Sodbusted Simcoezilla Returns on Lakeside Ranches Simcoe

Sodbusted comes back September 14 to close out Gigantic's fresh hop run, carrying what the brewery calls a big blast of fresh Simcoe from Lakeside Ranches.

Style: Fresh Hop IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-14
ABV: 6.2%
Gigantic Brewing Company (Portland, OR)

Gigantic Brewing Company is closing its September fresh hop run with a returning name.

Sodbusted Simcoezilla Fresh Hop IPA lands September 14 at 6.2 percent, brewed with fresh Simcoe from Lakeside Ranches. The brewery bills it as last but certainly not least, and describes a big blast of the hop straight from the farm. It is the fifth and final release in a stretch that began on September 4.

Simcoe is a distinctive choice to finish on. It is an American variety with an unusually assertive character, known in dried form for pine, grapefruit and a resinous edge that tends to define whatever beer it lands in rather than blend into it. That makes it close to the opposite of the Tettnang in the Oktoberfest lager earlier in the same run, and a fairly loud note to end a ten-day sequence on.

The label matches the register. Gigantic's can art puts a pair of green, fanged hop creatures front and centre, in keeping with a name that welds a plains-farming term to a monster-movie suffix.

Returning beers are also a slightly different proposition from the rest of a fresh hop lineup. A collaboration or a one-off gets judged on its own. A beer that comes back each harvest gets measured against the previous year's crop, which is the closest thing fresh hop brewing has to a vintage.

Sodbusted Simcoezilla arrives September 14.

Editor’s Take

Simcoezilla is a fine piece of naming and the can art commits to it completely, with a pair of snarling green hop-monster heads rearing up out of the label like something that has just been woken by a submarine. The kaiju joke is doing honest work here, because Simcoe is the hop it applies to. Plenty of varieties are pleasant. Simcoe is territorial. That resinous, piney, faintly feral thing it does is the reason people either name it as a favourite or quietly avoid it, and there is not much middle ground.

That it is a returning beer rather than a debut is the detail I like most. Fresh hop season is relentlessly novelty-driven, all first-time collaborations and one-off experiments, which makes a beer that comes back every year a slightly unusual thing to find in the middle of one. Somebody made Sodbusted, and enough people asked after it, and now it has a slot.

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.