These days few styles draw as much passionate debate as IPA. Just five years ago the IPA was a somewhat straightforward style: bitter, clean, crystal clear, and a sturdy malt bill accentuated by crystal malt to add balancing sweetness to the bitterness which coated your tongue. Of course, there were variations and interpretations of the style (east vs. west), but only recently has the IPA become a source of internet forum fights. Regional interpretations of the style have traditionalists going crazy. As an example, hazy juicy IPAs from the North East have emerged as a force to be reckoned with; albeit drawing plenty of controversy amongst brewers and craft beer geeks alike. Personally, I think regionality is always a good thing - leaving guidelines behind to certain extent and brewing the IPA YOU want to drink. Besides, what is an IPA really? Most agree that an IPA should be hop forward and pale, beyond that there really is not much people agree on these days. Again, a good thing. After all, it's interpretation and curiosity that drives innovation and advancement.

We chatted with four breweries who brew great interpretations of the style: Creature Comforts Brewing (Athens, GA), Beer'd Brewing (Stonington, CT), Burial Brewing (Asheville, NC), and Civil Society Brewing (Jupiter, FL), regarding their opinion on the style and how to brew it. We hope you enjoy what our friends across the country had to say.

Adam Beauchamp - Creature Comforts Brewing Co.

Check out the video below to get insight on how Creature Comforts approaches the IPA and creates their fantastic Tropicalia IPA.

Aaren Simoncini - Beer'd Brewing Co.

India Pale Ale can mean so many things to an individual. It's been crazy to watch the developments in what consumers are really seeking out of the style. Whether its the soft, hazy, full mouthfeel of the relatively new "New England IPA", the tongue scraping bitterness of the "West Coast IPA" or the old school balanced malt and floral hops of the "East Coast IPA." With so many niche's now, the only thing you can really put your finger on is the celebration of hops as an ingredient. The short answer of what it is to me though, is my favorite beverage!

The first thing that comes to mind when developing a new IPA recipe, is the hop bill. Are we looking for something bitter that may only showcase one note or are we looking to create a blend that will stand out as unique and multi layered. There are constantly new and interesting hops being released, so are we looking to showcase that one and "test" it's true profile?

Water profile is often the second thing that I consider when writing a recipe. Luckily for us here in Stonington, our water is very soft, and provides a very nice foundation to build upon. We use a good amount of Calcium Chloride to build our water, but we'll also use some Gypsum and Epsom Salt to dial in.

In regard to hop selection or schedule, it all really depends on what we're looking to put out. Single hop beers are always fun, but can often become too one noted. It's important to pick fresh pelletized hops that are high in the various desirable oil compounds to create the most aromatic flavorful IPA possible. Hop schedules can vary as well. We've become known for our IPA's that lean to the dry end of things and are generally low in bitterness. Being that we conduct a whirlpool post flame out, we generally don't add much of a bittering charge, and reserve the majority of hops for our whirlpool and subsequent dry hop. We still attain some bitterness from this method, but it lends it's self to our desired flavor profile.

I always say keep my malt bills simple! I don't mean so simple that it's nothing but pilsner, but keep the crystal malts out of it. If you absolutely must use crystal, keep it under 20L and use it sparingly or better yet, substitute a small amount of Munich. A nice two row or pale malt should act as your base, some Vienna, CaraPils (or other Dextrine Malt), wheat or perhaps oats can add a nice touch. Finally, if you're looking to brew a double, toss in some Dextrose. This should serve to boost the ABV, restrain the malt character and dry the final product out.

