When Jamil, Julian and I first started discussing this beer, I don’t think we even considered brewing anything other than a double IPA. So the question became: “How do we make this beer unique and something that reflects all of our approaches to brewing this wonderful beer style?” Julian suggested first wort hopping with Chinook and using a four-way blend of hops in the whirlpool and dry hop. Jamil suggested the malt bill, which includes the use of biscuit malt, something I’ve never used before in an IPA. As a result, the beer has a great blend of fruit flavors and an intense bitterness coming from the hops, which the three of us love. The hops we used are new and experimental varieties. For several years now, we’ve been researching the flavor profiles of newer varieties here at Stone Brewing, and the flavor descriptors we came up with for each of the hops used for dry-hopping this beer are as follows: Belma – Strawberry or grape jam, black currants and berries, with some citrus HBC 342 – Citrus and melon Hopsteiner 06300 – Coconut, tropical fruit and orange, with hints of cocoa and earthiness Azacca – Tropical fruit, citrus and stone fruit. Together, it’s a fun combination of hops that we think works exceptionally well for this beer.