A Taxonomy of IPAs?

Hello, folks. I’m doing a little thinking out loud here, and hoping your might lend me your lobes. I'm currently working on a chapter in the second edition of the Beer Bible about hoppy American ales. They are a surprisingly confusing and confounding category, for a couple reasons. Historically, there have been four epochs: original IPAs (extinct), British IPAs (extinct outside the UK, nearly extinct there), early bitter American IPAs (endangered), and modern IPAs. That last category poses the second difficulty, because it is a vast and sprawling collection of branches with no central trunk.

In this chapter, my intention is to describe the variants within the style as readers find them in the wild so they’ll know what all the different terms mean, not to comment on how good/bad or legitimate the subtype may be. I have no interest in a style-guidelines approach, just a short, handy guide so people know the difference between a beer labeled “hazy IPA” from one called “session IPA” or “white IPA”). It’s impossible to create categories of mutually-exclusive IPAs because a double IPA, for example, may be hazy or not, but this is my best first draft:

• West Coast IPAs. Basically as close to the standard IPA as we have.

• New England (or Hazy) IPAs

• Flavored IPAs. (Will include white, fruit, and milkshake IPAs)

• Strong IPAs

• Session IPAs and Pale Ales

• Brett and Sour IPAs

• Specialty IPAs (will include black, red, Belgian, and brut IPAs)

All right, your turn. Does this work? Would you make changes? Is there an entirely different way to conceptualize the terrain of IPAs?