I was surprised to not see anything turn up in my search in the forum regarding American IPA subcategories. Of course, there aren’t any subcategories. But that is why I am here in the forum now. As everyone here knows there are many different incarnations of the American IPA these days… we buy them, we brew them, we drink them, we enter them in homebrew competitions. So, curious as to why there hasn’t been a move to create some subcategories for this? The guy/gal who brews a “red ipa” may have an awesome beer but it gets marked down because its “too red”… or the same for someone with a “black ipa”… or whatever. Is there any kind of movement towards getting these variations on the style to have their own subcategory? I know that there will be some purists out there that would say that shouldn’t happen, for whatever reason they feel… but shouldn’t these variations be recognized better? Hey, its typically the American homebrewer who is constantly pushing the envelope to see what he/she can create… we come up with some pretty interesting brews, we are bound to have a need for additional categories or subcategories as time goes by.
Actually I didn’t check those… I was primarily looking at the categories that AHA has currently established for competition and so forth. I’ll check them out! Thanks for the info!
Don’t forget that the IPA subcategories are relatively new to brewing lore. I think they’ve been existence 4 or 5 years. I don’t find that there is really a need for all those subcategories, but there are unique beers that need a place to go. For example, my American brown ale is fashioned after Pete’s Wicked Ale and it doesn’t fit the Am Brown BJCP category. It now lines up as a brown IPA.
I’ll be a dick and reinforce that we should be calling these things something entirely different. Current “IPAs” never have anything to do with India, often are not pale, and occasionally aren’t even ales.
Ugh.
P.S. Someone finally showed me a picture of a Purple IPA. Yes. It DOES exist.
I don’t know if it’s the same as changing the name, but in the 2015 Guidelines Gordon Strong did say that IPA has taken on a life of it’s own (especially in America) and no longer stands for “India Pale Ale” although some still use that moniker.
To some extent this is full circle deja vu all over again. IPA in its original day was really more a bottler’s (ie marketing) term than a brewer’s designation. A brewer might just be making one of his pale ales. But in the day when breweries brewed and sold to bottlers for distribution, the bottler might label it “X & Sons Pale Ale, brewed by Messrs Y & Z, as prepared for the India trade.” That told you it was strong and hoppy. Eventually it got shortened, all you needed was India on the label. By the 1980s in England, “IPA” was a meaningless set of letters that still appeared on the pump handles of some VERY ordinary bitters. At that point it didn’t matter what it said, if there was a pump handle, it wasn’t lager or Guinness. Craft started out inspired by the ale "for the India trade, " and now the term is meaningless. Just means “not BMC.”
Well, there’s many ways to use the term. If you’re talking home brew competition then it’s what the BJCP says it is. (OPs question) If it’s GABF, its what the BA says it is. If it’s beer geeks talking, its yet another thing. If it’s John Q Weekend-Warrior, its any or all of the above or just a cool thing he says to impress his boss. Lol