Bitter

In the world of brewing, we can precisely measure and define certain things—and those things don’t have a whole lot to do with how we smell, taste, and feel about beer.

Ope! Midwest IPA is just gonna sneak right past the two coastal substyles as a unique approach all its own, rooted in modern tradition while evolving for the future.

From Marble Beers in Manchester, England, here’s what head of production Joe Ince describes as “a lighter, hoppier bitter, northern in style.”

Today’s British brewers are melding traditional cask bitter with brighter, modern hopping for a crushable alchemy greater than the sum of its parts. Will the rest of us ever catch on?

Evan Price, cofounder and head brewer of Green Cheek in Orange, California, details how pH, water chemistry, hop varieties, and grain choices are all among the knobs you can turn to shape your ideal perception of bitterness in West Coast–style, hop-forward beers.

In today’s hop-forward beers, whirlpool additions contribute many of the IBUs—yet the results are less clear-cut than adding to the boil. Research—some new, some not-so-new—may provide direction.

Before there was hazy or even a defined West Coast style, there was an IPA that emerged as a brashly hopped counterpoint to British ale. It never went away—but it evolved. And today’s brewers are making it better than ever.

It used to seem so simple—know your hops and when you add them to the boil, and you’ll know how bitter your beer will be. Now, thanks to IPA’s evolution and lots of new research, bitterness is getting … complicated. Here are key takeaways to help you dial it in.

Pale ale makes an ideal base for trying out the split-batch method and experimenting with the different flavors you can get from one kettle of wort and a single brew day. Following this recipe, you’ll get an American-style pale ale, a Belgian-style pale ale, and a British-style strong bitter—but it’s easy to imagine more variations.

For De Ranke, looking back was looking forward. When the Belgian beer industry was minimizing bitterness, De Ranke embraced it instead, carving out a hop-forward niche that’s been influencing fellow brewers for nearly three decades.

Tim Sciascia, cofounder and head brewer at Cellarmaker, walks us through their typical boil and whirlpool hop additions for pale ales, as they aim for the desired level of bitterness while avoiding any vegetal off-flavors.

Courtesy of Mike Messenie at cask-centric Dutchess Ales in Wassaic, New York, this homebrew-scale recipe is a pleasantly lush and nuanced take on their original Best Bitter, meant for natural cask-conditioning in a 5.4-gallon (20-liter) “pin.”

No, it’s not boring—it’s sublime. Yes, it should be somewhat bitter—but balanced. Randy Mosher breaks down one of the beer world’s great classics and the context that makes sense of it. Ready for a session?

This English-style bitter recipe is quick to produce, tasty, and ideal for trying out cask ale at home.

An American beer scene still dominated by IPA is enjoying a renaissance of small-scale lager brewing—the ground is fertile for combining the best of both. We don’t care what you call it—IPL, cold IPA, hoppy pilsner, whatever—as long as we get to drink it.

Brewers don’t develop their tastes and skills in a vacuum; they’re affected by others, both before and during their careers. Here, Yvan De Baets of Brasserie de la Senne in Brussels chooses his pack and defends it (and wishes he could pick more than six).

Dark malts and ample hops intersect at a risky but rewarding flavor zone where few brewers dare to tread with regularity. Here we dig into recipe choices for distinctive, hop-forward black beers that avoid the pitfalls.

More juice, but with more bite—East Coast and West Coast are synthesizing, again, right before our eyes. How did we get here? And what’s next? Drew Beechum walks us through IPA’s battles and evolutions.

Today’s brewing world is baroque in its embrace of excess, but for Bissell Brothers of Portland, Maine, the not-so-secret strategy is a deep desire to perfect their existing beers rather than create a stream of new ones.

Released to celebrate National Homebrew Day, this is the recipe for Schlafly Pale Ale—inspired by Britain but now a Midwestern classic.