Best local Hoppy beer on the shelves in Mass at the moment

one vote for Kiwi as an extra

 

12th Amendment recently started distributing Tribute in MA. If you can find it, it's better than Bootleg and plenty hoppy.
http://www.14thstarbrewing.com/beers/tribute-double-ipa/

If you can't find it, I'd vote for Kiwi.

 

I would say sea hag, had my first last week and loved it. Also gets you a bit more NE variety and not too mass heavy. Tribute would be awesome too.

 

Night Shift Santilli

 

Brewmaster Jack's DIPA and IPLs. Despite the quality and price, they seem to sit around. Otherwise, I'd go with Kiwi.

 

Are fresh Singlecut bottles still around? If so I'd say that's a top contender (unless your trade partner already sees their stuff).

If you can find fresh NB Greenhead IPA, that's an option. Under appreciated beer IMO.

Kiwi is a good choice. As is any of the other JA hoppy offerings really.

 

Redstone in Andover has Captains Daughter, saw it there today. They also have cases of Singlecut Mo Shuggie right now. This batch is phenomenal. Id say grab a couple of those and a some Captains Daughter, ship one of each and drink the others!

 

Ipswich Hop Harvest
Stoneface IPA
Worm town Be Hoppy

 

I second The Greenhead recommendation. I always grab some to bring back to Vt. I've surprised a few Vt hop snobs with it. not to mention their is nothing like grilling some butcher boy Tips and sipping on a Greenhead on a nice summer afternoon

 

Try BLDG8 around the Noho area. Real good stuff.

 

BLDG 8 and Brewmaster Jack from Western Mass.

Out east, Night Shift, Newburyport, Slumbrew.

 

Kiwi Rising for sure.

 

Personally I find it kind of funny how people clamor over MBC and Foley Bros, but Singlecut and Brewmaster Jack tend to sit around... at least in these parts.

 

Just had a kiwi rising tonight, in past years I put it behind Mass Rising. This year's seems to have something special going on.

 

Finest Kind.

 

Ipswich Route 101, if it's fresh.

 

Santili and Whirlpool are great.

Finest kind is a classic.

 

Out of the listed choices sea hag or kiwi.

 

Definitely Whirlpool. It's the most unique tasting beer of all those mentioned.

 

i will add a vote for Kiwi Rising

 

Whirlpool is the best. Not only is it generally as good as the more hyped New England stuff, it's also like icfpny said got its own niche thing going on. I like Santilli, but Whirlpool is the beer that really elevates Night Shift imo.

 

Be Hoppy would be my choice and when I have added it in trades (I like the ease of packing cans) it has been well received. Kiwi Rising is a great choice since it is currently out and fresh. It fades rapidly in my experience, so advise them accordingly. Santili and Whirlpool would be great, if you can find them.

 

I guess I need to revisit Greenhead. I thought the beer was terrible the first time I tried it and haven't had it again since

 

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks Greenhead is terrible. I have had it on many occasions on tap and from the can. It's just a bad beer IMO. I even went to the brewery to make sure in was getting a fresh pour, and it was still disappointing as ever.

 

Just before Thanksgiving I bought a 6pk dated 11/2 or 11/20 (depending on which label had the typo). I don't know if I'd call it terrible, but it didn't certainly didn't distinguish itself from common IPAs like Torpedo or Finestkind.

 

Yeah I've got to third this ... NBPT belgian white was one of my fav beers this summer but that IPA is not a good beer. I also would like to disagree with the post saying Singlecut tends to sit. It might not sell out in a day but based on my own observations I would say it sells pretty well.

My vote here is probably for Be Hoppy if you can find it, but I just picked up some Kiwi Rising on the advice of you all, and am looking forward to trying it tonight.

 

I'd go Kiwi since it's seasonal (i.e. only fresh once a year).

 

Their belgian white is on point and flies under the radar. I guess the style in general does , too

 

been seeing stoneface in boston too, and they're 1 for 1 for me so far

 

Yep, came here to post the same thing.

There's no other beer on the shelf in MA with that hop profile at 4.5% abv or lower.

 

I'll say Whirlpool as well. Be Hoppy has to be in the conversation though.

 

NBPT Greenhead is a good "bang for your buck beer". Not great, but good local beer.

 

hag all day.

 

Does Western MA get this? I thought they pulled out of MA completely?

 

No, OP posted he picked some up in CT. Hopefully soon though with their new brewery, RI too!!!

 

Would love to see it in RI: would probably jump ahead of Pour Judgement in the ranks of regional 6-pack IPAs available here.

 

The reason it seems like Singlecut sits around is because of its distributor. They use Craft Collective which works exclusively with small breweries. They typically deliver huge numbers of cases of a single beer to stores. So stores often get 10 plus cases of single cut beers which takes a while for stores to sell since a lot of people aren't familiar with the brand. Fair Maiden, Captain's Daughter, and Be Hoppy all use traditional distribution companies so most stores only get a case at a time and there are enough people who go nuts for those beers so they sell out really quickly.

 

It's quite the opposite. We just don't get enough beer from our suppliers to deliver huge amounts of anything to anybody. We have 50+ off-premise accounts, and they all want SingleCut. We typically receive 150-225 cases out of each of SingleCut's twice monthly bottling. The math just doesn't work for giving everybody 10+ cases.

Our average SingleCut delivery is 3 cases. Of all the SingleCut deliveries we've made since they began bottling, less than 10% have been for more than 5 cases.

It has also not been our experience that SingleCut beers are sitting around. About 25% of our accounts usually sell out in a week. The middle 50% sell out within two weeks. The final 25% typically sells out within three weeks. We typically receive and deliver 100% of our allotment of each SingleCut bottled within 7 days of bottling. So you're talking about less than 30 days, in even the worst case scenario. I'm not saying you won't find the odd longer dated bottle out there, but it's not a normal thing at this point to have this stuff sitting around for long.