We’re no strangers to pale ale at Firestone Walker, even if we’ve become better known in recent years for IPAs, crisp blondes and lagers, and various barrel-aged creations. Yet we still love to brew and drink pale ale, arguably the foundational beer of American craft. So, we’re excited to get back into that game in 2024 with Firestone XPA—a modern, West Coast–style pale ale inspired partly by our friends Down Under, where the extra pale ale style maintains a strong following.
We designed this beer after stepping back and surveying the arc of American pale ale over the past 40-plus years. The primary flashpoint there, obviously, was the launch of the iconic Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in 1981. The best early examples had some beautiful caramel-malt flavor and pronounced hop character while avoiding aggressive bitterness. They essentially riffed on English pale ale, adding a distinctly American twist with Cascade or other Pacific Northwest hops.
Our first entry in this genre was Windsor Pale Ale in 1998, just a couple of years after we opened, and it fell in line with the prevailing style. However, a few years later, we reformulated Windsor into Firestone Pale Ale—which later became Pale 31. For us, that reformulation was a distinct stylistic shift: We were relying less on caramel malt, and we were dry hopping to amplify the hop aromas and flavors. Let’s call it “pale ale 2.0”—we were among the first, but certainly not the last, to advance this drier, more hop- forward style of pale ale.