I had quite a weekend as far as sampling IPA’s goes. My dad came over on Saturday to help with a home improvement project that I will likely be spending a ton of my free time on before our new baby comes in the next month or so. But that is a topic for another time. During a break in the action we cracked open a couple of bottles of my remaining stash of Bell’s Hopslam. I will admit now that the 10% beer probably isn’t the best beer to have before doing any work with power tools, but the only real damaged items were a couple of broken drill bits.

Once our work for the day was complete we sampled Great Lakes new double IPA, Alchemy Hour. Though I didn’t like it as much as my bottle of Hopslam I had earlier, there is a noticeable sweetness that both beers share. And even though it doesn’t live up to Hopslam, this is still a very solid beer and is one that you can still buy in stores today, unlike Hopslam which hasn’t been available for at least a month.

Alchemy Hour

From there I opened a bottle of the very fresh Enjoy By 04.01.13 from Stone. This was my second time trying the Enjoy By series and I have to admit that the novelty has worn off a bit for me. It felt more unique when the 11.09.12 batch only went to two states. This batch went out to nearly twenty states! With that said, it is still an excellent IPA with a very fresh hop flavor. I bet there are still a few bottles of this around Cincinnati and it is available on tap too. In fact I’m heading out in a few minutes to get a some from the Cock and Bull in Hyde Park.

Enjoy By 04.01.13

On Sunday we were celebrating my grandmother’s 87th birthday. The party was at my grandparents’ house, which always means BYOB. This finally gave me the chance to crack open one of my cans of Heady Topper from The Alchemist. This is one of the highest rated IPA’s out there. In order for me to get my hands on it I had to trade some beer with a friend who lives in the northeast. I received four cans of Heady Topper, four cans of Gandhi Bot, and four cans of 668 Neighbor Of The Beast in exchange for a couple six packs of Hopslam, which he cannot get in his state.

Beer Trade

The Heady Topper was my first beer at the party on Sunday evening and it was delicious! I don’t know for sure that I can say it is my favorite IPA of all time, but it is definitely up there. Picking just one favorite is something that I’ve never been able to do and I don’t see that changing even with such an amazing beer. After a can of Heady I decided to mix it up and try one of the cans of Gandhi-Bot, a double IPA from New England Brewing. This was nearly just as good as the Heady and another example of an excellent double IPA.

I still have extra cans and bottles of all these beers which I will probably start putting a dent in this coming weekend. It is always a good idea to drink IPA’s fresh and often.