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At the the Italia Beer Festival recently held in Rome,  I hosted with Giaguarino (born Luca Sabatella) a workshop on IPA. Nothing new under the sun you may think, since the issue has been examined on several occasions.Our approach however has been somewhat challenging because we wanted to offer an overview of the style – from classic interpretations to modern developments – opposing the current Roman “fashion of AiPiEi”, that is somewhat anomalous and aberrant.

The boom of the Roman brewing movement in recent years has led to a curious phenomenon, for which India Pale Ale have suddenly become the most popular style of beer, especially amongst the younger segment of consumers.The hype started abroad, where this Anglo-Saxon origin style has become the flagship of many breweries of the new generation, used to an aggressive communication style and to effective marketing. The success of the IPA has grown a great demand for this kind of beer: a curious phenomenon when you think that is just one of the many existing brewing styles. Moreover that fashion mostly focus on more modern and extreme interpretations of the style, ignoring the beers closer to the classic recipes.That’s why we tried to clarify what is a proper India Pale Ale.

I must admit that the public has been very interested and involved and their comments on the samples a very valuable feedback, because allowed us to their taste, discovering that not all opinions were unanimous.

To explain the evolution of style, we started from the beers considered as the ancestors of IPA: the Pale Ale. Although nowadays in Italy is not easy to find a proper Pale Ale, we found a valid prototype in Ridgeway’s Ivanhoe, which, to avoid ambiguity and dispel doubts, self-proclaim itself on the label “A Very English Pale Ale”. Someone has called it “dull”, someone else has deemed as “excessive” the caramel note. The truth is that today the taste of consumers has changed radically and a Pale Ale, however good it may be it should be not easy to approach.

As a classical interpretation of the India Pale Ale style we picked up the Meantime IPA, which eventually resulted the best in the show.The Meantime is quite adherent to the classic recipe and is distinguished by its general elegance, something that was appreciated by almost everyone.

We then crossed the Atlantic to introduce American IPA, starting the path of extremism.We talked about the stronger nature of these beers: a higher IBU and ABV, the use of strongly aromatic American hops. We had a Flying Dog Snake Dog, which we believe is one of the best interpretations of the style, more balanced compared to the more muscular versions of other breweries.

Finally we talked about Imperial IPA and the Scandinavian, Danish in particular, trend, inspired by the American IPA style but overstepping the boundaries of extreme even further.As a demonstration of this phenomenon, we drank a Hornbeer Happy Hoppy Viking, which appeared as a really excessive beer .Many of the presents have confirmed the lack of elegance and the immoderate exaggeration of certain characters, while others (actually the minority) have expressed their fondness for this kind of products.

In conclusion I think it was a fun and informative workshop, which allowed participants to have a 360° view of the style and us to monitor Capitoline consumer tastes. We have probably influenced a bit their judgments with our opinions but it was still reassuring to discover that a classic such as Meantime IPA is still considered a top class. It’s also interesting to notice that there are some that perceive the extremer versions as more complex, preferring those to the more classical versions.

As often happens it’s all a matter of taste. However we like to think that by now some Roman consumers knows something more about IPA and above all know that there are not only the most extreme and muscular interpretations.