Chase away June Gloom with some haze of your own; Thorn’s Hopster Pot Hazy IPA. Now, you can get this delicious beer in six-packs all over San Diego and L.A.! We are so excited for this can release because not only is Hopster Pot the juiciest beer around, but it also brings many of the Thorn team back to their roots.

Let’s Get Hazy

Let’s be clear about this cloudy trend: Hazy IPAs are here to stay. While some may have thought this style was a flash-in-the-pan, it is showing some serious hop-legs. Not only did GABF add a hazy beer category this year, but the BJCP just released style guidelines for New England Style IPAs. Their comments on this type of beer:

“An American IPA with intense fruit flavors and aromas, a soft body, and smooth mouthfeel, and often opaque with substantial haze. Less perceived bitterness than traditional IPAs but always massively hop forward. This emphasis on late hopping, especially dry hopping, with hops with tropical fruit qualities lends the specific ‘juicy’ character for which this style is known.”

The “substantial haze” is created through a few different brewing steps. First, the beer is aggressively dry-hopped. Dry-hopping is when hops are added to the tank after fermentation but before packaging. Adding hops at this stage doesn’t add bitterness, but it does add delicate hop aromas and tastes that can otherwise be lost in the boil. While the addition of tons of hops at the end helps with the haziness, this isn’t the only factor. It also can depend on the use of high protein grains like flaked oats and wheat as well as the type of yeast used. Many of the hazy IPAs from New England use Vermont Ale yeast while many San Diego breweries, including Thorn, use London 3 yeast for their hazy beers giving West Coast hazy IPAs a slightly different profile. Hazy beers also have higher fruity esters and lower flocculation than many clear IPA counterparts. Additionally, even the make-up of water has an impact on this type of beer. When you put all this together, the old saying, “hazy = lazy” just doesn’t make sense. When done correctly, hazy beers are harder to brew than clear IPAs making hazy the opposite of lazy.

Hopster Pot Love

We have been getting a lot of love for our newest addition to the Thorn can line-up, Hopster Pot Hazy IPA (7% ABV). This hazy wonder is hopped with Amarillo, Citra and Ekunnot hops but each new batch will use a different blend of hops. To find out what hops are in your Hopster Pot, check out our Hazy Beer Page on our website.  We like to think of our hazy IPA as more of a West Coast Hazy IPA than the full-on New England Style IPA. It’s slightly drier and slightly more bitter, with brighter hops than many of the East Coast IPAs. Hopster Pot is like a hazy-hybrid, bringing together the style, methods of a New England style IPA with some West Coast twists.

This beer is really a labor of love for the whole Thorn team. While our three original owners/brewers are all San Diego natives, we also have a lot of East Coast transplants. Doug Pominville, our hazy head brewer, is from New Hampshire, cellarman, Kenny Maguire, is from Connecticut, sales-guru, Tom Kiely is from Massachusetts, Dave, our warehouse manager is from NY and I’m from Vermont, myself, so there is a full chain of New Englanders taking this beer from tank-to-shelf and everything in between!

Now that Hopster Pot is available throughout San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles, it’s even easier to get your hands on some of this juicy wonder. For info on where to get our beer check out our interactive map here…https://thorn.beer/buy-our-cans/

What is your favorite hazy beer in San Diego?