Tag Archives: Session IPA

Summit Unchained #21: Us & Them

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Parti Gyle

For beer history geeks these words conjure up images of the great, old breweries of Britain – Barclay Perkins, Bass, Whitbread, Ind Coope, and Allsopp. They give homebrewers tech goosebumps. But for the uninitiated it sounds like an act of festive duplicity.

Parti gyle is a system of getting two beers from one mash. If you aren’t up on the brewing process, the mash consists of steeping grains at a certain temperature – usually somewhere around 150 degrees Fahrenheit – for a period of time. This steeping activates enzymes in the grain that convert the kernels’ starch into simple sugars that yeast can ferment. The resulting sugary liquid is called “wort.”

Once the steeping is done, the wort is run off into the kettle to be boiled. A lot of usable sugar gets left behind in the grains. Typically they are rinsed with hot water, making a thinner wort which is also run to the kettle. But if that thinner wort is diverted to a different kettle, you have the basis for a second beer from the same mash. That’s parti gyle.

In the olden days, English brewers would use this system to make beers of differing strengths. For instance, they might make an X, XX, and XXX version of their pale ale. As many as three gyles would be run off from a particular mash and then the worts containing different amounts of sugar were blended together at different proportions to make the different beers.

Very few breweries still do this. There are a couple of breweries in England, I am told. Fuller’s is one. Anchor Brewing in San Francisco has done it, making their refreshing Small Beer from the second runnings of Old Foghorn Barleywine. Surly’s Damien is made from the second thread of Darkness.

Summit brewer Gabe Smoley has revived the practice for the latest Unchained Series beer Us & Them. This the 21st beer in the series is actually two beers. 1st Thread is an American-style IPA that comes in at 7.2-percent alcohol. 2nd Thread is a session IPA at 4-percent, made from a second gyle of the same mash. The kettle hopping regime is the same. The dry hops are different.

The results are remarkable. Like siblings that grew up in the same family, these are two very distinct beers, but with an underlying quality that ties them together.

Here’s my notes:

1st ThreadUnchained #21: Us & Them 1st Thread
Summit Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota
Style: American IPA
Serving Style: 12 oz. bottle
7.2% ABV
90 IBU

Aroma: Hops lead – juicy melon and tropical fruit. Pineapple, mango. Faint herbal/floral notes. Low, grainy malt with moderate impression of sweetness. Low esters. Low alcohol.

Appearance: Full, creamy, off-white to ivory foam with excellent retention. Dark gold/orange and brilliant.

Flavor: Juicy hops with sturdy supporting malt. Bitterness is high and lingering, but amply supported by medium sweetness. Bitterness comes on stronger mid-palate. Hop flavor is high and juicy – tropical fruit, mango, pineapple, grapefruit, and tangerine. Sprite-like citrus. Malt flavor is low, neutral-grainy, with a faint biscuit character. Finish is off-dry with lingering bitterness and juicy tropical fruit.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body. Medium carbonation.

Overall Impression: A super-juicy and slightly sweet IPA with restrained bitterness and bursting hop flavor. Perhaps a bit sweet in the finish.

2nd ThreadUnchained #21: Us & Them 2nd Thread
Summit Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota
Style: American Session IPA
Serving Style: 12 oz. bottle
4% ABV
55 IBU

Aroma: Hops dominate. Bright citrus – lime and tangerine. Apricots. Low, neutral-grain malt with light notes of toasted biscuit. Very low impression of sweetness. Low esters.

Appearance: Full, creamy, just off-white head with excellent retention. Medium gold and brilliant.

Flavor: Hops through and through with a low, grainy cushion. Bitterness is high, but smooth. Bright, lemon/lime-citrus hop flavors, almost acidic. Low floral and apricot back notes. Sweetness is very low. Malt has a dry, toasted biscuit character. The finish is very dry with lingering toasted grain, bitterness, and lime citrus.

Mouthfeel: Light body. Medium-high carbonation.

Overall Impression: Light and bright. Most session IPAs have bitterness levels that are too high for their weight. This one has nice balance. 55 IBU in a 4% beer is still bracing, but it isn’t tongue scraping in this beer. The dry, biscuit malt background is reminiscent of an English bitter.

Summit Hopvale Organic Ale

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In June 2014, Canadian beer writer Stephen Beaumont wrote a sarcastic piece on his Blogging at the World of Beer blog titled Every Beer is Now an IPA. In it he bemoaned the proliferation of variants on the India Pale Ale – variants that often have nothing to do with that style except an overload of hops. Beer drinkers are subjected to black, white and red IPA, Belgian IPA, rye IPA, stout IPA, Cali-Belgique IPA and any number of others. IPA is such a popular style that brewers slap that acronym onto any hopped-up ale or lager they produce instead of going to the trouble of calling it something else. If it’s an IPA people will buy it.

The one that bugs me maybe the most is the “session IPA.” What the heck is that besides an oxymoron? The whole idea of an IPA is super-hoppy and high alcohol. Indeed the style’s mythical origin story is all about brewers upping the alcohol content on beer shipped to India so that is wouldn’t spoil. IPA was never intended to be sessionable. We have a style category for sessionable pale ale. It’s called “pale ale.”

