American Strong Ales
DOUBLE OR TRIPLE IPAs
America is no place for restraint. If it can be made, it can be made bigger, better, stronger. It was inevitable that once Americans fell in love with strong, hoppy ales, we would naturally attempt to Texas-size them, as we have with cars, cinnamon rolls, and Super Bowl halftime shows. That inevitability has matured into a class of beers that collectively may be more American than any other styles going. Marking their strength by degrees with names like double (or imperial) or triple IPAs, these American strong ales are the twenty-footlong finned V-8s of the beer world.
The main feature in these beers is hops—nuclear, glowing lupulin intensity. The malt is useful to the extent that it allows the hop volume to crank to 11, but it doesn’t actually contribute a lot of richness, flavor, or body—as in a barley wine—because that might slightly occlude the force of the hopping. With a good American strong ale, you should able to achieve a contact high just by sitting next to the person drinking one. ■
ORIGINS
IT SHOULD NOW BE evident that strong ales are nothing new. Nor are strong, hoppy ales. Even in America, there is a long heritage going back through the Ballantine line, a tradition that Anchor tapped into when it made Old Foghorn in 1975. What distinguishes modern double or triple IPAs is their focus on saturated hoppiness. Breweries learned that by boosting the alcohol content, they could pack even more flavor and aroma into a beer—not to mention bitterness.
The first and most influential beer of this type was Sierra Nevada’s Celebration. First introduced in 1981, it was envisioned as a way to take advantage of the first hops of the harvest. Sierra Nevada settled on the current recipe in 1983, a template for the broad category we now call IPAs: concentrated flavor and aroma of freshly plucked hops, wild with American character, layered over the top of a candy-sweet but largely insubstantial body. For decades, it was a cult beer among American hopheads who bought it by the case every fall. At just under 7% ABV, it was not the heavyweight of modern strong ales—but the contours were there.
Sierra Nevada was ahead of its time, though. American breweries and drinkers spent the next fifteen years timidly experimenting with light, inoffensive ales. Malcolm Gladwell didn’t use craft beer as an illustration of his “tipping point” thesis, but what came next is a perfect example. A small group of hard-core fans—those guys who bought cases of Celebration—clamored for stronger, hoppier beer. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, breweries started to make hoppy pale ales and IPAs. Even though it was a small subculture in craft brewing, a passion for these kinds of beers took root.
The country reached the tipping point in the mid-1990s. IPAs had established enough popularity that breweries were escalating their intensity. Blind Pig and Rogue are credited with adding “double IPA” and “imperial IPA”—imprecise terms that signal strength—to the vernacular in 1994 and 1996, and breweries like Hair of the Dog and Stone Brewing released famous strong ales Fred and Arrogant Bastard, respectively, in 1997. These were rare examples, but they helped expand the definition of what a hoppy beer was, and the IBU continued to rise. These beers had become well enough established that the Great American Beer Festival added “imperial or double IPA” as a category in 2003. By 2012 (when the category was called “imperial IPA”) it had the second-most entries at 128. ■
Extreme Beer. Somewhere in the mid-2000s, the arms race in beer strength and hoppiness got a name: extreme beer. There is no exact definition for the term, except the general definition of the word itself: “going to great or exaggerated lengths.” Noting that these beers had many times as much malt and hops as the average light lager, The New Yorker’s Burkhard Bilger said they are “to Budweiser what a bouillabaisse is to fish stock.” Boston Beer was one of the first extreme breweries, making Triple Bock, an 18% titan, in 1994. When Dogfish Head matched that strength with its 120 Minute IPA in 2003, the race was on. Voodoo’s Black Magic (15%) joined the extreme club in 2009, but was no match for the competition: DuClaw’s Colossus (17.3%) pushed the alcohol higher and finally Boston Beer took back the trophy with Utopias (27%).
