#cloudy ipa

The New Normal

The same time I picked up our second four-pack of 3-Way, I grabbed a can of Fluffy, another cloudy IPA from Claim 52 in Eugene. Fluffy is an appropriate moniker for this beer. It’s super smooth, with far more malted wheat for a sweet bready flavor. The hops are bold, but focused on tangerine. It’s not the hodgepodge of flavors you get from the new 3-Way, and it lacks a certain acidity of our new favorite beer, but it’s really drinkable. I can see why so many beer nerds are tripping over themselves to drink these beers. 

So I must pose a question: Is the new hazy IPA craze a fad? Or is this the new normal? 

On the one hand, hoppy beers have been getting less and less bitter lately. When I started this blog five years ago, the term “hoppy” was a watchword for both IPA lovers and bitterness haters. Lots of people loved hoppy beer. Lots of people hated hoppy beer. In the time sense, the meaning of hoppy has changed. The word doesn’t have the same connotations. And at the same time the IPA category has grown to encompass a wider selection of flavors. 

So perhaps these sweet ultra-flavorful beers are just the next step in IPA’s evolution.

But there have been a million attempts at creating new IPA substyles in the last five years. White IPA, black IPA, brown IPA, red IPA: brewers have tried all the colors of the rainbow. Each had it’s moment and faded again. Examples of each are still around, but the volume is lessened considerably. 

We have some minor complaints.

Hey, Amanda. You did a great job today. We got our order really fast and all that. You looked a little busy, so I didn’t want to bother you. You probably had no time to chat, and I don’t like confrontation – or conversation for that matter. But I had a few notes on our meal tonight.

It’s not our first time at Breakside’s Slabtown brewpub. We’ve been before. But between the two times, we’ve had a pretty mediocre experience.

First of all, the pint of Hop Delivery Mechanism you served Sarah had quite a bit of diacetyl in it. I know, I know. It’s not your job to make the beer, or even pour it, but I think you need to tell someone the beer you’re serving is seriously, seriously flawed. It tastes like buttered popcorn. That’s fine flavor for a jelly bean, not a double IPA. I would’ve mentioned something, but as I said, I hate confrontation.

It’s not your fault, Amanda. It’s not your fault. 

The Bazooka Face was actually really really good. It’s hard to pull off a session strength IPA that is actually satisfying. It wasn’t super watery, and the hop flavor was real orangy, which I enjoyed. I thought it was cute that the menu said it tasted like sunny-D.

The food was good, if a little bland. I can, and do, cook better vegan food at home three nights a week – the other two night sare about on par with the food served here. 

Again, that’s not really your realm Amanda, but I had to say it. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine. There are at least five great bars in Portland serving amazing vegan pub grub. Go there and figure out how they do it. Not you Amanda, but someone, please.

It took a while to get my second beer, probably due to the afterwork crowd. You guys must get a lot of them huh?

Precious Snowflake was a nice double IPA. There was no butter in it for one, but it also had nice flavors, too. Pineapple and weeds are nice. Pine and dirt can be good. Heck even all those onions were cool.

I get it. This new brewpub is supposed to be all experimental and everything. It’s a hop lab. That’s why two-thirds of the taps are some variation on IPA. But last time we were here, in March, I got two different cloudy IPAs, Something Wicked and the Night Shift collab Shift Break, and I couldn’t tell them apart. 

Okay, you got me. I could tell them apart, but they were so similar it seemed like the experiment here was to test your patrons ability to tell the difference between a lemon and a grapefruit. Kinda boring.

It’s not your fault Amanda, but maybe you can get this message to your bosses?

Please Order at the Bar

Culmination Brewing is located in a cavernous, old warehouse in NE Portland, blocks from the freeway and the massive Pepsi bottling plant. It shares space with a sock manufacturer and a cider and mead maker. The tasting room is tiny, the bar probably fits fifty, uncomfortably. The tables are too short and the stools are too high. But there is a nice patio in the front, in a few months it will be too warm to mind. 

It’s hard to mind the cramped space once the beer starts flowing. There are twenty taps on the wall, five of them for guests, fifteen brewed in-house. The tap list is a beer nerds dream, featuring hops, more hops, three different sour beers, and a few interesting adjuncts like yuzu and cherry blossoms.

During the week, the Culmination kitchen churns out the usual bacon flavored french fries and pulled pork sandwiches you’ve come to expect at a taproom. On Sundays, they host Of Roots and Blooms, a pop-up restaurant which specializes in very fancy, very tasty vegan food. 

Over a bowls of beet ravioli stuffed with winter root veggies and almond ricotta with fennel-leek cream sauce, we sampled all the IPAs we could. It just seemed like the prudent thing to do. From what we tasted, four of the eight hoppy ales on offer, Culmination has definite house flavor, juicy and sharp.

Perhaps the most juicy, and Sarah’s favorite of the night, was Obscured by Clouds. The Northeastern IPA is having a moment in Portland, spurred on by the sudden popularity of Great Notion Brewing’s Juice Box. Culmination’s version is thick as milk with a massive citrus flavor. It’s like drinking fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, with extra pulp. It goes down ultra smooth, even at 8.4%.

Next up we had Elation Imperial IPA, a more traditional West Coast double IPA. It’s juicy too, but with a redder, more berry forward flavor – black currant, raspberry – and a slightly tart finish.  

Zenwave – a “HefeweIPAzen” brewed in collaboration with Widmer Brothers – was the hazy younger brother of Obscured by Clouds, tasty but a little boring compared to the real thing. 

Seeing as it’s February, the unofficial season of triple decker IPAs, we also sampled Ferret the Younger. I picked up a definite note of blueberry from Mosaic hops. I was impressed how clean it tastes. It never betrays its 11.9% ABV.

We finished our flight with Peche, a peach flavored sour ale. They call it a Flanders Style Blonde. It’s pretty authentic – sour, fruity, sharp. Yet, I was itching for a little more wood flavor. A little more funk. 

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