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About a month ago, Ezra Johnson-Greenough, a local beer blogger and microfest magnate, invited me and another WW writer over to his house to drink through a huge haul of Vermont beers. It was pod of whalez, bruh—nine of the most sought-after cans from Lawson's Finest Liquids, the Alchemist and Lost Nation.
The beers were… good. Not great, but fine. After nearly two years of drinking pretty much every hazy Oregon-made IPA I can find, I was thoroughly unenthused. As weird as it sounds, the best hazy, lightly bitter New England-style IPAs now come from the Northwest.
No disrespect to the region that made hazy hip. The style—just 18 months ago people were arguing with me that it's not a style, a position that quickly went the way of flat earth theory and phrenology—was arguably invented by the Alchemist. The only other arguable progenitor is classic British IPAs made with London III yeast.
But Oregon has the most concentrated collection of great brewers in this country, and once those brewers started focusing on the style, they mastered it.
Great Notion introduced the style here and won WW's Beer of the Year honor for Juice Jr., which is still the standard-bearer. And the brewery continues to crank out great new hazies. Super Ripe and Super Duper Ripe both impressed me on a recent visit. You can now find cloudy hoppy beers everywhere from the Ram to Wayfinder.
On the whole, our hazies are better than in the region that gave the style its name. I went to Boston last summer and drank everything Treehouse and Lord Hobo had around. I went to New York a few weeks ago and got what they had at LIC Beer Project and Torst. I had super-fresh Other Half poured by the owners at a party thrown by Chuck Schumer in Washington, D.C. I got a little more at Roscoe's in Montavilla last week, when Day One Distribution tapped 16 kegs of Other Half, blowing them in just a few hours. (Full disclosure: Other Half co-owner Matt Monahan is the cousin of WW staff writer Rachel Monahan).
Because of Great Notion's great influence here, Oregon hazies tend to present the fruity hops in a better way while maintaining the soft mouthfeel and striking a balance of bitterness. Fort George 3-Way IPA, a grocery store beer, can hang with anything I've had from the Alchemist. Something Wicked at Breakside Slabtown is a striking example of citrus and squishy melon with enough bitterness to not feel flabby. (Full disclosure: Breakside Slabtown brewer Will Jaquiss is the cousin of WW staff writer Nigel Jaquiss.)
This is all a long-winded way of saying I've very, very excited for Hazy Days, the cloudy hoppy festival Lardo's Rick Gencarelli is running this weekend. There, you will find the finest collection of hazy IPAs yet assembled.
And that's not hyperbole.
GO: The Hazy Days festival will tap 26 West-Coast hazy IPAs Friday, August 25, at Lardo, 1212 SE Hawthorne Blvd., lardopx.com. 5-10 pm. Free admission. Kids welcome.