So what is a session IPA and why isn’t it just called pale ale? A quick survey of a few of them shows alcohol content ranging from 4.3% to 5.1% ABV. Using the BJCP guidelines as a standard (because that’s the standard we’ve got) that puts all but one of them squarely in the range for American pale ale. And the one is under by just .2%. As for bitterness, they range from 40 to 65 IBU. Of the eight that I surveyed, only three were outside the American Pale Ale guidelines, one by an insignificant 2 IBU. I would argue that these beers are all just heavily late and dry-hopped pale ales.

But two of the examples that I looked at had significantly higher bitterness than is specified for an American pale ale. Stone Go To clocks in at 65 IBU and Summit Hopvale Organic Ale at 55 IBU – both square in the range for an IPA. So perhaps the definition of session IPA – if we have to call it that – should be a lower-alcohol, highly-hopped, pale ale with the bitterness of an IPA.

I don’t like the label, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the beers. Given my preference for malty beers, these often thin and aggressively bitter beers should not be to my taste. There is really nothing about them that I should like. But I happen to love them.

Did I mention Summit’s Hopvale Organic Ale? The newest year-round beer from the steadfast St. Paul brewery is being unleashed on the public today (April 1st. No really. It’s not a joke.). Summit seems to have studiously avoided the session IPA moniker in the marketing for this beer. Thank you Summit! They say merely that it has the “hop character of a full-strength IPA, but the drinkability of a low-gravity bitter.” But at 4.7% ABV and 55 IBU it fits neatly into the pigeon hole. It’s made with all organic ingredients and just a touch of lemon peel to give it a citrusy high note.

Here’s my notes:

Brews_Can_HopvaleHopvale Organic Ale
Summit Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota
Style: Session IPA
Serving Style: 16 oz. can
4.7% ABV
55 IBU

Aroma: Huge hop aroma. Melon, tropical fruit – mango. Herbs. Grapefruit. Lemon peel. Malt offers only a low impression of sweetness. Neutral character. Low esters – orange. Hint of sulfur. It all combines into a fruity, almost powdered sugar aroma.

Appearance: Medium gold and slightly hazy. Full, creamy, off-white head with excellent retention.

Flavor: Full blast of hops with low, supporting malt sweetness. Hop flavors are similar to the aroma – melon, tropical, grapefruit, pine. Lemon comes through more strongly. Bitterness is medium-high to high, but smooth, not overwhelming. Malt sweetness supports. Low biscuit/toast malt flavor. Light and refreshing. Hops are the star. Malt is barely there. Finish is very dry with lingering bitterness and hop flavors.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light body. Medium-high carbonation. Very low hop astringency.

Overall Impression: Hops rule the roost in this beer. Malt is almost an afterthought. Almost, but not quite. And oh, what hops they are. Full of rich, fruity and resiny flavors. And then there is that bright spot of lemon peel. This is one of those beers that I shouldn’t like, but do. This will be great in the summer, but it’s a year-round so you can drink it all the time.

Bent Brewstillery Moar Scottish Session IPA

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The session IPA train continues to roll. Smaller versions of America’s favorite beer keep flowing from breweries all over the country. The first Minnesota-brewed example of which I am aware was Summit’s Unchained #12: 100% Organic Ale released in early 2013. Now Roseville-based Bent Brewstillery has jumped on the trend with a new year-round offering called. Moar. Billed as a Scottish Session IPA, the beer delivers a low-test India ale with a decidedly British bent.

I’m a bit hard pressed though to figure out what classifies this as a “session IPA” rather than simply a special/best bitter. The ABV falls within the range for the best bitter style and the IBUs are only four points higher, an amount of extra bitterness that would go undetected by all but the most discriminating palates. In character it’s not too far off from the best bitter description offered by the BJCP. But you know what? Session IPA is a recently made up style anyway, so I’ll play along.

Here’s my notes:

Moar
Bent Brewstillery, Roseville, Minnesota
Style: Session IPA
Serving Style: 22 oz. bottle

Aroma: Caramel, biscuit and oranges. Fresh. Hops dominate slightly with the character of a freshly peeled orange. Low herbal/minty notes underneath. Toffee and dry-biscuit malt aromatics offer support. No alcohol. Low esters reinforce the orange hops.

Appearance: Medium-light orange/amber with a slight haze. Full head of creamy, white foam with low retention.

Flavor: Hops dominate. Medium-high bitterness rides through from start to finish. Citrus and herbal hop flavors carry over from the aroma, reinforced again by fruity esters to give the impression of freshly peeled orange. Malt offers some sweetness to balance the bitterness, but gives way to a super-dry finish. Flavors of toffee and biscuit linger after swallowing along with bitterness.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light body. Medium-low carbonation. Low astringency.

Overall Impression: Bent brewer Kristen England has done it again. Most session IPAs attempt to deliver IPA-level IBUs in a beer that can barely support them. England has opted instead for balance. The bitterness here is in line with the weight of the beer and the ability of the malt to offer support, making for a more drinkable beer. And malt character hasn’t been forgotten either. Toffee and biscuit flavors do more than just give the hops a place to sit.