Three hops go into Willibald Farm's newest IPA. Two of them were working the West Coast style before anyone was calling it that. The third arrived in time to help invent the hazy beer that came after. The gap between them is the point of the beer.

Kinfolk was canned on September 1 at Willibald's farm in Ayr, Ontario, a West Coast IPA at 7.3 percent in 473 millilitre cans. The brewery says it "marries old-school westies with a soft touch of modern haze and juicy hops," and describes it as drinking fairly balanced with a subtle bitter finish.

The hop bill carries that idea on its own. Cascade dates to the early 1970s and is the variety usually credited with giving American craft beer its first recognizable aroma, all grapefruit and light florals. Chinook followed in the mid-1980s and brought the resinous, piney bitterness that became the spine of the style. Citra is the outlier. Released commercially in the late 2000s, it is the tropical, citrus-heavy hop most associated with the juicy, low-bitterness IPAs that spent the following decade pulling drinkers away from West Coast beers entirely.

So the recipe is doing in miniature what the brewery describes in words. Two heritage bittering and aroma hops set the frame, and the hop of the hazy era gets folded in rather than kept out.

The haze claim is worth reading carefully. A West Coast IPA is conventionally bright and clear, finishing firmly bitter. Hazy IPAs went the opposite way, trading that bitterness for softness and body. Willibald is not swapping one for the other here. The brewery is keeping the bitter finish and letting a little of the softness through, which is a narrower target than either style on its own.

At 7.3 percent, Kinfolk also sits above the Cascade-era originals it borrows from, closer to where modern IPAs land.

Kinfolk is available now at Willibald's farm retail shop and pizza shop in Ayr, at the St. Jacobs Farmers Market and the Kitchener Market, and through the brewery's Ontario-wide and local delivery.

Editor’s Take

Kinfolk. A word that means the relatives, stamped on a can holding Cascade, Chinook and Citra, which is more or less a family photograph of American hop breeding with three decades of couch between the ends of it. Cascade is the grandparent who started the whole business. Citra is the one who showed up much later, became enormously popular, and changed how everyone talks. Putting them in the same 473 millilitres is either a reunion or a negotiation, and Willibald has gone to the trouble of naming the beer after it.

What I like most is the phrase soft touch of modern haze. Soft touch. Not a pivot, not a reinvention, just a touch - the beer equivalent of conceding one small point so that everybody can stay at the table. The West Coast IPA spent a stretch of years being told it was finished, and it has spent the years since quietly proving otherwise, largely by declining to have the argument at all. A beer that lets the pine and the juice share a can without requiring one of them to win is my kind of diplomacy.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Kinfolk Puts Cascade and Chinook in the Same Can as Citra

Willibald's new West Coast IPA hedges on purpose. Kinfolk keeps the Cascade and Chinook backbone the style was built on, then adds Citra and what the brewery calls a soft touch of modern haze.

Source & Editorial