Name: Brewers' IPA
Brand: South Lake Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

Ask five people on a brew crew to each pick one hop and you will not end up with the hop bill any of them would have written alone. South Lake Brewing Company built Brewers' IPA exactly that way. Every member of the brew team chose a variety, and all five went into the same beer. The result is a West Coast IPA at 7.2 percent ABV, pouring now at both of the brewery's South Lake Tahoe locations.

South Lake describes pine and citrus on the nose, resin and dark berry through the middle, and an earthy orange rind finish. The brewery's shorthand for the hop bill is a Pacific Northwest symphony. That is fair on the geography: Amarillo, Mosaic, Nugget, Meridian, and Strata were all bred in Washington or Oregon.

What is striking is how far apart they sit in time. Nugget goes back to the early 1980s and spent most of its career as a bittering workhorse, valued for alpha acids and a firm herbal, resinous character rather than for aroma. Strata is a far more recent Oregon variety, bred for exactly the dank, passionfruit-and-berry aromatics modern IPAs are built around. Amarillo and Mosaic fill in the citrus and dark fruit between them. That earthy orange rind finish reads like Nugget's herbal side landing underneath Amarillo's orange. A hop bill assembled by one person, out of one decade's worth of taste, probably would not have produced it.

The malt bill is the other deliberate choice. South Lake started with a lean grist of all pilsner malt, with nothing crystal or caramel in it to add color or sweetness. Pilsner malt is the palest and cleanest base a brewer can work with, and using it on its own gives a dry, crisp foundation that puts nothing between the drinker and the hops. It is a lager brewer's instinct applied to an IPA, and it is what keeps a beer carrying this much hop material from sitting heavy.

Brewers' IPA is on tap at both South Lake locations now. The brewery is pitching it as a weekend pint rather than a packaged release, so it is a taproom proposition for the moment.

Editor’s Take

The collaboration beer is usually two breweries in different states swapping emails about label art. This one is five people who already work in the same room, each allowed exactly one hop, which is either the purest form of democracy craft beer has produced or the most reckless. Nobody has said which member of the crew went to bat for Nugget - a hop that has spent forty years being asked for bitterness and not much else - but I would like to buy that person a pint. It is the pick nobody makes when they are trying to look modern, and it is very likely why the finish has an earthy edge on it instead of just more fruit.

The other thing worth admiring is what did not happen. Five people choosing independently ought to produce a potluck where everybody brings dessert. This one has a shape to it: bright at the front, resinous through the middle, orange rind at the close. Either the crew has excellent taste or they have been drinking together long enough to think alike, and both of those are good signs for a brewery.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Brewers' IPA Let Each of Five Brewers Choose One Hop

Five brewers, five hops, one beer. South Lake's Brewers' IPA runs Amarillo, Mosaic, Nugget, Meridian, and Strata over an all-pilsner-malt base - a hop bill stretching across four decades of Pacific Northwest breeding.

Source & Editorial