Surprise Transfer Carries 8.3 Percent on a Soft Mouthfeel

Masthead's newest double hazy runs at 8.3 percent and leads with texture rather than bitterness. The brewery describes a soft mouthfeel under mango, passion fruit and papaya, which is the whole job in this style.

• Style: Double Hazy IPA
• Release Date: 2026-09-25
• ABV: 8.3%
• Masthead Brewing Co. (Cleveland, OH)

The first thing Masthead Brewing Co. mentions about Surprise Transfer is not a hop or a flavour. It is the texture.

The Cleveland brewery's newest release is a double hazy IPA at 8.3 percent ABV, and its description leads with a soft mouthfeel before it gets to anything else. Underneath that, the brewery lists notes of mango, passion fruit and papaya.

That ordering is worth noticing. A double hazy IPA is one of the few styles where texture is the headline feature rather than a supporting detail. The haze comes from proteins and hop material held in suspension, usually helped along by oats or wheat in the grist, and the result is a beer that arrives thick and rounded instead of crisp. Bitterness is dialled back deliberately so the fruit has somewhere soft to land.

At 8.3 percent, that softness is also load-bearing. Alcohol at this strength has a tendency to read as heat and sharpness, and a full, rounded body is the usual way brewers keep a double IPA drinking like its fruit rather than its ABV. When a brewery puts mouthfeel first in its own notes, it is telling you which problem it was solving.

The fruit character Masthead describes stays in one lane. Mango, passion fruit and papaya are all soft tropical notes, with none of the citrus bite or resinous pine that a West Coast build would bring in to cut against them. Those are the brewery's tasting notes rather than a verdict, but they describe a coherent beer: sweet-leaning tropical fruit over a body built to carry it.

Surprise Transfer is available now for preorder and pickup at the Superior Avenue taproom. Four-packs are 19.99 dollars plus tax.