Surf Nazis Must Die Puts Azacca Into a Classic West Coast Build

Adroit Theory's newest West Coast IPA takes its name from a 1987 B-movie and its structure from the brewery's existing pale, dry, pine-finished house template. Azacca is the variable.

Style: West Coast IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-25
ABV: N/A
Adroit Theory Brewing Company (Purcellville, VA)

The name comes from a 1987 low-budget exploitation film, which puts it comfortably within Adroit Theory's long-running habit of borrowing titles from horror and B-movie history. The beer behind it is one of the brewery's more conventional releases: a West Coast IPA arriving Friday, September 25, in Purcellville.

Adroit Theory is explicit that it built this one to house specification. The brewery says it offers the same pale golden, effervescent body and crisp, clean finish as its other West Coast style brands, which it describes as a platform for showing off hop flavor up front. The stated aim is the sweet spot between strength and balance.

That framing is the useful part. A West Coast IPA is one of the few modern styles where the base beer is deliberately built to stay out of the way. The malt is pale and the finish is dry, so there is no residual sweetness for the hops to hide behind, and whatever the hop bill does arrives essentially unaccompanied.

Here the bill is Citra, Simcoe and Azacca, double dry-hopped, and the brewery describes forward notes of tangerine and grapefruit with assertive pine running through the finish. Citra and Simcoe are the established pairing for exactly that combination of citrus and resin. Azacca is the outlier: a comparatively recent variety, released commercially in 2014, known for tropical mango and papaya character that sits closer to what hazy IPAs are usually built around. Placed on a dry, bitter finish rather than a soft one, it reads differently than it would in a hazy.

Surf Nazis Must Die pours Friday in Purcellville, on draft and in cans, with eight cases packaged.

Editor’s Take

Azacca is the interesting seat at this table. Citra and Simcoe in a West Coast IPA is a recipe older than some of the people drinking it, and it works for the obvious reason that grapefruit and pine are the two poles the style has always run between. Azacca is the newer variety, released commercially in 2014 and named for a Haitian god of agriculture, and it brings mango and papaya into a beer that is otherwise built to finish dry and resinous.

That is a more interesting decision than it looks. Tropical hops are the signature of the hazy beers sitting next to this one on the same release list, and dropping one into a crisp, effervescent, bitter-finishing body means the fruit has nowhere soft to land. No oat haze, no pillowy sweetness, just tangerine and papaya standing on a dry floor with pine coming up behind them. Anything cooked over fire would be glad of it.

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.