You could ask fifty brewers about dry hopping and receive fifty unique answers! We generally target at least 1.5 #'s/BBL in our dry hop bills, and we'll add that across two or three different charges. The key here is to minimize Oxygen ingress, and use fresh pelletized hops. Don't use bags that have sat open or warm, actively purge the headspace of oxygen with Co2 while adding hops from the top of the vessel. It's also very important to make sure the beer is dry hopped warm. We generally want the beer to sit on dry hops for about a week, but we'll extend that occasionally depending on the particular beer. A few other things that I've heard out there are bubbling Co2 through the bottom of the vessel to rouse the hops, dry hopping before fermentation winds down, circulating the beer with a pump during the dry hopping period, and the list goes on...

The hazy versus clear IPA is probably the hottest topic in craft beer right now. It's almost as polarizing as the ongoing presidential race. I'd consider myself a moderate in this case. Our beer is on the clearer side, but there is a noticeable hop haze, especially when very fresh. I think that the haze contributes a great flavor and body that may be unattainable in a filtered or otherwise clear beer. As far as the New England haze goes, there are those out there doing it very well, and those that are cheap knock offs... It's pretty obvious who the cheap knock offs are...

With yeast it really depends on what you're looking to achieve. Are you brewing an East Coast IPA, where a more traditional English yeast may be a good fit, or are you brewing a West Coast IPA where bitterness is key and you may want to select the Chico strain? We personally like our beers to be very dry and not yeast focused. We found the San Diego Super strain to be a great fit for our production environment and flavor profile. It's a beast when it comes to attenuation, and versatility while remaining a backup singer to the hops that we're focusing on.

You can't be afraid to experiment. Through experimentation you find which hops play nicely together and then you can build upon that relationship. There is certainly more out there than Citra and Mosaic to play with. Try some of the experimental hops, change up your dry hopping regimen, keep the IPA focused on the hops, but don't let it become one dimensional.

Doug Reiser - Burial Beer Co.

IPA is the most important style to American brewers. It can be anything. It doesn’t have to be clear, bitter, hazy, juicy, light-colored, 6%, or 7%. It just has to be hop driven. An IPA should be an expression of hops, with a little support from their friends in the malt family. Hops can be accentuated by water chemistry, yeast, or heck, more hops. I don’t see a reason to define IPA as a historical category. It has evolved worldwide. Let it keep going.

When going to the drawing board, I’m looking to the desired end product always. What do I want the drinker to taste? Am I going tropical and juicy, or citrus and smooth, or piney and sharp, or floral and fluffy? That determination is step one, and that turns me immediately to water and yeast. Once I set those in place I can pick my hops and malt. I cannot remember the last time that I said “Oh, I like these hops. I’m going to make a beer around them.” It is almost always the finished product experience that starts the ball rolling, and yeast is a huge first step once I have that in place.

When it comes to water parameters we are all over the place - and I think that’s great. We read a lot of water reports from around the country. It all depends on the finished product experience. But we do everything from extremely soft (Asheville water is nearly devoid of salts) to moderately hard. Some IPA has higher sulfates and some has higher chlorides. We often balance Calcium and Magnesium as much as we can and use a bounty of Bicarbonate. If you aren’t messing with your water table each time, and designing to each beer, you are missing out on a valuable aspect of your beer.

Like most brewers these days, we eschewed bitterness for smoothness. Even our West Coast-styled IPAs have come down quite a bit in exchange for more present water chemistry. We are strong believers in the whirlpool, perhaps far beyond what many these days are doing. The amount of ripe fruity flavors that can be extracted there should never be overlooked. We very seldom add hops before the whirlpool. Many would probably be surprised to know that we balance our whirlpool and dry hop additions pretty closely. We don’t significantly use a ton more dry hops, but we believe it helps balance the beer more.

A good grain bill has base malts and flaked malts. We use about 8 different base malts at Burial and they are crucial, not just an afterthought. We also use a ton of local proteins. NC grows some killer Wrens Abruzzi Rye and Turkey Red Wheat. You will never see a crystal malt unless we do a Black IPA. On very limited occasions we might use 2-4% of a lightly modified sweet malt.

