Black IPA and What Makes a Beer Style

A rising trend in modern craft brewing today is toward an ill-defined beer known as the black IPA, which breaks down into an American-style IPA brewed with darker malts not out of place in porters and stouts. Beginning with a disclaimer, I am not a fan of this trend as the citrusy, pine-resin bite of domestic hops does not sit well on my palate with the dark-roasted malts used in these beers.

However, many do enjoy this flavor combination, which is why brewers are so keen to rush into this brand-new beer style. But this only begs the question: Is black IPA truly a new style or just a variant of an existing category? What, if anything, defines a craft beer “style” as distinct and official? Can such discrete lines be drawn, or are beer styles a squishy continuum that can accommodate most anything used in a brew kettle?

The categorization of beer styles comes down to just two elements, those being ingredients and tradition. Note that prevalence nor popularity is mentioned at this point; neither should be considered in defining a beer style, especially a brand new one. A new style is a new style, whether brewed by one brewer or adopted across the country. The science of grouping beers into styles should be approached as objectively as the senses can allow.

A beer’s ingredients may seem to be the simple part of this formula, but this element is deceptively complicated. It is easy to enumerate the constituents of a craft beer, and not much more difficult to quantify each in turn. However, modern beer styles have been fairly complete and well-defined for decades now—some for centuries—and wedging a new style into the grid is (and should be) a struggle. If defining new styles were an easy task, we would be left with thousands instead of the hundred or so recognized today.

For example, the black IPA has ingredients that are distinct from the American IPA as well as ingredients that are separate from the robust porter, but does that meet the threshold of a new style? Does the flavor profile of the black IPA reside within one of these other styles? Might it be considered a hoppy porter instead, or an off-style mistake that is too dark to judge within the existing IPA guidelines? If “dark” makes a new IPA style, does “light” do the same if using pale pilsner malts? This latter equivalence should hold for both or neither.

More important than the actual ingredients is the tradition surrounding the beer itself. In this sense, popularity does matter but not in the same way as in modern beer-rating website status. Instead, tradition implies a regional origin and prevalence, something identifiable with a particular locale either for cultural or societal reasons. Does a beer have a unique backstory, or does it exist due to some exceptional local demand from consumers? Does the beer stand the test of time, or will the black IPA fade out of our consciousness in a few years?

This last criterion is probably the most critical, and what will ultimately determine if the nascent black IPA style is to be formally recognized. Like adopting words into the English lexicon or scientists evaluating new species, these professionals must make sure that new changes have some true and meaningful persistence, and not minor blips that fade into obscurity within a few years. If it does just this, the black IPA will be remembered as merely a twist on an existing beer style, not something distinct unto itself.

Without splitting hairs to the degree of substyles, varietals and the unending permutations that can be achieved with both classic and modern beer recipes, we must conclude that the black IPA is not a new and distinct beer style—at least, not yet. This subcategory of beer styles will have to be debated by both the brewing and consuming communities, and only years from now can the stylistic determination be made.

Update: Just this past January, the Brewers Association updated their 2011 guidelines to include the American-style Black Ale, but this has not yet been universally adopted.

Beers Texas Needs

In case you had not noticed, the young Texas craft beer market is currently flourishing. We are seeing an unprecedented number of national brands and imports arriving almost weekly, and our in-state commercial brewers are the strongest they have been since the reckless microbrew expansion of the dot-com era.

Naturally, all the stylistic basics seem to be covered. Amber ales and Vienna-style lagers are quite popular and widespread, as are many variations of the well-liked wheat or weizen styles. We have plenty of quality helles lagers, and fall brings an abundance of new Oktoberfest beers each year. We have a couple of decent IPAs (although we could always use more) and a few great stouts, albeit with the latter not truly in high demand with our grueling Texas summers.

So where do we go from here? What direction should Texas brewers take with their products, and which will prove the most successful? What gaps remain to be filled? The good news is that many market niches have already been identified and satisfied most profitably. We have schwarzbiers and Dortmunders and variations on the kölsch, all of which are great additions to our landscape. But we have still missed a few of the obvious.

Bock. The historical settlement of Central Texas is one of German and Czech immigrants, imparting a long and noble history of Germanic brewing to the Lone Star State. Yet too few breweries today embrace this heritage, particularly with respect to bocks and their subcategories. We do have maibocks and limited spring seasonals, but it seems craft brewers are content to relinquish the bock style to Spoetzl (even though Shiner is no longer categorized as a bock) when instead this state should have a market flooded with bocks from every brewhaus. And a popular state-brewed doppelbock is long overdue.

