News — IPAs

Hazy IPAs are almost always described as “vaguely tropical-tasting.” Interchangeable words like dank, pine, mango, pineapple, and citrus are thrown around in their presence, illustrated on can art, and listed on Instagram captions whenever a brewery drops its latest hazy. While this may seem redundant, it makes sense: The hops most often used in hazy IPAs carry these notes. There are a lot of compounds that contribute to how hops smell and inevitably taste when made into beers, like sulfur-containing thiols, terpenes (also found in cannabis), and bitterness-imparting alpha acids. That said, there is no single source from which hops...

History of Belgian IPA   Brewing in Belgium stretches back some 2000 years, and the first recorded use of hops in brewing comes from Picardy, France in 822 A.D, about 1200 years ago. Picardy, France is less than 125 miles from Belgium, making it possible, even likely, hops were being used in Belgian brewing around this same time period. By the 1300s, hops were being cultivated in some of the Low Countries, including Belgium. Belgian beer is often typecast as only lightly-hopped and not very bitter. This stereotype is true to some extent. Belgian beers are often light bodied and...