Beer · Light & sessionable

Pale Ale

Hops and malt in actual balance — the craft beer that started the revolution.

How to order it: Sierra Nevada defined the American style. Citrus, pine, and restraint.

The story

Pale ale became possible when coke-fired kilns let eighteenth-century English maltsters make pale malt without smoke, and became glorious in Burton-upon-Trent, whose gypsum-rich water sharpened hop character so well that rivals shipped their water in or faked its chemistry. Bass grew so dominant that its red triangle became Britain's first registered trademark in 1876. The style's second founding came in 1980, when Sierra Nevada's pale ale wrapped American Cascade hops around the English template and effectively wrote the constitution of American craft brewing. Nearly every IPA, hazy or otherwise, is downstream of that bottle. Balance was the original revolution; everything louder came after, and owes it rent.

Adjacent pours