Münich dunkel. The dunkel, a slightly darker, roastier cousin of the Vienna lager, would make a fine competitor for either the dark, sweet lager that is now Shiner or as an alternative to brewing a true bock-style beer. Unfortunately, the only dunkels to be found in Texas are either imported from Germany or from Mexico, which has embraced its German and Austrian brewing heritage better than Texas has.

Berliner weisse. To brew a Berliner weisse for the scorching Texas heat should not even be debated. This low-alcohol wheat beer brings a refreshing lemon and citrus lactic tang to the traditional weizen already popular in hot weather. The proven success of hefeweizen and witbier in our state should prompt local craft brewers to explore all the variations of the weizen styles.

Rauchbier. Another seemingly obvious choice is the rauchbier, a German lager similar to a bock that is brewed with smoked malt and often with an addition of rye. The smoky flavor can be anywhere from subtle campfire to full bacon-flavored beverage, and its obvious pairing with native Texas barbecue should make it a commercial success if only for cooks building their marinades.

Czech pilsner. Despite being the most numerous commercial beer style on the market today, pilsners have drifted too far away from their authentic Bohemian origins. Instead of being smooth, sweet and forgettable, true Czech pilsners can be hopped as strongly as American IPAs using Saaz and other noble hops yet can remain equally as refreshing as a tame marketable lager.

Eisbock. Including an eisbock on this list is a guilty indulgence on my part but still one that may be economically competitive. A traditional strong bock is brewed and then held below freezing for a duration, after which the frozen water content is physically removed as ice (ethanol has a much lower freezing point than water). What remains is a high-gravity commercial competitor to barleywines and imperial stouts that is as smooth as schnapps and relatively unique to the marketplace.

Granted, a few of these styles have already been attempted by in-state brewers—even with ongoing success—but few remain as permanent products on the state’s large landscape. If existing and future brewers adopted German styles more, perhaps a unique national identity could successfully arise for Texas craft brewing.

Origins: India Pale Ale

Every beer has a story to tell. Every style has an origin, whether it is invented one night by a creative commercial brewer or developed over centuries by a brewing culture. Some origins are simple and direct, and others are complex amalgams of time, society, environment, worldwide economies and even international politics.

Take the India pale ale, or IPA, for example. Americans have rabidly embraced this style and have quickly made it their own, especially with the rise of very distinct American hop varietals. But the story of where it originated is sometimes blurry, and contains historical facts mixed with a fair amount of carried-forward misinformation.

The “traditional” history of the IPA relates that it was an ale brewed by the English to a greater strength and more strongly hopped so that it would survive the journey by sea to occupied India in the nineteenth century without spoiling. At that time, transit by ship took months and the additional hops acted as a natural preservative, keeping the beer fresh until delivery.

However, this origin tale is simply not true. Granted, it does contain some truths, enough to keep this version alive and propagating. Hops do act as a mild preservative, and the British did ship beer to occupied India on a trip that took months at sea. But other beers—namely, porters—often made the same trip without harm or spoilage, so it is unlikely that English brewers would use hop additions to solve a problem they simply did not face.

To uncover the IPA’s true origin, examine the brewers who first produced this style of beer. The IPA is tied to the origin of the pale ale, connected as that is to the particular water chemistry of Burton-on-Trent. A very high natural concentration of sulfates in the water produces a beer of not only exceptional clarity but also one of enhanced bitterness. The sulfates in the water also allows the beer to hold a greater hop load than typical brown ales without adversely affecting the flavor.

The first so-called IPA was the “October beer” brewed by George Hodgson at the Bow Brewery in the late eighteenth century. It was only of marginally higher gravity and only slightly more hoppy than the popular bitters at the time, but Hodgson had the fortune of good business relations with the East India Company, the long-serving trading body with India and China.

Due to Hodgson’s favorable location, business terms and lines of credit, the East India Company became a major customer for his beers—especially the October beer, which handled the journey to India very well. The months-long journey by sea aged Hodgson’s beers an equivalent of two years in a cellar, so they arrived at their destinations very well-attenuated and in prime condition for consumption.

At about this same time, many English brewers were suffering as they lost their Northern European and Russian markets due to new and increasing international tariffs on beer. To replace these lost markets, many took advantage of Hodgson’s popular new style and began producing IPA versions of their own for export. Demand for this export product expanded, and by 1840 the India pale ale was a popular style among British consumers.

These early IPAs would hardly be noticed by modern craft beer consumers, as their “hoppy” nature was only in contrast to the popular porters and brown ales of that day. However, brewers and horticulturists continued to experiment with the hop plant and have expanded the style almost continuously since that time.

Today’s varieties can be highly localized and regional, as American hops have been developed with distinct flavors that separate them from Old World species. Brewers and consumers continue to embrace an almost infinite spectrum of IPA substyles and specialties, as it remains one of the most popular American beers.

