Half Acre Beer Company's Vallejo IPAs work as a family rather than a run of one-offs. The Chicago brewery describes them as a set of distinct IPAs built on the same West Coast recipe, each one exploring a different Southern Hemisphere hop variation. Sunset Vallejo is the entry that carries the series into the cooler stretch of the year, and it is back now at 6.7 percent ABV.
Half Acre lists pineapple, grapefruit, creamy tangerine and fresh lime, moving through what it calls a clear, crisp West Coast IPA with a familiar bitter edge.
That last phrase does more work than it appears to. In a family of beers where the hops are the variable, the constants are what hold the set together, and Half Acre is naming bitterness as one of them. A clear West Coast base and a firm bitter finish are the fixed points. The fruit character is what moves between entries.
The can commits fully to the name. Photographed on a bed of wet river pebbles, it carries a ridgeline in silhouette under a sky of pink, orange and deep purple, with the beer's name in the same sunset palette.
Sunset Vallejo is available in 16 ounce four-packs through December, wherever Half Acre beer is sold.
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.