How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Total Palate Annihilation

Overheard in the office: “I am so dank. I am SUPER DANK.”

Hi there, do you enjoy the smell of America? Of sweet, beery FREEDOM? It’s a combination of Pot and Eagle tears. It’s grapefruit skin and a pine tree you just cut down yourself using gumption instead of a saw, tropical fruit being poured into your mouth by Abraham Lincoln from the top of a Hawaiian waterfall.

Do you even know what that means? NO ONE KNOWS. So let’s try this: What does freedom mean in terms of American craft beer? If any beer personifies craft beer in America, it’s not IPA, which has historical precedent. It is Double IPA.

A BITTER-FREE HISTORY

In the nascent days of American craft brewing, freedom to brew meant anything that wasn’t a pale lager. And so cutting-edge 1980s craft brewers across the land came forth with...amber lagers! And things were better, but eventually the 1990s came, and craft beer meant something more—something bigger, meaner, HOPPIER. More (cue ’90s graphics) XTREME. Something uncompromising and unconcerned about being a “gateway” beer for someone growing up from the same lager their dads drank. Something bold and new instead of safe and ordinary. Double IPA was like nothing anyone had ever had before. It had as many hops as a Rob Liefeld character had pouches for ammunition. In other words, too MUCH for the mainstream.

The Double IPA, or DIPA from here on out, is an all-American 1990s baby, born in the era of the Macarena and Beanie Babies; Americans tasted some of those first DIPAs while rocking fanny packs and using dial-up internet. The style was actually invented around the same time by two West Coast brewers: John Maier, longtime brewmaster at Rogue Ales in Oregon, and Vinnie Cilurzo, founder of Russian River Brewing Company in Northern California and creator of the legendary Pliny the Elder. Both say they wondered how far they could push IPA, and then pushed it further than that. Pliny the Elder and Rogue’s ‘IIPA’ (which stands for Imperial IPA, another way of saying super big) emerged from the void as a 90 IBU, 8% ABV monsters at a time when most people couldn’t conceive of beer being past 15 IBUs and 5% ABV. Those two beers started a trend that would forever change American craft brewing. Soon everyone was making beer as big and as bitter as they possibly could.

Lu·pu·lin /ˈlo͞opyəlin/

(noun) 1. A bitter, yellowish powder found on the flowers of the female hop plant.

THE LUPULIN THRESHOLD SHIFT COMETH*

For a while there with Double IPAs, things got out of hand (but that’s the whole point). Once the craft beer community fell in love with DIPAs, they REALLY fell in love with DIPAs. The question became: How big can we go? How hoppy, how flavorful, and how BITTER can we make a beer? 80 IBUs? 100 IBUs? 1,000 IBUs? Breweries were whipping out IPA bitterness boosts like “Dragon Ball Z” dishes out power upgrades. For a lot of Americans escaping from the bland food culture of the previous fifty-plus years, bitterness was a new flavor sensation, one they had been shielded from their entire lives.

Here’s the thing: Humans can’t really perceive bitterness past 80 IBUs. Anything past that and we likely don’t even notice; we’ve maxed out what our taste buds can handle. Nonetheless, breweries would brew beers with insane IBU counts and then proudly smack numbers on labels to attract a new generation of hopheads. Bitter was “in,” and craft beer rushed to fill this hop flavor vacuum that nature abhorred.

Things have gone in even stranger directions for DIPAs as the years have passed. Black IPAs (dark ales with IPA-level hopping, sometimes brewed with debittered black malt, which lends a darker color and hint of toasty character) became a thing for a while, then white, red, brown, Belgian, and so on. But through it all, DIPA has remained an American staple. If there is one thing that has defined American craft beer, it has been an irrepressible desire to take an existent style of beer and double the hops. Today, Hazy IPA is probably the hottest trend in craft beer, with the most popular examples of that style typically being Double IPA.

*No, this is not the next apocalypse movie tagline but an actual term coined by Vinnie Cilurzo in response to people building a tolerance to bitterness and hops such that even the bitterest DIPAs weren't enough anymore.

**REEFER MADNESS**

What is a hophead, and where did this term come from? As the old-timey cop would say, “That marijuana is turning all the teenage kids in this neighborhood into Hop Heads!” Hops and marijuana are cousins in the plant family Cannabinaceae and are broadly similar in appearance, hence the term’s likely origin. The word hop was slang for opium; as early as 1915, the term “hop head” referred to an opium (heroin) addict. Today the combined word hophead is still slang for any heavy drug user (typically a heroin or cocaine junkie) but is more commonly used to describe 1) a beer enthusiast in general or 2) a hops-forward beer lover.

