Try not to faint.īut without the right grains, the beer won’t develop the complexity necessary to keep the final product light while retaining essential residual sugars. Here’s a ringer for you: For session IPAs, the malt profile is more important than the hop bill. Which is why… Session IPAs Exalt the Malt “It can often be somewhat bitter not enough malt sweetness.” “It’s a challenging style to achieve the right balance because of the lower alcohol content and light body,” says Lawson. Sean Lawson, the CEO and founding brewer of Lawson’s Finest Liquids, shares an assessment of session IPA that’s close to Drapeau’s. The style tends to be pretty uniform from one brewery to the next, but every brewery faces the same pitfalls when making them. Though both are bad, the latter turns out much worse. Toe one side of the line and you end up with watered-down beer toe the other side and you end up with an acidic beer. “You can keep those IBUs tame by just doing whirlpool additions only, and those particular malt bills are basically wheat and oat driven.”īy contrast, session IPAs require a deliberate eye to avoid missteps. “You can load that thing up with hops,” says Juice Drapeau, Senior Head Brewer of Oskar Blues Brewery. In a stroke of brewing irony, making a session IPA is the exact opposite of brewing a standard IPA-pretty much a brew-by-numbers process. Balance In All Things–Especially Session IPA Photography courtesy of Oskar Blues Breweryįulfilling that brief is no simple task. Just as long as they don’t skimp on flavor. So if meticulous brewers want to slim down the IPA’s waistband and fit the beer into a lower ABV package, then let them! In fact, here’s a bit of fun trivia: Session IPAs might actually predate what we think of today as IPA in regards to alcohol content.Īt the end of the canning line, good beer is good beer, no matter what brewers or their customers want to call it. Given that the average IPA clocks in at 6% ABV at the low end, the notion that sessionable IPAs can be brewed in the first place is arguable–at least for purists or sticklers for style designations.īut session IPAs have been around for years and then some. Occasionally they’re spiked with lactose or other wacky adjuncts.Ī session IPA takes that essence and shaves off a percentage or two, delivering the tastes and textures people want from the style while pruning that alcoholic edge. IPAs are popularly dry hopped, or double dry hopped, and they can come in imperial classes and above, too, including double IPAS (DIPAs), triple IPAs (TIPAs), and even quadruple IPAs. Of course, we’re so accustomed to typical IPA alcohol percentages that it may take a moment to remember that session IPAs are even available. Let’s Ask The Obvious: What Is A Session IPA, Anyway? Photography courtesy of | Lawson’s Finest Liquids But as lower-ABV beers increasingly snatch up real estate in the craft beer market, maybe now’s the time for a lesson in session. Because consumers want options that don’t punish their livers.Ĭue the session IPA, a sub-style that until now has been somewhat shunted to the side in favor of its burlier cousins. They’ve had their moment, and they’re here to stay, just like dessert sours and pastry stouts.īut more recently more easy-drinking, lower-ABV beers like lagers (and even non-alcoholic beers to some extent) have been gaining popularity. Perils of pride aside, high ABV beers remain popular, and in some cases function as mainstays on brewery menus. If you are ordering two, either you have an inordinate impression of your own constitution, or you’re about to take a walk of shame, leaving that monster brew unfinished on the table. In these cases, the beer itself is often the experience.īut you are not racking up a tab by ordering nothing but 13% ABV IPAs. Once in a while, a tall boy rocking a beastly ABV is exactly what a person wants. This is fine because there’s a beer for everyone. Each designation intends to outdo the others for sheer breathtaking booziness, as if getting drunk is a contest where anyone needs to cheat to win. There are single-strength beers, double and triple, all the way up to quadruple. Beer comes in every size classification available: Small, medium, large, and Scottish.
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