Our dry hop process is beer dependent as well. Process is key to hitting specific taste profiles, so we may actively dry hop, hop off the yeast or multi-stage it. Regardless, we limit hop exposure time to just a few days to maintain freshness. I think it is crucial to avoiding the off-putting flavors of some of the huge AA% hops.

I love hazy and clear IPAs. Again, this is just a different drinking experience. I will drink clear Altamont Beer Works IPAs all day and wake up and drown myself in hazy Other Half Brewing IPAs. We have our own approach in that we use a very strange and unique yeast to make IPA. It provides us with a robust yeast character that brings out different flavors from the hops than many would expect.

Our house yeast sings in all of our “house-style" of IPA, and we often will blend it in different ratios with a cleaner yeast to reach a particular beer goal of attenuation or clean hop presence. Of course, we also still make some Chico yeast IPA, and it’s clear as day. Yeast is so vital to the success of our IPA.

It’s most important to be creative. Don’t copy what others are doing. When I first tasted our first foray with our house yeast I said: “I have never tasted this before.” And that blew me away so much that I was hooked. I just hope that others out there are doing the same. Never stop experimenting, ever.

Karl Volstad - Civil Society Brewing Co.

When I think of IPA, I think of something with moderate bitterness and juicy fruity character. Hops are always the first thought and after that it's how we can make sure that they shine in the finished product. When picking out which hops to use, it’s really just how I feel when I’m thinking of a recipe.

We treat our water to accentuate hop character and mouthfeel. It’s important to know what water you’re working with. We use RO water and build it back up from there.

A good malt bill is one that gets out of the way of the hops. I just want to keep it basic. I definitely think you can over think or get too cute when it comes to your malt selection.

As far as dry hopping goes, I think the temperature that you dry hop at is important. I prefer to dry hop between 65-72 degrees and making sure that the hops are in suspension to get as much contact time as possible.

I don’t care whether an IPA is clear or hazy – good beer is good beer wither way. Most of our beers lean towards hazy.

Yeast in an IPA all depends on what you’re going for. West coast IPA would generally lean towards a neutral clean fermenting yeast and for the east coast IPAs you’d be looking for a strain you can coax some fruity character out of.

Most important to a great IPA are water and your dry hopping process.

This article is for those homebrewers who are interested in the wilder side of brewing. Those who like to add a “sense of place” to their beers. “Sense of place” is something I heard in an interview with Jeff Stuffings of Jester King Brewery in Austin, TX. That really stuck out to me when I heard it. Brewing beers to represent where you are located or where you call home. To brew a “local” beer you could use local grown hops, locally kilned malts, or you can do something I’ve recently been very interested in, foraging yeast. Now, I’m not expert by any means. I’ve only recently started brewing with my foraged cultures. What I’d like to do is give some guidelines for those who have thought about trying this out but haven’t due to thinking it was too complicated. In actuality, this process can be very simple. I’ve come up with seven steps to forage wild yeast. All of these have come from talking with brewers who have done it or from reading Bootleg Biology’s website (http://bootlegbiology.com/diy/capturing-yeast/). My process is a little more simplified than what Jeff Mello has on his in that I won’t be using any agar plates and I won’t be isolating any of the different microbes from the culture. There isn’t anything wrong with those at all, but some of us may not have access or the time to use those.

Here are my steps for foraging and culturing wild yeasts:

