is the restaurant actively in the works or is it coming farther out?
That’s more in the long term. The restaurant, unlike the grapes which are kind of a crapshoot in terms of whether it’ll take, the restaurant can be more viable by the end of the decade. I have no restaurant experience, so I’ll have to find a good GM and really talented chef, but we’d be using the farming around us to make dishes that are very much of the land.

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Arguments over how long a beer should  age are one of the main causes of strife here at the DRAFT offices (that and whether yetis actually exist, but that’s a topic for another blog post). Thank goodness, then, for Deschutes Brewery, who for more than five years now has made our quibbling moot by printing a best-after date of one year after packaging on bottles of its sought-after Abyss imperial stout.

But this year, Deschutes disturbed our fragile peace by adding two “remarkably limited” Abyss variants—one aged in cognac barrels, the other in rye whiskey barrels – into the mix. For how long should these new brews be aged? Should they be aged at all? We popped a couple of them open to find out.

The 2015 Abyss – the “regular” version released late last year—is by no means rudimentary. The whole batch is crafted with brewer’s licorice, blackstrap molasses, vanilla beans and cherry tree bark, then half of each batch goes into oak—21 percent in bourbon barrels, 21 percent in wine barrels and 8 percent in plain old oak—while the other half is aged in stainless steel. The result in a fresh bottle is surprisingly fruit-forward; vinous notes of wine and grape skin meld with Red Vines and vanilla in the complex aroma. The flavor is bizarrely drinkable for a beer of this strength, as soft vanilla undertones round out the edges of bitter dark chocolate and molasses. It’s tasty, assuredly, but could use some time to stratify and develop deeper malt flavors to balance the intense fruits.

The two “Remarkably Limited” variants released earlier this year take the base Abyss—the portion aged in tanks, not oak—and throw the whole batch into barrels that once held either rye or cognac. We opened the Cognac edition first and noted immediately that the subtle roast of the standard Abyss had been traded here for the liquor. In the nose, pronounced cherry and orange peel meld with higher alcohols atop cocoa and vanilla. The tangy flavor flashes with cherry, raisin and an almost tart blackberry note. With the character of the barrels so pronounced and the malts so muted, we wondered if this beer would improve with time at all.

Wary of popping our bottle of the rye-aged Abyss too soon, we decided to call Jake Harper, one of Deschutes’ brewers, for advice.

“The rye is a little hot,” Harper says. “Those barrels were freshly emptied. If I were going to age one longer, that would be it. I’ve dug into some older vintages of the standard Abyss that were closer to that when they started out, and they tend to age better than others. The ones with more higher alcohol character at the beginning seem to hold up better after time.”

Case closed. The Rye Abyss is going in the cellar. In fact, Harper recommends aging all three versions of the beer for at least a year.

“I like the 12- to 18-month mark for the regular Abyss,” Harper says. “The cognac’s got some interesting liqueur characteristics and almost some tartness. That would be something interesting to note for a year down the road to see how that progresses.”

Whenever you choose to open them, we recommend drinking your Abysses side-by-side. The beers contrast each other nicely—the fruity sweetness of the cognac-aged Abyss emphasizes the roasted malt and smooth vanilla of the standard edition, and vice versa. We also recommend enjoying the rye- and cognac-aged versions while you can—Harper says the “remarkably limited” offerings will be completely different next year.

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In advance of the Beer Mile World Championships, the endurance running news website Flotrack has launched a new web video series on the beer mile.

“Anyone who knows anything about track knows that the beer mile is a HUGE underground event and something that people take huge pride in,” said a co-host named Joe in the first episode.

On Dec. 3rd, the Beer Mile World Championships will gather the elite runners of the world who can complete a 5-minute mile while downing four beers. Participants will include Olympians and beer mile record holders like Nick Symmonds.

In the second episode, 5:01 beer miler Corey Gallagher calls out world record holder James Nielson, who is the only runner to have run a sub-5 minute beer mile to date.

You can watch all episodes here.

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How many beers can you earn on the bike?

At Michigan’s new Windmill Point Brewery, that question isn’t just about how many calories you burn.

Patrons actually get a chance to power the brewery production with the energy they produce on a stationary bike.

“We are trying to change the mode of biking from recreation and transportation to energy production,” said Shawn Grose, who co-founded the East Lansing brewery with his brother Aaron.

Shawn and Aaron spoke with the Wall Street Journal, which also produced a short video that demonstrates how the bike-powered brewing process works.

However, since leg power only produced a small amount of the energy needed to run an entire brewery, it’s also powered through solar and wind energy. But time on the stationary bike can also earn points that can be redeemed for gift shop items or free beer.

“Honestly, I think it’s a bit of a gimmick,” one cyclist who tried it out told the Wall Street Journal. “But it’s a fun gimmick.”

Next will we see brewery-powering treadmills?

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Photo via Patrick Bieser and Milwaukee Running Group

The number to beat is 26.

That’s the amount of runners who unofficially established a world record yesterday for total number of people who completed the beer mile at one time.

