Author: Marshall Schott

IPA is an assertive style in many respects, possessing relatively high levels of bitterness, hop character, and alcohol, which can hinder ample consumption. While American Pale Ale offers drinkers a generally more restrained option, the style as classically interpreted tends toward more of a balanced malt and hop profile, which can leave a hop-heads wanting for more.

Purportedly coined by Full Sail Brewery, the term session is commonly used to describe beers of lower ABV that can be guzzled by the growler full. Typically reserved for styles that naturally tend toward the lower end of the alcohol scale, there’s been increased interest in crafting beers of such humble potency that pack more of a hoppy punch than traditional Pale Ale.

Enter Session IPA, a non-style style with an arguably oxymoronic moniker that has caused quite the kerfuffle among those who care a bit too much. Too hoppy for an APA and not enough sauce to be an IPA, Session IPA is a sort of mental amalgamation of ideas thrust into a pint glass. With no formal section in the BJCP guidelines, Session IPA falls into the category of Specialty IPA and requires the brewer to specify the strength when entering one in a competition. The description matches that of American IPA with the exception of that ABV falling in the range of 3.0 – 5.0%.

A decidedly hoppy and bitter, moderately strong American pale ale, showcasing modern American or New World hop varieties. The balance is hop-forward, with a clean fermentation profile, dryish finish, and clean, supporting malt allowing a creative range of hop character to shine through.

A commonly cited problem when brewing Session IPA has to do with creating a beer that’s full-flavored and creates the organoleptic impression of a regular IPA without being watery or lifeless. Having developed a few hypotheses based past xBmt results, I was curious to see what might come of making such a beer using some not-so-traditional methods.

| BREWING THE BEER |

My thinking when designing this beer was influenced largely by past xBmts showing that beers with a higher FG aren’t necessarily more sweet than those that attenuate more, at least to an easily distinguishable degree. As such, I used more malt in this batch in hopes of retaining adequate body and flavor, while adjusting the mash temperature up to limit fermentability.

Short & Shoddy Session IPA

Recipe Details Batch Size Boil Time IBU SRM Est. OG Est. FG ABV 5.5 gal 30 min 44.9 IBUs 6.3 SRM 1.048 1.017 4.1 % Actuals 1.048 1.018 4.0 % Fermentables Name Amount % Lamonta American-style Pale Malt (Mecca Grade) 10 lbs 81.63 Vanora Vienna-style Malt (Mecca Grade) 1.5 lbs 12.24 Metolius Munich-style Malt (Mecca Grade) 12 oz 6.12 Hops Name Amount Time Use Form Alpha % Horizon 13 g 30 min First Wort Pellet 14.1 Citra (2014) 15 g 10 min Boil Pellet 13.8 Comet (2015) 15 g 10 min Boil Pellet 9.6 Comet (2015) 40 g 2 min Boil Pellet 9.6 Cali Chinook (2018) 30 g 2 min Boil Pellet 11 Citra (2014) 30 g 2 min Boil Pellet 13.8 Comet (2015) 25 g 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 9.6 Cali Chinook (2018) 20 g 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 11 Citra (2014) 20 g 5 days Dry Hop Pellet 13.8 Yeast Name Lab Attenuation Temperature Tartan (A31) Imperial Yeast 73% 65°F - 70°F Notes Water Profile: Fresno Tap + a palm full of gypsum Download Download this recipe's BeerXML file

My brew day began with the collection of water, which I ran through a cheap carbon filter.

While the water was flowing, I poured a small mound of gypsum into the palm of my hand then tossed it into the liquor. No other adjustments were made.

I lit the flame under the kettle to begin heating the full volume of brewing liquor.

As the water warmed, I weighed out and milled the grains for this batch.

It took a little bit longer to heat the strike water due to the fact I would be mashing at a much warmer temperature than usual. At 35 minutes from water collection, I dropped the bag of grains into the hot water, gave it a good stir, then made sure the mash was where I planned on it being.

After a zippy 20 minute rest, I removed the grain bag and let it drain while the wort was being heated.

I then proceeded to weigh out the hops, most of which I’d recently discovered sitting in the back of my freezer, the Citra having somehow lost it’s vacuum since I last used it over a year prior.

The wort was boiled for 30 minutes with hops added per the recipe.

During the boil, I poured the rather hefty dry hop addition into a stainless mesh sleeve and dropped it directly into the empty fermentation vessel.

At the end of the short boil, I quickly chilled the wort is my immersion chiller and took a refractometer reading showing it was smack on where I hoped it would be.

I then racked 5.5 gallons of wort to a plastic fermentor that held the dry hop charge.

The filled fermentor was placed in my chamber controlled to 66°F/19°C. The wort was sitting at 71°F/22°C, warmer than I might usually pitch the yeast, but hey… in went a single pouch of Imperial Yeast A31 Tartan. This was exactly 2 hours 15 minutes after I started brewing.

