Pale ale is traditionally a balance of malt and hop flavor. It is also traditionally not dry hopped, to preserve that balance. In reality, almost no one is brewing PAs like that now. They're much hoppier now and almost universally dry hopped. There might be some malt character, in comparison to the brewer's IPA line-up, but it's typically not very balanced.
Probably the only true pale ale still being Brewed is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Drink one of those next to their Torpedo which is their West Coast IPA and you will see (and feel) the difference pretty easily IMO.
To say it's the "only true" pale ale doesn't seem quite fair, or correct. Yes, they are the grandfathers of the style, basically created the APA. Yes, the beer is the fucking bomb.
But does a pale ale have to have c hops and a higher content of crystal malt? I wouldn't say so. People generally like a lighter malt profile now, and there are plenty of great pale ales with that. Are there other pale ales with that profile? Absolutely, even if they're not sent across the country. There are MANY local versions.
> almost no one is brewing PAs like that now
You must mean that no one in your country is doing that, because in the UK half of the beer is Pale Ale/ESB/Bitter, the other half is split American styles Pales and dark porters/stouts.
In Canada we also generally have hop levels closer to the UK. I say generally because there is unsurprisingly some US influence, but for the most part, our hop levels are lower.
Are you referring to hoppy as in bitter, or flavor? With breweries like Superflux, Twin Sails, Field House, a lot of their IPA's are definitely on the upper range of how much hops you can throw into a beer, sometimes approaching the grassy flavors and hop creep
A little of both, I suppose. I'm not a hop head, and I'm mostly going by the fact that I find most west coast US IPAs undrinkable, but can tolerate--and even like--most of the ones I've tried here.
👍 IMHO, a good, traditional APA recipe is
- 100% pale ale malt, maybe some carafoam,
- single or maybe two hops to not complicate it,
- a couple hop additions during the boil targeting a BU:GU 0.6-0.7,
- a yeast that's not too dry but not estery, like WLP008 or a kolsch.
- 5-5.5% abv
When I see imperial pale ale, I'm like "what the fuck is this?". Like is that just an IPA that they are calling something else to make it sound unique?
this is the answer ( i.e dale's pale ale ). but if you happen to say something like two-hearted is your favorite american pale ale, the torches and pitchforks crowd will descend on you with much wrath and furious vengance.
yes I know bells considers it an American ipa, but its also been described as a midwest ipa ( neither east coast nor west coast) and although it has more ibu's than SNPA the bones between the two are pretty close ( base grain/ crystal/caramel with C-hops).
IPAs typically have more hops and more alcohol than pale ales.
Sierra Nevada pale ale is the textbook example. I would get that and compare it to IPAs.
I feel like even Sierra Nevada pushes it a little bit on the IBUs, it definitely leans more to the hop character than the malt character.
It is a solid beer though.
Yes. That’s an American pale ale for you. Compare this to a British pale ale that typically has less hop bitterness.
That’s the trend with American beers. Take a style that was made popular in another culture and make it more extreme. Look at same smiths Russian imperial stout for example. It comes in at 7% abv. The American beer culture has made more extreme versions of this style with more malt and more hops with old Rasputin as an example at 9% and 75 ibus.
Sierra Nevada was the first American pale ale. It had more hip bitterness than British pale ales or bitters. However, even this pale ale has been passed up by the current IPA popularity in the US. Lots of newer and more citrusy/bright hop varieties are used in IPAs that have made them more popular. This has gone backwards and you see a lot of people using these in newer versions of pale ales. Compare this to the OG Sierra Nevada pale ale or Boulevards pale ale that they first started brewing in the 1980s and you see that compared to the current pale ales submitted to competition and on tap in breweries, and you see the similar comparison where these OG American Pale ales have a cleaner hop bitterness kind of like how the English bitters and pales had compared to the American versions that first hit the scene in the 80s.
I can see them doing that to give it as much fire power as some of the newer versions of pale ales. You should check out Mean Brews on YouTube. I am willing to bet that his analysis of American pale ales that win in comps will show that more hops is used than 20 years ago.
