Have you indulged in the haze craze?  As you may have noticed, the new IPA in town is the Hazy IPA.  In fact, Hazy IPA's have dominated craft brewing competitions for the past several years. One great thing about a Hazy IPA is that people who don’t enjoy classic IPAs can find themselves loving the taste of a Hazy IPA. 

Visually, the difference between a Hazy IPA and a classic American-style IPA is the cloudiness that gives Hazy IPAs their name. If you’re a long-time IPA drinker, you’ve seen the rise of the Hazy IPA style. It’s grown from a niche interest to dominating beer shelves, while bringing in more future IPA fanatics. Whether you’re new to the style or already a fan, you may have wondered: What makes the haze hazy?

Most beer we drink tends to be filtered. Hazy IPAs skip the filtration step, leaving behind the extra goodness from the grain and hops. The careful planning of malt and hops, along with less filtering before packaging, yields a beer with lower perceived bitterness than other IPAs and hop character that’s decidedly fruity—you’ll often hear “juicy” as a flavor descriptor, like a tasty bite of ripe citrus. The popularity of Hazy IPA suggests it’s a welcoming style within craft beer.

With countless Hazy IPAs on store shelves, it’s no surprise their taste can vary greatly.  Hazy IPAs are like a beautiful union of solid and liquid. The main component making up the haze in your IPA is grain protein. If you’ve ever had a wheat beer, you’ve probably seen haze there too. That’s because wheat has a much higher protein content than barley, the main ingredient in beer. 

Along with grain protein from wheat and barley, there are solid compounds from hop oils and starch from oats if a brewer decides to use them. If a beer has fruit, fruit pectins might also add to the mix. These are all big, insoluble organic compounds, and with the right recipe, they’ll remain visible in the beer, instead of settling into a sediment. 

While their haze is jam-packed with flavor, Hazy IPAs don't have higher alcohol content. Craft brewers target various ABV depending upon their vision for a recipe, from easy-drinking session beers to those that overwhelm your taste buds. The calories in a Hazy IPA, like any craft beer, largely come from carbohydrates and alcohol generated during brewing and fermentation. The yeast leave behind sugars they can’t break down. So the nutrition facts of a Hazy IPA depend on recipe design, namely the target alcohol content and how “fermentable” the grains are.

What makes Hazy IPAs appealing is that they tend to have a thick, satisfying taste from both the density and the extra solids and lower perceived bitterness. Hop aroma compounds also like to stick to those big organic compounds in the haze, which is why Hazy IPAs tend to pack such a powerful punch when it comes to flavor and aroma.

You'll find a wide selection of classic IPAs and Hazy IPAs at The Beer Trap. Many of our selections this time of year are seasonal, so be sure to choose yours while they are in stock. Once these seasonal beers are gone, we won't see them again until this time next year.