Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Stone Japanese Green Tea IPA, India Pale Ale Brewed with Green Tea

 Stone Japanese Green Tea IPA, India Pale Ale Brewed with Green Tea.


10.1% ABV. Brewed and bottled by Stone Brewing, Escondido, CA, with Baird and Kiuchi breweries, Japan. 

Clear, bright golden hue, slim white head.

In the nose: Dank. Resinous. Fruity. Hoppy. And I’m getting a little tea.

In the mouth: why doesn’t the label say double IPA, or even triple? Doubly dank, deeply resinous overwhelming in its hop attack, gobsmackably boozy. And, sure, there’s some tea in it. Some sweetness, but largely bitter. Tea is in there somewhere. Kompai!

Our style of brewing has always been about taking chances. It’s an extension of our “What if” mentality, wherein we ask ourselves what would happen if we did things di­fferently in the brewhouse, such as fermenting with a di­fferent strain of yeast or, in the case of this beer, incorporating whole-leaf green tea imported from Japan. The answer, embodied in this IPA when we first released it in 2011, was something truly magnificent, delicious and well worth brewing again. But what if we changed it up a bit? This time around, we exchanged Pacifica hops from New Zealand for Helga hops from Australia. The result is an IPA that’s as bright, herbaceous and bitingly hoppy as the one that’s had our fans requesting its return ever since its depletion from store shelves, but with a modern, hop-driven twist that makes this second draft unique and tasty in its own right.


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