What better way to commemorate the Fourth of July than discovering the origin of our crowd favorite, Hoppy Boy an American Pale Ale (APA).
The American Pale Ale is a slightly newer form of brewing that has taken the craft beer world by storm. This style of brewing began with small homebrewers opting to replace the British ingredients of Pale Ales with US ingredients. This resulted in a lighter, crisper and less malty version of ales.
American microbreweries officially began brewing and releasing this style to the public in the 1970s. The APA style of brewing originally was used to showcase the Cascade hop, which is still used in some of the top selling commercial APA brews available. Nowadays brewers use any variation of American hops, such as the Centennial, Simcoe and Amarillo hops, to highlight the variety of citrus and piney flavor that is unique to the American Pale Ale aroma. Using all of the different styles of American hops allows this style of brewing to not only represent the country's history, but each specific region within it as well!
Brewmaster, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewing, has noted that breweries around the world have used the American Pale Ale framework of balanced color, malt and bitterness to compliment the local hop signature. So even though the American Pale Ale started out only using American ingredients, it has found its way all over the world to highlight a variety of hop families. This could be because most APAs use fairly neutral ale yeasts which allow the flavor of the hops to be the signature flavor.
What do you love about APAs?
Cheers!