IPA
White IPA
A hybrid of witbier and IPA: wheat and Belgian yeast spice underneath American hop aroma.
- Strength
- 5–7% ABV
- Bitterness
- 40–70 IBU
- Colour
- Pale straw to gold
- Serve at
- 7–10°C
Commercial category. A marketing or shorthand term that behaves like a style. Useful for finding beer; treat its boundaries as loose.
White IPA crosses a witbier with an American IPA: unmalted wheat and a spicy Belgian-derived yeast under a modern hop charge. The interest is in whether the yeast phenols and the hop terpenes agree — clove and coriander against citrus and pine is a genuine gamble, and the style is worth trying precisely because it does not always come off.
Where it works, the wheat gives a softness that suits juicy hop character and the yeast adds a peppery lift that a clean American strain cannot. Where it does not, the two aroma sets simply argue.
The test is whether the two aroma sets resolve into something or simply sit alongside each other. A good one reads as a single beer — citrus and coriander pulling the same direction, the wheat softening the bitterness — and a poor one reads as two beers in the same glass. Drink it young: both the hop aroma and the yeast spice fade quickly, and the malt base underneath is deliberately quiet.
Questions this page answers
- what does white ipa taste like — How it tastes
- white ipa abv — Measurements
- white ipa food pairing — What to eat with it
- white ipa serving temperature — Serving
- how long does white ipa last — Freshness and storage
- styles similar to white ipa — If you like this, try
- how to brew white 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 | hazy |
| Head | White, dense, persistent |
| 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 | 5–7% ABV |
| IBU | 40–70 IBU |
| Colour | Pale straw to gold — 3–6 SRM, 6–12 EBC. |
| Original gravity | 1.050–1.065 |
| Final gravity | 1.008–1.014 |
| Carbonation | 2–3 vol CO₂ |
What goes into it
| Hops | Citra, Amarillo |
|---|---|
| Malt | Pale ale malt, Wheat malt |
| Yeast | Belgian ale yeast |
Serving
| Temperature | 7–10°C |
|---|---|
| Glass | Tulip glass |
Freshness and storage
White 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
- Paneer
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Spicy food
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Falafel
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Tagine
Bitterness, carbonation and a dry finish scrub the fat off the palate, so each mouthful of food tastes as good as the first.
- Biryani
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.
If you like this, try
Belgian IPA
A close neighbour built on Belgian yeast and American hops.
Suits you if: You like White IPA but want more dryness. Reason not to: The main shift is more dryness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
American IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like White IPA but want more resin & pine. Reason not to: Noticeably more resin & pine than White IPA, which not everyone wants.
Black IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like White IPA but want more resin & pine. Reason not to: Noticeably more resin & pine than White IPA, which not everyone wants.
English IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like White IPA but want less citrus. Reason not to: Noticeably less citrus than White IPA, which may make it feel thin by comparison.
West Coast IPA
Same family — both are IPA beers.
Suits you if: You like White IPA but want more resin & pine. Reason not to: Noticeably more resin & pine than White IPA, which not everyone wants.
Compare with
- White IPA vs English IPA — The main difference is malt intensity: English IPA has far more of it than White IPA. White IPA also leads on citrus and phenolic spice; English IPA on bread & biscuit.
- White IPA vs American IPA — The main difference is phenolic spice: White IPA has noticeably more of it than American IPA. American IPA also leads on resin & pine, malt intensity and alcohol warmth.
- White IPA vs Red IPA — The main difference is malt intensity: Red IPA has far more of it than White IPA. White IPA also leads on dryness, yeast fruitiness (esters) and phenolic spice.
- White IPA vs Milkshake IPA — The main difference is yeast fruitiness (esters): White IPA has far more of it than Milkshake IPA. White IPA also leads on bitterness and phenolic spice; Milkshake IPA on sweetness.
Faults to watch for
- Faded hop character — The specific staling of hop character: the aroma fades first, and badly stored hops can turn cheesy.
- Chill haze — A temperature-dependent haze from protein and polyphenol binding — cosmetic only, and by definition it clears as the beer warms.
How it got here
Usually traced to a 2010 collaboration between two American breweries, Deschutes and Boulevard, which released the same witbier-and-IPA hybrid concept under each brewery’s own name. The idea — Belgian wheat yeast and spicing under American hopping — was picked up widely enough over the following years to become a category.
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.
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 Chill haze
Chill haze consists of complexes between proline-rich proteins and polyphenols that come out of solution when beer is chilled and redissolve as it warms, which is what distinguishes it from permanent haze.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print
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 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