Stone Japanese Green Tea IPA

Stone Japanese Green Tea IPA is an American Double/Imperial IPA, brewed in collaboration with Baird Brewing Company (Japan) and Ishii Brewing Co. (Guam). This review is for the 2015 version of this beer, which is sightly different from the 2011 version. It replaces Pacifica hops with Helga hops. 10.1% ABV.

This is a pretty good looking beer, light golden color, but it does have a little bit of somethng floating in the glass. Let’s just get this out of the way… green tea is all over this. Huge tea on both the aroma and taste that mixes with the some of the big west coast hoppiness you’ve come to expect from Stone. The hop profiles and green tea come togehter to create a tingling mint note and a huge amount of tea flavor that is really quite nice. If you are looking for malt balance, you have come to the wrong IPA!

I have to say I really like this beer, but it is probably best that this is a 22 oz. “one off” type of beer. As good as this is I just couldn’t see myself buying this on the regular in six packs.