Beer Styles

The city's signature style is the West Coast IPA. Under BJCP competition guidelines, it falls into the American IPA category. It's golden to copper in color, clear, assertively bitter, and smells of citrus peel, resin, and pine needles. Malt sweetness stays in the background.

IPA stands for India Pale Ale. The story that it was invented purely to survive the sea voyage to India is a myth. It was a pale, heavily hopped export beer that found its greatest success in India. The name emerged in the early 19th century. The American version is noticeably more bitter and drier than the English original.

The Double IPA, also called Imperial IPA, is the amped-up version. More malt brings more alcohol, more hops bring more bitterness and aroma. Here too, sweetness is kept in check through added sugar or a dry fermentation, otherwise the beer tips into cloying territory.

By comparison: a Hazy IPA is cloudy and soft, smelling more of juice than resin. An English IPA is more mildly hopped, showing more bread crust and caramel. Of the three, the West Coast IPA is the clearest and the most bitter. Stone and Ballast Point made this style famous out of Escondido and San Diego, and many small breweries followed their lead.

The style ranges below come from the 2021 BJCP guidelines. They are competition corridors, not recipe requirements, and individual beers can fall outside them. Original gravity in degrees Plato indicates how much dissolved sugar is in the wort before the yeast ferments it.