Is heady topper a NEIPA/ DIPA or both?

Question

I'm from Australia so we don't really have good access to Heady Topper, Treehouse or Trilium NEIPAs. I have been looking at the heady topper clone on byo.com -https://byo.com/recipe/alchemist-heady-topper-clone/ (Note: Paywall, recipe posted below) and notice it doesn't have oats or wheat. So my question - even though this is one of the originals, compared with today's and other progressions of the NEIPA, is this more of a DIPA or are other brewers just adding sweetness/haze with wheat and oats?

INGREDIENTS

15 lb. (6.8 kg) British 2-row pale malt

6 oz. (170 g) Caravienne malt

1 lb. (0.45 kg) turbinado sugar (10 mins.)

7 AAU Magnum hops (60 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 14% alpha acids)

13 AAU Simcoe hops (30 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 13% alpha acids)

5.75 AAU Cascade hops (0 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 5.75% alpha acids)

8.6 AAU Apollo hops (0 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 17.2% alpha acids)

13 AAU Simcoe hops (0 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 13% alpha acids)

10.5 AAU Centennial hops (0 min.) (1 oz./28 g at 10.5% alpha acids)

7 AAU Columbus hops (0 min.) (0.5 oz./14 g at 14% alpha acids)

1 oz. (28 g) Chinook hops (primary dry hop)

1 oz. (28 g) Apollo hops (primary dry hop)

1 oz. (28 g) Simcoe hops (primary dry hop)

1.25 oz. (35 g) Centennial hops (secondary dry hop)

1.25 oz. (35 g) Simcoe hops (secondary dry hop)

1 tbsp. polyclar

Yeast

The Yeast Bay (Vermont Ale), GigaYeast GY054 (Vermont IPA), East Coast Yeast ECY29 (North East Ale), White Labs WLP095 (Burlington Ale), or Omega Yeast Labs (DIPA Ale) yeast (as a 3 L yeast starter) 2/3 cup (130 g) dextrose (if priming)

Answer 1

NE IPAs are known to their high amount of late hopping, sometimes the use of proteins like oatmeal and wheat can help too, the proteins along with the hop oils creates chains of polifenols, that will cause the cloudy/hazy/turbid look, there's also some interaction with the yeast (low flocculation) and the lack of filtration, just putting lots of hops in a beer with low protein content will not make it hazy enough as most NE IPAs we see these days.

Styles are like guidelines to classify the beers, so since Heady Topper has 120 IBU and 8% abv (as ratebeer says) and there was no NE IPA style at the time (they were probably the first ones to brew it), they classified it correctly as a DIPA besides not making a clear beer as expected for a DIPA.

Answer 2

DIPA = Double India Pale Ale

NEIPA = New England (Style) India Pale Ale

I would expect the DIPA to have a more pronounced bitterness over the NEIPA. Both can have a huge amount of hop-character (other than bitterness), so they can't really be well differentiated on that point.

So, given the overwhelming bulk of the hops are (non-bittering) 0-minute/flameout and dry hops, I would class this as a NEIPA rather than a DIPA.

But then the brewery itself calls it's a DIPA, but it's also brewed in North Eastern USA. So we're splitting hairs... Maybe it's a NE-DIPA!