Happy Valley 50k IPA

Happy Valley have championed hoppy beers since the day they opened, and they hold this West Coast IPA up like a banner.

The brewery refers to 50k IPA as liquid gold, and it’s easy to understand why: it pours like melted down bling. Classic west coast hop flavours of citrus peel and pine fill your mouth, as well as sleek resin that's as smooth and effortless as ice skating on a freshly polished rink.* And to keep with the ice skating imagery that I’ve fallen into for some reason, the bitterness is rough like the scarred surface of the rink after a three-hour session. It’s there at the start of the sip but bigger as the end, like the bruise you got from falling and landing your knee on the ice; it hurts now, but it'll hurt more later.

This beer’s fragrant and intense. It’s got malt sweetness and bitey bitterness. As my drinking partner said: “It’s a lot of what it is.”

Mick Wüst

*Freshly polished? Freshly poured? Freshly Zambonied? It’ s possible I don’t know a lot about ice skating rinks.