Stone Brewing Co. is possibly one of the greatest U.S. breweries around. Every beer they make is top notch. For example, their IPA.

This beer is one of the most highly rated IPAs around, and it stands up to the hype. Balanced bitterness, nice malty backbone, and in-your-face hop aroma and flavour. They’ve managed to create that nice sweet resiny mouth feel with a somehow dry-ish and not overly bitter finish.

Different hops tend to have different aroma and flavour characteristics, usually falling into different camps: fruity, spicy, or grassy/piney.  A lot of IPAs will be concentrated on one of those camps, and rightfully so. If you try to combine all different types of hops, for example some spicy hops and some citrus-y hops, you are likely going to get a muddled mess. Somehow, Stone has managed to just say ‘fuck it’ and combine all sorts of different hops with different characteristics and have made it work well.

I don’t know how they do it, but I guarantee you that very few brewers can replicate it.