Bad Bull Rising Gets Its West Coast Credentials From El Cerrito

Bolero Snort's new West Coast IPA is named after a Sonic Youth album named after a Creedence song, and its entire claim to West Coast credentials is that Creedence formed in El Cerrito.

Style: West Coast IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-03
ABV: 7.5%
Bolero Snort Brewery (Carlstadt, NJ)

The paper trail on Bolero Snort Brewery's new West Coast IPA runs through two bands and one California suburb, and the brewery is entirely upfront that this is a stretch.

Bad Bull Rising borrows its name from Bad Moon Rising, the second studio album Sonic Youth released in 1985. That title came from the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival song. Creedence formed in El Cerrito, California, which Bolero Snort offers, tongue firmly in cheek, as the West Coast inspo behind a beer brewed in Carlstadt, New Jersey.

The beer underneath the joke is a straighter proposition. It runs 7.5 percent on Simcoe, Centennial and Citra, which is about as canonical as an American hop bill gets. The three of them also arrived roughly a decade apart: Centennial was released in 1990, Simcoe in 2000 and Citra in 2008. Nearly twenty years of American hop breeding, stacked into one whirlpool.

Each does a distinct job. Bolero Snort credits Simcoe with the fragrant woodiness and pine on the nose, Centennial with a fresh layer of grapefruit and citrus tang, and Citra with the juicy orange, mango and lime underneath. A light, dry malt keeps out of the way, and the brewery describes a characteristic dry bitterness cleaning up the finish before the next sip.

That last part is the style working as intended. A West Coast IPA earns its keep on what it takes away, since there is little residual sweetness and no soft haze to round off the edges, so the hops have to carry the beer on aroma and bite alone. It is also the reason this one would sit well next to something rich and salty, a burger or a plate of fried fish, where the bitterness has a job to do.

The can matches the register: a bull with its horns on fire, standing scarecrow-style in a plaid shirt against a burning orange skyline. Bolero Snort has built a decade of releases on cattle puns, and files the whole catalogue under hoof crafted ales and lagers.

Bad Bull Rising is available now from the Carlstadt brewery.

Editor’s Take

The chain of custody here is magnificent. Creedence Clearwater Revival wrote a song, Sonic Youth borrowed its title for an album sixteen years later, Bolero Snort borrowed the album for a beer forty-one years after that, and the West Coast enters the story only because four men in El Cerrito once formed a band. That is provenance established at three removes, and the brewery lays it out in full rather than hoping nobody checks, which I find genuinely endearing.

It also quietly makes a point about the style. West Coast IPA stopped being a location a long time ago and became a set of instructions: dry, bitter, pale, no haze, hops that lean pine and citrus rather than smoothie. A brewery in Carlstadt, New Jersey can execute those instructions perfectly and still be nowhere near a coast, which is why every East Coast brewery making one ends up performing this little ritual of borrowed geography. Bolero Snort just did the paperwork out loud.

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.