Like the Alchemist, Massachusetts-based Treehouse Brewing Company only lists its hazies as pale ales, American IPAs, or double IPAs, with the differences among those categories dictated solely by each beer’s ABV. Funny enough, many legendary breweries in the Northeastern United States take a humble approach to marketing their hazy or New England-style IPAs, often leaving those buzzwords out of their branding. Though some would argue that Heady is not as hazy or fruit-forward as a lot of other modern New England IPAs, its opaque appearance and subtle bitterness are undoubtedly characteristic of the NEIPA profile. Vermont-based brewery The Alchemist is generally credited for coining the style with Heady Topper, a famous double IPA that kicked off the haze craze in the early 2010s. Since the style has become so popular throughout the country, a lot of American breweries outside the Northeast feel the need to label their hazy offerings as “New England-style” or “hazy.” This is perhaps why Sierra Nevada, king of the old-school, caramel-tone West Coast IPA, releases any New England-style brews as part of its “ Hazy Little Thing” line. “The BJCP guidelines under Hazy IPA specifically state, ‘Also known as New England IPA or NEIPA.’ So, these are not two distinct styles, just a difference in regional recognition of origin versus national marketing.”

“Hazy IPA is used to describe what many in my region (the Northeast) would call a NEIPA,” says Andrew Luberto, Northeast rep for the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). When it comes to differentiating between the terms, it’s all a matter of marketing.

Virtually all New England IPAs (NEIPAs) are hazy, but not all hazy IPAs are New England IPAs.

The titles hazy IPA and New England IPA seem to be interchangeable, but it’s really a square-rectangle situation. And with so many of them on the shelves sporting wild can art, long lists of every hop combo imaginable, and a rotating arsenal of buzzwords to describe their inherent “juiciness,” some of the terminology associated with this style can be a bit confusing. Juice bombs, hazy IPAs, New England IPAs - no matter what you call them, these dank, hop-saturated, cloudy brews are here to stay.

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