Isle of Sky Skips the Centrifuge and Chases Thiols Instead

Two of the four hops come from New Zealand, and Half Acre left the beer deliberately cloudy. Isle of Sky arrives September 16 at 7 percent, with a blended yeast fermentation doing work the hops cannot do alone.

Style: Hazy IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-16
ABV: 7.0%
Half Acre Beer Company (Chicago, IL)

The Isle of Skye sits off the west coast of Scotland. The hops in Half Acre's new hazy IPA come from considerably further afield.

Isle of Sky is a 7 percent hazy IPA built on Strata, Superdelic, Riwaka and Dolcita. Half Acre closes its release note with the line "Journey to the Isle of Skye, your next great escape awaits," which places the name somewhere between a Scottish island and the beer's own weather.

Two of those four hops are New Zealand varieties, and one of them is the reason to pay attention. Riwaka is scarce, expensive and prized for an intense passionfruit and grapefruit character that few other hops get near. Superdelic is a newer New Zealand release working similar tropical territory. Strata, an Oregon variety, brings the dank, resinous edge that keeps the fruit from turning into juice. The brewery describes the combined result as mango, passionfruit, pineapple, peach and apricot, with bright citrus and a subtle dank note pulling it together.

How it was built

The process notes are unusually specific for a newsletter blurb:

A light base malt, keeping the beer soft and hop-forward

Full haze, with no centrifuge

A blended yeast fermentation, with what Half Acre calls a touch of thiols to push the fruit aromatics

The centrifuge decision is a real one. A centrifuge strips yeast and hop particulate out of finished beer, which brightens it and extends its shelf life, but it also removes some of the material responsible for the plush, opaque texture the style is judged on. Skipping it is a trade of stability for mouthfeel.

Thiols are the more interesting note. They are sulfur compounds responsible for some of the most intense tropical aromas in beer and wine, and much of what a hop carries arrives as an odorless precursor rather than as aroma. Certain yeast strains carry the enzyme that releases them during fermentation. A blended fermentation, in that context, is a way of pairing the hop bill with yeast capable of unlocking it, rather than relying on dry hopping alone.

Isle of Sky is a shop release on September 16.

Editor’s Take

There is a quiet bit of contrarianism folded into the phrase 'no centrifuge.' A centrifuge is an expensive machine whose entire purpose is to make beer clearer, and the modern hazy IPA brewer's considered position on it is: no, thank you. A century of brewing technology aimed at removing cloudiness, politely declined. I never tire of this.\n\nThe thiol business is the cleverer half, though. The passionfruit smell you get out of a good New Zealand hop is not simply sitting inside the hop waiting to be tipped into a tank. A great deal of it is locked up as an odorless precursor, chemically bound and going nowhere, and it takes the right yeast with the right enzyme to snip it free during fermentation. So the brewer is not just choosing hops. They are choosing the thing that unlocks the hops. Half Acre says it ran a blended fermentation to push those aromatics further, which is a long way from throwing pellets at a tank and hoping.\n\nIf you find one, drink it next to something with chilli and lime in it. The stone fruit will have somewhere to go.

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.