Sublime juice. Yeasty swill. The apex of 15,000 years of brewing art. Why can’t these lazy brewers clarify their beers?
Deeply held opinions swirl around the controversial hazy IPAs. Whatever your feeling, there’s no denying that these aromatic, fruit-tinged beers have upset the norms around IPA, including the level of passionate devotion to them.
The roots of this sub-style originated in the late 1990s when John Kimmich—later a cofounder of the Alchemist brewery—was a junior brewer to the legendary Greg Noonan at his Vermont Pub & Brewery. In search of more aromatic beers, they tolerated the increasing haze, which was then considered deeply inappropriate in an IPA. When Kimmich opened Alchemist in 2003, he had a clear mission: to brew a beer that smelled as much like weed as possible. Eventually a beer called Heady Topper emerged, the first in this radically new mold. This, in turn, inspired Shaun Hill of nearby Hill Farmstead brewery—he became the first to bestow the “juicy” descriptor. The style exploded to a number of other breweries in New England, and eventually the word got out to the rest of us.