On Tap

By James Figy

Photos by James Figy

Baseball season is in full swing. The Twins avoided a lockout. The St. Paul Saints are as entertaining as ever. And the Mankato MoonDogs will blast off with a season opener later this month.

I love enjoying a beer at the ballpark, and what I reach for is hazy. That cool, citrusy offshoot of the IPA family is unequivocally refreshing, with mild bitterness and ABVs that often swing for the fences.

Nowadays, every nanobrewery up to macro corp. is making at least one. You can find them at LocAle and Mankato Brewery, Lost Sanity in Madelia, Half Pint and Ward House in Waseca — and the list goes on. But it wasn’t always this way.

Not long ago, the head brewer at a Minnesota brewpub confessed to me a hatred of hazies. This individual only saw production flaws, signs of incorrect clarification, in all that dank murkiness. Other brewers believed the Northeast IPA (NEIPA) would be a fad.

How did we get to the ubiquity of haze in a few years? Let’s look at how the rapid rise of IPAs slid this way, then use two Minnesota breweries to show the spectrum.

First off, I lean heavily on “The Beer Bible: Second Edition” for any brewing history. And as author Jeff Alworth writes, IPAs are really an American invention — at least, as we know them today.

The Indian pale ale was a marginal style even during the height of the British empire, when brewers started using higher hop quantities to stabilize ales to survive transport to India. Briefly, breweries tried to market them in Great Britain as something exotic and elite to little success.

In the 1970s, ales started to emerge with early craft brewers in the U.S. But the IPA really wasn’t reborn until the ’90s, and at that time, it was a brutally bitter, malty concoction that most considered niche and a passing fad.

Fast forward about two decades, and the most popular style in the world is having an identity crisis. On the one hand, the West Coast IPA offered a clear, piney, moderately bitter affair, while this emerging style without a single name — the hazy, juicy, Northeast, milkshake IPA — began to muck up taplines across the nation.

In some cases, the hops and malt bill are extremely similar between the two styles. But West Coast IPAs follow the traditional process of adding hops during the boil, while hazy IPAs rely on dry-hopping — adding hops to the ale after primary fermentation.

This decision essentially makes the style. Dry-hopping reduces bitterness, builds that dank, citrusy aroma and causes the characteristic cloudiness. Early on, the haze was seen as a side effect of chemical reactions during dry-hopping. In this view, there once was some

Who wins the ballgame of Summit’s Slugfest vs. BlackStack’s Local 755? Better make it a double header to help decide.

truth to haziness being accidental.

In reality, brewers are as careful as club owners with their lineups. They’ve drafted various hops: Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, Amarillo, Galaxy, Strata, Vista and, one of my favorites, Cashmere, among many others. They’ve amped up haziness, often adding oats and wheat.

On the visiting team is Slugfest from Summit Brewing Co. The sessionable 4.7% ABV IPA checks all the boxes — great citrus flavor from Huell Melon, Azacca and Mandarina Bavaria hops — but with a fairly clear appearance. The brewery itself describes it as “unfiltered” and “juicy” rather than hazy. This aligns closely with Summit’s traditional approach to brewing and offers mass market appeal but is riding the same trend.

The hazy home team would have to be BlackStack Brewing in St. Paul. The brewers serve up a solid NEIPA, Local 755, as a flagship. The beer is vibrant in color and taste, owing to generous portions of Azacca, Amarillo and Citra, and clocks in at 6.8%.

And that’s just the beginning for the “murk merchants,” as they proudly call themselves. At any time, you can find a wide variety on the menu at BlackStack — or its sister brewpub in Burnsville, Bricksworth Beer Co., which serves well-crafted Detroit-style pizza. They continue to innovate and collaborate with like-minded operations, including Toppling Goliath.

So which brewery is the winner? It depends on who’s drinking and what they’re in the mood for. I’m a loyal fan of BlackStack, but you can’t bench a solid crusher like Slugfest.

On the right day, either team can knock it out of the park.

James Figy is a writer and beer enthusiast based in St. Paul. In Mankato, he earned an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University and a World Beer Cruise captain’s jacket from Pub 500.