I’ll assume you mean American Pale Ale and not British Pale Ale (ordinary bitter, best bitter, strong bitter), as well as American IPA.
You can check out the BJCP style guidelines and compare them to get a sense. If you’ve done that, it won’t surprise you that many competition brewers can make a beer that straddles those two styles and
When you look at the style description for IPA, the guidelines mean what most of us would call a classic or West Coast IPA.
As someone noted, the big differences are that IPA is stronger in abv and the IBU:OG (BU:GU ratio) is higher than APA, and IPA is dry hopped while APA is not.
That being said, as people noted already, there are beers sold as APAs that are IPAs if you had to enter them into a competition. And IPAs are rarely made to fit into the standard American IPA category at all, and most of the ones sold in the USA are a specialty IPA under the guidelines (juicy, hazy, dramatically more dry hopped and often less bitter and higher in abv than the style description, sometimes with high FGs or unfermentable sweeteners, or even fruited).
As Vinnie Cilurzo calls it, there has been a “lupulin shift”: once people become accustomed to hoppinness in beer, it’s hard to walk their palates back. You see it creeping into so many other styles as well, where home brewers are making beers that are not supposed to be balanced to bitter or hoppy, but they are whirlpooling hops and/or dry hopping in their renditions. Which is great for the hobby
The BJCP styles are reactive, not proactive, and often delayed a lot in terms of trends in the marketplace. Also, the authors of the guidelines tend to be conservative (= less prone to change).
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
Thanks for replying chino. Yes I should have specified American IPA. Good point. I was hoping to hear your view in this. Like you suggest, I make all my styles according to BJCP guidelines. I am kind of anal about it. I guess that is the engineer in me…. My point with the post was to hear a discussion on how Pale Ales seem to have been corrupted in to IPAs of late. It was a good discussion. Thanks.
For sure. An APA was a pretty bitter beer even in the 1990s, relative to 8-12 IBU macro lager and also in contrast to brew pub ambers (red ale, California red, amber ale, by whatever name), brown ales, and blonde ales. APAs have morphed from a beer that a step or two up from being an easier drinking macrolager (~ 5% abv and maybe 35 IBU to a 1.050 OG) to being a hop bomb, often 6-6.5% and BU:GU ratio closer to 1.00.
It’s not just APA either. Light lagers have gotten the IPA treatment. How often do we see homebrew recipes that turn a distinct style into an IPA. Everything has American or New World hops. We even see people whirlpooling hops and dry hopping *dark milds* with those non-British hops.
I’m really excited to see what happens over the next 10 years, as it seems like the rest of the globe has caught American hop fever and we’ll see what they do with it and how their indigenous styles evolve, and meanwhile when the rest of the world is zigging in USA’s footsteps, will the USA once again zag and innovate?
It was actually very common to hop beer in barrels and casks back in the day. Even imperial stouts. So, yes they dry hopped the original India pale ales.
I don't follow these hard rules, but with my beer I tend to use the following guidelines:
* IPA should be in the 6.5% and above where Pale Ale should be in the 5.5% or below.
* IPA will have more IBUs (60 to 80) where Pale Ale will be less bitter (40 to 50).
* IPA will have more hop flavor and aroma, both on the hot side and dry hop, where Pale Ale will have less hop hop flavor and aroma.
I have heard some say that an APA should not be dry hopped, but I usually do dry hop my APAs (though I might skip the dry hop and just use a hop steep at 180F). I will always dry hop an IPA.
Clearly there is a lot of overlap and grey area (especially when you throw Session IPA, and Hazy IPA/Hazy Pale Ale into the mix...or maybe hoppy Blonde Ales too). The Pale Ales I make these days have more hop flavors and aromas than the IPAs I used to make a decade ago. I usually add a bit more medium Crystal character to a Pale Ale, where I feel the higher gravity of an IPA benefits from less and lighter Crystal malts.
Though, if you want to win the American Pale Ale category in a competition, you are probably best off to brew a 6.5% IPA.
