The Five Best San Diego IPAs

Happy San Diego Beer Week. For those traveling from out of town to the motherland, or if you are brand new to craft beer, we’d like to share with you what we think are the five best San Diego IPAs you can get in San Diego. Because we love these beers and breweries so much, we are going to put them into alphabetical order rather than ranking them. Feel free to prove me wrong, rank these beers or give your five. Please note, some of these beers are available outside of San Diego, but we think you will have maximum enjoyment closest to the source.

Alpine Nelson IPA – There is hype and controversy surrounding the present and future state of Alpine Beer Company. Regardless of that, they make one of the best San Diego IPAs in the world. This beer pours a cloudy yellow and showcases the Nelson Sauvin hop to the fullest. Dank fruity nose with big time white grape notes. Even at 7 %, you could probably drink this juicy beast all day.

Ballast Point Sculpin IPA – Back in my day, you used to have to wait for Ballast Point to make a batch of Sculpin, and hope you could snag a few bottles. Fast forward today and you can get this in six pack cans (a little pricey), in 22 oz. bottles and on tap almost anywhere in SD. There is just something that sets this particular IPA apart from the rest. It it has wonderful, dry clean bitterness, an orange body that’s neither toasty or sweet. You really can’t go wrong with Sculpin.

AleSmith IPA – This is likely the blueprint for the San Diego IPA. Aggressively bitter and even more aggressively aromatic. Once you are accustomed to big, high IBU beers like this, they go down quite refreshingly and easy.

Societe The Pupil – One of the new kids in town as far as San Diego IPAs go. This seems like a long lost cousin of Alpine Nelson, mostly due to the perfectly executed use of Nelson Sauvin hops. This is just as cloudy, and might be a tad drier than Alpine’s offering. I would hate to have a gun to my head, having to pick between the two.

Stone Enjoy By IPA – Old dog, new tricks.  Stone Brewing Co. is most definitely the pioneer of the American/West-Coast Style IPA. Beers like Stone IPA and Stone Ruination IPA won the hearts of San Diego county and the rest of the country with the aggressively hopped, highly aromatic ale. Over the past ten years, the game has been changing, new hops have been developed and the malt bill has been tweaked for the sophisticated San Diego palate. While Ruination used to be the top dog in the IPA game, locals started shrugging their shoulders at “the liquid poem to the glory of the hop!” Stone took notice and formulated Stone Enjoy By IPA, a beer that took form of other new IPA darlings and promoted the importance of drinking these styles of beer fresh as possible. The beer is a home run, going on it’s second year in the market and has kept strong interest thus far. You can smell this beer a mile away, the beer is crisp and bitter, but has a nice modest layer of toffee-like malt so that you want to drink this beer all night.

Honorable mention: Pretty much every IPA Pizza Port makes.