Beer Advocate has this at a 95 (off 2,516 reviews), rate beer puts it at 100 (based off 2,837 reviews), finally untappd knocks it down to 4 stars which I guess compares to an 80 (from a whopping 10,861 ratings). That gives me a pretty solid feeling that this will be a fantastic beer. Basically 14,000 people gave this beer an average of an A-. This beer gets a lot of hype as being some crazy bitter uber hard core beer that is not for wussies and needs some kind of beer pedigree to drink. That whole mindset doesn’t sit too well with me. It’s that type of thing that prevents people from getting into craft beer in the first place. Sure it’s safe to recommend a friend to stay away from this for a bit and steer them toward something else first. But by hyping this beer up so high in the end puts your friend down saying they aren’t good enough for this beer. Anyway, rant over time to drink!
Brewery: Stone
Beer: IPA
Style: American IPA
Alcohol by volume: 6.9%
Pours out a standard IPA color of golden orange with a standard IPA fluffy head.
Smells strongly of hops with citrus and spice scents, pretty standard IPA fare.
The taste is pretty hoppy but not crazy like I expect from Stone. The hop taste is spicy as well as some pine, the malt brings in biscuity flavors but are very minor compared to the hop presence. Don’t underestimate what I’m saying here, this is a very hoppy beer but compared to lots of IPAs and other Stone beers it just isn’t that big of a bite.
Medium bodied mouth feel and slight carbonation.
Overall this is a pretty standard IPA across the board with a fair bit more hops than usual but nothing that makes it too outstanding or crazy. I’m not overly excited by this and I definitely don’t feel that it lives up to the mass hype. Sure it’s a GOOD beer but it’s not a GREAT beer and I disagree with the very high scores it’s gotten on the beer review sites.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This beer was sent to me for free by Stone. To our readers, and any breweries interested in sending me stuff, giving me free beer impacts the review in only 1 way. That way is that I WILL review the beer and I WILL write a blog post about it. Giving me free beer does not guarantee you a favorable review or that I will tell everyone to go buy it or anything like that.
BrewMinds 
I’ve never got the hype on this, either. Maybe at one time this was one of the better IPAs available, but now with distribution as it is, we have a ton of choices for the style and I can tell you I rarely pick up this one. Give me a Bell’s Two Hearted any day of the week instead.
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