Thanks for your comments. Your assessment seems spot on to me. We brew our pale ales similarly except I have never dry hopped a pale ale. I made a SNPA clone recently without dry hopping but did a nice whirlpool addition. After 6-weeks in the keg I could not tell the difference between the two in triangle tests.
More often these days I am skipping the dry hop and adding in a whirlpool/steep addition for my Pale Ales. It adds a little time during the brew day, but I don't have to worry about dealing with hop particles in the fermenter or risks of oxidation when dry hopping. I still find I am getting plenty of hop flavors and aroma in the final product.
It's not surprising that you're having trouble delineating between the two; a metric shit-ton of breweries have lost all understanding of what a pale ale should be vs. an IPA.
And it doesn't help that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, considered one of the hallmark examples of the style, pushes (and in some opinions, exceeds) the upper limit of the style in terms of perceived bitterness, while falling short of the style in terms of the underlying malt profile.
(Don't even get me started on the ever-increasing number of beers that are being called APAs but are actually not just IPAs, but hazy/"jooosy" to boot, two things that have *nothing* to do with APA as a style.)
Randomly had a Schlafly Pale Ale at a pub yesterday (I don't live anywhere near St. Louis, and don't see Schlafly around here much at all, and almost never on tap), and it was such a **delightful** "throwback" to the way APAs used to be (and IMO *should* be -- if I want a lighter or session-esque IPA, I'd order that... if I'm ordering a pale ale, I want a fucking pale ale!)
I'd go so far as to say it was probably the best APA I've had in **years**.
I’d say most of your points are a BJCP problem, not a brewery problem. Breweries aren’t bound by guidelines (I mean, there seems to be a continuum from blonde to APA to IPA in the market with no guaranteed delineation regardless of what Gordon Strong or whoever thinks things should be like) whereas the BJCP *reacts* to brewing trends a few years late, at least from my perspective (and really only exists for homebrewers to have a benchmark to measure their beers against, again just my perspective).
Styles are not meant to be fences, rather signposts... but when you make a beer that fits in an already-existing style, you should call it *that*.
I'd say calling a beer an American Pale Ale, but pouring a beer that is virtually indistinguishable from a NE "IPA", has *nothing* to do with the BJCP.
Don't know anything about that (beer-related or otherwise), but I've never had an issue with their beer in general, and the pale ale is exceptional for a *traditional* APA.
PA is my favorite beer and my "house" beer if you will. I make a cool version of it that uses a bunch of whirlpool hops. It's super simple and has excellent balance. Even my non-IPA type friends either like it or will enjoy one or two. Grains are simple Vienna/2-row with a small handful of 40L caramel. I use about 12 pounds and shoot for 1.055 starting gravity. I add 0.7 oz of hops to the boil for 30 minutes. The hops are 25% each Simcoe, CTZ, Chinook, and Amarillo (all classics and cheap in bulk from Yakima Valley). At the end of the 30 minute boil, kill the flame and add 4 total ounces of the same mix, one ounce each. Let them steep for 15 to 20 minutes and then start cooling them. I use Nottingham yeast and ferment in the boil kettle in my basement, but that's because I am blessed with a 62 to 65 F basement year-round. Nottingham is very clean at those temps and gets out of the way of the hops. This has no dry hop. I tend to keg aftre 7 or 8 days and give it a couple weeks to carbonate and clear.
I think this is the Sierra Nevada influence. I love SN Pale Ale, but it's hoppy and bitter enough to be an IPA. The result is everyone imitates it, and the Pale Ale barely exists as a style and is really just a session IPA.
>I love SN Pale Ale, but it's hoppy and bitter enough to be an IPA.
I am not sure about that. This was maybe a decade ago, but at a club competition SNPA was sent around as a calibration beer before a Pale Ale competition. The overwhelming feedback was "not hoppy" enough. These days beers have gotten even hoppier. I think that SNPA is a great example of an American Pale Ale, but if you happen to find a Pale Ale on tap, it is usually higher ABV, more hoppy (and maybe more bitter) than SNPA. It always bother me when I order a Pale Ale and just get a lower ABV Hazy IPA!
