Haze Is Not a Phase at Dallas Breweries

Love 'em or hate 'em, hazy IPAs are here to stay.

Although traditional craft beer enthusiasts may have originally cast them off as a gimmick, New England IPAs are officially a mainstay in the world of beer.

Most beer historians will point to early 2004 as the birth year for what we know as the first NEIPA, called “Heady Topper” at The Alchemist Brewery in Vermont. A hazy IPA is more than just its foggy looks; it has floral and citrus notes as well as a silky, smooth finish compared to the piney bite that’s commonly attributed to those brewed in the West Coast style.

Over the next decade, as online beer rating sites became more popular, so too did this new sub-style of IPA. In 2014 and 2015 the craze for haze had made its way to DFW in the form of bottle sharings. Though there hadn’t yet been a local brewery known for its haze selection, there was a community of beer nerds who started bringing back new brews from their travels. This included some heavy hitters in the craft brew scene: Trillium and Treehouse, both located in Massachusetts, which really made a name for themselves with NEIPAs.

North Texas was a little late to the party as far as local breweries were concerned, but as soon as the party got started, it was hard to miss. And, despite the late start, local breweries have given birth to some crowd favorites of their own that can stand tall with some of the big boys of New England.

One of these breweries is Celestial Beerworks in Dallas. The founders, husband and wife Matt and Molly Reynolds, are self-proclaimed beer nerds. For Molly and the team at Celestial, NEIPAs are all about the process of creation.

“It’s a beer nerd's dream," says Molly, "and it’s really easy to experiment with them, whether it’s tiny tweaks or overloading a beer with every kind of hop. When you change the process, you can come out with a whole new beer."

Matt brewed one of the first known hazy beers in North Texas, called “Jungle IPA,” out of Malai Kitchen in Southlake in 2017. Since opening in 2018, Celestial has become known as a hazy brewery with often more than half of its taps pouring hazy beers.

When it comes to NEIPAs for the casual beer drinker, Molly’s advice is simply to just try it. "A lot of people are scared off because it has the name 'IPA’ in it and they assume it’ll be too bitter, but that’s just not true. New England IPAs are a great start because they’re a gateway into the more bitter and West Coast beer. Plus, you get to try something from someone who is passionate about what they’re doing.”