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Does That IPA Taste Different? American Breweries are Learning to Kill Their Darlings
On the evolution of American craft beers since 2000.
By Joshua M. Bernstein
This is Foaming at the Mouth, Joshua M. Bernstein's hopped-up adventures in the ever-expanding universe of beer. And yes, he would like another round, please.
In college, nothing was as intoxicating as opening a 40-ouncer and Microsoft Word. As I sucked down cheap beer, I spilled out adjectives and adverbs, similes and metaphors, a word jumble of boozy brilliance.
"You need to kill your darlings," a sage teacher told me, her red pen eviscerating my favorite phrases. Anger welled, quelled, and hardened into understanding. What I loved was not universally beloved, better euthanized than allowed to live.
Maybe I'm being maudlin, but that's because beer is making me a bit weepy. Today's drinkers seek and sip the latest, greatest flavor formulations, the shiniest beers on the shelves. Faced with dwindling sales and interest, the trailblazing copper ales, pale ales, black lagers, and nut browns that once defined American brewing are increasingly dispatched to that great recycling bin in the sky.
In recent years, epitaphs have been written for Goose Island Nut Brown Ale, Otter Creek Copper Ale, 21st Amendment Bitter American, Southern Tier's Mokah and Jahva, Long Trail Hibernator, Stone Levitation Ale, Boulevard Amber, and too many beers to list on a tombstone. Instead of being put down, other long-running IPAs, such as Ithaca Flower Power and New Holland Mad Hatter, have been reformulated with new hop varieties. The move aligns them with today's trends, pumping up aroma and flavor while diminishing bitterness.
Two of Stone Brewing Co.'s (recently updated) classic beers. Photo: Stone Brewing Co.
This is an about-face from the early 21st century, when the IPA was just another acronym. One of the key breweries to popularize aggressive bitterness was Southern California's Stone, which made its bones by rattling taste buds. Its signature beer is Arrogant Bastard, "a shot across the bow of fizzy yellow beer" when it debuted in 1997. Five years later, Stone unveiled Ruination, the first West Coast double IPA bottled year-round. "It was at the vanguard of understanding of what a big, bold, hoppy beer could even be," says cofounder Greg Koch.
This helped launch an arms race that saw brewers blast bitterness into the stratosphere, detonating palates as a point of pride. Today, rampant bitterness is reversing course. Intense double IPAs like Ruination symbolized an earlier era in which aggression changed perception.
Attuned to changing tastes, Stone reformulated its double IPA, utilizing newfangled hop varieties and techniques that emphasize flavor and aroma, not bitterness. Revised Ruination is fruitier than its predecessor, a harvest stand of tropical fruit, melons, citrus, and pine. "At Stone, over the last 19 or 20 years, we haven't stayed static," Koch says of the brewery's endless mission to innovate. In addition to recently dropping Levitation Ale, a low-alcohol amber, and the inky Sublimely Self-Righteous IPA, Stone updated its pale ale. Stone Pale Ale 2.0 thrums with the bright, citrusy flavors of Germany's Mandarina Bavaria hops, one of the more exciting new varieties to appear recently.
Just a reimagined IPA, waiting to be drunk.
Like Stone, Virginia's Starr Hill faced a similar conundrum with its IPA. "Northern Lights was developed to really push palates and change people's perceptions of what beer was," says brewmaster Robbie O'Cain. That meant full-throttle bitterness, since "the starkest difference from a light lager is a big hop bomb," he says.
Initially novel, Northern Lights slowly fell out of favor from its perch as flavor of the month. In 2012, Starr Hill decided to alter the IPA, but it took until 2015 to secure the required hop quantities. Released this summer, the revised Northern Lights features an amplified aroma of flower and citrus, the bitterness more in balance. "This is an evolution—not a revolution—of Northern Lights," O'Cain says. "It's a new recipe, but we're paying tribute to what the beer used to be."
In addition to Northern Lights, Starr Hill also goosed its Jomo Vienna-style lager (chewier, less bitter) and overhauled its packaging. Fresh labels and design communicated a clean start, ideally giving consumers both new and old a reason to snag a Starr Hill six-pack. As O'Cain says, "The first taste is with the eyes."
From Deschutes to Firestone Walker, New Belgium to Great Lakes, many old-guard American breweries have recently given their labels a 21st-century look. However, few breweries have overhauled their identity as thoroughly as Otter Creek. Founded in 1991, the Vermont brewery was known for its Copper Ale and Pale Ale, Oktoberfest and porter—balanced beers that barely quickened pulses. "Copper Ale was a really well-crafted, put-together beer, but people aren't really looking for that kind of beer anymore," says marketing director Jed Nelson.
Otter Creek brewmaster Mike Gerhart considers his beer.
The brewery sat in a dire crossroads: adapt or die. "We were a near-failure at one point in the late 2000s," Nelson says. To adapt to changing consumer preferences (in an eggshell, more hops), Otter Creek tossed the car keys to brewmaster Mike Gerhart and let him drive the brewery in a new direction. He brewed beers like Kind Ryed, an unabashedly piney and grassy IPA; dank Overgrown APA; and tropical Citra Mantra IPL.
"You really need to evolve with what's going on in the market," Nelson says. To put a face to the brewery's new direction, Otter Creek replaced its text-heavy labels with whimsical, cartoon illustrations featuring bearded brewmaster Gerhart, his VW van, Clementine, and Oslo, his Bernese mountain dog.
Completing the overhaul, Otter Creek earlier this year discontinued its Copper Ale, Black IPA, and Hop Session, replacing them with juicy Backseat Berner IPA and orange-y Over Easy. "It's been overwhelming to see the amount of people that wrote off or ignored Otter Creek who have now been buying our beer," says Otter Creek media specialist Drew Vetere.
Count me among them. As much as it pained me, in theory, to see old favorites disappearing, I had joined the popular shift. With blinders to the past, I had bypassed the brand, buying everything but Otter Creek. Now I seek out Backseat Berner, a modern IPA calibrated for modern tastes. It's a darling beer, one I hope Otter Creek lets live for a good long while.
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