If there’s a beer archetype that I both perpetuate and find annoying, it’s the “I don’t even likes,” as in, “I don’t even like Belgian tripel, but theirs is really good.” The problem is that I clearly do like Belgian tripel—I just have a particular presentation that works better for me than others.
I bring this up because it’s quite common for people to tell me, “I don’t even like dry and bitter West Coast IPA, but I really like that one.” Meanwhile, they’re polishing off three to six pints of it on a sunny afternoon in my backyard.
For all the success of sweeter, softer hazy pale ales and IPAs, there’s clearly still a place for drier, more bitter beers out there. Here’s the thing: We want crisp, bitter, and dry—but it must be balanced, too. And, whether they are hazy or clear, we definitely don’t want beers that are cloying and flabby.
So, what’s a brewer to do?
Here, we discuss some levers you can pull and dials you can turn to get a drier, more drinkable IPA. Our target is a beer that delivers the sensory experience you want, avoiding the harsh palate assault (“I don’t even like hoppy beers”) that still keeps many people away from the style. A dry, snappy, flinty, bitter beer can be a joy to drink, and at its best it provides that natural incentive to go back for another sip (“but I like this one”).
Designing for Balance
First things first: Let’s not get lost in the numbers.
Sure, vital stats such as IBUs and gravity can tell us a lot about what a beer might taste like—but numbers aren’t destiny. Ultimately, it’s our perception of the beer’s flavor and mouthfeel that matters, and “dry” and “bitter” are terms we use to describe our experience with it.
And that’s what designing a beer for balance is ultimately about: how it’s perceived. Think of the 12 percent ABV barleywine that lacks even a hint of fusel alcohols. Or think of the IPA that has the big IBUs but nevertheless leaves a light and bright impression on the tongue. When beers go wrong—when not because of off-flavors or poor sanitation—it’s usually because they overcommit to a certain flavor or sensation. Balance is at the very heart of drinkability.
One brewery that knows a thing or two about drinkability—and producing dry, balanced beers—is Allagash in Portland, Maine. Best known for its well-attenuated, beautifully balanced White and other Belgian styles, the brewery only released its first year-round IPA, Hop Reach, in 2022. With that development process still fresh in mind, Allagash senior R&D brewer Patrick Chavanelle offers this gutsy piece of advice: “Lean into bitterness to create impressions of dryness.”
Not all bitterness is created equal. Successful bittering keeps the harsher aspects of bitterness at bay, and that starts with your choice of hops. If you subscribe to the school that lower cohumulone equals softer bitterness, then by all means, have at it. However, I focus on a much more basic metric: alpha-acid percentage.
Lower-alpha hops tend to impart a softer (or finer, or smoother) impression of bitterness than higher-alpha. So, while the high-double-digit AA-percentage hops are more efficient, they also introduce a risk to drinkability. There’s a cost to having more plant matter in the beer, too, in the form of beer loss via absorption, but those costs are worth bearing if the alternative is a resinous harshness.
Moving on to grist, Chavanelle recommends going with a leaner, mostly base-grain malt bill to increase fermentability. That choice also leads to a few side effects that make our jobs easier. Keeping any character malts to a minimum avoids flavors that make a beer seem sweeter. That reduces the need to use more bitterness to keep the beer in balance. Note that the color of specialty malts isn’t a reliable way to predict sweetness or how it’s perceived in the finished beer. Many low-Lovibond crystal malts have a distinct sweet-caramel flavor, but even a pinch of darker crystals can burn you, too, with fruit or toffee flavors that create impressions of sweetness. Choose wisely, and experiment if you can.
Finally, different yeast strains will attenuate your beer to varying degrees, and that is further affected by factors such as wort composition and fermentation temperature. We can harness this diversity by selecting strains tailored to our desired flavor profile and attenuation range.
That’s what Allagash did while developing Hop Reach. “Leading up to the release, we did yeast trials to see how the beer turns out differently with different yeasts,” Chavanelle says. “We kept the wort and dry hopping the same but ran it in different strains. And even with identical wort, the attenuation rate and mouthfeel varied dramatically.”
The experiments included their house ale yeast as well as some diastatic strains—highly effective attenuators that can take a beer dry indeed—but those shifted the flavor profile, he says, and didn’t match their flavor target.
They also noticed differences in flavor stability. Even if they sometimes preferred the “younger” versions of the beer with certain yeasts, they found two yeasts that provided better long-term crispness and shelf life: Chico ale and a Bohemian lager strain. Chavanelle says he suspects that was also thanks to their lower finishing pH—another factor worth considering if you really want to dial in a dry, crisp finish.
Of course, there are also ways to employ process to compensate for the limitations of certain yeasts—up to a point. For example, at the 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco, cofounder and brewmaster Shaun O’Sullivan describes a lesson learned from his early days: “When I began brewing in 1994,” he says, “the Fullers strain was among the limited yeast options available. We adapted by employing low mashing techniques to dry out the beer, as the Fullers strain exhibited poor attenuation, and experimented with heightened hop rates to counterbalance its inherent sweetness.”
Today, however, they “opt to brew with the American [ale] yeast strain or Chico ale, as it attenuates quite nicely, and more importantly has more of a neutral character allowing the hops to shine.”
Unsurprisingly—and we’ll come back to this in process considerations—yeast matter.