I checked on the beer 8 hours later and didn’t notice any activity, something I attribute to direct pitching a pouch of yeast that was over 5 months old. While slightly concerned at first, my worries were quelled when I observed a bubbling airlock the following morning, less than 24 hours post-pitch. After 6 days of fermentation, I noticed activity was completely absent and took a hydrometer measurement showing my high mash temperature plan had worked– the beer finished at 1.018 FG.

After swapping out the airlock with a CO2 filled BrüLoonLock, I reduced the temperature in my chamber to 34°F/1°C for cold crashing.

Later that evening, once the beer had dropped below 50°F/10°C, I added some gelatin in hopes of clearing the beer up. I let that sit for another 20 hours before racking the beer to a sanitized keg that had been purged with CO2. The filled keg was placed in my cool keezer and hit with 50 psi of CO2 for 14 hours of burst carbonation before I reduced the gas to serving pressure. After 4 more days of cold conditioning, the beer was ready to serve to serve to participants.

| RESULTS |

A total of 12 people of various levels of experience participated in this Short & Shoddy evaluation. Participants were first asked to identify the style they believed the beer to be based on their perception.

Tasters were then instructed to rate how hoppy, malty, and dry they perceived the beer to be on a 0-5 scale where a rating of 0 indicated “not at all” and 5 indicated “extremely;” these ratings were then averaged.

Tasters were provided a list of common hop, malt, and yeast characteristics then instructed to select from each the one they perceived as being strongest in the beer.

Hop Characteristics

Malt Characteristics

Yeast Characteristics

Next, participants were asked to indicate whether or not they detected any off-flavors in the beer; those who did were provided a list of common off-flavors and instructed to select the one they perceived as being strongest. Of the 6 people who noticed off-flavors, 2 identified astringent and 1 each noted metallic, acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and alcoholic.

Tasters were then asked to rate how much they enjoyed the beer on a 0-5 scale where 0 indicated they hated it and 5 indicated they loved it.

Finally, the beer style was revealed to participants and they were asked to rate how representative it was on a 0-5 scale where 0 meant “not at all” and 5 meant “exactly.”

My Impressions: Focused almost entirely on malt flavor and mouthfeel, I was rather impressed upon my first sampling of this beer prior to packaging. I’ve found most beers improve once carbonated and cold conditioned for a bit, but I was pleased to have discovered the beer wasn’t watery or completely pallid. I started to get a little worried when tasting the beer after a day of burst carbonation, the fizz seemed to bring something out that was rather… unique. When it came time to collect data a few days later, I finally accepted something had gone awry and that this beer just wasn’t good, to the point I felt terrible asking people to evaluate it, hence the lower than normal number of participants. It wasn’t laziness, it was a gesture of good will.

| CONCLUSION |

Session IPA is supposed to mirror all of the characteristics of a good IPA but with less alcohol, making it all the more crushable. A common method for accomplishing this involves using a smaller amount of grain, though as many brewers have experienced, this can lead to lacking flavor and body. To counter this, I relied on the results of past xBmts showing a higher FG doesn’t necessarily correspond to more perceived sweetness and mashed my Short & Shoddy version of this style a bit warmer than usual, allowing me to use more flavorful malt. And it worked, the beer finished with a higher FG and lower ABV without being cloying.

Unfortunately, any good that was present in this Session IPA was overshadowed by the sharp bitterness that lingered way too long on the palate and general absence of the fruity hop character one might expect considering the varieties and amounts used. Rather, the beer was strikingly earthy and woody with an odd whisper of smoke that was completely out of place for the style. Given its similarity in taste to a beer I made using old and poorly stored Simcoe hops awhile back, I’m compelled to think the fact I used mostly old hops that I found sitting in the back of my freezer seemed a likely contributor, though I wasn’t convinced that was sole culprit.

A few years ago, I recall someone telling me they get a slight hint of smoke in beers they ferment with the McEwan strain, which Imperial Yeast’s A31 Tartan is said to be sourced from. While I’ve not used this particular yeast enough to form an opinion for myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps this is where the smoky character in my Session IPA came form. Another idea that crossed my mind is that something about adding the dry hop addition yeast pitch screwed with the character of the finished beer. I’ve done this a few times with success, but it seems at least plausible my use of this method was at play in the shoddy results.

In the end, this beer was a complete and utter failure, tasting nothing at all like the beer I envisioned when designing the recipe. I considered the possibility of a contamination, but based on the fact the FG hadn’t changed at all even after 3 weeks in the keg, I really don’t think that was it. Oxidation comes to mind as well, but that seems unlikely seeing as I took the effort to limit oxygen exposure during cold crashing and packaging. Accurately identifying characteristics of a beer with such strong overtones can be difficult, but I’m pretty sure this Session IPA was free of any of the feared by-products of the Short & Shoddy process. No, it just tasted like old hops.

Brewing a shitty beer is a major bummer for most people, but I tend to view it as a part of the learning process, even when it’s bad enough to demand dumping down the drain, as this one did. In addition to being quite humbling, this experience motivated me, not only to rid my freezer of 3+ year old hops, but to brew a Session IPA using Short & Shoddy methods that people actually enjoy drinking.

If you have thoughts about this Short & Shoddy brew, please feel free to share in the comments section below!

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