“Hophead” was used most famously in the legendary, and legendarily bad, 1936 anti-drug film Reefer Madness.

Double IPA’s emergence was a landmark in American craft brewing history, and rightfully so: a completely unique and original American style that has inspired brewers the world over instead of the other way around. As American craft beer evolves, DIPAs evolve with it, becoming whatever they need to be and changing the flavor profile as often as they must to stay relevant. If there is one thing that can be said about Double IPAs, it’s that they have never been boring. Brewing DIPA is always on the cutting edge of style and technical excellence. DIPA is a style that is truly easy to make and difficult to master, and nothing about that looks to change.

Finally, there is one immutable rule about DIPA drinking that should always be followed: Drink it as fresh as possible. These beers don’t stay at their peak long, and when that hop flavor is gone, it’s NEVER coming back. When brewers tell you to “drink fresh,” this is what they mean.

HOP-FORWARD HOME BREW

So, if you were an ambitious homebrewer, how would you make a DIPA? Don’t worry, it’s easy! And really easy to screw up.

MALT The best recipes use a malt bill loaded with characterful English pale malt. Do NOT add crystal or caramel malt to a DIPA recipe, as the malt sugars will break down into raisin and dried-fruit flavors that will cover and conflict with the hop character of the beer. Adding sugar to get a high alcohol content is fine, as the sugar will ferment out and keep the beer dry. The high alcohol content will add the perception of body (mouthfeel), so the combination of fermentable sugar and avoiding caramel malt is critical to the classic dry, hop-focused character of this beer. Malt flavor absolutely belongs in the background for this one, so simple is best.

Pro Tip - Pitch twice as much healthy, viable yeast as you usually would. This beer needs a clean fermentation with classic American “Chico” yeast to avoid off-flavors and allow the hop character to shine.

HOPS For hops, go buck wild. Add as many as you can stand and then throw in more. Specifically, use a very small bittering charge at the beginning of the boil (10 to 30 IBUs, depending on the style), and then wait until the last 10 to 15 minutes to begin bombing the beer with hops. Keep hops-bombing in the whirlpool, then dry hop the hell out of it after fermentation is over. Then wait a few days and dry hop it again. Then wait a few days and dry hop it again.

Pro Tip - If you are into Hazy DIPAs, make sure to dry hop it during fermentation. The world of research into biotransformation of flavors due to dry hopping during fermentation is intense and complicated, so wander into this method of beer making very carefully.

DIPA PICKS

Please bear in mind that this is not a comprehensive list of the “best” DIPAs. Rather, these are a few classics that deserve to be lauded and are pretty widely available, though some are seasonal and/or very limited releases. (RIP Double Jack from Firestone Walker, which deserves to be here but is no longer commercially available.) And if you’re wondering what is the best Double IPA in America, my answer is still going to be the freshest one that you can find. —Beau Forbes

Pliny the Elder

Russian River Brewing Company

Santa Rosa, CA

THE legend. The original and still a liquid time machine back to the ’90s. Piney, bitter, some supporting caramel, and finishes dry and clean. The whole craft beer game has changed, seasons have come and gone, but Pliny remains the same. Bonus points if you’ve ever tasted Pliny the Younger, the Triple IPA version. russianriverbrewing.com

Hopslam

Bell’s Brewery

Comstock, MI

A Midwestern classic. Honey serves as the sugar addition in this beer, giving it a sweet edge. Blasted with loads of Simcoe hops (i.e. “Cascade on steroids”) to give flavor and aroma qualities of pine and passion fruit. A winter seasonal release and much beloved. bellsbeer.com

Sip of Sunshine

Lawson’s Finest Liquids

Warren, VT

A game changer when it emerged, Sip of Sunshine pushed the Double IPA flavor profile from pine and grapefruit to tropical fruit and pineapple, and caused a generational shift in palate and flavor expectations for DIPA. lawsonsfinest.com

Heady Topper

The Alchemist

Stowe, VT

There are so many stories about this beer that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Still, even after 14 years of production, crazy difficult to find? Check. Always fresh because of excellent supply-chain management and the fact that it sells out extremely quickly? Check. Fermented with a yeast literally named Conan? Check. This beer changed the IPA world and continues to influence it today. Alchemistbeer.com