Though the once seemingly unstoppable rise of the hazy IPA has started to plateau in recent years, there’s no denying the style’s consistent mass appeal. But in such a saturated market of hazies, there are likely some dedicated craft beer aficionados who are tired of chasing down the next limited release or waiting in line for yet another collab brew from their local taproom. For these jaded IPA fanatics, there’s finally something fresh to try: the India Pale Cocktail at Jersey City’s newest restaurant, Maxwell Alley.
The IPA-inspired drink might look like a beer and taste like a beer, but it doesn’t contain any beer at all. Beverage director Matt Colvin designed the cocktail to replicate the fruit-forward, hoppy flavors of a classic IPA using typical cocktail ingredients.
To achieve this, Colvin starts with Askur London Dry gin from Iceland, an expression made with juniper, citrus, coriander, and cassia bark that offers slightly bitter, herbaceous notes — similar to some complexities one might get from a well-made IPA. To add that extra layer of beer flavor, Colvin infuses the spirit with hops — combining one ounce of hops per liter of gin for one hour and then straining it through a coffee filter.
For this first iteration of the drink, Colvin acquired Citra hops from a local homebrewing store. Citra has been one of the most popular hop varieties in the hazy IPA movement, known for its signature bright grapefruit and orange notes. Colvin plans to change the hop varieties up each season, looking to other fan-favorite varieties like Mosaic and Cascade.
Drawing inspiration from both the quaffable, New England-style IPA — citing breweries like Brooklyn’s Other Half as reference points — and the bitter, West Coast styles, Colvin wanted to introduce ripe, fruit-forward flavors as well as a more bracing, bitter component. In order to hit those juicy, fruit notes, Colvin makes an acid-adjusted tropical juice blend with pineapple, orange, and guava; he aims to hit the more bitter, citrus notes via a house-made grapefruit oleo saccharum.
“We use a lot of grapefruit peels for Puerto Escondido,” Colvin shares about Maxwell Alley’s popular spicy Margarita riff. “We reserve all of the grapefruit peels at the end of the night and pack them in with sugar to create the oleo.”
The finishing touch? A layer of hop foam, made with hop-infused water and Modernist Pantry Foam Magic, discharged from an iSi Whip canister. The fluffy white foam that sits on top replicates the head on a freshly poured draft beer, accentuates the drink’s hoppy flavors, and adds a familiar bitter bite when you first put your mouth to the glass.
The ingredients are combined, shaken, and served over a big cube of ice before being topped with the hop foam. Maxwell Alley also offers a non-alcoholic version of the cocktail with dry-hopped NA gin.
Though the India Pale Cocktail isn’t carbonated like our favorite beers, the easy-drinking combination of fruit and hops certainly goes down like a refreshing hazy IPA on a hot summer day.
