There’s no surprise that we’ll keep putting out more and more (and more!) IPAs, but we’ll always make sure to brew progressively different and interesting ones.

This one is a bit of a repeat, in a sense, but not exactly.

First of all, we must solemnly declare our love for Sorachi Ace hops. Stand by for the Japanese anthem.

We loved the mild herbal, dill-like twist it brought to Royal Execution, even if dry-hopping an ESB might’ve seemed like a big no-no. Still, there wasn’t a lot used there.

The obvious next step: let’s abuse that hop, somehow!

You might’ve found a more solid showcase of the hop profile in Shock Therapy v7, booming with bigger herbal notes (especially the cooking varieties, like dill, thyme or lemongrass), big bitter citrus, a sharp minty edge, but also coconut oil (which was the biggest surprise).

Shady Sushi packs almost double that amount of hops, but we also added some Citra hops, to provide a more fruity, popular and ultimately safe backbone for our IPA. We found that it actually fits rather well. Bit of dankness and citrus (duh!) melt right in.

The rest of the recipe is pretty simple, too. The usual pale, some wheat and oats three-ways: malted, flakes and naked. Butt naked. And of course, a New England IPA style yeast strain.

This one’s gonna put your taste buds to quite a bit of a test, so feel free to let us know what this funky, beautiful and unique (which is a term that a lot of things use, but few merit it) hop made you think of.

Fresh cans of this juicy IPA pop up during the weekend. In the meantime, come get a sneak peek (and gulp) this Friday at Hop Hooligans Shady Sushi IPA Launch at Mikkeller Bucharest, or in Cluj at Craft Beer Festival.