1. Equipment and Preparation

2. Capture

3. Culture

4. Sensory Test #1

5. Propagate

6. Brew

7. Sensory Test #2

EQUIPMENT AND PREPARATION

Before capturing wild yeast, you need to make sure you have the necessary equipment. Some of the basic equipment needed includes: sanitary vials, sugar and DME (dry malt extract), water (I use distilled), a propagation vessel (something like a mason jar will work), and a hydrometer or refractometer. There are a few other tools that can help make the process easier. I like to use a stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask when propagating the cultures as it feeds it oxygen and keeps the yeast in suspension but you can use whatever you currently use for yeast starters. If you use growlers, that will work too. I advise picking up an alcohol lamp if possible just to make sure you aren’t getting anything from the air when transferring your culture to and from starters or other vessels. I also like to use media bottles to keep my cultures in. If needed, I can feed them in there and just helps keep everything organized. I picked up the media bottles and alcohol lamb tips from Ed Coffey of the Ales of the Riverwards when he posted about re-pitching commercial yeast cultures for different brews (http://www.alesoftheriverwards.com/2016/01/harvesting-and-re-pitching-slurry.html). A pH meter is another tool that would greatly benefit you in testing. It isn’t required as you could check attenuation before sampling but I am more comfortable making sure the pH is safe before sampling for flavor. We are working with wild yeast and bacteria instead of commercial available yeasts and lactic acid bacterias. Much better to be safe than end up with botulism from picking up something nasty. As a general rule, if it smells bad or looks moldy, dump it and start over.

CAPTURE

Now you have your equipment and you are prepared. How do you capture something? Well you need to think about where you would like to attempt to capture your culture. The great thing about yeast and bacteria is that it exists pretty much everywhere. You can attempt to capture yeast from flowers, fruit, pieces of a wood, the air, or even bees! It’s hard to determine what qualities wild yeast and bacteria culture will give a beer. I’m not positive that using flowers will give you a floral character or that collecting from fruit will give you a fruity yeast strain or but that is something I’d like to test.

In my case, I decided to use clover flowers. The morning I went looking for something to use, I noticed bees and other insects flying around the front yard going form clover flower to clover flower. I thought for sure there would be something there. I’ve read and seen where folks have used garden flowers, berries, and a there was a post in the Milk the Funk Facebook group where someone captured yeast from a bee. When you are choosing what you subject for culturing, be sure to do you research. There are plants and fruits all over that are poisonous to humans. From what I’ve read, nothing poisonous should leech out during the process, but I’d remain cautious of using anything like that. This is where your sanitized vials come in. Place whatever material you’ve decided to use in the vials and return home for the next step. Some folks may like carrying around a few of the sanitized vials with them at all times (I do.) This is also useful for when you want to keep dregs form a bottle share or even at a bar/restaurant.

At this point you will prepare a starter with a gravity of somewhere in between 1.010 and 1.020. Pour the starter into the vials and shake vigorously to aerate as well as macerate the material a bit. Leave a little room in the vial for some off gassing. When fermentation starts, there will definitely be CO2 given off. The macerating was a tip I picked up while talking with Gerard Olson of Forest & Main Brewing Co. when I visited them earlier in the year. Another tip he supplied was that while some folks always use DME in the first starter, it may be easier to jump start the culture by using a simple sugar solution. I had run into problems getting no fermentation when attempting this a few other times with a wort from DME so I wanted to try the sugar solution.
After you have the material combined with the starter sugar or wort you will want to give it a few days to show signs of fermentation. These signs can be: bubbling, cloudiness of the wort, or a small krausen forming on top. I placed mine in the warm window sill but others (including the Bootleg Biology website) suggest placing it somewhere dark and at room temperature. When you see signs of fermentation it’s time to move on to the culturing step.

CULTURING

Culturing is basically putting the yeast and bacteria into an environment that encourages growth. You’ve got some active fermentation going on in the vials. There has to be something good in there right? Well, while it is likely wild yeast and bacteria growing in there you still need to build it up to something viable that you can do some sensory tests on. After the initial fermentation in the vials, I like to move the entire contents of the vial (or vials) into a sanitized mason jar. I leave everything in the jar including whatever material you’ve chosen to collect your culture from. I do this for the first culture step as there may be some slower acting yeasts and bacteria that haven’t had a chance to start working. Create another starter either with the sugar solution or this time you may go ahead and use a DME starter of the same gravity 1.020. You are feeding the culture another step to cultivate anything you have captured.

