No single beer style has dominated the craft world like the American IPA. Though the British invented the hop-centric India pale ale in the 18th century, the IPAs we know and love today were born in the 1990s, as American brewers amplified the bitterness, alcohol, and hop flavor.
For our survey of the best IPAs in America, we limited ourselves to pale, hoppy ales with 5.5 to 7.5 percent alcohol—the standard used by the Beer Judge Certification Program—and ruled out fruited variations. Our final list features established craft breweries you can find at your nearest beer shop, alongside a newer generation of upstarts with fresh takes on the style.
Blind Pig
Brewer: Russian River Brewing
Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo was anything but an overnight success. He toiled in obscurity for years at a San Diego brewery called the Blind Pig. When the operation closed its doors, he took his IPA recipe and the Blind Pig name with him to Russian River. The beer has changed a bit since the original formulation to incorporate some pinier hops, but today’s Blind Pig is just as deserving of attention as its bigger and more famous sibling, Pliny the Elder.
Head Hunter
Brewer: Fatheads Brewery
Ohio doesn’t get mentioned enough as a hotbed of great brewing, but that just speaks to the strength of America’s craft beer scene that a brewery like Fatheads can blend into the landscape. We love both the Fatheads Hop Juju Imperial IPA and its mainstay, Head Hunter, which is brewed in the West Coast style with a crackling bitterness and waves of grapefruit and pine aroma wafting out of the glass.
Jai Alai
Brewer: Cigar City Brewing
Florida’s Cigar City embraces the region’s Latin roots with Jai Alai. Its flagship IPA is named after the exotic sport where players whip a small ball at triple-digit speeds with an elaborate curved mitt. The beer features bright orange, melon, and grapefruit flavors which jump out of the understated aluminum can. There’s a bready malt character with a touch of caramel to balance the hopping. We flip the cans to check the packaging date on the bottom. If it’s more than a month old, wait for a fresh shipment to fully appreciate the delicate hop character.
Union Jack
Brewer: Firestone Walker Brewing
Matt Brynildson is known as Merlin around the Firestone Walker campus in Paso Robles, California, for his nearly magical ability to win medals at the Great American Beer Festival. Union Jack is one of the best tricks in his repertoire, having pulled in gold medals in 2008 and 2009 and a silver in 2013. If that sounds like old news in a trend-chasing beer scene, think again. Union Jack is still an absolutely killer West Coast–style IPA with assertive bitterness and gobs of citrus aroma from two separate courses of dry-hop additions.
Mosaic Promise
Brewer: Founders Brewing
Founders Brewing Company has mastered the art of coaxing complexity out of simple recipes with two killer IPAs that use just a single hop variety. The Centennial IPA is great, but it’s the Mosaic Promise that gets us every time. In this IPA, the Golden Promise barley contributes a depth of sweet grainy flavor that plays well against the pineapple, mango, and grapefruit notes produced by the Mosaic hops.
Two Hearted Ale
Brewer: Bell’s Brewery
John Mallet is the Director of Operations at Bell’s Brewery, and he has a reputation as a mad genius in the brewing industry. We’ve witnessed him tossing lemon peel into candles at beer tasting to demonstrate the flammability of hops (it made sense at the time) and on Sierra Nevada’s 2014 Beer Camp Across America he was the guy on the bus offering body shots to the other brewers. All of which makes it a little surprising that Mallet’s brewing displays such restraint, steady, and meticulous execution. Two Hearted Ale showcases a seemingly effortless balance of malt and bitterness, and a complex citrusy hop character achieved with just Centennial hops — long before single-hop beers came into vogue.
Susan
Brewer: Hill Farmstead Brewery
Hill Farmstead is widely regarded as the vanguard of Vermont brewers making deeply cloudy hop bombs, but we have difficulty lumping it in with any group, because its beers are a head above its Northeastern peers. Hill Farmstead’s beers are slightly hazy and not quite as cloudy as many in the region. They also exhibit a better balance and clarity of flavor than all but a handful breweries in the country. Hoppy beers abound in its portfolio, but Susan is the one that most typifies the IPA style with waves of citrus, piney dankness, and grapefruit. Buy on sight.
Julius
Brewer: Tree House Brewing
One of the breweries at the center of the cloudy beer phenomena is Massachusetts-based Tree House Brewing. They offer a range of IPAs in varying hues, but there’s generally one level of clarity, and it’s just shy of orange juice. Don’t let the milkshake appearance turn you off. You’d be missing a brightly tropical IPA with big mango and citrus notes that drinks easy.
Superpower IPA
Brewer: Comrade Brewing
When this Denver brewery opened in 2014, Colorado was already awash with dry, West Coast–style IPAs. So to stand out, Comrade added a small portion of caramel malt to balance the rich, citrus hop character. It’s a move some would consider old-school, but Superpower is our favorite IPA hailing from the Rocky Mountains.
Todd the Axe Man
Brewer: Surly Brewing
We’re big fans of the heavy metal stylings of Minnesota-based Surly, and we absolutely love its Todd the Axe Man IPA. More tropical than the also excellent Furious, Todd the Axe Man was first brewed as a collaboration with Denmark’s Amager.
