116 Beer IPA Blind Taste Test

I wonder how Fat Head's Head Hunter would have fared. I really enjoyed that when I visited Cleveland a couple of years back and it rates very highly here on BA.

 

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...asted-116-american-ipas-and-soon-a-champ.html

 

I wasn't personally so enamored with blind pig from RR that I would have to specifically mention my shock that it wasn't (whatever). That might have a little bit to do with PtE stealing the show, but mostly I just don't think it's so outstanding as to deserve special mention as to why it wasn't specially mentioned. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine beer. But so are several hundred that didn't get on the list. The bottom line is that there are a LOT of breweries these days, and they're all making IPAs, and troof be told, most of the time when I try a new beer, it's pretty good. The quality of beer around the country IS very high, and thus anything that's not of high quality will probably last less than five minutes.

 

Stone delicious at #6? It's nothing near as good as regular old Stone IPA. It's not even close. And I didn't over-rate it as I have reviewed that rating several times and still won't change it.

 

Yeah, see I think Stone Delicious is far better than the regular IPA. Still shocked it's not a Double.

 

From the linked article:

“This time, though, we took our game to the next level, gathering IPAs from every inch of the U.S.A. until the total stood at a truly ridiculous 116, almost doubling our previous figure.”

And:

“…particularly in the time spent reaching out to breweries and acquiring the 116 entries. We assure you, that part wasn’t easy—the sheer number of emails and phone calls I made about American IPAs in the last couple months boggles the mind.”

It sure reads like the beers were ‘donated’ by the breweries. Why they couldn’t explicitly state that is a bit confusing to me.

Cheers!

 

Aside from the subjective nature of all this, I wonder what the freshness and storage conditions on all of these were? I can get Lunch and Another One, and MBC is nuts about freshness, and on a given day I may like one better than the other. Wormtown Be Hoppy certainly should be there and I'd be surprised if it missed the top 20. Same thing with Stoneface. One thing about the bottom of the list, there's not a single beer on that list that I have regular access to that I will also buy. Not one. So I think they did pretty well with that.

It really shows me only one thing, we have an absurdly high number of very good IPAs out there.

 

Agreed!!

Cheers!

 

Good, interesting read. Loose Cannon in the top ten? Crazy. Still won't likely be purchasing that ever again.

You could do this with 500 IPAs and still leave many deserving candidates out. What a great time to be a hop head.

 

116 IPAs? We've got almost 300 breweries in my state alone, and all but a small handful brew at least one, and most several, IPAs. The only 2 WA beers I saw were both ABI brands, Elysian and Red Hook. With over 3k breweries in the US, there's gotta be almost that many IPAs.

It's probably not logistically possible, but I'd like to see one of these done with every IPA in the field.

 

If there are over 3000 breweries in the US, there must be over 15,000 different IPAs.

Good luck with that tasting.

 

great article!

 

Glad to see White Rajah get some national recognition. I take it for granted living 20 minutes from the brewery, but it is truly great. Back Rajah and El Lupulo Libre are even better if you get a chance to try them. Would have liked to see where Fatheads and Columbus ranked in this, though.

 

This was a good effort but I regard all taste tests of this nature as true for these participants at this place and time but nothing more than that.
I think White Rajah is great and among the very best. Founder's Centennial is, for me, nowhere near a top ten IPA. There are few other eye rollers in their top twenty-five but then I wasn't there.

 

Pretty solid list. Of course completely subjective. And obviously they couldn't get there hands on everything they wanted. Certain seasonals would not have been available. Also have to take into consideration that freshness of each IPA. I'm sure some of these were sitting a bit while waiting for others to come in.

-I thought Sculpin would have placed higher. Grapefruit was high, but I prefer the original.
-Surprised they didn't use Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter (probably not released by the time the test was done).
-Glad to see Six Point Bengali ranked that high. I think its very underrated.
-I'm dying to try Maine Beer Company's Lunch.

I would like to see a taste test done on this large of a scale with some other styles...Might as well start with the Double IPAs.

 

Ridiculous to compare unless they're fresh, interisting but meaningless. Putting big 8% Dipas up against 7% brews also doesn't work real well.

 

The end of the article is pretty damn explicit.

 

Needless to say but I missed that.

It appears that they purchased some of the beers and some of the beers were donated.

Cheers!

 

I was going to post the same thing. It's one of my favorites.