The Citra/Mosaic Connection
Traveling the country offers a kind of insight one can’t access at a remote distance, no matter how much you read and study. It’s necessarily a limited view—I am getting merely superficial hits from my brief stops in the cities I’ve visited. I don’t count it as representative. Still, certain things emerge. As Twitter readers know, one of those observations has to do with the ubiquity of Citra/Mosaic IPAs I’ve been seeing.
This combo is hardly new. Citra has been around for almost 15 years, and Mosaic is approaching a decade of success. In a growing sea of IPA hops, brewers still default to one or both, and consumers have started to recognize them. They are the most-planted varieties in the US. I’ve known all of this and I’ve seen plenty of IPAs that feature the dynamic duo, often in combination with other varieties. On this trip, however, I’ve seen the two wielded as something more than just a toothsome pair: brewers have mentioned that their Citra/Mosaic IPAs outsell others, to the point that for their volume IPAs, they feel they must use them. And that did startle me.
American brewers have thrived on novelty over the past half decade, and the growing number of hops seemed to feed that churn. We looked at Brits, with their quaint Golding-and-Fuggle bitters, or Czechs, with Saazy svetles, as charming anachronisms.
On the other hand, humans crave familiarity, and fatigue is one of downsides of this constant invention. We like a little variety, but not bewildering change. All those new IPAs with their myriad obscure taste descriptors may have scared many people off.
I suspect that some combination of several things causes the Citramosaic* glut: 1) drinkers recognize these flavors, which anchor an IPA in familiarity, 2) drinkers don’t really know what these newer varieties are so they look for names they recognize, 3) Citramosaic is gradually being associated with IPAs the way haze is. It’s become a brand of sorts, like Pinot noir in the Northwest.
I threw these thoughts out on Twitter and got tepid support for the theory. I think part of the murkiness stems from that distinction between regular drinkers and beer geeks. Many one-off hazies exist for experimentation. Those may occasionally feature Citramosaic but usually highlight new varieties. Meanwhile, workhorse IPAs that breweries depend on to pay the bills need to appeal to a larger, more stable crowd. It’s not surprising those beers would offer “typical” flavors familiar to drinkers.
I don’t want to overemphasize this trend, just flag it. We should watch to see if this combo becomes ever more entrenched in IPAs, or if the newer varieties ultimately begin to supplant them. I am genuinely curious to see which way it goes.
If you missed the Twitter thread and have thoughts, I invite you to share them.
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*Yes, I’m winking at William Golding here. Always steal from the best.