Beer of the Week: Sun Soaked

I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving feast. In doing so, I hope you took the opportunity to indulge in beers of the amber, red, umber and onyx ilk, many of which pair exquisitely with autumnal holiday fare like stuffing, yams and pumpkin pie. Because today, less than 24 hours after our national day of feasting, it’s back to everyday life in San Diego, and where craft beer is concerned, that means turning the page from darker beers right back to most locals’ style of choice, the West Coast IPA. If our fall season mirrored the 75% or so of the country that enjoys a changing of the leaves, brisk temperatures and seasonal foods designed for the cooler transitional season, our celebration of autumn-geared beer would last longer, but one day of sporadic showers over a week ago does not a seasonal weather-shift make. The sun is hanging high in the sky, lighting the way for hoppy-ale enjoyment, so this week’s featured beer is the apt Sun Soaked West Coast IPA from Thorn Brewing. A recent addition to the Barrio Logan-based company’s year-round lineup, it blends popular hops of yesteryear with varietals today’s drinking class hold dear. The result is deep-golden IPA emitting vibrant scents of ripe mango, pineapple and fresh-cut grass. On the palate, navel orange takes the lead, backed by flavors of mango and pinesap. The latter dovetails into a short-lived, resinous finish reminiscent of IPAs from back in the day. Sun Soaked presents a nice intermingling of the best of today and yesterday and fits well into Thorn’s hop-heavy portfolio.

I was asked by our team to brew a West Coast IPA for our new core lineup. I love drinking a good West Coast IPA, so I was thrilled with the direction they wanted to go. I started with two-row malt and white wheat because I don’t like malty sweetness in my IPAs. Since it was really the hop flavor that we were after, I used a generous amount of old-school Chinook and Centennial paired with some new-age hops, Strata and Ekuanot. This created a dry, crisp IPA with pine and grapefruit flavors from the old-school varietals, followed by mango, passionfruit and berry notes from the new-school hops. West Coast for life!”

Shawn Steele, Director of Brewing Operations, Thorn Brewing