The beer style is called Session IPA. Oxymoronic? Yes. Does it fit a niche? Absolutely! Session IPAs are hopped like an IPA without the alcohol wallop. With an ABV of under 5%, this is a style that will satisfy a lightweight’s desire for a hop bomb they can drink two of.
As part of our SIPA contest, we want you to whet your creative thirst and come up with a new Session IPA. If you’ve never tried one before, use Founder’s All Day IPA or Stone’s Go To IPA as an example, and then come up with something new and different in the same style.
Session IPAs are not American pale ales. Session IPAs have much more hop character, less malt backbone and are lighter in body and alcohol than an American pale. According to Stone Brewing’s Mitch Steele, “The brewers challenge here is twofold: first is achieving a good flavor balance in a beer that is so low in alcohol that there isn’t much else to balance the hop character with, and second, ensuring that the dry hop character doesn’t become overly vegetal, due to the lower alcohol content of the beer.”
Besides being a good representation of the style, we ask that your entry stick by the following rules. Experiment with hops and malts. Be creative and blow our socks off with your creation!
