Here are my top picks for best IPAs brewed right here in Houston and perfect to celebrate with on #NationalIPADay!

Heavy Hands Double IPA – Spindletap Brewery

If you read my Valentines letter to this beer, you know my mad obsession. This beer pours milky bright yellow with vibrant hops qualities present on all corners. This IPA has a strong citrus kick making it the true definition of Texas JUICE! At 8%, its medium body and soft mouthfeel continues to delight my hop head senses with each sip. Cans are generally available in the taproom and local distro markets like HEB. Load up on the case special at the brewery, because you won’t want this hoppy adventure to end. Cheers to the heavy weight champ of Houston hazy beers!

Mini Boss IPA – Eureka Heights Brewing Company

This double dry hopped IPA is the classic example of a tropical citrus IPA. Containing Citra and mosaic in the hop profile, this beer is one of the most balanced IPAs around. Modest amount of bitterness, aroma of bold citrus hops and drying alcohol finish makes this 6.8% IPA are perfect entry IPA for those new to the style. Coincidentally, it also makes a great shotgun beer with its approachable hoppy character. Crack open a cold one and down the hatch it goes!

Doc Hoppiday Hazy IPA – Saloon Door Brewing

This beer is my hoppy huckleberry. Coming in at 6.8%, this hazy New England style IPA from Saloon Door Brewing in Webster is an ultra smooth drinkable IPA with all the juicy characteristics hop heads crave. With all Citra hops and its bold tropical juice notes, this beer finishes dry with a slight hop bite on the end. If you are a fan of Heavy Hands, this one is definitely one to try! This brew is available to go from the taproom as well as local distribution markets including Total Wine’s all over the state of Texas.

The Haas West Coast IPA – Vallensons’ Brewing Co.

It wouldn’t be proper to include a list of awesome IPAs and leave off Valle’s Haas West Coast IPA. This resinous dank forward west coast style was named after Joe Haas, close friend of the brewery & lifetime mug club member who happens to be a huge fan of this beer and west coast IPAs. The Haas is a dedication beer to all the help and friendship over the years with the Haas family. They have assisted the brewery in many ways, including preparing the original cellar & fermentation system, making runs to Austin for brewery equipment and slinging pints behind the bar.

Weighing in a 7%, this American west coast IPA is brewed with Magnum and Centennial hops for bitterness and then triple dry hopped with Simcoe to reflect an amazing pine citrus aroma. This beer is as traditional as they come. By the way, are you free tonight? Vallensons’ is celebrating their first Thursday open to the public with the release of a new DIPA with Sabro, Cascade and Belma hops. Come check out the new taproom digs in Pearland and keep your eyes peeled for a Joe Haas sighting!

Art Car IPA – Saint Arnold Brewing Company

A classic favorite H-town treat! Art Car IPA is an American IPA featuring a blend of both new and old hop varieties from the Pacific Northwest. Visually, this beer pours golden yellow, nose full of tropical mango and apricot making it very inviting to enjoy. A generous dry hopping of Amarillo, Simcoe and Mosaic brings out the tropical mango and citrus aromatics. I highly recommend a fresh pour directly from the beer garden for the ultimate tasting experience. Best thing about this beer? It can be found nearly all around town including your local gas stations. Check the date if you want, we think its still enjoyable months in!

The post Top 5 Houston area IPAs to drink on #IPADay first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Top 5 Houston area IPAs to drink on #IPADay appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Everyone knows about the game of craps, right? Even if you have never played yourself, you have surely heard the commotion from these high paced tables in Vegas. Players giving high fives, rejoicing after hot roll sequences of sevens on the come out roll is all part of the fun. When the table is hot, everyone wins. Part of the excitement of the game is the never ending action especially when the shooter hits the winning point with a table full of place and field bets. Complicated yes, but just like most casino games, craps is no different than poker and the fact is, you can’t win if you don’t bet big. The brewing team at Saint Arnold did just that with this beer.  

Our patron Saint brewery of Houston, Saint Arnold Brewing Company took that gamble with this eclectic choice of hops for their latest year round offering. This latest beer innovation is a double IPA weighing in at a hefty 9.2% abv and after tasting it, I have no doubt that we will all win with this choice.

It’s picture perfect clarity shines bright through today’s choice glassware . **All hail the queen of tejano music, Selena.  26 years gone but never forgotten. **  

The subtle aroma of fresh honey dew and tropical fruits aren’t enough to overshadow this beer’s boozy breath.   The hop bill includes Pahto, Citra, Citra Incognito, Mosaic, Mosaic Incognito, and Galaxy. The taste on the flavor is very fruit forward with pineapple and melon.  At 71 IBUs, the beer carries a familiar bitterness but finishes extremely clean and refreshing. A non confrontation unity of characteristics from both West and East coast style IPAs. It is unique and loud but leaves the palate quenched for more. This beer truly stands out in a category all its own and I am glad to have tried it.