Hop Hunter
Brewer: Sierra Nevada Brewing
Sierra Nevada is a steadfast traditionalist in its embrace of minimally processed, whole cone hops over the easier-to-use hop pellets favored at most breweries. Don’t confuse traditional with stodgy though, the Sierra Nevada brewers are also restless innovators. The excellent Torpedo IPA, for example, takes its name from a vessel that they re-purposed and crammed with hops to improve aroma. For Hop Hunter, the brewery steam distills fresh hops in the field to create an extract that further enhances hop aromas. The extract is then used along with whole cone hops in the torpedo to create a beer that tastes like it uses just-harvested wet hops.
Focal Banger
Brewer: The Alchemist
Hiding in the shadow of Heady Topper — possibly the world’s more sought-after beer — is Focal Banger. If the Alchemist had launched it’s canning line with this 7.5 percent IPA instead of the slightly stronger Heady, we have no doubt beer lovers would still be driving for hours and days to stalk delivery trucks in hope of buying a case.
The Pupil
Brewer: Societe Brewing
San Diego’s Societe is one of our favorite hop-centric breweries for its ability to create dry IPAs that still have enough body to carry and maximize the rich floral, pine, and fruit flavors of the bitter flower. It’s much harder to pick a favorite beer once you’re sitting in the brewery tasting room, but if we only had time for one pint, we’d pick the Pupil.
Elevated IPA
Brewer: La Cumbre Brewing
New Mexico’s La Cumbre says Elevated IPA was decades in the making; we say the research paid off. Close your eyes and breathe this ridiculously aromatic brew in, and you’ll be transported to Yakima Valley’s hop fields at harvest time. New Mexico may not be a booming beer state, but Elevated can go toe-to-toe with any West Coast IPA.
Lunch
Brewer: Maine Beer Company
Maine Beer Company named its Lunch IPA after a whale that’s regularly spotted off the New England coast. The whale became known as Lunch after suffering an attack from a predator that took a bite out of its fin. We would have named the beer after the predator who was clearly punching above its weight class, but that’s about the only fault we can find in this superb, hazy IPA.
The Substance
Brewer: Bissell Brothers Brewing
Bissell Brothers’ flagship, The Substance, is a viciously dank take on the IPA that smells like a Colorado grow room. There are also notes of citrus and pine, which are carried by the unconventional additions of wheat and oats to the malt bill.
Tropicália
Brewer: Creature Comforts
The brewers at Georgia’s Creature Comforts built Tropicália around the flavors of hops, not the bitterness. The result is an IPA for people who don’t normally like IPAs, and a hop bomb of juicy stone fruit and citrus for IPA lovers who seek more than a bitter punch to the palate.
Fuzzy Baby Ducks IPA
Brewer: New England Brewing
Sure, Fuzzy Baby Ducks is a refreshing beer that will give a warm, fuzzy feeling in the pit of your stomach, but it could be argued that New England’s popular seasonal IPA is misleadingly named. This citrus-heavy hop bomb is bursting with juicy orange, grapefruit, and tropical fruit flavors in a very assertive, un-duckie-like manner. (Perhaps a rebranding as “Furry Adult Tigers” is in order?)
Pernicious
Brewer: Wicked Weed Brewing
We focus on Wicked Weed for its impressive sour ales, but the Asheville, North Carolina, brewer also runs one of the best IPA programs on the East Coast. Wicked Weed takes its name, and the IPA’s name, from a Henry VIII quote that referred to hops as “a wicked and pernicious weed” unsuitable for English beer. We’re guessing that the brewers in Henry’s day weren’t privy to the hop contracts that Wicked Weed has lined up for Pernicious. Thick with resin, pine, and citrus flavors, Pernicious maintains a great balance and an easy drinkability despite the expansive flavor.
Scepter Head IPA
Brewer: Draught Works
Montana is a sleeper of a beer state, but it ranks fourth in the country for breweries per capita, right behind Colorado. Scepter Head, hailing from Missoula, is our favorite in Big Sky Country. And we’re not alone in our love for the 6 percent ABV hop bomb, the Great American Beer Festival awarded it a gold medal in 2014.
Topcutter
Brewer: Bale Breaker Brewing
This IPA hails from the heart of hop-growing country in Yakima, Washington. The founders are the grandchildren of hop farmers, and built Bale Breaker on a hill that used to supply Sierra Nevada. Its flagship Topcutter IPA is brewed in the dry West Coast style, but with a touch more body than most of its bitter peers.
Hop, Drop ‘N Roll
Brewer: NoDa Brewing
There are a handful of breweries lining the strip of North Davidson in Charlotte, North Carolina, and NoDa Brewing is hands down the best of the bunch. The truth is, they’d stand out in just about any neighborhood you could plop them down in. Hop Drop ‘N Roll is brewed in the West Coast style with a lean malt profile and a generous hop profile that stops just short of unbalancing the beer. Citrus and pine dance out of the glass and across the palate.
Workhorse IPA
Brewer: Laurelwood Brewing
Throw a stone in Portland, Oregon, and you’ll likely hit a brewery with a solid IPA. Laurelwood’s Workhorse, however, is the first one we’d order while visiting Stumptown. It’s amber-hued, thanks to caramelized malts, which carry the big tropical fruit and piney citrus hops.
Hop Showers
Brewer: Other Half Brewing
If you make it to one of Other Half’s can releases at its Brooklyn tasting room, you can’t go wrong with any of the IPAs—we’ve loved them all. But Hop Showers, one of the more regular Other Half varieties, is an IPA we can never get enough of. The beer pours a slightly hazy golden color, with wildly aggressive citrus, resin, and citrus pith flavors over a sharp bitterness.
Santilli
Brewer: Night Shift Brewing
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.