The extreme philosophy is not unique to the United States, and indeed, reached further heights elsewhere. Once Guinness World Records listed Utopias as the world’s strongest beer, it became a ripe target for German brewery Schorschbräu, who eventually toppled it with its Schorschbock (40%) in February 2009. For the next three years, the battle for most extreme beer was fought overseas as the title seesawed back and forth between Schorschbräu and Scotland’s BrewDog, apparently concluding with a victory for the German brewer in 2012. At 57.5%, its amped-up Schorschbock was 115 proof, substantially stronger than most liquors. The competition actually sparked the founding of a third brewery named Brewmeister (another Scottish concern) devoted to breaking the record. It has, with a beer called Snake Venom, made to a staggering 68%. These breweries used a system of freezing, removing the water in the form of ice, and reducing the beer until the alcohol percentage of the remaining liquid reached these dizzying heights.
DESCRIPTION AND CHARACTERISTICS
IS THERE ENOUGH difference between American strong ales and barley wines to justify a separate category? Or put another way: Isn’t this style just an especially hoppy, lighter-bodied example of barley wine? Indeed, this is one of those cases where the distinction, perhaps small, makes a difference.
American strong ales are, for those who brew them and pursue them, a kind of ongoing quest to attain the platonic ideal of hop bliss. Unlike nearly every other beer style, where balance is prized, American strong ales are optimized to express one quality perfectly. Malt or yeast character and alcohol strength are useful only to the extent they heighten the sense of hop loveliness. The goal of an American strong ale is maximizing the vividness of hop aromas, flavors, and bitterness. The balance exists not between malt and hop, but rather among the various elements the hops themselves provide. The aromas, flavors, and bitterness should be in harmony.
Russian River Brewing Company makes two prototypical examples in their two Pliny varieties, the Younger and the Elder. In 1994, brewer Vinnie Cilurzo was on the vanguard of super hoppy beers when he made Inaugural Ale at his first brewery, the Blind Pig, in Temecula, California. In 2000, brewing at the other end of the state in Santa Rosa, Cilurzo created Pliny the Elder, a double IPA, which led to Pliny the Younger, a “triple IPA.” In most styles, the “double” and “triple” refer to malt; to Cilurzo, they refer to the level of hopping. Both beers have light, golden bodies and shocking hop character. The elements come together best in Pliny the Elder, a dangerously light-bodied beer (8%) that has few rivals in the way it synthesizes the hoppiness.
Alimony Ale. The nation’s first “extreme” beer may have been Alimony Ale, made in Hayward, California, by Buffalo Bill’s—one of the nation’s first brewpubs. Brewed by founder Bill Owens in 1987 to celebrate a customer’s divorce, it carried the fitting tagline “Bitterest beer in America.” It was purportedly 100 IBU, but has been scaled down over time. Buffalo Bill’s still sells Alimony Ale, but at a more reasonable 70 IBU.
Strength is an important part of the picture. The stronger a beer, the more it accommodates condensed, concentrated flavors. Alpha acids—the bittering agent in hops—dissolve more readily in alcohol than water, so the stronger a beer is, the more bitterness breweries can pack in. Alcohol also helps vent the aromas, which makes them particularly intense in the mouth as the volatile scents are taken to the nose.
The final pieces of the puzzle are the exotic flavors New World hops contribute. With their juicy citrus and tropical flavors, American hops are the old standbys, but New Zealand is the new kid on the block. Kiwi hops are even more exotic, with flavors that have elements of garlic, musk, and onion at high concentrations, and they are increasingly common in American strongs. Unlike many styles for which breweries try to achieve perfection of a traditional flavor, in American strong ales, breweries and drinkers are perpetually on the hunt for the latest, most exotic new flavors. ■
BREWING NOTES
IT’S EASY ENOUGH to make a muddy, toxically hoppy strong ale—just add tons of hops. But American strong ales shouldn’t become a heavy stew of alcohol and brute-force hopping. They’re actually delicate beers that rely on several fragile elements. Hop flavor and aroma are at least as important as bitterness, but preserving them amid the onslaught of IBU is tricky. Similarly, the malt base has to provide enough sweetness to moderate the effects of those hops (indeed, it’s important in inflecting them), but it can never intrude.
