what's with commercial IPAs?

[Magnus314]

I live in Florida and the VAST majority of west coast IPA's suck here. Bitter and otherwise flavorless - little or no hop aroma, etc.

Sierra, Lagunitas... even the Stone IPA at the local craft/homebrew store is the same as Costco... sucks. Dogfish anything is no picnic either. Mission in the can... gross.

All bitter, no flavor or aroma.

Travel does NOT help IPA's.

We have a few (VERY few) excellent breweries in the local area, and their offerings are - to paraphrase - amazeballs!

My guess is because they are fresh and local.

Certainly my fresh, dry hopped homebrew is amazeballs (I think

So it must be a time/handling/packaging thing.

 

[GCPHomebrew]

I only buy IPAs at a store with a cicerone and the willingness to tell the distributor "take this crappy mishandled garbage beer back!". So if you can go to a hyvee(where I go), nothing but amazing tasting hoppy beer. A new store recently opened closer to me than the hyvee. It sells aged beef and IPAs. Threw 3 six packs in the trash from them. All beers I have had previously. If the labels says oranges or pine and you taste metal/pennies/ blood it was mishandled(got hot or is old). So don't hate on IPAs you are making what their beer should taste like

 

[desabat]

West Coast Double IPAs have to be even fresher IMO as they taste like hot alcohol after the hops are gone. You can't make an 8-10 % ABV beer with a 1.00 - 1.005 FG without packing some sort of flavor and aroma in the form of yeast or hops. Yeast profile lasts longer than hops in the bottle as well.

IPAs will always be better when fresh that's why the ones you make taste better. Recently was gifted some very good west coast Double ipas and thought that they tasted too much like alcohol and almost no hop flavor/aroma compared to my own but it's just the freshness not that pro brewers are making bad ipas.

 

[khillian]

This is for, Nicole Erny master cicerone,

"oxidized hop compounds get pretty confusing!
the paper/cardboard is from trans-2-nonenal, which comes from a precursor - an unsaturated fatty acid in malt.
hop compounds are a little trickier. The classic "old hop" aroma is isovaleric acid, which is an oxidized fatty acid from hops, and is the same compound found in foot sweat and in some "stinky" cheeses. So "cheesy" is a hop off flavor... the thing is this usually comes from beer MADE with old hops...
SO a really hop forward beer that is old/oxidized/exposed to heat will first of all, loose the intense and fresh complexity you might expect. The first aromas to go are those derived from dry hopping and very very late aroma additions - and happen to be the least water-solluble (makes sense, right?) monoterpnes such as myrcene, as well as compounds like linalool, limonene, and others don't want to stay in solution and will leave. They would rather stick to the cap, can liner, or glom onto something that isn't water and is precipitating out of solution.
After those other terpenes and terpenoids go... goodbye fresh pine needle, citrus, floral, and other aromas...
The bitterness derrived from isomerized alpha acids also start to subside.
Other flavor compounds start to oxidize and change. Beta acids and others have compounds that can become more bitter as they oxidize.
Oxidized flavor and aroma compounds in hops could be compared to those of any vegetable or fruit... think canned v. fresh. I often get notes of canned peach and stale tea... fruit and tea likely have some of the exact same compounds as hops that are causing the particular flavor (most "flavor active" compounds occur in multiple places, but it is the magical combination of compounds that make up for the "essence" of a particular fruit, veg, etc).
To sum it up, let's say you have an oxidized american IPA... it is just starting to show signs... You might have enhanced carmel flavors (malt derrived) notes of stone fruit like canned peaches (hops) and a less pleasant, flat bitterness (hops). There might be a popsickle stick aroma or no aroma at all where you're expecting a fresh burst of straight-up dryhop action. This is, unfortunately what most bottled IPAs taste like due to poor handling!
-N"

Explains everything you guys on the east coast experience. The cardboard descriptor is BS with hoppy beers. More bitter, no flavor, no aroma. Hoppy beers are like a ticking time bomb, they must be consumed within weeks and kept cold. I live in SF, and gave up on any bottled IPAs that don't have bottle dates. This is why local beer rules, fresh growlers consumed fresh. The same applies for homebrew, I always laugh at people on HBT that claim their hoppy beers are better at a month in the keg or bottles. I think those folk have never had an aromatic awesome hoppy beer. My hoppy homebrew tastes best the first day I tap my keg, and falls off after a few weeks. Most are brewed and gone within one month. Most people claim they don't oxidize their homebrew but I think most common flaw in homebrew is oxidation. It doesn't come off as cardboard ever to me, just loss of hoppy aroma and flavors, and weird bitter malty finish. I also don't trade commercial beers, see people reviewing month old Pliny Bottles. I can get bottles every week where I live and notice even kept cold it starts to change for the worst after a week. Russian River also has an insane c02 purge system using way more then most commercial operations. So applying this for our homebrew it's the biggest obstacle in my mind to make hoppy beer anywhere near Pliny/Heady/etc. due to oxidation. It's not your ingredients or recipe, it's your process!

 

[Hopcalypse]

The fresher the better for IPAs.

I generally only buy local IPAs in the bottle due to freshness. My favorite local-ish IPA is White Rajah and I have even had not so good sixers of that. It just depends on the store and how long it was sitting there.

I recently entered an IPA into a homebrew competition. Kegged it was awesome with tons of citrus aroma, however, when I tried a bottle 5 days after the competition I was disappointed with the aroma and flavor. It scored decently, but I defiantly see why it did not place in the top 3. Next time I will remember to dry hop right before I bottling.

 

[ktblunden]

I live in Florida and the VAST majority of west coast IPA's suck here. Bitter and otherwise flavorless - little or no hop aroma, etc.

Sierra, Lagunitas... even the Stone IPA at the local craft/homebrew store is the same as Costco... sucks. Dogfish anything is no picnic either. Mission in the can... gross.

All bitter, no flavor or aroma.

Travel does NOT help IPA's.

We have a few (VERY few) excellent breweries in the local area, and their offerings are - to paraphrase - amazeballs!

My guess is because they are fresh and local.

Certainly my fresh, dry hopped homebrew is amazeballs (I think

So it must be a time/handling/packaging thing.

The bolded portion exactly. The best IPA is a fresh IPA. If you can get it fresh from the tap at the brewery (including your own), all the better.