It’s all about the hops

When it comes to IPAs, many craft beer fans agree that it is all about the hops. On this episode of West Virginia Beer Roads, two of West Virginia’s hippest hoppy beer brewers discuss the ins and outs of making beer with all the beautiful juiciness or bitterness that the market demands.

Jon Robeson of Stumptown Ales in Davis pretty much single handedly put West Virgina on the contemporary IPA map with his cabinet of hoppy classics. His hop-centric brewery produces many of the most in-demand IPAs in the state. Robeson’s breakthrough Holy Citra IPA remains an immensely satisfying beer and an incredibly strong seller. It leads a tasty parade of the brewer’s hoppy art, including Multiple Hopgasms, Holy Mojo, Bewildered Hippie, Six Legged Frog, Holy Galaxy, and Big Boy Pants, among others. What a super line up all with such drinkable hop expressions.

Sam Fonda of Weathered Ground Brewery in Cool Ridge may have originally trained in North Carolina, but has shown super powers in producing a West Virginia line of IPA classics that don’t take a back seat to anything from the Tar Heel State. His Haggard IPA, More Haggard Than Haggard, Stop and Smell the Citrus, RK Double, Tallahatchie, That Old West Coast, The Cashmere, More Scrappy Than Scrappy, and Worth a Lick are sizzlin’ hot. They are in such demand that Fonda’s little brewery cannot begin to keep up. Tasting a flight of these beers, you will be amazed at the balance and clarity of flavors you find.
Episode 39 of WV Beer Roads

Listen to the Audio Podcast ••• Watch the Videocast on Youtube

Listen in and hear what makes these two tick when it comes to brewing IPA classics. How’d they get started. What motivates them. Neither of these two modest individuals would ever express a claim to being the hop kings that they are. Of course it’s that modesty that helps make them such an endearing part of our WV craft beer community. Since they don’t brag, we’ll do it for them. If West Virginia never produced another hoppy IPA, the beers from these two brewers would live on in the annuls of WV’s greatest. It’s hard to overstate the impact that these two have had in raising the bar for West Virginia hoppy beer.

Toward the end of the podcast, we taste two IPAs with the their brewers. Stumptown’s Holy Mojo and Weathered Ground’s Tallahatchie.

Two WV Breweries of the Year

In the past, Brilliant Stream has named both their breweries as West Virgina Brewery of the Year (Stumptown 2017; Weathered Ground 2018), It’s rewarding to see them continuing to push the envelope. It’s not all easy sailing though. Today, both are struggling with how to best navigate the difficult waters around handling the market demand for more production and more distribution from their tiny brewing operations. Hopefully in the near future, both will find ways to expand production and thereby help more West Virginians enjoy their beer.