IPA
Double IPA
IPA scaled up: more strength, more hops and more bitterness, while staying dry enough to remain drinkable.
- Strength
- 7.5–10% ABV
- Bitterness
- 60–100 IBU
- Colour
- Gold to amber
- Serve at
- 8–11°C
Also known as DIPA, imperial IPA.
Double IPA earns its strength by hiding it. The technique is to use highly fermentable sugar for part of the extract so that alcohol rises without dextrin, which keeps the body lighter than 8–10% ABV would suggest and stops the hop character being buried under sweetness. Done badly it is sticky and hot; done well it is dangerously easy to drink.
It is also the style most punished by age. The bitterness holds, but the aroma that justifies the strength fades within months, so a year-old double IPA is a strong, bitter, malty beer with the point removed. Buy it fresh and drink it fresh.
The craft of a double IPA is keeping it dry. At 8–9% ABV with a heavy grist, the beer would be sweet and heavy, so brewers use simple sugar to raise gravity without body — allowing high strength and a lean finish at once.
Questions this page answers
- what does double ipa taste like — How it tastes
- double ipa abv — Measurements
- double ipa food pairing — What to eat with it
- double ipa serving temperature — Serving
- how long does double ipa last — Freshness and storage
- styles similar to double ipa — If you like this, try
- how to brew double ipa — How it is made
- double ipa history — How it got here
- what beer is an example of double ipa — Beers to try
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 | Gold to amber |
|---|---|
| Clarity | clear |
| Head | White to off-white, dense |
| Fermentation | Top-fermented (ale). Fermented warm with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which collects at the surface. Warmer fermentation produces more esters and phenols, so ales tend to carry more fruit and spice from the yeast itself. |
| Origin | United States |
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 | 7.5–10% ABV |
| IBU | 60–100 IBU |
| Colour | Gold to amber — 5–12 SRM, 10–24 EBC. That is a wide range: two examples of this style can look plainly different from each other in the glass. |
| Original gravity | 1.065–1.085 |
| Final gravity | 1.008–1.018 |
| Carbonation | 2–3 vol CO₂ |
Classified by BJCP-2021 as Double IPA (exact fit). BeerHQ maintains its own taxonomy and records how it maps onto others rather than adopting any one of them.
What goes into it
Serving
| Temperature | 8–11°C |
|---|---|
| Glass | Tulip glass, Teku glass, Snifter |
Freshness and storage
Double 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
- Tagine
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Beef stew
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Liver and onions
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Paella
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Roast beef
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Shepherd's pie
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
Beers to try
Widely-known examples BeerHQ carries as reference points for this style. Not a recommendation list and not ranked — these are the beers that make the category concrete.
If you like this, try
American IPA
The base style this scales up from.
Suits you if: You like Double IPA but want less alcohol warmth. Reason not to: Weaker than Double IPA, which may not deliver the intensity you are after.
West Coast IPA
A close relative at lower strength, equally dry and bitter.
Suits you if: You like Double IPA but want less sweetness. Reason not to: The main shift is less sweetness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
American barley wine
Where a double IPA ends up if the malt is allowed to lead.
Suits you if: You like Double IPA but want more caramel & toffee. Reason not to: Noticeably more caramel & toffee than Double IPA, which not everyone wants.
Black IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like Double IPA but want less tropical fruit. Reason not to: Noticeably less tropical fruit than Double IPA, which may make it feel thin by comparison.
Belgian IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like Double IPA but want less tropical fruit. Reason not to: Noticeably less tropical fruit than Double IPA, which may make it feel thin by comparison.
Compare with
- Double IPA vs Belgian IPA — The main difference is yeast fruitiness (esters): Belgian IPA has far more of it than Double IPA. Double IPA also leads on malt intensity and tropical fruit; Belgian IPA on phenolic spice.
- Double IPA vs Black IPA — The main difference is roast: Black IPA has noticeably more of it than Double IPA. Double IPA also leads on malt intensity, tropical fruit and hop aroma.
- Double IPA vs Milkshake IPA — The main difference is bitterness: Double IPA has far more of it than Milkshake IPA. Double IPA also leads on alcohol warmth, resin & pine and malt intensity.
- Double IPA vs American barley wine — The main difference is dryness: Double IPA has far more of it than American barley wine. Double IPA also leads on tropical fruit; American barley wine on caramel & toffee and yeast fruitiness (esters).
Faults to watch for
- Faded hop character — The specific staling of hop character: the aroma fades first, and badly stored hops can turn cheesy.
