North Park Beer Co. turned ten this year, and the San Diego brewery is marking it with three cans released together. All three carry the same name, NPBC10, and the same label device: a numeral 10 built out of cartoon hop cones with faces on them. The heaviest of the set arrives in a green can as a triple dry-hopped Hazy Triple IPA at 10 percent ABV.

The hop list runs to seven entries. It is really four varieties, handled several different ways.

Citra appears three times. Once as ordinary pellets, once as Cryo, and once as Incognito. Cryo pellets are made by freezing whole hops and separating out the lupulin, the sticky yellow resin that carries most of the aroma. Incognito is a liquid hop extract that pours at room temperature and leaves the plant material behind entirely. Nelson shows up twice, as pellets and as Cryo. Peacharine and Galaxy fill out the rest.

Peacharine is the one worth stopping on. It is a New Zealand variety from Freestyle Hops, and the name is a direct description of what growers report smelling in it: peach and nectarine. North Park's first listed tasting note for this beer is peach gummies. The brewery also describes fresh-picked guava, fruit punch and candied orange peel.

Loading that much hop character into a 10 percent beer is a real constraint, and the spread of concentrated formats is part of how it gets done. Cryo and Incognito both carry aroma at higher concentration than whole pellets, with far less vegetative matter left behind in the tank.

All three NPBC10 cans went up today. Pre-orders can be collected at the taprooms, and the brewery is shipping within California. The anniversary weekend follows immediately. Two Pre-NPBC10 tap takeovers come first: Friday September 4 at the Bankers Hill taproom, with ten visiting breweries including Russian River, Green Cheek and Humble Sea, then Saturday September 5 at the Crown Point Pizza Shop, with eleven more including Cellarmaker, Alvarado Street and Vitamin Sea. North Park says all three anniversary events have entirely separate tap lists, with no beer repeated. Sunday's party at the brewery is ticketed and sold out.

Editor’s Take

There is a hop in this beer called Peacharine. It comes from New Zealand, and it was named after peach and nectarine, which is what growers say it smells like. Somewhere in the process a breeder held a cone that reeked of stone fruit and concluded that the honest move was to put that on the paperwork. Set against an industry that routinely ships varieties named after three-digit trial numbers and river valleys nobody can place, this counts as radical plain speaking.

What delights me is where North Park took it. The first listed tasting note is not peach. It is peach gummies: the specific, slightly artificial, sugar-dusted article you buy in a bag at a service station at eleven at night. Ten years of brewing, three anniversary cans, and the flagship one lands squarely in the confectionery aisle. For a 10 percent triple IPA wearing cartoon hop cones with faces on them, that is precisely the right address.

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.

Three Forms of Citra Stack Up in NPBC10 TDH Hazy Triple IPA

North Park Beer Co. is ten, and the heaviest of its three anniversary cans lists seven hops that turn out to be four varieties handled seven ways. Citra alone shows up three separate times.

Source & Editorial