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It seems weird, but Pliny and Heady are the same age. The two most influential imperial IPAs the world has known were both born in the fall of 2003, as Saddam spent his last days in that spider hole and the Concorde landed its last supersonic flight. Pliny the Elder, from Northern California's Russian River Brewing, became the standard-bearer of the bitter but citrusy style. In Waterbury, Vt., a tiny brewery called the Alchemist put out its cloudy, fruity version, called Heady Topper. Pliny and his descendants came to dominate Portland, while New England got a slew of turbid, vaguely sweet IPAs from small operations with limited distribution. It took a decade, but the New England strain of that IPA style finally spread west. The clouds have come to Colorado—last week, Denver's alternative newspaper wrote about a raft of new breweries there making them—and, now, to Oregon. Corvallis' Block 15 Brewing has a limited release of a beer called Hop Workshop #2, which BeerAdvocate posters are fighting to get. And in Portland, the two industry outsiders behind Great Notion have finally released Juice Box. Great Notion already has crazy hype thanks to Ripe, which uses Heady's yeast, and a lighter IPA called Juice Jr., the little brother to Juice Box. Juice Box looks like a peach milkshake and is deceptively big, an 8-percenter that sips like Sunny D. It's loud, fruity and balanced as much by an earthy hop note as bitterness. It is to Heady Topper what peak-era Boneyard RPM was to Pliny. Recommended.
Willamette Week