Producing a Winner
Once you’ve made some choices on ingredients and recipe, it’s time to think about how your process can help you achieve that dry finish that makes for an IPA that can be hard to stop drinking.
It takes attention to detail to get it right, including meticulous control over wort production and fermentation—from mash and lauter to temperature management, dry hopping, and oxygenation. These variables significantly impact your beer’s potential flavor profiles as well as yeast activity and, consequently, its attenuation and how it is perceived by the drinker. Plus, remember we want balance: If we turn all the dials up to 11 and produce a super-fermentable wort using a vigorous yeast in a hot environment, we’ll go off the rails quickly.
As our dry beer comes into focus, let’s look at some process considerations.
The Mash and Lauter
At the start, focus on mash temperature is essential. The sugars that we ultimately ferment—unless we’re adding simple syrups or sugars—begin the brew day as starches. It’s in the mash that enzymes convert and cleave those starches into sugars that are accessible to our yeast, and time and temperature dictate the fermentability of what comes out of the mash tun.
In a straightforward single-infusion mash, we’re choosing the temperature at which all our conversion will happen, and we have an idea of where to land to get a more (or less) fermentable wort. For my money—and with plenty of data to back it up—152°F (67°C) is an excellent go-to temperature for the most-fermentable wort. At that temperature, you have a blend of alpha- and beta-amylase enzymes chipping away at the mash. Going higher than that tends to yield a less-fermentable wort with more body, while going lower can make a more fermentable wort—but I basically have “152” tattooed on my chest as a recommendation for a single-infusion mash.
If you want to get more complicated—and why not?—you could employ a step mash to promote fermentability. In that case, you could leave your wort at 140°F (60°C) for a nice long rest—say, 60 to 90 minutes—before bumping up to 160°F (71°C) for a brief spell to get some longer-chain sugars for body. This brings up the element of mash length as well: Generally, longer mashes tend to produce more-fermentable wort because the enzymes have more time to keep on cleaving up those sugar chains. If your goal is more attenuation, then time—either in a single-infusion mash or a step-mash at the lower beta-amylase temperature—is your friend.
When it’s time to lauter, Chavanelle has some advice: Watch your pH. Lautering as your pH rises increases the risk of pulling tannins from the malt, and that can make your beer feel harsh—not the kind of bitterness we want. So, keep an eye on it, and hit the brakes if you see pH flirting with 5.6. (If you can, monitor your mash pH using a pH meter or good test strips, adjusting with lactic acid if needed.)
Fermentation
With your yeast in mind, make a plan for your fermentation temperatures. Manage the starting temperature—beginning, typically, below your “prime” temperature—and increase it deliberately to promote thorough (but not runaway) fermentation. Then, finish a bit warm.
Another option to aid fermentation is adding exogenous enzymes to the mash or fermentor. Options include alpha-amylase or glucoamylase additions in the mash tun, which promote specific kinds of starch conversion for a more fermentable wort. A relatively simple solution could be the Fermentis All-in-1 packets, which include glucoamylase—SafBrew DA-16 would be the choice for an IPA. (Remember brut IPAs? They’re still a thing—though they’re not always sold that way.) Exogenous enzymes will definitely dry out a beer, but fair warning: These tend to work best on very high-gravity beers, so unless you’re going into the double digits in ABV, you’ll probably find them to be too drying.
We also want to be careful about oxidation—in any beer, but especially in dry, hop-forward ones. At the least, that means minimizing oxygen exposure at every point once fermentation begins. Besides the obvious benefits—such as not tasting like wet cardboard—limiting the oxidation of your beer also means limiting the oxidation of beta-acid remnants in your hops. Over time, that adds a harsh bitterness to the flavor even as our softer, isomerized alpha acids are taking a hike. Bad timing, there.
Dry Hops
Finally—and fittingly, for IPAs—we should consider the effects of dry hopping, especially the phenomenon known as “hop creep.”
We’ve written plenty about this phenomenon in the magazine, but here’s a recap: Hop creep happens when the naturally occurring, starch-degrading enzymes present in hops break down otherwise nonfermentable sugars. That leads to drier beer and higher attenuation, not to mention slightly higher ABV. This extra bit of fermentation also tends to produce diacetyl, an off-flavor that can spoil your bright hop character and drinkability, all at the same time.
Unfortunately, because we dry hop toward the end of the process, many brewers don’t give their yeast enough time to clean up that diacetyl. Time matters. Also, if you dry hop too long after the end of primary fermentation, there may not be enough life left in the yeast to ferment those newly accessible sugars and do the cleanup. A safer bet is to dry hop near the end—but not after—primary fermentation.
Dry, Bitter, Drinkable
This is one of those places where science meets art: the creation of a dry beer that gives drinkers a great experience, and one of the pivotal demonstrations of a brewer’s abilities.
In a world of easy-to-cash-in tricks that create unbalanced beers—gimmickry is, unfortunately, often rewarded—brewing an excellent dry, bitterish beer stands at an intersection of technical prowess and culinary intuition. That holds true whether your IPA is hazy or clear or something else along the spectrum.
Whatever you are brewing, thoughtful hop choices, knowing your yeast and what they can do, producing fermentable wort that’s tannin-free, and applying ingredients and processes that responsibly “dry out” your beers isn’t ever going to make them worse. In fact, that’s a proven formula for winning over more of the “I don’t even likes.”
And, if they keep drinking your beer, you might even get them to admit they do like it dry and bitter, after all.