- Oxidation — The universal ageing fault: oxygen degrades beer into papery, cardboard-like staleness, and dulls everything that made it good.
- Fusel alcohol — Harsh, solvent-like alcohol heat from fermentation run too warm or under stress — distinct from the pleasant warmth of a strong beer.
How it got here
Double IPA is generally traced to Russian River in California in the late 1990s, and the name to a beer brewed there for a hop-forward audience that already existed. Unlike most modern style names it stuck almost immediately and was codified within a few years.
What it changed was permission. Once a beer could be an IPA at twice the hopping rate and half again the strength, the category stopped having an upper bound, and most of what followed — triple IPAs, the hazy branch, the strength arms race of the 2010s — runs from that.
1994–2004 The double IPA emerges
West Coast brewers pushed IPA to higher strength and far higher hop rates while keeping it dry, establishing a category defined by intensity without sweetness.
See the whole sequence on the beer history timeline.
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.
- Dry hopping — Add hops to beer after fermentation, without heat, to extract aroma compounds while adding essentially no bitterness.
- Biotransformation — Add hops during active fermentation so yeast enzymes convert bound hop compounds into aromas the hop could not release on its own.
- Hop creep — Explain the renewed fermentation that dry hopping can start in beer that had already finished, and the over-carbonation and dryness that follow it.
- Concentrated lupulin products — Use hop products from which most of the leaf material has been removed, concentrating the resin and oil that carry flavour.
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 Teku glass
How much glass shape changes the experience of a beer beyond aroma concentration and head formation is disputed, and much published glassware advice asserts effects with no proposed mechanism.
— Trade and enthusiast position that specific shapes are matched to specific styles and materially improve them.
— The defensible mechanisms — aroma concentration, head formation and retention, keeping a hand off the bowl — are few, and effects claimed beyond them are largely convention presented as function.
BeerHQ requires every glassware recommendation to name a mechanism from a closed list, or to state plainly that the choice is conventional.
Genuinely contested Credible sources disagree, so both positions are given rather than one.
Sources: Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Chinook
Chinook comes from a Petham Golding crossed with a Brewer’s Gold line, and the USDA collection records it at around 13.6% alpha acids, 3.9% beta, 33% cohumulone and 1.83 ml/100 g total oil.
Checked against the source
Source: USDA-ARS World Hop Cultivar Collection, Accession 21226 (Chinook), pedigree and analysis
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 Fusel alcohol
Fusel alcohols are a fault only at concentration: at high levels they impart off-flavours, while at low levels they and their esters are an essential part of the flavour and aroma of fermented drinks.
Checked against the source
Source: Hazelwood et al., "The Ehrlich Pathway for Fusel Alcohol Production" (2008), Introduction (Appl Environ Microbiol 74(8):2259–2266)
On Fusel alcohol
The higher alcohols behind fusel character are formed by yeast from amino acids through the Ehrlich pathway: the amino acid is transaminated to an alpha-keto acid, which is decarboxylated to an aldehyde and then reduced to the alcohol.
Checked against the source
Source: Hazelwood et al., "The Ehrlich Pathway for Fusel Alcohol Production" (2008), Initial transamination reaction (Appl Environ Microbiol 74(8):2259–2266)
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 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 Oxidation
In strong dark beer the same oxidative chemistry produces sherry, port and dried-fruit character that many drinkers actively seek, which is why oxidation is a defect in a fresh pilsner and part of the appeal of an aged barley wine.
Backed by a source
Sources: Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Oxidation
The wet-cardboard character of stale beer is attributed principally to trans-2-nonenal, a carbonyl formed from lipid precursors and perceptible at extremely low concentrations.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print; Journal of the Institute of Brewing
On Oxidation
trans-2-Nonenal, a product of lipid peroxidation, is the compound behind the cardboard or papery flavour characteristic of stale beer.
Checked against the source
Source: Wu et al., "Identification of a Protein with Antioxidant Activity that is Important for the Protection against Beer Ageing" (2011), Introduction (Int J Mol Sci 12(9):6089–6103)
On Oxidation
Staling reactions in packaged beer are strongly temperature-dependent, with the conventional working figure being that the rate roughly doubles for every 10 °C increase in storage temperature.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print; Technology Brewing and Malting — print
On Teku glass
The idea that different regions of the tongue detect different basic tastes, sometimes invoked to justify glass shapes that "direct beer" to one area, has been understood to be a misreading of the original research for decades.
Backed by a source
Source: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print