The evolution of IPA in the United States is partly shaped by consumer demand, but it’s also been supercharged by new hop varieties and products developed by breeders, growers, and hop companies. And that evolution also reflects innovations in how American brewers have tackled the style—especially as they’ve learned more from each other about how to squeeze the most from those hops.
Kelsey McNair, founder and head brewer at North Park Beer in San Diego, is a locus in that evolution—a longtime sponge of brewing knowhow, freely sharing his own award-winning methods with others. For his chosen six-pack, he’s opted to pick IPAs from different eras that all had an influence on how he brews them today—“whether it was the information that I took in without even having an actual touchpoint,” he says, “to just experiencing and thinking about the pieces and parts of what I wanted to do, and to continue to evolve.”
Ballantine IPA
Newark, New Jersey/Milwaukee
“The first beer is a beer that I’ve never had. In my early homebrew research phase, when I was scouring the Internet for whatever I could find—we’re talking early 2000s—it seemed that there was a sort of predecessor to a lot of what modern IPAs were. All signs pointed to that beer, as if it was so much hoppier, and more in tune … Maybe not as much crystal malt as we might have found as a trend through the mid-’00s, but it was interesting.
“I was so infatuated with the history of this beer, and I got it wrong out of the gate. I was like, ‘Oh, they aged it in wood casks. So, there must be an oak-aged element to what made Ballantine a special beer.’ But, no, those casks were pitched, so there was no wood contact—it was just a conditioning vessel. It was, I believe, hopped with Bullion. At one point, I was trying to find good-quality Bullion, just to see if it was worth the chase. I was so obsessed, my wife [Amanda McNair], girlfriend then, bought me a taphandle of Ballantine IPA as a gift. It’s just a nostalgic thing that I never got to try in its actual form.
“I did get to try it when it was re-released by Pabst, at GABF. But the hop schedule, based on the hops used, didn’t align with what the original recipe was. So, I didn’t feel like I was getting the true interpretation of what that beer might have been. On the BeerAdvocate forums, back in early 2000s, there were always reference points—‘Oh, I used to drink Ballantine IPA.’ ‘My dad drank Ballantine IPA.’ It’s like there was layer on layer of people who had some connection to this beer and loved it … and then it just disappeared. I never quite figured out what it was supposed to be, other than just reading the history of it. It had some guidelines to it that seemed interesting and became a theoretical chase.”
Russian River Pliny the Elder
Windsor, California
“This is an easy one. This was sort of in my learning-how-to-brew phase—going all-grain brewing, infatuated with West Coast IPA. Pliny started to show up on tap at O’Briens in San Diego, so it was somewhat available. I emailed Vinnie [Cilurzo] and asked if there was some way that I could get a keg of Pliny for my house and have on tap on my kegerator. And he said, ‘No,’ but then chased it with, ‘Well, there is this self-distributor, O’Shea’s homebrew supply, that works with Stone. They do get our beer from time to time. Maybe if you call them on the right day, they’ll have a keg.’
“And, sure enough, I called them the next day when I got up. ‘Do you guys have a keg of Pliny?’
“‘Yes, we do.’
“‘Save it for me. I’ll be right there.’ Took an extra-long lunch break at work, drove up there, grabbed this keg, took it to my house, dropped it off, went back to work. And that sat on tap at my house for about a month, where my roommates and I enjoyed it—I brewed three consecutive double IPAs while this was going on. I loved the balance of that beer. Just its form, even at that time, was something that was so very different and a cut above anything else that you could get. I thought it was perfection in a double IPA, and that was my favorite style at the time.”
Caledonian Deuchars IPA
Edinburgh, Scotland
“I’ve only been to Europe once, and that was in 2005. I bounced around to several countries, was there for a friend’s wedding in Sweden. But on one of our stops, we went to Scotland. We were in Edinburgh. I had heard of this beer—which I learned was pronounced differently. It reads, ‘du-CARS,’ but it’s pronounced by the Scots, ‘JU-kers.’ At this point in time, [it was] usually found ubiquitously on a handpump in virtually any bar that you went into that had more than Stella or Guinness or some more macro beers.