Make a gamble with this beer, and place your bets! Just like the label reads, you might as well double down! We are in for a great year of wins with this delicious choice from Saint Arnold.

The post Beer Spotlight: Double Down Double IPA – Saint Arnold Brewing Co. first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post Beer Spotlight: Double Down Double IPA – Saint Arnold Brewing Co. appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.

Apparently I should write about things I want to see happen more often. Since publishing “Who will be Houston’s Trillium or Tree House?” a handful of our area breweries have gone public with their intentions to attempt to brew a beer closely adhering to the style hallmarks — huge tropical fruit flavor thanks to obscene amounts of post-boil dry-hop additions during whirlpool, fermentation and/or under CO2 pressure of uber-popular citrusy hops like Citra, Galaxy, Mosaic, Nelson, Amarillo and El Dorado; super-soft, creamy and juicy body/mouthfeel as a result of the interplay of the water treatment, specialty grain bill and London Ale (1318) or English Ale (007) yeast strains; and minimal (but still present) lingering bitterness due in part to almost no kettle hop additions — of the supernova that is the Northeast-Style India Pale Ale (NEIPA), or at least their interpretation of such.

Baa Baa Brewhouse was among the first to respond, and I enjoyed their initial stab at it, which they are now tweaking in preparation for a more scaled-up release on March 4. Katy’s No Label then announced last week that they are taking a stab at a double dry-hopped New England-Style IPA; as did Spindletap (while also coining #HoustonHaze); it was mentioned in the comments of my Cow Jumped Over the Moon review that Sigma is also planning one (though I haven’t seen an official announcement anywhere yet); and there are a couple of forthcoming breweries with exciting plans whose beers I am very eager to try. In the midst of this flurry of activity, Conroe’s Copperhead Brewery also announced the release of their own double dry-hopped Double IPA, Feeding Frenzy, and were kind enough to invite me out to try it.

Brewed with copious amounts of Citra, alongside Comet, Amarillo and Apollo, Feeding Frenzy announces itself immediately with its huge tropical aroma. It’s a fairly deep orange in appearance, with Fawcett Maris Otter and flaked oats in the grain bill, and pleasantly hazy. Flavor-wise the citrus is robust and plentiful; there’s absolutely no mistaking this beer for anything but Citra-dominated. And it is deceptively, dangerously easy to down for the 8.0% ABV. In fact, it may well be the tastiest Houston-brewed DIPA I’ve had — I actually said the same thing last time I had a Copperhead DIPA almost a year ago, and it’s clear owner and brewmaster Seth Earnest knows his way around hops.

Of course, you’re probably wanting to know whether I thought it was a good representation of a NEIPA. And, my answer is that it’s actually not an NEIPA (nor did Seth say it was one). Granted, Feeding Frenzy was brewed utilizing many of the aforementioned NE-style techniques (and these days specifically calling out double dry-hopping is a signifier in the northeast in particular), but the beer was also fermented with Chico (or American Ale) yeast, which, while historically hailed for its clean character, doesn’t lend itself to the creamy/juicy/soft mouthfeel that is a critical component of the style. As such, Feeding Frenzy still finished decidedly West Coast for me, with a bit of a harsher bitterness than I’d want in an NE-style beer. Seth mentioned to me that for the next batch, which will be appropriately scaled up, he plans to pitch Conan yeast instead, which is best known as the strain that made Heady Topper the most sought-after beer in the world three years ago. I’ll be curious to see what Conan does to Feeding Frenzy, although in my experience, the yeast strain really needs to be either 1318 or 007 to nail the Northeast-style mouthfeel.

That all said, I want to reiterate: it was still a very good beer. And ultimately it doesn’t even matter what I think as the beer was an unequivocal success in their taproom this past weekend, prompting Copperhead to add a new batch to its brew schedule roughly every other month going forward. And there’s even more great news for fans of beer in cans (a.k.a. everyone): while the next batch of Feeding Frenzy will be available in 4-packs of 12-oz. bottles to-go directly from the brewery, Seth intends to start canning all of their hoppy beers in the not-too-distant future, with flagship Striker IPA first up to hit six-packs of 12-oz. cans, eventually followed by Feeding Frenzy later on down the line.

The post A look at Copperhead Brewery’s Feeding Frenzy IIPA first appeared on Houston Beer Guide.

The post A look at Copperhead Brewery’s Feeding Frenzy IIPA appeared first on Houston Beer Guide.