Thirty-eight IBU. Five percent ABV. A Midwest Pale Ale. On paper this is the most unremarkable beer released this week, the kind of spec sheet you could write blindfolded. And yet here is Fifth Ward Brewing, three batches deep into a beer whose entire premise is that it changes every time.
Hopscotch is built less like a recipe and more like a standing challenge: same base beer, different malt and hop combination each round, whatever the brewers feel like drawing up. Batch #3 lands on Bru-1, Vista, and Dolcita, a hop lineup that reads like nobody involved was trying to be safe about it. The name fits better than most brewery puns manage - a kids' sidewalk game where you never land on the same square twice, applied to a beer that has now proven it can do exactly that three times running.
It shows up in four-packs and on tap at the Oshkosh taproom starting this Friday, alongside the return of Fifth Ward's Mexican-style lager for the Beer of the Month slot. But Hopscotch is the one worth paying attention to here, mostly because a brewery willing to keep rerolling the dice on its own flagship idea is more interesting than one playing it safe with the same recipe forever. Three squares in, no signs of missing a jump yet.