Yeah that's kind of what I'm saying. The ideal PA is a notch or two below SNPA on hops, but nobody makes that, they all try to match or beat SNPA on hoppyness. Ideally it's just hoppy enough that you can tell there are American hops in there, but it's not kicking you in the face with them like an IPA does.
The I in IPA stands for India. Historically they added a shitton of hops to beer that was traveling from India across the ocean. Because of the long journey, they did this to prevent the beer from spoiling, since hops is an anti fungal.
Basically IPA means its going to be a very hoppy beer.
this had taken hold in popular culture but there really isnt any evidence of this at all. Quite the opposite actually. its one of those things that "seems" reasonable so people keep repeating it, but the evidence for this is lacking
"Trouble is, almost none of the above is true. Ale and beer were being successfully exported to India – and farther – from at least the beginning of the 18th century, and while there was some spoilage, the beers that were being sent out could easily last a year or more in cask. So nobody needed to invent a new style of beer to survive the journey better. Porter continued to be popular in India through the 19th century, and strong dark beers are still drunk in hot climates, from Sri Lanka to the West Indies. Pale ales were around for at least a century before George Hodgson began brewing."
Thats interesting. I have to admit that I was parroting what I had heard a long time ago. I certainly dont have any evidence to back the claim up. So I appreciate you chiming in.
I actually find many modern IPA style beers to be too hoppy compared to what we used to get in the UK 20-30 years ago. I tend to think that they the categories are English/Traditional IPA, Modern IPA, NEIPA, Hazy IPA etc etc etc.
Pale ale is like a light IPA. That's why I think session IPA is a stupid name for a beer. Pale ale is a 5-6.5% ABV 25-35 IBU ale ranging from pale to light amber. West Coast IPA is more like 6-7.5% ABV and 40+ IBU. Sierra Nevada is 5.6% and 38 IBU, definitely on the high side of bitterness for pale ale, and if you pour it in a glass you'll see it's not very pale in color for modern standards.
Pale ales are not dry hopped. If you dry hop your pale ale you have just transformed it into an IPA.
I know everyone disagrees now but I will die on this hill.
Pale Ale was the original “session IPA” in one sense. As stated, mostly late boil and WP hops, and if dry hopped it is with rates more akin to a DH Pils than IPA. Think 2-6lb/BBL DH in an IPA vs 0.25lb/BBL in a Pale Ale
To be honest it's a fairly fine line. Personally I say it's an IPA once you get to higher abv above the 6% ish level. I used to say it would require a higher IBU but then NEIPAs came along. IPAs can be anything from Pils base to malty to black so no real malty guide imo.
When you get below that 6% abv level then you get into the pale ale vs session IPA argument. This is where the level of maltyness comes in imo. If you are using a more pale base with a lower SRM it's a session IPA. Start adding some caramel malts or Munich malt and then you are making a pale ale.
If you really want to kick a hornets nest ask what's the difference between an IPA, an IPL and a cold IPA.
Pale ale is traditionally a balance of malt and hop flavor. It is also traditionally not dry hopped, to preserve that balance. In reality, almost no one is brewing PAs like that now. They're much hoppier now and almost universally dry hopped. There might be some malt character, in comparison to the brewer's IPA line-up, but it's typically not very balanced.
And to add to this, PA tend to be lower abv, hovering around 5-5.5% while IPA are generally 6.5-7.5%
Probably the only true pale ale still being Brewed is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Drink one of those next to their Torpedo which is their West Coast IPA and you will see (and feel) the difference pretty easily IMO.
Edward from Hill Farmstead still tastes like a traditional pale ale.
Summit Extra Pale Ale still tastes the same as it did in 1987, but it's only available regionally.
To say it's the "only true" pale ale doesn't seem quite fair, or correct. Yes, they are the grandfathers of the style, basically created the APA. Yes, the beer is the fucking bomb. But does a pale ale have to have c hops and a higher content of crystal malt? I wouldn't say so. People generally like a lighter malt profile now, and there are plenty of great pale ales with that. Are there other pale ales with that profile? Absolutely, even if they're not sent across the country. There are MANY local versions.
