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21st Amendment Down to Earth Session IPA

Drink Reviews
21st Amendment Down to Earth Session IPA

Craft beer is currently looking square in the face of a generational shift. It’s a shift between older and younger breweries, and between venerable old brands and flashy new replacements. It’s a wave where former flagships are being updated into entirely new products. Look no further than Stone Brewing Co. for one, reformulating everything from their pale ale and classic IPA to their Ruination DIPA. That’s a brewery considering its options, reflecting on consumer feedback and moving forward into the future. (They also just let us release the recipe for venerable Levitation Ale).

Likewise, 21st Amendment is another brewery now taking a step in the same direction by discontinuing Bitter American, their pale ale since 2006, and transforming it into Down to Earth, a session IPA that seemingly keeps the malt bill intact while radically transforming the hop profile. It’s indicative of multiple trends in the industry and in consumer tastes: Fewer balanced or malt-driven pale ales and a trend toward fruitier, drier, thinner-bodied session IPAs that are showcases for the ever-emerging and diversifying arena of new hop varieties. Some people like the style, some people don’t, and some people appreciate both—count me among the latter. But regardless of which way the wind is blowing, I’ll simply say this: Down to Earth is a fantastic new session IPA. It’s one of the best pure session IPAs I’ve had to date, with no exaggeration.

This is a beer that pours an orangey-gold, a shade darker than most of the session IPAs on the market, with assertive aromatics that I could pick up on from about a foot away. There are aromas of orange marmalade and melon, chased by caramel and biscuity malt, all combining to create some sort of orange candy profile—very enticing and brash.

On the palate, it’s very crisp and dry, with a lightly grainy, toasted malt backbone that is wrapped in a blanket of oranges. There’s tons of citrus—a true citrus IPA-fan’s dream—and juicy melon. It screams summertime, and I can only imagine it would be great with something like fresh grilled fish or summer salad. Unsurprisingly, it drinks extremely easily. DANGEROUSLY easily, with low-to-mid bitterness that is just enough to keep things in check. As I’ve stated in the past, is there really anything different about this and a dry, hop-forward pale ale? No, but I’ve long since given up on fighting a term like “session IPA.” Pale ale, session IPA, as long as it’s good, I’ll drink it. And I want to drink about a pitcher of this.

21st Amendment has crafted a real winner here, a new year-round beer that will no doubt appeal to current tastes and hopefully will find a strong audience right off the bat. It’s now available in 22 states.

Brewery: 21st Amendment Brewery
City: San Francisco, CA
Style: Session IPA
ABV: 4.4%
IBU: 42
Availability: year-round, six-packs, 12 oz bottles


Jim Vorel is Paste’s news editor, and he likes his IPAs juicy. You can follow him on Twitter.

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