IPA
Cold IPA
A lean, dry IPA fermented with lager yeast at higher temperature, using maize or rice to strip body and expose hop aroma.
- Strength
- 6–7.5% ABV
- Bitterness
- 50–80 IBU
- Colour
- Pale straw to gold
- Serve at
- 6–9°C
Commercial category. A marketing or shorthand term that behaves like a style. Useful for finding beer; treat its boundaries as loose.
Cold IPA is a recent term with contested boundaries. The usual description is an IPA fermented with lager yeast, warmer than a true lager, with adjuncts to lighten the body — producing something drier and crisper than an American IPA while keeping the hop load.
BeerHQ marks it a commercial category. It has real commercial currency and a reasonably consistent technical description, but it is too recent and too loosely defined to present with the same authority as an established style, and it overlaps heavily with India pale lager.
Judged as a drink rather than as a category, a good one is noticeably drier and cleaner than an American IPA of the same strength, with the hop aroma sitting very forward because there is so little body behind it. The risk is thinness: strip too much and the beer has nothing to carry the hops at all, which is the difference between crisp and hollow.
Questions this page answers
- what does cold ipa taste like — How it tastes
- cold ipa abv — Measurements
- cold ipa food pairing — What to eat with it
- cold ipa serving temperature — Serving
- how long does cold ipa last — Freshness and storage
- styles similar to cold ipa — If you like this, try
- how to brew cold ipa — How it is made
How it tastes
BeerHQ’s own comparative scale, not a measurement. Each bar is a range because a style is a span of real beers rather than one beer.
Appearance and character
| Colour | Pale straw to gold |
|---|---|
| Clarity | brilliant |
| Head | White, dense |
| Fermentation | Hybrid. Crosses the ale/lager process line — for example ale yeast fermented cold, or lager yeast fermented warm. |
| Origin | United States (From around 2018) |
Measurements
Conventional ranges published by style bodies, not a specification. IBU measures iso-alpha acids in a lab and does not track perceived bitterness — compare it against the sensory scale above rather than reading it as a flavour rating.
| Measurement | Typical range |
|---|---|
| ABV | 6–7.5% ABV |
| IBU | 50–80 IBU |
| Colour | Pale straw to gold — 3–6 SRM, 6–12 EBC. |
| Original gravity | 1.058–1.070 |
| Final gravity | 1.006–1.012 |
| Carbonation | 2–3 vol CO₂ |
What goes into it
| Hops | Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe |
|---|---|
| Malt | Pilsner malt, Flaked maize, Rice |
| Yeast | Saccharomyces pastorianus |
Serving
| Temperature | 6–9°C |
|---|---|
| Glass | Pilsner glass, Tulip glass |
Freshness and storage
Cold IPA shows best within 1–3 months of packaging. After that it declines in quality rather than becoming unsafe.
Drink fresh. Buy it as young as you can and drink it soon. What makes this beer worth drinking is the first thing to leave it.
- Built on hop aroma, which is the least durable thing in beer. What you are paying for is the first thing to leave.
What changes with time
- Flavour decline. The beer is still perfectly sound, but the most volatile parts of its character have faded. Weeks to a few months, fastest in heavily dry-hopped beer.
- Staling. The general, gradual loss of freshness that affects all beer, accelerated sharply by warmth. Months, and roughly twice as fast for every 10 °C warmer.
In the package
- Aluminium can — No light can reach the beer, so lightstrike is impossible in this format. Very low oxygen ingress, which matters for a beer this dependent on hop aroma.
- Brown glass bottle — No format-specific concerns beyond the general advice above.
- Keg — No light can reach the beer, so lightstrike is impossible in this format. Very low oxygen ingress, which matters for a beer this dependent on hop aroma.
Old beer tastes worse; it does not become dangerous. Ethanol, low pH, hop compounds and the absence of oxygen make packaged beer hostile to the organisms that cause foodborne illness. The exception is a compromised package — visible mould at the closure, a pierced or rusted can, a lifted cap — which is a reason to discard the beer regardless of its age.
Guidance, not an expiry date. How a beer is stored matters more than the date printed on it, and staling roughly doubles in rate for every 10 °C. See storage and freshness for the full model.
What to eat with it
- Aubergine
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Cornish pasty
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Dim sum
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Empanadas
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Goat's cheese
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Hummus
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
If you like this, try
West Coast IPA
A similarly dry and bitter target reached with ale yeast.
Suits you if: You like Cold IPA but want more bitterness. Reason not to: The main shift is more bitterness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
India pale lager
A heavily overlapping category — the distinction is contested.
Suits you if: You like Cold IPA but want more malt intensity. Reason not to: The main shift is more malt intensity, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
American IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like Cold IPA but want more tropical fruit. Reason not to: Noticeably more tropical fruit than Cold IPA, which not everyone wants.
American pale ale
Comparable bitterness, body, hop aroma — the things you are probably drinking Cold IPA for.
Suits you if: You like Cold IPA but want more sweetness. Reason not to: The main shift is more sweetness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Black IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like Cold IPA but want more alcohol warmth. Reason not to: The main shift is more alcohol warmth, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Compare with
- Cold IPA vs New England IPA — The main difference is tropical fruit: New England IPA has far more of it than Cold IPA. Cold IPA also leads on bitterness, resin & pine and dryness.
