Good People Snake Handler — Birmingham’s Most Dangerous Double IPA

The Review

Let’s not bury the lede: Snake Handler is 10% ABV and it will absolutely rearrange your evening. Good People Brewing has been making Birmingham proud since 2008, but Snake Handler is the beer that made people outside Alabama pay attention.

The name earns it. This double IPA pours copper-amber with a persistent white head, and the nose hits you before the glass reaches your face — pine, citrus peel, tropical fruit, a faint grassiness, something floral underneath. On the palate, a biscuit-and-caramel malt backbone shows up just long enough to keep the whole thing from flying off the rails, before the hops reassert control and don’t apologize for it.

Food Advertisements by

The finish is dry and long, with a lingering pine resin bitterness that reminds you what you just drank. At double-digit ABV it’s dangerously sessionable — which is either the best or the worst thing about it depending on how your Sunday goes.

Good People calls this their most-requested beer, and the taproom regulars at 14th Street will back that up. It’s not the most complex DIPA you’ve ever had. But it’s the most honest one made in Alabama, and on any given afternoon at Railroad Park, honest beats clever every time.

Quick Stats