After you see signs of fermentation again, it’s time to separate the matter from the solution. I used a sanitize strainer covered with a hop bag (cheese cloth will work as well) to keep out as much of the vegetal matter as I could. That way what makes it through is the yeast and bacteria and no bits of material you captured your yeast from. This will help the culture be clean and prevent any mold from forming on floating bits and pieces. You are now culturing your wild yeast and bacteria.

SENSORY TEST #1

It may take a few days to see signs of activity but if you have captured something aggressive, it will show signs of fermentation quickly. Remember the signs of fermentation are: bubbles, cloudiness, or a krausen on top of the wort. After the signs of fermentation have stopped or slowed (could be 2 days, could be a week or longer) you will be able to do your first sensory test.
With the first test, I usually just stick to aroma. What does it smell like? Are there pleasant aromas or things you enjoy in your beers? Or does it smell like a diaper or something terrible? If it’s the latter, dump it and start over. Nothing lost but some sugar, DME, water and time. If it does smell nice (mine was tart with some earthiness and notes of honey sweetness) then you can probably proceed to the next step. If you are able to take a pH of the starter, you could taste it at this point as well. But I would make sure there was nothing spiking the pH with the possibility of bad bacteria growing in there.

PROPAGATE

Propagation is the key to building up enough yeast to do a test batch of beer. You need to make sure there are enough cells to ferment the beer. At this point, my process is far from scientific. I am using past experiences with commercial yeast starters instead of lab equipment. It may takea few steps to get the yeast cake where you need it to be. I like to start with a 1.030 600mL starter and work my way up from there. If you are getting good reproduction and building a larger yeast cake, you may be able to do fewer steps.

This is also a time that you can check the gravity of the starter to see if you are getting good attenuation. With a 600mL starter, you should have enough to check the final gravity with a hydrometer or refractometer. My initial starter I saw attenuation of the 1.030 gravity wort down to 1.008FG. There is definitely some yeast at work. The step after that was 1.006 down from 1.040. My clover flower culture seems to have some pretty attenuative yeast strains in there.
The alcohol lamp tip is used here. Light it when you are transferring your culture from starter to starter. This will keep out anything that may be in the air when you move from vessel to vessel. Some may not care but I really wanted to keep what I had been growing free from any saccromyces or brettanomyces that may be floating around in the air of my kitchen. I work with a ton of yeasts making lots of starters. It’s highly possible there are things in the air. Now you are ready to use your foraged culture!

BREW

We’ve made it to the fun part, brewing beer. Now you can decided what type of beer you want to brew. You could also keep it simple and brew a simple pale wort with minimal hopping to see what type of beer you will produce. If you use little or no hops, the bacteria in your culture could be the dominant player. If you are looking to see what the yeast itself will do, you may want to hop your beer to 10 IBUs or higher. With my test batch, I’m going for 20 IBUs and hoping and can get something like a Saison or farmhouse beer out of it. With the honey aroma an flavors I had in my starters, it may be something that will work nicely with a Bière de Meil or even a blond Bière de Garde.

SENSORY TEST #2

After you have brewed your beer using your techniques and equipment you normally use, you can do the final sensory test. Do you lie the beer that came from the culture? Maybe you can change the malts or hops to suit the yeast a little better if that’s what it needs. Either way, you can repeat these steps with other plants, fruits or anything really. The world is your oyster, as they say, at this point.

I will have all of my foraging experiences up on my website for anyone to reference. If you click the foraging tab, it will list all the posts about using my foraged culture. I plan to use this technique regularly and maybe even do some different vintage and seasonal beers with it. Either way, I’m going to have fun while doing it!

Good things!

Andrew “Gus” Addkison
The Farmhouse Obsession
www.thefarmhouseobsession.com

IPA - The Style and How to Brew it From a Brewer's Perspective

Brewing Beer With a Sense of Place - Foraging Yeast for Beginners