The challenge marked the first ever public event run by the Milwaukee Running Group. In addition to emptying more than 100 beers in ~20 minutes, the event raised money for the Chasing Chad organization funding Brain Cancer Research.

About 50 people in all came out to run or watch and cheer, including a family that brought a picnic blanket and wine to spectate in style.

“The event was true to our mission of promoting running and having fun, to which we can now add fund raising to make our community a better place,” wrote organizer Patrick Bieser in the club’s Facebook group. 

The run took place along a measured 400-meter loop in Estabrook Park in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Some may take issue with the fact that it wasn’t held on a standard track, but it’s also more legally sound for a few dozen people to drink in a park’s picnic area than on school grounds.

I completed my fifth beer mile with yesterday’s run, finishing in 7:28. I forgot how weird it is to finish a race feeling fine, only to have the waves of nausea, fatigue and pain wash over you about five or 10 minutes after you’re done running.

There are no other groups that have immediately declared plans to break the record, but the Flo Track Beer Mile World Championships in December has a good chance at raising the bar. More info about that race can be found here.

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Milwaukee Running Group will attempt to make history

On Saturday, October 18, the Milwaukee Running Group and friends will attempt to establish a world record for the most people to complete the Beer Mile at one running.  

It should be fairly easy, because currently there is no world record in this category.

The beer mile will be run on a 400 meter track in Milwaukee’s Estabrook Park at 5 pm, rain or shine.

Full details of the event can be found at Milwaukee-Running-Group.com.

The event is free, but a $5 donation is suggested in support of Chasing Chad, a non-profit orgnization named after a local marathon runner which raises money for brain cancer research.

I plan to be there myself. Stay tuned for updates.

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Photo from BrewMile.com

“Do you drink? Yes. 
Do you run? Yes.
Can you drink 4 beers and run a mile? Hell yes! Let’s do this.”

That’s the tagline for Brew Mile, which features (you guessed it) four beers over the course of a mile.

There are plenty of race series dedicated to running followed by beer. But a new series called Brew Mile is the first and only one I’m aware of devoted to the beer mile.

Technically, it’s not an official beer mile format — which is probably why it’s called the Brew Mile. It’s not timed, it’s not on a track and there isn’t a winner. What is familiar to beer mile participants in the one beer per quarter mile.

Upcoming race locations include Houston, Tampa, New York and Atlanta, and you can get on an email list with updates for several more cities. The Tampa race is sponsored by Cigar City Brewing on Oct 17th, and Houston features St. Arnold’s Brewery on Nov 6th.

Each races is followed by a 3-hour open bar, and each participant must define a designated driver, reserve a ride, or use public transportation to get home from the event.

The FAQ on the site has some fun, and lists the reasons why you shouldn’t sign up for a Brew Mile:

“You’re a weak-willed person who wants to look back at their life and regret all of the things you could have done but didn’t. Just kidding. Not really.”

Learn more at http://brewmile.com.

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It hit me like a ton of bricks when I got home.

It was that old familiar feeling. Nausea and stomach cramps. Extreme fatigue despite being restless and unable to sleep. Your mind a complete fog. The need to constantly visit the bathroom.

No, I’m not talking about a beer hangover, though I did indulge in high-ABV craft beer flights last night to celebrate my 33rd birthday.

I’m talking about the marathon hangover.

I realized that the feeling of overexerting in running and overindulging in drinking can produce the exact same physical and mental effects. It’s the highest highs followed by the lowest lows.

In the throes of struggle, it can lead to vowing to swear off drinking or never wanting to lace up your running shoes again.

Today was one of those days. Running my sixth marathon, I averaged about 6:45 miles going into the final two mile homestretch.

That’s the point where I really hit the wall. I battled cramping in my quads and hamstrings and a stiff headwind coming off Lake Michigan.

I knew if I was going to hit my goal of under 3 hours it was going to hurt. A lot. Somehow, I managed to stay upright and sprinted the final .02 miles to squeak under 3 hours in 2:59:55. It was also a nearly 27-minute PR.

I pulled up lame at the finish with every muscle in my body screaming at me. Then I paid the price the rest of the afternoon, in pain and unable to pull myself off the couch for anything other than an emergency trip to the bathroom.

It turns out I was not the only one experiencing these symptoms, as my friend Reggie pointed out. This weekend was the Great American Beer Festival.

When you’re really hungover you swear you’ll never drink again. After a marathon the thought of another step makes you nauseous. Same thing.

— Beer Runner (@TheBeerRunner) October 5, 2014

“10 breweries in 3 days. Get me the hell home.” — Wisconsuds (@wisconsuds) October 5, 2014

Water. — Wisconsuds (@wisconsuds) October 5, 2014

I remember this feeling all too well. Five years ago this weekend, I was flying home on a few hours of sleep after overindulging at my first trip to GABF. I wasn’t sure I was going to survive the flight home.

These are good warning signs. You’re in for serious trouble if you overindulge or overexert yourself too often.

But as the saying goes, everything in moderation – including moderation.

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