Franconian Beer Message Board
Half-IPA (OT) |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2012-01-22 04:19:55 |
| It's got half the malt of an IPA, but all the hops, and then more. A traditional English bitter is 25 - 45 IBU (?), whereas mine are theoretically as high as 130 IBU. It is really "just" a low-gravity bitter or pale ale with nothing but pale ale or Pilsener malt (and wheat for head formation), no crystal malt to muck up the hoppiness. And lots and lots of flavour and aroma hops. The English started brewing "golden ales" back in the 80s and 90s to turn lager drinkers on to real ale. These are clean and fairly bland, and not terribly interesting beers of 4% abv or so using mostly mundane English hops. Then early in the new millennium, some brewers started using new American citric hops, and in great quantities. The two lads at Steel City Brewing in Sheffield, a tiny little operation, started calling theirs "mid-Atlantic golden/pale ale" to capture the crossing of English *pale* malt (the new wave of English brewers rightly criticise Yank brewers' bizarre tendency to use crystal malt in hoppy beers, which collides with the citric hoppiness in a most disgusting way) and yeast with American hops. I've been trying to get people to use the term "trans-Atlantic", since to Americans, "mid-Atlantic" means "mid-Atlantic seaboard", which in turn implies excessively-crystal-malt-laden ale. They also came up with the term "half-IPA", not me. But now that I've discovered Kiwi and Aussie hops (Nelson Sauvin and Galaxy), "trans-Atlantic" doesn't really work as well. Maybe "trans-global"? Alles klar? |