IPA — brewed fresh in Berlin.

What is an IPA?

An IPA — India Pale Ale — is a beer built around hops. Not just more of them, but hops used deliberately: early in the boil for bitterness, late and after fermentation for aroma. That single decision is what separates an IPA from every other style, and it is why the same three letters can cover beers that taste like grapefruit and pine, or like mango and passion fruit, or like nothing but soft citrus.

The name is historical — heavily hopped pale ales shipped from England to India in the 19th century — but a modern IPA has almost nothing in common with those beers. Today the style is about fresh aroma rather than preservation, which is why an IPA is at its best within weeks of being canned.

The IPA family — the styles we brew

Hazy IPA is the branch we are best known for: opaque, soft, low in bitterness and loaded with tropical-fruit aroma. We brewed Germany’s first one in December 2016. It is also called a New England IPA, or NEIPA — same style, three names.

West Coast IPA is the older, drier counterpart: brilliant-clear, crisp and assertively bitter, built on pine, resin and grapefruit. Where a hazy softens the hops, a West Coast sharpens them. We brew both, and which one you prefer usually says more about you than about the beers.

DIPA, or double IPA — also called an Imperial IPA — scales everything up: more malt, more hops, more alcohol, typically 7.5 to 9 percent. A good DIPA is not simply a stronger IPA; the body has to grow with the hop load or the beer turns hot and thin. A TIPA, triple IPA, pushes further again. Ours are usually brewed hazy and double dry-hopped.

Session IPA takes the same aroma-first approach below about 5 percent, so the hops stay and the weight goes.

What does DDH mean?

You will see DDH — double dry-hopped — on a lot of our cans. Dry-hopping means adding hops after the boil, purely for aroma rather than bitterness; DDH just means we take it further. That can be a bigger charge of hops, the same hops added across several stages during and after fermentation, or both — it is not a fixed recipe. What it always means is more of the aroma the style is loved for. You will also find TDH, triple dry-hopped, on some releases. Most of our DDH beers are hazy IPAs, but the technique is not limited to one style.

Bitterness, and why it stopped being the point

For years IPAs competed on bitterness — the higher the IBU, the better the beer was supposed to be. That race ended. Modern brewing moved the hops later in the process, where they give aroma and flavour instead of bite, and the result is beers that smell enormous and drink easily. Bitterness is now one tool among several rather than the headline, which is exactly why a Hazy IPA and a West Coast IPA can share a name and taste nothing alike.

Why freshness is everything

Hop aroma is fragile. The compounds that make an IPA smell like mango, citrus or pine start fading within weeks of canning — which is why a fresh can and an old one can taste like two different beers. It is also why we print the canning date on every can, brew in small batches, and dispatch orders the next business day, same day if you order before 9:00 on a weekday. Fresh is not a marketing word here; it is the whole point.