Beer Expert vs. 6 IPA Styles

Matthew set a trap for me this week. He poured me six IPAs blind. They ranged from zero alcohol up to nearly 10%. My job was to figure out which style of IPA each one was. No hazies allowed, since the appearance would've been a dead giveaway. Watch the video to see me squirm, this was the hardest style discrimination I've done on camera.

Why do we keep shooting these videos? Because they're fun! It's also a window into how experienced sensory experts (if I may) analyze beer in the moment, under blind tasting exam-style conditions. If you're prepping for the Certified or Advanced Cicerone exams, these vids and write ups can be especially helpful. The way Matthew and I get through these blind lineups is essentially similar to how we'll teach you to crush yours on the exam - or to just level up your sensory skills!

The lineup

• Deschutes Fresh Squeezed Non-Alcoholic IPA
• Pizza Port session IPA, 4.5%
• Funky Fauna rustic IPA (Bend, Oregon), mixed fermentation
• Breakside IPA (Portland), 6.8%, a piney, grapefruity West Coast IPA
• Reuben's Brews double IPA (Seattle), 8%
• Fremont triple IPA (Seattle), 9.8%

Appearance tells you nothing. Faults and yeast tell you a lot.

I say this every single time we film one of these. Do not use appearance to identify beer styles on an exam. Every style has a color range. Those ranges overlap like crazy. One glass in this lineup was a shade darker than the rest. That could have been the non-alcoholic beer (dealcoholizing often involves heat, which darkens beer and ages it) or it could just as easily have been the triple IPA with all of its extra malt. The least alcoholic beer on the table or the most alcoholic one. Appearance did not help me decide.

My nose did. The darker glass smelled like wet cardboard, which is oxidation, the most common fault in packaged beer. Matthew gets more of a black iced tea note from oxidized hops where I get cardboard. Both of us are right. Describing aroma is never anything more than comparing what is in the glass to something the other person already knows. Either way, the staling pointed me straight at the NA beer. If I was wrong, then somebody else in the lineup had been sitting on a shelf for a year.

The hazy glass was the layup. It smelled funky, with the spicy, earthy phenols that Brettanomyces throws off. You would never expect noticeable yeast character in an American IPA, so the one beer with a lot of it had to be the mixed fermentation rustic IPA. That is not a BJCP style, by the way. It is a fun riff by a brewery I like a lot. I had a lovely saison from Funky Fauna just a couple of weeks ago.

Notice what happened there. Two of my six answers came from a fault and from yeast, not from hops. Work the same way on the exam. Sort out whatever is obviously off or obviously different first, then spend your attention on the hard pairs.

Strength is felt, not smelled

Here is where I started sweating. I kept waiting to get a whiff of alcohol off the bigger beers. It never really came. That is what great brewing does. The better the brewer, the less obvious the booze, even at 8 or 10%. So I had to fall back on mouthfeel and finish.

The session IPA and the Breakside IPA both drank light, dry and crushable. That is what a good IPA should do, even a double. If an IPA sits heavy on your palate, finishes sweet or burns on the way down, that is a mark against it. The Breakside was so clean that I went back and forth on whether I was drinking a 4.5% beer or a nearly 7% beer, which says everything about how well it is made. In the end a subtle extra weight on the palate told me it was the bigger of the two.

Quick aside, since we filmed this a few blocks from Breakside's original pub. Ben Edmunds, the brewmaster there, is about as respected as it gets in the beer geek world. I have judged the Great American Beer Festival several times. One year the organizers brought Ben on stage to give a room full of very experienced judges tips on tasting better. His brewers have gone on to run some of the best breweries in the Pacific Northwest, including Wayfinder. If you want a textbook West Coast IPA, Breakside is where I would send you.

Double vs. triple, or why a triple IPA is not triple anything

Matthew asked a smart question midway through. Should a triple IPA be three times as bitter as a regular IPA? No. The jump from double to triple is only a couple of percentage points of alcohol. To get there the brewer adds a lot more malt, which brings sugar for the yeast but also body and flavor compounds that never ferment out. Almost everyone making beers this big also adds plain sugar, which ferments completely and keeps the body from turning syrupy. Bitterness has to go up to balance all that malt, but how far it goes up is a house decision. One of these two leaned noticeably more bitter than the other. That told me about the brewery's taste, not about which beer was bigger.

So I picked on the only honest evidence I had, a slightly heavier mouthfeel plus the faintest extra warmth on one of the two. I told Matthew I was less confident than I have been on any call in this series.

I got all six. The championship belt stays in Portland.

Do this at home

You do not need me or Matthew to run this drill. Buy an IPA ladder, say a session IPA, a regular IPA and a double from breweries you trust. Have a friend pour them blind. Pay attention to body, finish and warmth rather than hop aroma, since every one of them is going to smell like citrus and pine. Then throw in an NA beer or an old can from the back of the shelf so you learn what oxidation smells like on purpose.

If you want structure around this kind of practice, my Certified Cicerone course includes a blind tasting proctor guide plus panel-by-panel tasting exam prep. Matthew and I also pour styles side by side every week in the live tastings for the Beer Scholar community on Skool. Come sweat with us.

Cheers! –Chris