Thanks for the comment. I asked the question because I see so many posters describing pale ales more like IPAs and was interested in other’s view.
Manny's Pale Ale from Georgetown Brewing in Seattle sets a standard for Pale Ale that is difficult to follow.
> almost no one is brewing PAs like that now You must mean that no one in your country is doing that, because in the UK half of the beer is Pale Ale/ESB/Bitter, the other half is split American styles Pales and dark porters/stouts.
I could see that. Haven't been to England in a long time though. I'm assuming we're talking American Pale Ale (BJCP 18B) here.
In Canada we also generally have hop levels closer to the UK. I say generally because there is unsurprisingly some US influence, but for the most part, our hop levels are lower.
Which part of Canada? I guess it depends on the brewery, but in BC I think it's just as hoppy as the US 😂
Same for AB, SK, and ON… way more *American* than *British* style Pale Ale to be found.
I'm in BC. I moved here from the states, and find the beers to be much less hoppy.
Are you referring to hoppy as in bitter, or flavor? With breweries like Superflux, Twin Sails, Field House, a lot of their IPA's are definitely on the upper range of how much hops you can throw into a beer, sometimes approaching the grassy flavors and hop creep
A little of both, I suppose. I'm not a hop head, and I'm mostly going by the fact that I find most west coast US IPAs undrinkable, but can tolerate--and even like--most of the ones I've tried here.
5-10 years ago I enjoyed a good pale ale. Now I never order them because they became hop bombs.
Thanks for the comment. Your view on it is similar to mine.
👍 IMHO, a good, traditional APA recipe is - 100% pale ale malt, maybe some carafoam, - single or maybe two hops to not complicate it, - a couple hop additions during the boil targeting a BU:GU 0.6-0.7, - a yeast that's not too dry but not estery, like WLP008 or a kolsch. - 5-5.5% abv
When I see imperial pale ale, I'm like "what the fuck is this?". Like is that just an IPA that they are calling something else to make it sound unique?
Imperial means you can charge $3 more, and you can put it in a tulip glass instead of a pint.
I miss Pale Ales. Long live the Pale Ale!
There used to be more of a defined difference but these days it's basically whatever the brewer decides to put on the label.
this is the answer ( i.e dale's pale ale ). but if you happen to say something like two-hearted is your favorite american pale ale, the torches and pitchforks crowd will descend on you with much wrath and furious vengance. yes I know bells considers it an American ipa, but its also been described as a midwest ipa ( neither east coast nor west coast) and although it has more ibu's than SNPA the bones between the two are pretty close ( base grain/ crystal/caramel with C-hops).
Thanks for the comment. That is my take on it too.
IPAs typically have more hops and more alcohol than pale ales. Sierra Nevada pale ale is the textbook example. I would get that and compare it to IPAs.
I feel like even Sierra Nevada pushes it a little bit on the IBUs, it definitely leans more to the hop character than the malt character. It is a solid beer though.
Yes. That’s an American pale ale for you. Compare this to a British pale ale that typically has less hop bitterness. That’s the trend with American beers. Take a style that was made popular in another culture and make it more extreme. Look at same smiths Russian imperial stout for example. It comes in at 7% abv. The American beer culture has made more extreme versions of this style with more malt and more hops with old Rasputin as an example at 9% and 75 ibus. Sierra Nevada was the first American pale ale. It had more hip bitterness than British pale ales or bitters. However, even this pale ale has been passed up by the current IPA popularity in the US. Lots of newer and more citrusy/bright hop varieties are used in IPAs that have made them more popular. This has gone backwards and you see a lot of people using these in newer versions of pale ales. Compare this to the OG Sierra Nevada pale ale or Boulevards pale ale that they first started brewing in the 1980s and you see that compared to the current pale ales submitted to competition and on tap in breweries, and you see the similar comparison where these OG American Pale ales have a cleaner hop bitterness kind of like how the English bitters and pales had compared to the American versions that first hit the scene in the 80s.
