Bane of Existence Puts Oats Under a Citra and Simcoe Bill

No reinvention is claimed here and none is needed. Hitchhiker's oat-bodied IPA runs Citra and Simcoe, the most familiar pairing in American hops, under a name considerably heavier than the beer.

• Style: India Pale Ale
• Release Date: 2026-09-11
• ABV: 6.6%
• Hitchhiker Brewing Co. (Pittsburgh, PA)

Citra and Simcoe are the two hops most likely to turn up in an American IPA, and Hitchhiker Brewing Co. has made no attempt to dress that up. Bane of Existence is 6.6 percent, brewed with oats and hopped with the pair of them. The brewery lists passion fruit, melon, stone fruit and mango.

The oats are the detail worth noting. Oat malt brings beta-glucans, which raise the viscosity of the finished beer and give it a softer, rounder body than barley can manage alone. In current practice, most brewers reaching for oats in an IPA are building toward haze. Hitchhiker lists this one plainly as an India Pale Ale, without the modifier that usually travels with an oat bill.

On the hops there is no reinvention here, and none is claimed. Citra and Simcoe have been paired for well over a decade for a straightforward reason: Citra pushes the tropical and citrus end while Simcoe supplies pine, resin and a faintly savory edge that stops the fruit turning candied. The four notes the brewery lists sit almost entirely on the Citra side of that split, which suggests where the weight of the dry hop went.

It is the plain beer in an unusual release. Bane of Existence goes out the same day as a s'mores pastry stout and a prickly pear sour, and it is the one of the three you could hand to somebody without explaining anything first.

Bane of Existence is available for pre-order now, with pick-up beginning Friday, September 11 at Hitchhiker's Mt. Lebanon and Sharpsburg locations.