The team here at Rocky Mountain Beer Explorer has always been fond of IPAs among all the beer styles we’ve tried all over the country. Recently we’ve found the regionally new style of “hazy” IPAs that are exceptionally good and tasty. When we wander into our favorite beer dealer’s cooler, we find it very hard not to reach for any number of hazy IPAs cooling their heels on the shelves.
Hazy IPAs have their roots in New England where they were first brewed in Vermont by master brewers who wanted to put large amounts of hops with a fruity flavor in a beer without the beer becoming bitter. They balanced the high hopping with just the right malts and careful water chemistry to create the beers we now know of as “juicy” or “hazy.” The beers tend to be opaque.
The result has been extremely popular and hazy beers have been spreading from the Northeast into the beer centers of the West Coast and, more importantly, Colorado where some of the master brewers of the Rocky Mountains have been putting them in the taps and in cans, not always without controversy.
People tend to like hazy beers because of the fruity flavor of the hops. Using up to three times more hops than go in traditional IPAs, some brewers have blended hops such as Citra, Mosaic, Galaxy, Amarillo and others. The trick is choosing the right hops, adding them at the right time and balancing them with malts that calm the edginess that can be off putting to some drinkers.
Andy Sparhawk of the Boulder based Brewer’s Association told craftbeer.com: “Hop haze is a permanent haze brought on by aggressive dry-hopping.” “The addition of more and more hops can have repercussions on clarity — and some brewers, as well as their hop-head fans, are OK with that.”
Some other brewers have even added some fruit to the brew to round off the flavor and get people excited about lemons and peaches. I have always associated a hazy beer, such as an unfiltered Hefeweizen, as a beer with extra nutrition. The haze is either yeast residue or tiny bits of hops.
Other brewers have complained that the hazy or juicy beers are “not ready” and not fully brewed, like a homebrew. Beers can be cleared by putting them in a centrifuge but most small brewers can’t afford such a machine.
The hazy beer trend is popular with many brewers putting them on tap and in cans to satiate thirsty hoards of beer drinkers. Some of New Mexico’s 44 breweries are making hazy IPAs. Tractor Brewing in Albuquerque is offering a hazy and Second Street will likely offer one soon.
The best hazy that is widely available in stores is the Sierra Nevada Hazy as well as Hazy from Great Divide in Denver.
Of course we can’t help remembering Jimi Hendrix singing about purple haze.
Cheers.