Breweries have several methods of addressing these issues. One trick is sugar, which reduces the influence of the malt while at the same time boosting octane. As an added plus, it lends a more crisp finish, critical in preserving those volatile hop elements. Russian River uses sugar in the Plinys to great effect, as does Surly in Abrasive Ale and Deschutes in Hop Henge. Bell’s gets the same effect in Hopslam, its much-loved strong, by using honey instead. The use of sugar reveals the way in which American strong ales differ from their cousins, barley wines. Those latter beers are very thick of body and, even in the most hoppy American examples, have tons of malt character. American strong ales have a closer kinship with an unlikely beer: Belgian tripels. Both are pale and attenuated, both downplay caramel malts (American styles less so), and both highlight hops—though of course, American strongs more so. Odd as it may seem, Pliny the Elder may be closer to the slender, elegant Westmalle Tripel than it is to the syrupy and intense Rogue Old Crustacean.
Released once a year, Bell’s Hopslam is such a beloved beer that it has its own fan clubs.
“If you want to know the difference between [Pliny] and a barley wine, it’s got just 3.5 to 4 percent crystal malt in it. Having a low level of crystal malt, you really let the hops come through; they’re not being muddled by the caramel character. Also, we’re using a lot of sugars in the fermentables, so it’s drying the beer out and giving the beer a nice light, dry body that’s super crisp, yet really bitter. The malt lays the foundation and it’s just there to keep the hops in check without being sweet, malty, or biscuity. It’s a really simple malt bill and the hops are the shining star in that beer.”
—VINNIE CILURZO, Russian River Brewing, on Pliny the Elder
Hopping is, of course, the key to the whole affair, and the best advice a brewer might give is: Try everything. Some breweries start with the mash, where the hops are exposed to water well below boiling temperature. This technique boosts flavor extraction, and Deschutes uses it for their annual Hop Henge. The sheer quantity of hops required for a bitter charge has led Cilurzo to use hop extract in the Plinys; in this concentrated form, he gets a pure, clarion bitterness without also picking up cooked, vegetal aromas from the hop cones. Hopping schedules vary brewery to brewery during the boil, but late-addition hopping is critical to pop flavor and especially aromas. Breweries use hopbacks and whirlpools for further additions, and dry-hopping is a nearly universal practice.
Breweries have different theories about whether to use many hop varieties or just a couple, but this seems less critical than the method. Stone and Surly seem to do just fine extracting flavor from just two varieties. Most breweries do favor many varieties, though: Deschutes uses an astonishing eight, Bell’s and Firestone Walker (DBA) six, and Avery (Maharaja) and Russian River four. ■
EVOLUTION
INVENTED JUST IN the mid-1990s, double IPAs are still babies. They are in many ways an invention of horticulture rather than brewing, enabled by the glut of new hop varieties that gushed into the market in the 1990s and 2000s. Newer hops have alpha acids and exotic flavors far in excess of earlier strains. Craft brewing sparked the interest in, and market for, strange and wonderful new varieties that headline beer flavors, and growers are happy to keep a new stream flowing into breweries every year.
Since strong, hoppy beers depend so much on the flavors and aromas of hops, their future is bound up with the development of newer strains with different flavors. This is happening on the international market as well, as hops from New Zealand—particularly Nelson Sauvin—have become popular in Europe. The American strong ale phenomenon is no longer limited to America—breweries like Denmark’s Mikkeller, England’s Thornbridge, and New Zealand’s Epic are making some of the most accomplished examples in the genre. Americans were first on the scene, but the style has gone international. ■
New Zealand Hops. It wasn’t too long ago that the Pacific Northwest was the lone international hop superstar. It still attracts the most attention, but an ingénue has marched onto the stage: New Zealand. The first big success came in the form of Nelson Sauvin, a hop with humid tropical fruit flavors and aromas (and, to some people, a little human musk). Motueka, another variety, is all lemons, limes, and pepper, while Green Bullet has a more refined, spicy character. Others include the exotic-sounding Riwaka (pine and bergamot), Pacific Gem (oak and blackberries), and Pacific Jade (citrus and black pepper).
New Zealand has a decided advantage over the much larger U.S. hop industry, too: The country lacks native pests or diseases that normally afflict hops; the plants are therefore not treated with chemicals. Dried using indirect radiators, the hops are kept further unfouled by oil or gas fumes. This makes it easy for New Zealand growers to produce organic hops, which has given them a nice platform to sell in foreign markets.
