Cahaba River Haze — Jump In, the Hops Are Fine

The Review

By 2020 every brewery in America had a hazy IPA. Most of them were fine. Some were very good. Cahaba’s River Haze is the kind that makes you stop mid-sip and actually think about what’s in your glass.

It pours a deep, opaque golden-orange — not the pale yellow of a lazy hazy, but the rich, dense pour of a beer with something real going on in the grain bill. The nose is immediate and generous: citrus blossom, stone fruit, a tropical undercurrent, and something faintly floral. The palate is soft and pillowy, as a good NEIPA should be, with juicy hop flavor that builds through the middle and finishes surprisingly clean for something this cloudy.

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Cahaba built the River Haze concept around their outdoor adventure branding — this is the beer you crack open after you get off the river, hence the name and the tagline. And it works for that context perfectly. But it also works in a taproom chair with no river in sight, which is where most of us encounter it.

Summer 2020 was not a great summer for most things. River Haze was one of its genuinely good things.

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