Beer of the Week: Roam Vol. 3

As someone who manually compiles and enters the names, styles and alcohol-by-volume for between 40 and 120 different beers on a weekly basis, I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s difficult to keep track of the thousands of different beers produced in San Diego County. It’s even harder to keep track of the hop bills of all the different IPAs. I don’t mean for all the breweries, but in many cases, singular breweries. It’s common practice for local brewing companies and brewpubs to produce dozens of West Coast and hazy IPAs in a calendar year, and while many are near identical-looking, their aromas and flavors are very different depending on the hop varietals they are crafted with. Often, I find myself trying to remember which of a certain brewery’s IPAs had, say, the Strata, Citra Cryo and Nectaron combination or, for instance, the Nelson Sauvin, Motueka and Cashmere bill. Add the creativity, or in some cases, the similarity of some of the beer names, and recall becomes even harder. That’s why, I for one, am a fan of beer operation’s that opt to produce a series of IPAs versus 20 independent creations. Case in point, this week’s featured beer, Roam Vol. 3. The third in an ongoing family of hazy IPAs from Oceanside’s Northern Pine Brewing, it gets its bright mixed citrus and tropical-fruit bouquet as well as its orange, pineapple and apricot palate from Citra, Simcoe, Idaho 7 and Mosaic. Should I forget some or all of those four key varietals, it’s as easy as remembering the simple one-word, four-letter name of the base beer and conducting a Google search. In a county with so many beers, this practice makes keeping track of one’s favorites much simpler.

Roam is a rotating hazy IPA series that originated at the beginning of 2023. Each volume is carefully crafted with a new variety of hops, but every batch brings both juiciness and just the right amount of bitterness with every sip. The goal is to maintain intense fruit flavors and aromas, a soft body, smooth mouthfeel and an opaque haze while bringing new and distinct flavors with each volume. Volume 3 features Simcoe, Citra, Mosaic and Idaho 7 hops and is our first volume to be available in cans. The cans were designed by Maggie Enterrios of Little Patterns and have individually drawn stickers mimicking those one would collect on all their adventures.”

Anne Ortega, Co-owner, Northern Pine Brewing