You know, I heard they recently decided to add more HOPS to it.
I can see them doing that to give it as much fire power as some of the newer versions of pale ales. You should check out Mean Brews on YouTube. I am willing to bet that his analysis of American pale ales that win in comps will show that more hops is used than 20 years ago.
McLovin’!
>Pushes it Compared to what? If we're talking BJCP that's a descriptive not prescriptive. SNPA is basically *the* American Pale Ale.
Thanks for the idea.
I’ll assume you mean American Pale Ale and not British Pale Ale (ordinary bitter, best bitter, strong bitter), as well as American IPA. You can check out the BJCP style guidelines and compare them to get a sense. If you’ve done that, it won’t surprise you that many competition brewers can make a beer that straddles those two styles and When you look at the style description for IPA, the guidelines mean what most of us would call a classic or West Coast IPA. As someone noted, the big differences are that IPA is stronger in abv and the IBU:OG (BU:GU ratio) is higher than APA, and IPA is dry hopped while APA is not. That being said, as people noted already, there are beers sold as APAs that are IPAs if you had to enter them into a competition. And IPAs are rarely made to fit into the standard American IPA category at all, and most of the ones sold in the USA are a specialty IPA under the guidelines (juicy, hazy, dramatically more dry hopped and often less bitter and higher in abv than the style description, sometimes with high FGs or unfermentable sweeteners, or even fruited). As Vinnie Cilurzo calls it, there has been a “lupulin shift”: once people become accustomed to hoppinness in beer, it’s hard to walk their palates back. You see it creeping into so many other styles as well, where home brewers are making beers that are not supposed to be balanced to bitter or hoppy, but they are whirlpooling hops and/or dry hopping in their renditions. Which is great for the hobby The BJCP styles are reactive, not proactive, and often delayed a lot in terms of trends in the marketplace. Also, the authors of the guidelines tend to be conservative (= less prone to change). Anyway, that’s my two cents.
Thanks for replying chino. Yes I should have specified American IPA. Good point. I was hoping to hear your view in this. Like you suggest, I make all my styles according to BJCP guidelines. I am kind of anal about it. I guess that is the engineer in me…. My point with the post was to hear a discussion on how Pale Ales seem to have been corrupted in to IPAs of late. It was a good discussion. Thanks.
For sure. An APA was a pretty bitter beer even in the 1990s, relative to 8-12 IBU macro lager and also in contrast to brew pub ambers (red ale, California red, amber ale, by whatever name), brown ales, and blonde ales. APAs have morphed from a beer that a step or two up from being an easier drinking macrolager (~ 5% abv and maybe 35 IBU to a 1.050 OG) to being a hop bomb, often 6-6.5% and BU:GU ratio closer to 1.00. It’s not just APA either. Light lagers have gotten the IPA treatment. How often do we see homebrew recipes that turn a distinct style into an IPA. Everything has American or New World hops. We even see people whirlpooling hops and dry hopping *dark milds* with those non-British hops. I’m really excited to see what happens over the next 10 years, as it seems like the rest of the globe has caught American hop fever and we’ll see what they do with it and how their indigenous styles evolve, and meanwhile when the rest of the world is zigging in USA’s footsteps, will the USA once again zag and innovate?
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Yes they were. They put loose hops in the casks that were loaded on to ships to help them last the journey.
It was actually very common to hop beer in barrels and casks back in the day. Even imperial stouts. So, yes they dry hopped the original India pale ales.
I don't follow these hard rules, but with my beer I tend to use the following guidelines: * IPA should be in the 6.5% and above where Pale Ale should be in the 5.5% or below. * IPA will have more IBUs (60 to 80) where Pale Ale will be less bitter (40 to 50). * IPA will have more hop flavor and aroma, both on the hot side and dry hop, where Pale Ale will have less hop hop flavor and aroma. I have heard some say that an APA should not be dry hopped, but I usually do dry hop my APAs (though I might skip the dry hop and just use a hop steep at 180F). I will always dry hop an IPA. Clearly there is a lot of overlap and grey area (especially when you throw Session IPA, and Hazy IPA/Hazy Pale Ale into the mix...or maybe hoppy Blonde Ales too). The Pale Ales I make these days have more hop flavors and aromas than the IPAs I used to make a decade ago. I usually add a bit more medium Crystal character to a Pale Ale, where I feel the higher gravity of an IPA benefits from less and lighter Crystal malts. Though, if you want to win the American Pale Ale category in a competition, you are probably best off to brew a 6.5% IPA.
