Tomorrow (August 7) is National IPA Day, when beer drinkers across the country unite to imbibe the country’s favorite beer style. Undoubtedly the most popular style of craft beer in the United States, IPA was the most entered style at this year’s World Beer Cup (with 224 entries). It’s tough to find a craft brewery tasting room that doesn’t have a fresh IPA on tap.
Not only do Americans have an affinity for hops, they are craving, if not demanding, hoppier and hoppier craft beers. Jeff Erway of New Mexico’s La Cumbre Brewing Co. remembers that when he first started brewing his Elevated IPA, a 7.2 percent ABV IPA with 100 IBUs, in 2008, it was the hoppiest beer that anyone who tried it had ever had. Fast forward a few more years, he says, and it’s now often described as “balanced.”
In a lot of cases, what once qualified as an IPA has been shifted over to the American pale ale designation. That was the case at Boulder’s Twisted Pine Brewery earlier this year when the brewery’s flagship IPA, the infamous Hoppy Boy, moved over to the American pale ale category to make room for a brand new IPA, the Hop Zealot, that has twenty more IBUs.