It seems like everyone these days is making a fruity IPA.
India pale ales are known for the citrus qualities imparted by many kinds of hops, but in recent years brewers have taken it a step further, adding juice, puree, and other forms of fruit to already hoppy beers. Ballast Point Brewing Company’s ubiquitous Sculpin IPA brand, for example, now has grapefruit and pineapple versions, and the California brewery is not alone.
Two notable New England brewers are joining in with a pair of on-trend fruit beers. Long Trail Brewery’s Citrus Limbo and Samuel Adams’s Rebel Juiced are takes on already existing IPAs from each company.
“We did not want this to be a fruit beer,’’ Long Trail brewmaster Dave Hartmann says of Citrus Limbo. “We wanted it to be a hoppy IPA with some fruit character.’’
To make Citrus Limbo, Hartmann and his team wanted to use real fruit, but first they had to overcome a problem: the bitterness contained in the pith of grapefruit and tangerine peels.
“We didn’t want to use artificial flavoring,’’ says Hartmann. “We wanted to come at it with something that was an agricultural product.’’
Long Trail brewers ended up pressing the peels, then soaking mosaic and galaxy hops in the essential oils. The resulting beer is every bit as crisp and biting as the original Limbo IPA, with more intense grapefruit notes. It clocks in at 7.6 percent alcohol by volume and 80 international bitterness units.
Less bitter is Rebel Juiced, Sam Adams’s Rebel IPA enhanced with mango juice. In tweaking the flagship beer from Samuel Adams’s popular Rebel IPA line, founder Jim Koch says he wanted to highlight the already juicy qualities of mosaic, mandarina, and zeus hops.
“Mandarina is probably the most interesting hop to come out of Bavaria in decades,’’ says Koch. “The new hops that are being developed, they have an orange fruit note to them. You’ll get a little orange, mango, even pineapple.The mango juice complements those very nicely.’
Rebel Juiced still drinks like an IPA, but at 55 IBUS and 6.2 percent alcohol by volume, it’s less in-your-face than the Long Trail offering. Both are excellent examples of a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
“When we’re bottling this stuff, you can smell it on the other side of the brewery,’’ says Hartmann. “It should hit you before it gets up to your nose.’’
Gary Dzen can be reached at gary.dzen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GaryDzen