“The first pull I had of it—it’s like 4.2 or 4.3 percent—must have been a fresh cask because it was just popping with so much vibrant, bright citrus-lemon. It was so easy to drink and crushable. That kind of framed my mind that there was this style of beer that didn’t really exist in the States—but needed to.
“I got to brew a beer with Stone after winning their homebrew competition in 2010—we made a session IPA, and a lot of the dots connect back to Caledonian Deuchars IPA because it just had that sort of … It wasn’t rich with malts, it was just this clean platform and lots of hops. It was just something different, very special. There were some local beers that might have meandered in that direction—AleSmith X Extra Pale Ale, I would say Ballast Point Even Keel—but that was the one that really was like, whoa. I’d even say that those ideas have now come back to be how we approach things like West Coast pils—lower ABV, very easy to drink, lots of hops.”
Julian Shrago’s Melrose IPA
Long Beach, California
“This isn’t the one that Beachwood releases now—that could be very much the same recipe, but the beer on my list would be the version circa 2008 when Julian [Shrago, owner and brewmaster at Beachwood Brewing] was not yet associated with Beachwood. Julian was homebrewing at the time. He would make fanciful labels for his bottles, and his brewery at the time was called Bellwether Brewing—it was his garage brewery—and he and I became good friends. In 2007, we met at a homebrew fest, and he would always show up to events with growlers of Melrose. At the time, I’d be bringing growlers of Hop-Fu, or whatever, and we’d share those with whoever [from the] industry was around, or other homebrew friends.
“That beer was perfection at the time—and Melrose was just crushing competitions. He got a Best of Show at the America’s Finest City competition, which is a highly contested homebrew competition in San Diego. The beer was just a harmonious match of Amarillo and Simcoe hops and just embodied everything that I liked in a West Coast IPA. It was another touchpoint to the things that I liked, that I wanted to brew. He was several steps ahead of me in going pro, but that beer was really remarkable. You could put it side-by-side with any of the commercial IPAs out there, and it was probably better. It was just an amazing beer.”
Pizza Port Poor Man’s Double IPA
Carlsbad, California
“I’ve got to put in Jeff Bagby in the Alpha King era. I’d make it up to Pizza Port Carlsbad when I could, and sometimes this beer would end up on tap at Toronado in North Park. Where Pliny was this super fine-tuned thing that was like perfection in its truest form, and something where you said, ‘That is double IPA,’ Poor Man’s was intensity. It was like you took the double IPA, and you just cranked it up to 11. The hops are so intense.
“From my understanding, this beer was basically in a serving tank that had body bags full of whole-cone hops stuffed into it. So, it was very leafy and raw and intense, and just powerful. You drink that, and it’s like you’re so saturated with fresh- hop intensity. There was nothing else you could drink like that. You could have a pint of it at Toronado, but if you went to the source and had it straight off the serving tank, it was like, wow, just amazing. There weren’t a lot of beers that did that at that point at the time.”
Green Cheek ’Member IPA?
Orange, California
“This would have been at the L.A. IPA fest. And the L.A. IPA fest is cool because you get 10-ounce pours of beers. My beer is in the competition. I’m grabbing a pour of my beer, a pour of someone else’s beer. I’m hanging on to mine, and I’m taking sips of others and kind of seeing the differences. Then, at the end of it, when they’re announcing the winners and I’ve had some of those beers, I’m starting to collect the data and have an understanding of what the judges are really wanting in this category. Because we had some duds in that competition for a couple of years in a row. Tasting the beer side-by-side, I could tell why.
“We were kind of stuck in the old-school West Coast IPA mode, which were the homebrew beers that I was making before opening North Park. Well, the Green Cheek keg kicked before I could even get to it, but Green Cheek in Orange wasn’t too far out of the way on my drive home, so I had to stop by and try a pint. Having that beer was kind of a light-bulb moment at the time. I’m like, ‘I get it.’ This beer is what is now West Coast IPA—this leaner, more intense fruit-forward expression of hops that’s very rich and saturated. The Mosaic was just popping, and it was just an amazing beer.
“I literally went back to the brewery after having that one and retooled our whole approach to West Coast IPAs and folded in the changes to Hop-Fu. Our steps forward paid off, and the next year at L.A. IPA fest, we won it. It felt like that was gratifying to learn some lessons from all those things.”