Welcome to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
This probably isn’t a beer that needs a review. Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale is a titan in the world of craft brewery standouts. It’s been around for as long as I’ve been drinking beer — a baseline fancy option everyone likes. It’s even spawned its own extensions light and heavy along the way.
But I’ll be damned if Two-Hearted doesn’t taste like summer to me. And we’re finally set to have more than one 70-degree day in a row up here in Wisconsin, so here we go.
The first sip, this one off a fresh tap, is crisp, pine-y hops. It’s not overwhelmingly gloomy with bitterness, especially for a brew that promises “massive hop additions in both the kettle and the fermenter.” Instead, there’s a sunny feeling stuck in there thanks to the general lightness of the beer.
That leaves an open canvas for a little grapefruit citrus to slide onto the scene. No one’s going to confuse it for a shandy or even a juicy IPA, but there’s a definite fruit aftertaste that works in tandem with that crispy start. By now that’s fairly commonplace, but back in the 1990s when this beer first came about it probably blew people’s minds.
This is a beer that is much easier to drink than you expect, especially at 7 percent ABV. It stays inviting as it warms, balancing the earthiness of a healthy dose of hops with the airiness of that citrus. Everything about it is pleasant; if you’re a beer person it’s complex enough that you can parse out distinct flavors. If you’re just looking for a quick drink you can enjoy the fact it tastes great and drinks smoother than any IPA from the 90s should.
Three-ish decades later, it’s still a flagship beer since it’s so damn good. What’s going to happen now that trends are finally turning away from traditional IPAs?
Two-Hearted’s future is probably fine. The brewery was sold to a subsidiary of Japan’s Kirin last winter after its founder decided to retire, but as long as no one’s tinkering with the recipe, Bell’s will continue to thrive. The brewery itself is diverse enough to survive a changing landscape. Two-Hearted will be the taste of summer for dorks like me no matter what.
But what about the rest of a brewing landscape that leaned heavily on “[expletive] your tastebuds” hoppiness over the past decade-plus? Pale ales’ share of the beer marketplace continues to grow, but much of that can be tied to the expansion of styles that goes beyond the basic brew that defined the early stages of the brewery boom. Demand for hazy IPAs in particular is a major driver; their share of the beer market grew by 761 percent through the start of the pandemic, per Drizly.
Hazies aren’t the only reason for the pale ale’s recent rise. Session IPAs have helped make the heavy brews more approachable. Imperial IPAs moved in the opposite direction and had their sales grow nearly 500 percent between 2020 and 2021.
Together they make up the second-best selling booze style of the budding decade, behind only the incredible rise of hard seltzers. Half the top-selling IPAs came from those aforementioned subcategories. Just having a hoppy beer isn’t enough anymore. Being really good in one dimension isn’t going to provide a flagship brand. And while we don’t have actual numbers for 2022 yet, anecdotal evidence suggests the drinking public may be cooling on the traditional pale ales that were omnipresent in America’s craft brewing boom.
Not presenting this as indicative of national trends, but quite the 👀 note in my inbox from a Montana brewery that I'm visiting this weekend: "We will have 2 lagers on draft: Schwarzbier and Vienna. Bock in the tank. Lagers are our best selling beers, we cannot give away IPA."
— Kate Bernot (@kbernot) April 6, 2022
Which makes sense, because we’ve had two-plus decades to perfect the micro- (and macro-) brew version of the American pale ale. Two-Hearted proves there isn’t much room left for improvement. No one’s clamoring for Dr. Thunder when Dr. Pepper already exists.
And that’s what a great pale ale like Two-Hearted (or Space Dust, or Axe Man, or Sculpin) has become; the brand name competitors are left to chase. Instead, breweries have turned to IPA styles they can make their own while unlocking a new dimension of customer. There might not be another Two-Hearted, but there doesn’t need to be. There could be a hazy or imperial or session copycat instead that takes the ball and runs with it to create a unique juggernaut.
That’s great news for beer nerds and neophytes alike. Pale ales are great. Expanding their universe so there’s something for everyone is even better.