Consumer Trends, Brewing Trends

Merriam-Webster defines a trend as "a line or general direction of movement” or “a prevailing tendency or inclination." The most obvious trends are either in fashion or on Wall Street, where the skill of detecting and predicting trends is almost a science. Consumers trend constantly in their choices and purchases, from autos to household electronics, from movies to the food they eat.

Likewise, craft beer is not immune to trends. It is as much a consumer item as any DVD or child’s Christmas toy, and craft brewers are as attuned to the market as any retailer or manufacturer. Let us examine a few recent trends in the Texas craft beer market. Texas makes a good sample population because it has a large beer-consuming base and none of its small craft breweries distribute outside the state.

Case #1. In 2004, the Rahr & Sons Brewing Company began brewing operations in Fort Worth with three flagship beers: a Münich helles, a Vienna lager and a schwarzbier. The schwarzbier, named Ugly Pug Black Lager, was a tremendous local success and remains so today. Even in a state with a large historic German settlement and brewing tradition, this was the first U.S. commercial schwarzbier in the Texas market, a market that barely had any imported schwarzbiers at all.

To celebrate their upcoming centennial, a few years ago Spoetzl Brewing began a limited-run annual series of beers of various Bavarian styles. Released in 2006, their Shiner 97 edition was a “Bohemian Black Lager,” or a schwarzbier. This particular beer proved so commercially successful that it was resurrected a year later and added to their current product portfolio as the Shiner Bohemian Black Lager, the only one of the series so far to make this permanent jump.

Case #2. Each spring, the Houston area homebrewing clubs host the Big Batch Brew Bash, a statewide homebrew competition with a twist: it only has one style category. That style changes from year to year, and in 2008 the designated style was weizenbock, a dark German wheat beer full of yeasty banana and clove flavors.

In an agreement with the competition, the Saint Arnold Brewing Company of Houston purchases the top beer from the winning homebrewer each year and uses that recipe to develop the odd-numbered beers of their special Divine Reserve limited edition series. And in 2008, the Divine Reserve #7 was that championship weizenbock, which enjoyed an improved and wider distribution throughout the state than previous beers in this series.

Again as far as I am aware, this was the first U.S. commercial weizenbock available in the Texas market, aside from the rare European import. And what happened later that year? The Live Oak Brewing Company of Austin releases a new fall seasonal beer named Primus—a weizenbock. A few weizenbocks also start appearing among the Texas brewpubs, where they never had entertained that style previously.

Are these cases of petty copycat brewers or savvy businessmen identifying and pursuing profitable popular trends? Do Texas craft brewers large and small keep one eye on the competition and plan products competitively, or are style ideas and preferences planted in the population’s psyche that somehow spread virally and bubble just beneath the consciousness? Is this a case of convergent evolution or is the market larger than the sum of its parts?

No craft brewer wants to be labeled as a follower, and all claim to have developed similar beers only coincidentally. All in all, trends like these do turn out to be very good things, especially in a rather contained market like Texas. Multiple versions of similar beers foster competition and the craft beer consumers become a wonderful test bed for comparing and contrasting individual interpretations of the same styles.

Cask Ale

Consumers are quite familiar with the common serving methods for beer, both mass-produced and craft. Beer may be served either from a large keg via a tap in the wall or it may be put into smaller containers, either colored glass bottles or aluminum cans. But most consumers in the United States are woefully unaware of a third, unique style of service that gives rise to a world of different treatments: cask ale.

A cask is nothing more than a small traditional wooden storage vessel, still used today for aging whiskey and other spirits. Taking its name from the historical container, cask ales are more accurately described as cask-conditioned ales and very often as real ales, as their methods are steeped in tradition long eschewed by modern commercial breweries. The beers are fermented and then packaged into the cask (although the process can use modern metal kegs as well), at which time a small dose of yeast is added before it is sealed.

The resulting beer is a naturally fermented, unpasteurized ale that has striking differences to the same brand available in bottles, cans or kegs. Cask ale is actually “unfinished” beer, as the late dose of yeast provides a natural and ongoing late fermentation and the lack of pasteurization means the ale is still “alive.” Yes, with cask ale you will most likely be drinking what few living yeast cells are left, depending on the age of the cask—and this is just fine.

What should you expect from a cask serving? First, the beer is not propelled through the lines using gas pressure on the keg, as most taps are served (a blend of carbon dioxide and nitrogen aptly named beer gas). The beer must be laboriously hand-pumped using what is known as a beer engine, a simple mechanical piston with a thick handle used to draw the beer from the cask that is the historical and traditional method that beers have been served.

