UPDATE: The results are now up!
March was a busy month for Paste, between the addition of new team members and the musical madness of SXSW, but there was one project we conducted from start to finish that I’m fairly confident I can say will be the most interesting for our beer-savvy readership.
If you’ve spent any time at all in our drinks tab since the fall, then you’ve probably noticed our monthly beer style tastings and rankings. In September, it was pumpkin beer. In October, marzens/Octoberfest lagers. In December, Christmas ales. In January, two different sets of imperial stouts—standard and barrel-aged. In February, American porters. We’ve kept it as varied and seasonably appropriate as possible, and our readers have responded by making each of those pieces heavily trafficked and shared. But we’re now attempting something that is so much larger and more ambitious that belongs to another tier, all by itself.
Throughout the month of March, the writers, editors and friends of Paste have conducted what has been by far the largest, most comprehensive and most carefully organized tasting in our history, tackling the most beloved and ubiquitous style in the world of craft beer: American-style India Pale ale. This is our way of updating 2013’s Top of the Hops tournament, wherein Paste conducted a 64-IPA bracket-style challenge (Firestone Walker Union Jack is the returning champ). This time, though, we took our game to the next level, gathering IPAs from every inch of the U.S.A. until the total stood at a truly ridiculous 116, almost doubling our previous figure. And we tasted all of those beers completely blind.
Almost every day in March, we’ve conducted the tasting by selecting 10 beers to assess blind. I was given the job of creating sensible daily groupings or “heats” that capture a fair dichotomy of the overall field of entries—no one day can have too many hyped or top-ranking beers, so it was important to make every day similar in terms of overall quality. We rated every single beer with numeral scores ranging from 1-100, and the top two from each heat were selected to move on to a final tasting of 25 IPAs, from which a champion will be drawn. We’ll be conducting that grand finale tasting later today, the reward for dozens of hours of very real labor that were put into this particular tasting, particularly in the time spent reaching out to breweries and acquiring the 116 entries. We assure you, that part wasn’t easy—the sheer number of emails and phone calls I made about American IPAs in the last couple months boggles the mind.
For that very reason, allow us to take this moment to answer a few preemptive questions:
Q. Which beers were considered?
A. Any “standard” American India Pale ale under 8% ABV, which was set as the cut-off between IPA and DIPA. The BJCP guidelines actually say 7.5%, but we bumped it up slightly. Note that this does still disqualify a couple of IPAs that are 8% and above, but with so many other breweries calling their beers DIPA at that alcohol range, it gets too confusing and inconsistent from 8% onward. Likewise, only “single” American IPA is on this list: No session IPA. No DIPA. No black IPA. No Belgian IPA, or anything with a Belgian yeast strain. Just classic American-style IPA.