THE BEERS TO KNOW
DOUBLE AND TRIPLE IPAs are often released seasonally by breweries. Beyond highlighting their special status in a brewery’s line, this emphasizes their evanescence. Unlike regular IPAs or barley wines, these beers will not last. Because so much of the hop character comes from late-boil and dry-hop additions, the aromas and flavors will begin to degrade within days of release. After a month the beers will have diminished—their flavors will be listless, the aromas faint—and after three they will have lost a great deal of what made them special. Buy and drink these immediately.
RUSSIAN RIVER PLINY THE ELDER
LOCATION: Santa Rosa, CA
MALT: Pale, crystal
HOPS: Amarillo, Centennial, CTZ, Simcoe
OTHER: Dextrose
8.0% ABV, 1.070 SP. GR., 100 IBU
Pliny the Elder is one of a handful of American beers that have altered the course of craft brewing, but more than that, it’s one of America’s best beers. By appearance and texture, you’d swear it was a 6% beer. It looks like a pale ale in the glass, topped with a dollop of whipped cream. The aroma is such an intense, distilled spritz of pine and grapefruit that you can almost taste the smell. That intensity carries over to the palate, but like a perfectly balanced fresh lemonade, it remains on the side of pleasure, never overwhelming the senses.
AVERY MAHARAJA
LOCATION: Boulder, CO
MALT: Pale, dark crystal, Victory
HOPS: Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, Chinook
10.2% ABV, 1.090 SP. GR., 102 IBU
A deceivingly light apricot–colored beer with an innocent white head, Maharaja announces its identity to the nose—a blast of pineapple and mango. Like Pliny, Maharaja is piney, but the pine here has some eucalyptus. The hop matrix is rounded out by those fruity mango notes, and the malt provides just enough sweetness to keep the bitterness from scraping the taste buds off your tongue.
SURLY ABRASIVE ALE
LOCATION: Brooklyn Center, MN
MALT: Pale, Golden Promise, crystal, oats
HOPS: Warrior, Citra
8.8% ABV, 1.081 SP. GR., 120 IBU
Abrasive is a bit of a misnomer—the original name came from a grade of sandpaper—because this hazy golden offering has so much juicy hop flavor that it doesn’t register as shocking. The malt base, though slight, has a honey sweetness that helps the hops pop. And pop they do, first with a citrusy bouquet, and later with spicier, darker, and slightly sativa-like “dankness.”
DESCHUTES HOP HENGE
LOCATION: Bend, OR
MALT: Pale, Munich
HOPS: Millennium, Northern Brewer, Cascade, Centennial, Zeus, Simcoe, Brewer’s Gold, Citra (vary by year)
OTHER: Sugar
8.5% ABV, 95 IBU
Released every January, Hop Henge takes advantage of a rotating selection of hops that strike the brewers’ fancy after harvest. (The list here comes from the 2012 vintage.) Hops go in at every stage, from the mash through to the primary fermenter and conditioning tank. The flavors change yearly, but Hop Henge always manages to achieve the proper intensity: pleasure ratio.
ALCHEMIST HEADY TOPPER
LOCATION: Waterbury, VT
MALT: Undisclosed
HOPS: Undisclosed
8% ABV, UNDISCLOSED IBU*
Poured into a glass (against the advice on the can), Heady Topper doesn’t look promising. It’s a murky beer of indistinct color. Yet people don’t give this beer raves for the appearance; they do so for the flavors and aromas, which are as concentrated and intense as in any beer made: almost pure grapefruit, juicy and sometimes even rindy, tailing off toward pine.
*“IBU—plenty” according to the can
LAGUNITAS HOP STOOPID
LOCATION: Petaluma, CA
MALT: Undisclosed
HOPS: Undisclosed
7.7% ABV, 1.085 SP. GR., 102 IBU
After Heady Topper, you might admire the clarity of Hop Stoopid, which is just a shade south of perfectly bright. Lagunitas has a famous connection with a certain herb—in the realm of metaphor, of course—and this hop extract beer is more than suggestive of it. Call it a pine– to–sativa “dankness,” sticky, resinous, and enough to make a person light-headed. It has the characteristic double IPA lightness of body, which is lean and bereft of all but the tiniest hint of biscuit.
