“We’re getting to the point [in craft brewing, and specifically on the West Coast] where regular single pale ales are starting to taste more like IPAs,” says Colby Chandler, the executive director and specialty brewer at Ballast Point Tasting Room & Kitchen in San Diego, California. “They’re losing the malt base, and they have more hops aroma than ever before.”
Last year, Justin Tilotta of Twisted Pine Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, weighed in on hoppier pale ales when the company announced it would designate its former Hoppy Boy IPA as a pale ale going forward. The beer might have been a perfect example of an American IPA fifteen years ago, he said, but now the style is characterized by “a less prominent malt backbone and a lean toward bitterness.”
Increasingly, consumers think of pale ale as IPA’s little sister. In Issue 5 (Feb/Mar 2015) of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®, brewers make a case for pale ale and explain that it can be just as hops-forward as IPA and is often more nuanced. Here are more of their perspectives on pale ale.