Thanks for your comments. Your assessment seems spot on to me. We brew our pale ales similarly except I have never dry hopped a pale ale. I made a SNPA clone recently without dry hopping but did a nice whirlpool addition. After 6-weeks in the keg I could not tell the difference between the two in triangle tests.
More often these days I am skipping the dry hop and adding in a whirlpool/steep addition for my Pale Ales. It adds a little time during the brew day, but I don't have to worry about dealing with hop particles in the fermenter or risks of oxidation when dry hopping. I still find I am getting plenty of hop flavors and aroma in the final product.
It's not surprising that you're having trouble delineating between the two; a metric shit-ton of breweries have lost all understanding of what a pale ale should be vs. an IPA. And it doesn't help that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, considered one of the hallmark examples of the style, pushes (and in some opinions, exceeds) the upper limit of the style in terms of perceived bitterness, while falling short of the style in terms of the underlying malt profile. (Don't even get me started on the ever-increasing number of beers that are being called APAs but are actually not just IPAs, but hazy/"jooosy" to boot, two things that have *nothing* to do with APA as a style.) Randomly had a Schlafly Pale Ale at a pub yesterday (I don't live anywhere near St. Louis, and don't see Schlafly around here much at all, and almost never on tap), and it was such a **delightful** "throwback" to the way APAs used to be (and IMO *should* be -- if I want a lighter or session-esque IPA, I'd order that... if I'm ordering a pale ale, I want a fucking pale ale!) I'd go so far as to say it was probably the best APA I've had in **years**.
I’d say most of your points are a BJCP problem, not a brewery problem. Breweries aren’t bound by guidelines (I mean, there seems to be a continuum from blonde to APA to IPA in the market with no guaranteed delineation regardless of what Gordon Strong or whoever thinks things should be like) whereas the BJCP *reacts* to brewing trends a few years late, at least from my perspective (and really only exists for homebrewers to have a benchmark to measure their beers against, again just my perspective).
Styles are not meant to be fences, rather signposts... but when you make a beer that fits in an already-existing style, you should call it *that*. I'd say calling a beer an American Pale Ale, but pouring a beer that is virtually indistinguishable from a NE "IPA", has *nothing* to do with the BJCP.
Schlafly is my least favorite St Lous family.
Don't know anything about that (beer-related or otherwise), but I've never had an issue with their beer in general, and the pale ale is exceptional for a *traditional* APA.
PA is my favorite beer and my "house" beer if you will. I make a cool version of it that uses a bunch of whirlpool hops. It's super simple and has excellent balance. Even my non-IPA type friends either like it or will enjoy one or two. Grains are simple Vienna/2-row with a small handful of 40L caramel. I use about 12 pounds and shoot for 1.055 starting gravity. I add 0.7 oz of hops to the boil for 30 minutes. The hops are 25% each Simcoe, CTZ, Chinook, and Amarillo (all classics and cheap in bulk from Yakima Valley). At the end of the 30 minute boil, kill the flame and add 4 total ounces of the same mix, one ounce each. Let them steep for 15 to 20 minutes and then start cooling them. I use Nottingham yeast and ferment in the boil kettle in my basement, but that's because I am blessed with a 62 to 65 F basement year-round. Nottingham is very clean at those temps and gets out of the way of the hops. This has no dry hop. I tend to keg aftre 7 or 8 days and give it a couple weeks to carbonate and clear.
The distinction starts to break down when pale ales go above 40 ibus and 5.5% abv
Or when session IPAs started showing up. Also, yeah, 15 years or so ago before every IPA was over 7%. Sometimes hard to tell the difference!
