Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 609 In the beginning, there was pale ale. And there was fruit beer. Although the fact might seem a quaint anachronism in today’s super-charged world of barrel-aged this and kettle- soured that, those two categories at one time accounted for a great deal of North America’s craft beer output. The 1997 book, America’s Best Brews, devoted six pages to fruit beers – more than it gave to blond ale or barley wine – and treated IPA as a mere substyle within 32 pages of pale ales, while even as recently as 2002, the total number of pale ales entered in the Great American Beer Festival’s competition outnumbered those in any other category. Only three years later, however, the style juggernaut that is IPA was already making its presence felt, with all pale ale categories at the GABF totalling 167 entries, while the cumulative total of all IPA categories dominated the competition with 193 beers entered. Ten years after that, the American-Style IPA alone totaled 336 entries, well over one hundred more than any other judging category. And somewhere along the line there appeared a beer called Grapefruit Sculpin. A spinoff of the wildly successful Sculpin IPA from San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing, famously purchased by Constellation Brands in 2015 for US$1billion, Grapefruit Sculpin adds grapefruit to the well-hopped original IPA to emphasize – some say over- emphasize – the citrusy character of the beer’s American hops. The release was an instant hit, with beer drinkers and bar managers outside of southern California tweeting the arrival of kegs as if they were rare sightings of endangered wildlife or reclusive rock stars. Naturally, such success engendered imitators and it was not long before other fruit IPAs began to appear on draught taps and store shelves, arriving slowly at first and then with steadily increasing frequency. Soon the dribble had become a torrent and today the beer rating website, ratebeer.com, counts in its database 381 such beers, 310 of which are brewed in North America. Which certainly suggests that brewers and beer drinkers alike have cottoned on to the style. But why specifically fruit IPAs and why now? One currently popular theory, almost certainly true to at least some degree, is that fruit, be it in the form of whole flesh, juice, extracts or peels and pith, serves as a handy substitute for increasingly hard-to-source hops. Can’t get your hands on enough Citra hops? Try adding citrus fruit instead! No access to New Zealand hops like Motueka and Riwaka? Pack in some pineapple and mango! It could scarcely be more simple. Another view is that the fruit is not necessarily intended as a substitute for hops, but rather that the hops most popular today actually laid the foundations for the rise of fruit IPAs. Contrary to the more spicy, leafy and floral characteristics of classic hop varieties such as Fuggle and Saaz, modern New World hops are, of course, widely noted for their abundant fruitiness, be it the powerful grapefruit of Centennial or the equally potent gooseberry of a Nelson Sauvin, and in their use beer drinkers have grown more used to hop-derived fruit characteristics in their beers. From fruity hops, it is obviously but a short step to hoppy fruit beers. A third view parallels the second, after a fashion, suggesting that an overabundance of intensely hopped IPAs has created a sort of ‘hop weariness’ in a beer drinking public which, while not quite ready to turn its back on IPAs, was ready for something a bit different. That ‘something,’ this theory conjectures, was the fresh and lively flavours of IPAs juiced up with fruit. In the end, the motivation behind the rise of fruit IPA as a style likely resides in some sort of combination of all three theories. How long they will remain on the scene and how lasting might be their legacy, however, depends on whether you put more truck in the first or the second two viewpoints. For if fruit is being used as principally a hops substitute, then it is unlikely this situation will change until hop supplies increase significantly, and that doesn’t seem likely for at least the next couple of years. If, on the other hand, fruit IPAs are a movement based on the fancies of craft beer drinkers, then the future would seem less certain. Indeed, in that case one might be well-advised to heed the words of Jennifer Litz-Kirk of the trade publication, Beer Business Daily, who at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference referred to fruit IPAs as “the flavored-vodkafication of beer” and suggested that the trend might be “getting a little bit faddish” and could soon be due for a correction. Stephen Beaumont Letter from North America The rise of fruit IPAs A professional beer writer for 25 years, Stephen Beaumont is the author of ten books on beer, including The World Atlas of Beer – the second, fully-revised edition of which will be published in the fall of 2016 – and The Pocket Beer Guide 2015, both co-written with Tim Webb. Stephen’s latest solo book is the Beer & Food Companion, which was published to much critical and commercial acclaim in October of 2015. Stephen has also contributed to several other books and written innumerable features, articles and columns for publications as varied at The Globe and Mail and Playboy, Fine Cooking and Whisky Advocate. When not writing, he travels the world extensively, tracking down new breweries and hosting beer dinners and tastings from São Paulo, Brazil, to Helsinki, Finland, and Beijing, China, to Seattle, Washington. brewingbusiness.co.uk 9_Layout 1 28/07/2016 09:27 Page 1