Other differences arise from the nature of the late fermentation of the product. The beer is generally served at “cellar temperature,” or a temperature slightly cooler than ambient and closer to that found in underground cellars used for aging. The beer is also left unfiltered, so a glass of cask ale may be cloudy and turbid. Keep in mind that nothing is wrong with this style of service; a cool (neither warm nor ice-cold) and hazy pint of beer is normal for cask ales.

What you taste is something fuller, richer, softer and more subtle than the same product poured from a wall tap. The beer is naturally carbonated by the remaining yeast instead of force-carbonated by gas pressure, so the mouthfeel is generally softer and less effervescent. Because it is unfiltered and unpasteurized, different delicate flavors are present that are tied to the yeast and other compounds usually removed by sterile filters and heat.

The tradeoff with a dramatic rise in the quality of flavor in cask service is a great reduction in shelf-life. In this sense, cask ale has much in common with freshly baked bread or fruits and vegetables. Pasteurization is a preservative measure, and the lifetime of a cask of beer is generally listed in terms of days or a couple of weeks. Left in the cask too long, the beer can sour through the continued action of the live yeast and other microorganisms.

Tragically, cask ale is a rare species as its short shelf-life and unfamiliar qualities are frowned upon by mass consumers and profit-driven retailers. Long enjoyed as the standard product in the United Kingdom, organizations such as the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) work hard to keep cask ale alive and popular. If you see such a device in the States, enjoy it for the rarity it is here.

In Praise of Session Beers

The evolution of the craft beer consumer is fairly predictable. Raised on a steady diet of bland corporate products (or no beer at all), the new beer drinker will discover their first craft beer. It may be brewed by a local craft brewer, or perhaps it is a popular import. From that point forward, eyes are opened, tastes are awakened and what was once good is no longer satisfying enough.

Sooner or later, the craft beer consumer will find a local source for a wide variety of craft beers, and then will read a beer website online, and then all bets are off. The new enthusiast will consume with abandon, drawn to the strong, pungent elements of the high-end IPAs and barleywines, the robustness of the Imperial stouts and the intoxicating (literally) complexity of Belgian beers.

However, on the other side of this heady flavor binge lies another, more subtle arena. This place marks the maturity of the craft beer drinker—not another phase, simply a move from fervent amateur to appreciative yeoman consumer. It is certainly not the endpoint of this journey but instead another beginning. This is the landscape of the session beers.

The origins of session beers can be traced back to Great Britain, probably from one of the world wars. British laborers (or is it labourers?) worked in shifts in the factories, sometimes around the clock. During their off hours, often either before or after work, they would “pop 'round to the local” in true pub culture fashion. These visits became the origin of the drinking session, where a patron would consume four, five, six or more pints at one sitting.

The attributes of session beer arose from these British drinking sessions. The workers required a beer that was alcoholic but not so strong as to leave them impaired or outright inebriated. They required a beer that was flavorful but neither so bitterly hopped nor cloyingly sweet as to grow tiring before the end of the session. Although interesting and mighty delicious, Trappist ales and strong IPAs can quickly lead to palate fatigue, rarely have a neutral finish and the alcohol content can be regrettable in volume. Thus arose the brewing quasi-category of the session beer.

Although traditionally British, session beers can have any origin and are not necessarily limited by defined style. At their core, session beers exemplify the ideal of balance in a beverage. They are bitter yet not too much so, malty but not too much so, lightly alcoholic but with sufficient flavor complexity not only to defer boredom but to keep the drinker genuinely interested.

These session beers are the delicate Goldilocks of the brewing world. They generally have a rich malt base and are mildly hopped, sometimes only barely so. Their alcohol content is generally higher than non-alcoholic beers (which are usually around 0.5% ABV) and almost by definition all are under 5% ABV. Both ale and lager yeast are used for session beers, although distinct and robust strains such as in Belgian ales are usually avoided.

Session beer styles range from English milds, bitters and brown ales to porters and even the milder stouts and Scottish ales. Teutonic varieties include the mild bocks, Vienna lagers, altbiers and dunkels—almost by definition, the Oktoberfest/märzen style is a session beer. Many wheat beers such as hefeweizen and Berliner weisse would also qualify as session beers, as would standard lagers and a few pilsners. Across the pond, American varieties like wheat ale, blonde ale, rye beer and California common also fall into this category.

Do not take the next logical step and believe that anything you can imbibe in quantity will qualify as a session beer. Individual tolerances do not define the session beer category. Instead, it is a world of subtlety and whispers, the enticement of spotting a fawn in the wild as opposed to listening to a lion roar in his cage. Appreciation of session beers marks the successful fulfillment of your craft beer education but still only the start of your craft beer journey.