Beer of the Week: Hop Maxxing

Many craft-brew enthusiasts are familiar with the largest beer-drinking event in the nation, the Great American Beer Festival, as well as its professional brewing competition component. Far less popular, but quite important to brewers of IPAs is the Alpha King Challenge, where IPAs of all strengths and types are submitted for judging to find out who crafts the most intensely hoppy yet drinkable beer in the country. With a crown made of hop cones and serious bragging rights going to the winner of this fun-yet-serious melee, it’s a big deal, and a seriously hard competition to win. All of which makes it so impressive that a local brewer, Belching Beaver Brewery’s Thomas Peters, has won not once, but twice! With something like that on his résumé, one would be justified in resting on their laurels (or hop bines), but not Peters. Recently, he and his team challenged themselves to try to pack unprecedented hoppiness into an R&D hazy IPA. It’s a task that would be difficult for any brewery, but especially one with two Alpha King champion beers to its credit. The resultant brew goes by the fitting handle Hop Maxxing, and it’s this week’s featured beer. At this point, you have to be wondering how they came through on their daunting mission. Allow me to answer in more detail than you probably bargained for (it’s kinda like my job). When decanting this hazy, I picked up vibrant aromas eliciting thoughts of skipping through an orange grove with a freshly hulled pineapple and a bag of peach rings. The flavor of the beer isn’t as punchy, but rather soft and pulpy. Citrus is the main characteristic. It’s quite present but doesn’t insist on itself. Throw in a full, silken texture and you have a winner of a beer, even if the only competition Peters and his colleagues were having was with themselves. At this point, I’ll leave the Alpha King to explain the approach and process behind Hop Maxxing. He is the expert, after all, and it really shows in this beer.

Hop Maxxing is exactly what it sounds like. We wanted to see how much hop character we could pile into one beer. The base is built to carry the load: 2-row underneath a heavy dose of white wheat, flaked wheat and oats two ways, so the beer lands soft and full instead of thin and sharp. We added Simcoe hops in the mash, Mosaic and Citra in the whirlpool, and a dry-hop with more Mosaic, Citra in both classic and Cryo concentrated form, and Dolcita, a newer varietal that brings a candied citrus-cream note we can’t get from any of the old standbys. The resulting IPA pours hazy and drinks way too easy for how much hop material went into the tank.”

Thomas Peters, Head of Production & Quality Manager, Belching Beaver Brewery

Belching Beaver Brewery is located at 1334 Rocky Point Drive in Oceanside, 302 East Broadway and 980 Park Center Drive in Vista, and 4223 30th Street in North Park