Cool Transition Signals Autumn With Rye and Columbus, Not Spice

An autumn hazy IPA that gets its season from rye in the grain bill and Columbus in the hop bill, rather than from anything in a spice jar. Six percent, out Friday.

Style: Hazy IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-18
ABV: 6%
Hitchhiker Brewing Co. (Pittsburgh, PA)

The interesting choice here is in the grain bill, and it is one grain in particular.

Cool Transition is a 6 percent hazy IPA from Hitchhiker Brewing Co., brewed with oats, wheat and rye. The first two are the standard foundation of the style - they build the soft body and hazy appearance the category is named for. Rye is not standard. It brings a dry, faintly peppery character that works against softness rather than with it, and it tightens up a finish that oats and wheat would otherwise leave round.

That tension appears to be the point. The brewery is calling this an autumn hazy IPA, and the seasonal signal is coming from construction rather than from anything in a spice jar.

The hops follow the same logic. Citra and Mosaic are the two most recognizable names in modern hazy brewing, responsible for the tropical and citrus notes the style trades on. Columbus is the outlier - an older American variety with a dank, resinous, herbal profile that predates the juice era by some margin. Adding it to a Citra and Mosaic base shifts the beer away from summer fruit and toward something greener and more pine-inflected.

The effect should be a hazy IPA that keeps the texture of the style while trading some of its brightness for grip. Alongside a plate of roasted vegetables or anything off a late-season grill, that would work well.

Cool Transition is available for online pre-order now, with pick-up beginning Friday, September 18 at Hitchhiker's Mt. Lebanon and Sharpsburg taprooms.

Editor’s Take

Calling a beer an autumn IPA is usually an invitation to start adding things that belong in a pie. I am relieved to report that no such thing has happened here. The season arrives instead through rye and Columbus, which is a far more interesting way to say September.

Rye is the ingredient doing the real work. The hazy IPA is a style engineered for softness - oats and wheat, low bitterness, a texture people describe as pillowy without embarrassment - and rye walks into that arrangement with a dry, peppery snap and declines to go along with it. Put Columbus on top, a hop from an older and dankier school than the tropical varieties sharing the bill, and the result leans resinous where a summer beer would lean juicy. Same category, different weather. It is the beer equivalent of noticing you need a jacket in the evening now.

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.