American Pale Ale

ABV 4.5-6.2% · IBU 30-50 · SRM 5-10 · Serve 45-50F · Glass Shaker pint

Identify

Deep gold to light amber, usually clear, sometimes lightly hazy. A thick off white head that holds. You get the smell before the glass reaches your face: grapefruit peel, pine sap, sometimes cut grass or melon. Under that there is a faint toast note from the malt. Medium bodied, lively with bubbles. Bitterness arrives in the middle of the sip and keeps going through the swallow. The finish is dry, and the grapefruit smell comes back up the back of your nose after it.

Place

Chico, California, 1980

Cause

Hops boiled for a full hour give you bitterness and lose their smell. The heat converts their acids into a bitter, water friendly form, a change brewers call isomerization. It also boils the aromatic oils away. So a brewer who wants smell has to add hops at the end instead.

Confused with

American IPA, which is stronger and more bitter. American Amber Ale, which is darker and tastes of caramel. Blonde Ale, which has far less hop in it. English Best Bitter, which smells earthy and marmalade-like rather than of grapefruit.

Numbers

Everything in this family smells of hops, so smell alone will not sort them. What sorts them is how strong the beer is, how dark it is, and whether the malt says anything. Each neighbour below has one feature you can catch without a lab. American IPA. Stronger and clearly more bitter, and you can feel the alcohol as a slight warmth.

Will you like it and Try

Grapefruit, marmalade or the white pith on a lemon. That is the hop smell, almost exactly. Strong tea left to brew a minute too long. You have already decided that a clean bitterness is pleasant rather than a fault. Rosemary, pine nuts, or the smell of a Christmas tree.

Order and Pair

Take the full pour. A Pale Ale is a normal strength beer built to be drunk rather than sipped, and a taster glass loses most of the smell before it reaches you. In the United States that means a pint, though what you get is often fourteen or sixteen ounces. The one question worth asking is about freshness.

Judge, Myth and Remember

The smell arrives before the glass does, and it is clean and bright rather than vague. The bitterness is firm but smooth, and it lets go a few seconds after you swallow. The malt is present as body rather than as flavour. The head holds and leaves rings down the glass. Age, and it is not the brewer's fault.