Kyle Nabilcy
Have you had enough of hazy IPAs yet? Are you one of those people who posts comments online about how craft brewing is nothing but a hopster’s game, and the real craft is in, I don’t know, harnessing the banana-esque esters of a Bavarian weissbier? Well, take your antacid because this week we’re talking beers so cloudy, they’re damn near meteorological.
It’s true that the rise of the hazy IPA has dramatically impacted the broader IPA market and craft beer in general. When Paste issued its recent blind tasting of American IPAs — 324 American IPAs — its editors were compelled to post a companion piece titled “The State of IPA” just to detail the broader context for their massive undertaking. Because no, it might feel like it, but not every IPA is hazy.
But it sure seems like some drinkers expect them to be. The pressure to produce an opaque IPA is so strong, some brewers actively push back on it out of sheer entrepreneurial obstinacy. On the Tap Takeover podcast last year, Central Waters’ Anello Mollica proclaimed that Central Waters would never produce a hazy IPA. Cut to April, when Central Waters posted on its Facebook page a new tap: Unsettled IPA, aka Anello Eats Crow, a hazy IPA.
The brewers at Old Nation Brewing in Williamston, Michigan, were of the same mindset. Draft Magazine detailed how their insistence on producing Old World styles was paired with a hatred for the New England IPA — until they had to make one. (It was a small batch to settle an argument about what made the haze hazy.)
Cut to today, and Old Nation’s M-43 is a top-tier New England IPA in the Midwest, and that’s not meant as faint praise. It landed at 54th in Paste’s aforementioned IPA ranking. It’s the 12th ranked New England IPA on Untappd, the third-highest Midwestern NEIPA behind beers from Colorado, Oregon, and the actual New England region.
You may have noticed that in all the “beercation” posts I’ve published in the Two Cent Pint, I’ve never given a field report from Michigan. To my occasional chagrin, I have to admit the only time I’ve spent in Michigan has been at the Detroit airport. Thankfully, another one of my beer-drinkin’ friends was in our neighbor to the east to visit family, and he had my back when visiting the Old Nation brewery.
In one fell swoop, my fridge was home to a single can each of Greenstone American Pale Ale, Full Earth Double New England IPA, and a whole glorious four-pack of M-43.
The closest of the three to a casual, sessionable NEIPA is Greenstone, a pale straw-colored hazebomb with notes of the smaller citrus fruits and sharper flavors — kumquat and orange peel, pithy bitterness. There was some pine resin as well, not the standard Citra profile but something more complex. It was a nice change of pace.
M-43’s dry hop bill leads off with Citra, but also includes Amarillo and Simcoe hops. Its color is sunnier than Greenstone, and I strongly encourage you to follow the can’s instruction and give it a gentle sideways roll on the countertop to re-incorporate the haze-inducing sediment. The mouthfeel is luxurious, with no chalk or grit, and the back end of the swallow is such pure grapefruit, I could imagine the individual cells of the fruit popping on my tongue.
Before this development, the only exposure I’d had to any Old Nation beer was a thimbleful of Boss Tweed, Untappd’s number 1 Double NEIPA, at a New Glarus R&D release. Old Nation also holds the third spot with ME-MI, a triple NEIPA, and at 26 on the list sits Full Earth. Let me tell you, M-43 may get the hype, and it earns it, but short of getting another shot at Boss Tweed, Full Earth is the beer I wish I could have more of.
It has an ABV of just over 10% but you’d never know it. It has a homebrew shop full of hop varieties, both traditional and cryo-processed. (Cryo hops are freeze-dried whole leaf hops, more or less, with all of the flavor and none of the bitterness or astringency. Perfect for hazy IPAs.) The mouthfeel is even more satiny than the other two, thanks to the increased malt bill, and the pineapple. Oh, the pineapple.
Greenstone is refreshingly bright and resiny. M-43, the moneymaker, pulls the weight of its expectations expertly. Full Earth is a straight-up fruit basket, with an orange juice nose, all the pineapple you could ask for, and barely-ripe berries at the tail end of each sip. Just no banana esters.
