Frontaal V5 Juice Punch: New England IPA. Long live the (new) king?

As a beer drinker, life has never been more beautiful than the current times. Where not too many years ago every region of the world tended to stick to their own style of beer, both high-level (micro-)breweries and beer styles seem to have popped up all over the world — even in countries not traditionally beer-producing or beer-drinking. To still see the forest for the trees in this vast landscape, categorisation is crucial.

Of all the beer sold worldwide, the vast majority falls under either the ale (Pale Ale, IPA, et cetera) or lager (such as Pilsner) type. The intricate differences between these types is an article for another day, but in essence the most essential difference is that ales and lagers are fermented using distinctly different species of yeast¹. Generally speaking, lager is lighter in flavour, higher carbonated, mellow and served very cold whereas ales are more complex, have much higher bitter content, are fruitier and served at a higher temperature.

Of course, reality is rarely this simple. Beer makers have been walking down the spectrum of flavour within these two styles for many years now. One of the relatively new entries to this game of thrones is the New England India Pale Ale (NE-IPA) style of beer-making. The NE-IPA can be seen as a jucier, tropical variation on a 'standard' IPA. Often specific hops (such as Citra) are used to implement citrus notes. The beer is brewed without much of the bitterness one would normally get from an IPA (technical note: hop are added after the boiling process, keeping alpha acids from being pulled from the hops — but this will also be for a later article). And finally, the beer is unpasteurized and cloudy. What one should then end up with is a fruity, not-so-bitter IPA.

The specific beer being tasted here is the V5 Juice Punch from the Dutch brewery Frontaal in Breda. The name already gives away much of what to expect of this beer, and it should certainly fall within expectation of the subtype. They use Wyeast 1318, which is known to be a relatively juicy yeast strain in IPA. The IBU is a fairly mild 48. This, alongside the higher levels of chloride to sulfate to bring out more of the malt character (as opposed to typical IPAs, that favour the focus on sulfate to accentuate the hops), creates an expectation of a very smooth, fruity yet complex 'IPA-style' beer with relatively low bitters.

^{1. Many would point out differences in fermentation temperatures, or top- vs. bottom-fermentation, but these differences are not all-encompassing.}