Winter IPAs Are Coming
The pandemic changed the purchasing behaviors of craft beer fans in many ways. My personal favorite has been the spike in consumers embracing the seasons. More days at home allowed more time to slow life down and feel like we did growing up, when everything didn’t move so fast. As Don Draper said in Mad Men, "You are the product. You feeling something. That's what sells."
You’ll struggle to find a craft brewery whose Oktoberfest sales didn’t exceed their expectations in 2020 & 2021. Holiday beers followed suit, over-performing in 2020 and leaving few release calendars without at least one festive brand. The challenge remained unsolved though for the cold, often snowy days beginning December 26th. How do you make consumers feel something during these darker, gloomy months? Craft beer’s #1 style is elbowing it’s way into the chat because, to use Don Draper’s line, “that’s what sells".
So what do I mean when I say “Winter IPAs” are coming? Every tie to Winter that you can think of. As my neighbor to the North, Half Acre Beer Co. so eloquently put it on Instagram, “Seasonal beers, more than most, are big for beer makers to fiddle with the associations living in the recesses of your brain”. So for this post, let’s travel the map and I’ll share some examples you should expect to see, along with a project I’ve been working on for Revolution.
1) THE RETURN OF THE WHITE IPA
The Black IPA had its moment back in the spotlight last year, so why wouldn’t the White IPA return for another cup of coffee? Blending American-style IPA with Belgian wit provides those pleasant fruity esters with a good bit more punch and extra bitterness. What’s not to like about that? In fact, as Firestone Walker’s R&D brewer Sam Tierney asked on Twitter over the Summer:
If brewers weren’t in planning mode when Sam wrote that tweet in July, they probably are now. But the always on-trend team at New Belgium was already on the prowl, preparing to announce the comeback of their White IPA called Accumulation, now branded as a Winter Hazy IPA, “inspried by super fluffy, wispy winter snowfalls”.
After reaching out, I learned that Accumulation will be an overhauled & modernized version of their now-dated original White IPA recipe. Still a hefty amount of wheat and mosaic hops carries over from old recipe, but now with a heavy dose of oats in an attempt “to mimic the pillowy snow pile feel”. The dry hop of El Dorado, Strata, Lotus, and Mosaic Incognito (Hot side and cold side) should add to its more modern day feel.
2) EXTRA LAYERS
The White IPA is more of a riff off of Winter elements than it is seasonal, which I’m completely OK with. It combines an approachable Summer style with a year-round one, leaning more on appearance and perhaps mouthfeel to hit the theme. An alternative approach to a Winter-y IPA is the route of building a recipe that helps coat the body with that extra layer of warmth. Half Acre went in this direction with the recent launch of Tend, which they eloquently describe as follows:
“…we’ve looked at the cycling, Gregorian hold-down that is Midwestern cold. Brewing beer for the cold, we think hearty, chewy beer. Give us color, increased density and heft to live with the sunken temps, but hopefully beers brewed in rhythm with the season push on associations. In Tend, a range of specialty malts tilt us into a Caramel, baked & toasted bread landscape ~ chord wood, simmering soups, wind-licked skin. Some of our favorite hops, Mosaic and Simcoe, bake-in the notes of pine and orange, berry marmalade ~ Norway Spruce, dense outdoor soundscapes only heavy snow can provide and fractalized horizons sliced-up by naked trees. Weighty Winter IPA brewed for wood smoke and fire to lift your mind out over the dim, long cold.”
Gimme.
3. Cryo Hopped IPAs
Yakama Chief was very wise to brand their hop product with a slick term like “cryo”, providing breweries with a fun way to play off the key ingredient in their branding. These concepts are less about the temperatures outside and more about playing up the name of an innovation from the hop industry. And using Cryo in a beer name is nothing new, but I am expecting a surge this Winter as brewers look to stay relatable.
Cryo hops are a treated version of varieties we know and love, thanks to cryogenic processing technology which uses low temperatures in a nitrogen-rich environment to separate out and better concentrate the desirable resins and aromatic oils. Cryo hops are more costly to brewers, but improve efficiency and yielding more (finished beer) using less (expensive hops), and leaving less waste. More importantly to the consumer, the flavors and aromatics get punched up quite a bit thanks to the more intense does of lupulin and reduction of the less desirable grassy, vegetal flavors.
A cynic might say that your average customer isn’t going to know the difference. To me, that’s less so the point. Brewers tasting their own beer each day can tell the difference and get excited about these hops products. An important part of craft beer’s evolution and story-telling is to convey that excitement and what’s happening behind the scene to your customers.
4. COLD IPAs
With lagers on the uptick, but IPAs still firmly planted on the iron throne, the Cold IPA has emerged as a smart, modified approach to classic India Pale Lagers & Dry-Hopped Lagers that has a better chance of resonating today. The style was coined by Kevin Davey, brewmaster at Wayfinder Beer in Portland, OR. The hybrid approach combines the magnificent hop aroma and clean assertive bitterness of an American IPA with the crisp, clean finish that lager drinkers continuously come back for.
I love how use of this adapted style name begs the question, “Why is it called a Cold IPA?” The majority of casual beer fans do not know the difference in fermentation temperatures between ale yeast and lager yeast, and more importantly, the impact on flavor. By building this process-driven nugget into the made-up style name, it results in more healthy conversation that advances knowledge a little bit further. You say marketing, I say education.
On a Personal Note…
I like to keep my job and this blog as separate as possible, but I’ve been hyper aware of this trend because of it matching up so well with a project I’ve been working on. As part of my role with Revolution Brewing, I lead our brand development including the “League of Heroes” Variety 12-Packs of IPA. We rotate the box’s artwork every 3 months, along with the beers inside, to feel like an issue of a comic book, keep the concept fresh, and simulate a new adventure each time.
The variety pack became our at-home equivalent of a tasting room flight during the pandemic, selling very well and setting a high bar in a post pandemic world. So last year I proposed the lofty idea of having all of the IPAs and corresponding Hero characters fall within a new theme for each pack. The strategy being to enhance the story-telling and overall experience. I wanted to ensure that the League of Heroes stayed innovative, beyond the liquid itself, which usually means raising the degree of difficulty (and costs). If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Due to previous commitments, the first opportunity to complete a full themed pack would be November 2021, coming up now. Knowing what a brutal two month stretch January & February are for Midwesterners, as well as brewery sales, I wanted to create a pack that spoke to what our core consumer base was going through: Winter. The recipes didn’t necessarily need to be built for Winter like Half Acre’s release, but I wanted to tie the brands into this time of year, through each character’s backstory and show that embracing the brutal season can still be fun.
The result:
For the same reason we put pumpkins outside in October and lights around our home in December, it just feels good to get into the spirit and connect with the season. Craft beer has long been enjoying it’s place during the holidays and is now coming at us with creative options to keep us engaged through the less festive months that follow. You say Marketing, I say…okay fine, it’s Marketing.