Name: Eight Billion Genies
Brand: Half Acre Beer Co
Availability: InStock

The premise fits in a sentence. Everyone on Earth gets a genie, and every genie grants exactly one wish. Charles Soule and Ryan Browne spent an Image Comics series working out what happens in the eight seconds after that, and in the years that follow. Half Acre Beer Company has now brewed the beer twice.

Eight Billion Genies is a Double IPA at 8 percent ABV, back this month as a limited release. It is the Chicago brewery's second collaboration with Browne, who illustrated the series, and the second time this particular recipe has run. Half Acre's release photo shows two cans standing together in different colorways, one red and one green, carrying the same figures in reversed colors.

The beer gets a double dry hop of Strata, Mosaic and Citra, which Half Acre refers to as the hazy hop trinity. The brewery is not overselling that. Those three are the standard backbone of the modern hazy IPA, and they are here doing the job they are usually hired for. Citra and Mosaic carry the citrus and tropical weight. Strata is the one that brings a resinous, faintly dank edge, and it is also the variety most associated with strawberry.

That last point is worth connecting. Among the flavors Half Acre lists are big fruit salad aromatics, strawberry and lemon-lime sherbet, with a balanced bitterness carrying through the finish. The strawberry is not a stray descriptor. It traces directly back to one of the three hops on the list.

Eight Billion Genies is available in 16 ounce four-packs through September.

Editor’s Take

The entire premise of the comic is that you get one wish. One. Non-negotiable, no refunds, eight billion people discovering at the same instant that they really should have thought about it for another minute. Half Acre has now brewed the tie-in beer twice, which I choose to read as the most quietly optimistic gesture in the whole arrangement. Somebody looked at a story about the finality of a single chance and said: or, alternatively, we could just do it again.

And then there are the two cans in the photo, one red and one green, the same artwork flipped between them. Comics readers will recognize this instantly as the variant cover, an institution built on the premise that people who already own a thing might reasonably want a slightly different-looking version of the same thing. Transferring that logic to a four-pack of Double IPA is either a very good joke or a very good idea, and I have decided not to work out which.

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.

Eight Billion Genies Returns for a Second Brew, in Two Colorways

Half Acre's collaboration with comic artist Ryan Browne is back for a second brew this year. It is an 8 percent Double IPA built on Strata, Mosaic and Citra, and the strawberry note traces straight to one of them.

Source & Editorial