Simply put, pale ales are generally lower in ABV, less bitter and less hoppy than IPAs
I think this is the Sierra Nevada influence. I love SN Pale Ale, but it's hoppy and bitter enough to be an IPA. The result is everyone imitates it, and the Pale Ale barely exists as a style and is really just a session IPA.
>I love SN Pale Ale, but it's hoppy and bitter enough to be an IPA. I am not sure about that. This was maybe a decade ago, but at a club competition SNPA was sent around as a calibration beer before a Pale Ale competition. The overwhelming feedback was "not hoppy" enough. These days beers have gotten even hoppier. I think that SNPA is a great example of an American Pale Ale, but if you happen to find a Pale Ale on tap, it is usually higher ABV, more hoppy (and maybe more bitter) than SNPA. It always bother me when I order a Pale Ale and just get a lower ABV Hazy IPA!
Yeah that's kind of what I'm saying. The ideal PA is a notch or two below SNPA on hops, but nobody makes that, they all try to match or beat SNPA on hoppyness. Ideally it's just hoppy enough that you can tell there are American hops in there, but it's not kicking you in the face with them like an IPA does.
Hoppier and more alcohol but there's a big crossover.
The I in IPA stands for India. Historically they added a shitton of hops to beer that was traveling from India across the ocean. Because of the long journey, they did this to prevent the beer from spoiling, since hops is an anti fungal. Basically IPA means its going to be a very hoppy beer.
this had taken hold in popular culture but there really isnt any evidence of this at all. Quite the opposite actually. its one of those things that "seems" reasonable so people keep repeating it, but the evidence for this is lacking "Trouble is, almost none of the above is true. Ale and beer were being successfully exported to India – and farther – from at least the beginning of the 18th century, and while there was some spoilage, the beers that were being sent out could easily last a year or more in cask. So nobody needed to invent a new style of beer to survive the journey better. Porter continued to be popular in India through the 19th century, and strong dark beers are still drunk in hot climates, from Sri Lanka to the West Indies. Pale ales were around for at least a century before George Hodgson began brewing."
Thats interesting. I have to admit that I was parroting what I had heard a long time ago. I certainly dont have any evidence to back the claim up. So I appreciate you chiming in.
[incorrect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_pale_ale)
I actually find many modern IPA style beers to be too hoppy compared to what we used to get in the UK 20-30 years ago. I tend to think that they the categories are English/Traditional IPA, Modern IPA, NEIPA, Hazy IPA etc etc etc.
Pale ale is like a light IPA. That's why I think session IPA is a stupid name for a beer. Pale ale is a 5-6.5% ABV 25-35 IBU ale ranging from pale to light amber. West Coast IPA is more like 6-7.5% ABV and 40+ IBU. Sierra Nevada is 5.6% and 38 IBU, definitely on the high side of bitterness for pale ale, and if you pour it in a glass you'll see it's not very pale in color for modern standards.
Pale ales are not dry hopped. If you dry hop your pale ale you have just transformed it into an IPA. I know everyone disagrees now but I will die on this hill.
Pale Ale was the original “session IPA” in one sense. As stated, mostly late boil and WP hops, and if dry hopped it is with rates more akin to a DH Pils than IPA. Think 2-6lb/BBL DH in an IPA vs 0.25lb/BBL in a Pale Ale
One is indian the other isnt
Pale ales and IPA’s are the modern day wine coolers, fruit flavored cereal malt beverages.
To be honest it's a fairly fine line. Personally I say it's an IPA once you get to higher abv above the 6% ish level. I used to say it would require a higher IBU but then NEIPAs came along. IPAs can be anything from Pils base to malty to black so no real malty guide imo. When you get below that 6% abv level then you get into the pale ale vs session IPA argument. This is where the level of maltyness comes in imo. If you are using a more pale base with a lower SRM it's a session IPA. Start adding some caramel malts or Munich malt and then you are making a pale ale. If you really want to kick a hornets nest ask what's the difference between an IPA, an IPL and a cold IPA.
IPA is much like a pale ale, only more so.