- Cold IPA vs West Coast IPA — The main difference is alcohol warmth: West Coast IPA has noticeably more of it than Cold IPA. West Coast IPA also leads on tropical fruit, bitterness and floral.
- Cold IPA vs American IPA — The main difference is tropical fruit: American IPA has far more of it than Cold IPA. American IPA also leads on alcohol warmth, bread & biscuit and stone fruit.
- Cold IPA vs Red IPA — The main difference is dryness: Cold IPA has far more of it than Red IPA. Red IPA also leads on caramel & toffee, alcohol warmth and malt intensity.
Faults to watch for
- Faded hop character — The specific staling of hop character: the aroma fades first, and badly stored hops can turn cheesy.
- DMS — A cooked-vegetable note from a malt precursor that a vigorous open boil should have driven off.
How it got here
Coined around 2018 at Wayfinder Beer in Portland, Oregon, for an IPA fermented with lager yeast at ale-ish temperatures over a grist cut with maize or rice. The name was chosen partly in opposition to the hazy branch, and the beer is closer to a heavily-hopped pale lager than to anything the IPA name would suggest.
How it is made
The steps that shape this style in particular, rather than the ones every beer goes through.
- Whirlpool hopping — Steep hops in wort held below boiling — typically 75–85 °C — to extract aroma compounds with far less isomerisation than a boil addition.
- Lagering — Store beer cold for an extended period after fermentation to clarify it and produce the clean, rounded character lagers are named for.
- Dry hopping — Add hops to beer after fermentation, without heat, to extract aroma compounds while adding essentially no bitterness.
Sensory levels are BeerHQ’s editorial abstraction, described as None–Very high on a six-point scale. Measurements are conventional style ranges. Last reviewed 2026-08-15.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
On Citra
Citra was released in 2008 from the Hop Breeding Company programme and is a proprietary variety, with parentage including Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, US Tettnanger, Brewer’s Gold and East Kent Golding among others.
Backed by a source
Sources: Hop Growers of America variety data; For the Love of Hops — print
On Citra
Much of Citra’s tropical and grapefruit character is carried by polyfunctional thiols perceptible at parts-per-trillion concentrations, many of which arrive in wort bound and inactive and are released by yeast enzymes during fermentation.
Backed by a source
Sources: Journal of the Institute of Brewing; For the Love of Hops — print
On Citra
Citra is a registered trademark rather than a generic variety name, and the plant is grown under licence — which is why it cannot simply be propagated freely as an older public-programme variety can.
Backed by a source Last checked 2026-08-16.
On DMS
A low level of DMS is accepted, and by some tasters expected, in pale lagers built on pilsner malt, and only reads as a defect when it dominates.
Backed by a source
Sources: BJCP Beer Style Guidelines (2021); Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print
On DMS
Dimethyl sulphide is generated during wort heating from S-methylmethionine, a precursor formed during germination and progressively destroyed by kilning — which is why it is highest in lightly-kilned pilsner malt and negligible in darker malts.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Technology Brewing and Malting — print
On DMS
DMS is volatile and leaves wort as vapour during a vigorous uncovered boil, which is why covering the kettle, boiling gently or cooling the wort slowly all raise the level in finished beer.
Backed by a source
Sources: How to Brew (4th edition) — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print
On Tulip glass
An inward-curving rim concentrates volatile aromatics in the headspace above the beer, which is a real and measurable effect and the only glassware mechanism with a straightforward physical basis.
Backed by a source
Sources: Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print; Institute of Brewing & Distilling technical publications
On Saccharomyces pastorianus
Emil Christian Hansen’s isolation of a single pure yeast strain at Carlsberg in 1883 made reproducible lager fermentation possible and was shared rather than patented, which is why it spread across the industry quickly.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: The Story of the Pint — print; Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print
On Dry hopping
Hops carry amylolytic enzymes that break down dextrins the brewing yeast could not ferment, so heavy dry hopping can restart fermentation in the package — lowering final gravity, raising alcohol, generating additional carbon dioxide and regenerating diacetyl.
Backed by a source
Sources: Journal of the Institute of Brewing; For the Love of Hops — print
On Faded hop character
How hops are stored dominates how much of them survives: in a two-year trial, alpha-acid losses ran from roughly 12–36% under cold anaerobic storage to 63–99% in air at room temperature.
Checked against the source
Source: Rutnik et al., "The Stability of Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) Resins during Long-Period Storage" (2023), Section 2.1, Alpha-Acids; Table 1 (Plants 12(4):936)
On Citra
BeerHQ treats a hop substitution as a nearest-available match rather than an equivalence: substitutes share a broad aroma family, and the differences between them are usually the reason a brewer chose the original.
BeerHQ’s own reading
On Saccharomyces pastorianus
Saccharomyces pastorianus is a hybrid of S. cerevisiae and the cold-tolerant S. eubayanus, the latter of which was not identified in the wild until 2011, in Patagonia.
Backed by a source
Sources: Journal of the Institute of Brewing; Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print
On Lagering
Carl von Linde’s mechanical refrigeration, first installed in a brewery in the early 1870s, freed lager production from dependence on natural ice and cold cellars.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: The Story of the Pint — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Lagering
Mechanical refrigeration from the late nineteenth century removed lager brewing’s dependence on cold cellars and natural ice, allowing it to be produced year-round and anywhere.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: The Story of the Pint — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print