Food & Drink

The Best New IPAs

by Matt Allyn

The American IPA is the number-one craft style and accounts for about a quarter of all craft beer sold. You’ll be hard pressed to find a new brewery that doesn’t have a take on the hoppy style, and now we’re even seeing stalwarts of the craft world retooling classic IPAs to better satisfy our thirst for beers bursting with ever more flavor and aroma. To help you wade through the bounty of new options, we offer our favorite new and relaunched IPAs that have hit shelves and tap lines in the last year.

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1 / 10

Oskar Blues IPA

Brewer: Oskar Blues Brewery

Style: American IPA

Perhaps Colorado’s Oskar Blues went so long without a true IPA because Dale’s Pale Ale, and the amped up Deviant Dale’s, are so hoppy and satisfying. But following the release of last year’s excellent, crushable Pinner session IPA, we have the Oskar Blues IPA. It’s a welcome addition to the OB family, with more juicy and tropical flavors than the brewery’s other hop bombs.

2 / 10

Santilli

Brewer: Night Shift Brewing

Style: American IPA

Massachusetts’s Night Shift has been on our radar a few years for its expertly brewed ales and lagers, but cans of its Santilli IPA didn’t start making a splash until last spring. The hazy (always a good sign) gold beer is bursting with tropical fruit and citrus, with a very reasonable 6 percent alcohol.

3 / 10

Ruination 2.0

Brewer: Stone Brewing

Style: Imperial IPA

2015 was a big year for Stone Brewing. A shakeup in the regular lineup dropped Levitation Ale and Sublimely Self Righteous Black IPA while introducing retooled recipes of Stone Pale Ale and Ruination. Both reborn beers are fantastic, but the Ruination is the first we’d reach for on the shelf. The brewers at Stone have amplified the already-huge hop aroma while adding new flavors with additional varietals.

4 / 10

Backseat Berner

Brewer: Otter Creek Brewing

Style: American IPA

Otter Creek is another respected brewery that went decades without an IPA. But it’s made up for lost time with Backseat Berner. This instant classic tastes like a more tropical take on Bell’s legendary Two Hearted Ale. And “Berner” references the brewmaster’s giant Bernese mountain dog, which is hanging out on the label.

5 / 10

Heavy Lifting

Brewer: Boulevard Brewing

Style: American IPA

Boulevard already has an excellent IPA in its Single-Wide, but the Kansas City brewers wanted something with even more kick, something for the geekiest hop heads. The juicy aroma and rolling citrus flavors certainly achieves that, and we’d liken it to one of our longtime favorites, Pliny the Elder.

6 / 10

Metamodern

Brewer: Oasis Texas Brewing

Style: Session IPA

Oasis Texas is still a relative newcomer to the rich Austin beer scene, but they’ve wasted no time in impressing locals with the likes of its Great American Beer Festival gold medalist London Homesick ale and flagship Slow Ride Pale Ale. Our favorite brew is the Metamodern Session IPA, a 4.5-percent easy-drinking ale with huge flavors.

7 / 10

Hop Hunter

Brewer: Sierra Nevada Brewing

Style: American IPA

Until the launch of Hop Hunter, the primary technique to make hoppier beer was to add more hops or hop extract. Sierra Nevada developed a proprietary method to distill hop oils from fresh flowers to preserve the aroma of unprocessed hops for a year round beer. The result is Hop Hunter, a relatively easy to find IPA with the intense floral character of the very limited wet hop beers you can typically only get a few weeks every fall.

8 / 10

Mad Hatter

Brewer: New Holland Brewing

Style: American IPA

This Midwest staple has graced shelves since 1998, but last spring the brewers at New Holland relaunched Mad Hatter with a “reimagined” recipe. The new IPA features Michigan-grown hops, an ABV boosted to 7 percent, and booming citrus aroma.

9 / 10

Introvert

Brewer: Left Hand Brewing

Style: Session IPA

This Colorado brewery made its name on the rich, smooth Left Hand Milk Stout, and you could consider this the complementary beer in its lineup. Introvert is bright and lighter bodied, but no dull blonde ale. It’s a prime example of why session IPAs are a hit — big hops without a ton of booze — thanks to a blend of six hop varieties that range from kiwi fruit to pine flavors.

10 / 10

Down to Earth

Brewer: 21st Amendment Brewing

Style: Session IPA

We were fans of this brew’s predecessor, the spicy, satisfying Bitter American. Its replacement, Down to Earth, is a little lighter bodied and adds clean tangerine and peach elements to the classic citrus flavors. Like the best session IPAs, this one also lets the malts shine briefly with a hit of toasted barley. 21st Amendment calls this an evolution of Bitter American, and we have to agree that it’s reached a higher state.

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Oskar Blues IPA

Santilli

Ruination 2.0

Backseat Berner

Heavy Lifting

Metamodern

Hop Hunter

Mad Hatter

Introvert

Down to Earth

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