Big Orange Creamsicle Returns for Tennessee's Season Opener

Tennessee's season opener is Saturday, so Johnson City put a fresh batch of its orange juice and vanilla double IPA on Wednesday. Mosaic and Azacca hops, milk sugar doing the cream half, 7.5 percent.

Style: Hazy Double IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-02
ABV: 7.5%
Johnson City Brewing Company (Johnson City, TN)

Johnson City Brewing Company runs this one on a football schedule.

A fresh batch of Big Orange Creamsicle Hazy Double IPA went out on Wednesday, September 2, four days before Tennessee opened its season against Furman. The name is a nod to the same thing. Big Orange is University of Tennessee shorthand, and the brewery's label copy says the beer is named both for being a double IPA and as a nod to the Volunteers of Tennessee.

The beer is brewed and dry hopped with Mosaic and Azacca, then conditioned on vanilla and orange juice. The can also lists milk sugar. It finishes at 7.5 percent.

That ingredient list is the whole idea, and the parts are chosen rather than piled on. Azacca is an American hop known for mango, citrus and tropical fruit, so it runs with the orange juice instead of against it. Mosaic adds berry and a softer tropical note underneath. The lactose is the structural piece. Brewer's yeast cannot ferment it, so it stays in the finished beer as residual sweetness and body, which is what turns citrus and vanilla into something that reads as a creamsicle rather than as a fruited IPA.

The brewery is candid about how it got there. Its label describes the beer as the result of multiple attempts to achieve something hoppy and hazy with a twist.

Johnson City also says the beer drinks easy for its strength, and that it hopes to keep it on as often as possible through football season.

Big Orange Creamsicle is available on draft and in four-packs at both taprooms, the Walnut Street location and Boones Creek.

Editor’s Take

Tucked into the label copy is a sentence most breweries would have quietly cut: this beer is, in their own words, the result of multiple attempts to achieve something hoppy and hazy with a twist. Multiple attempts. Printed on the can, permanently, an inch from the government warning, where anybody holding it can read it. I find this genuinely endearing. Every brewery on earth has beers that took four goes to get right. Almost none of them commit that to packaging.\n\nThe build underneath it is a small piece of engineering. Orange juice and vanilla will get you most of the way to a creamsicle, but the ingredient that makes it land as cream rather than as orange squash is the milk sugar. Brewer's yeast cannot ferment lactose, so it does not turn into alcohol and disappear. It just stays there, sweet and round, holding the body up while the Azacca throws citrus over the top. That is the trick that stops the whole thing tasting like a hazy IPA someone spilled juice into.

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.