Stone Brewing built their identity on attitude — the gargoyle logo, the back-label prose about ales not being for the faint of heart, the naming convention that kept daring you to try something stronger. Stone IPA is where that attitude meets the glass, and it delivers.This is a West Coast IPA the way the style was conceived: clear, bright, aggressively bitter, malt-supported but hop-driven. It pours a clear golden-amber with a white head. The nose is piney and citrusy — grapefruit, resin, a sharp clean sharpness that West Coast fans will immediately recognize. No tropical softness. No haze. Commitment.The bitterness is real. At 71 IBUs, this isn’t a beer that pretends. It arrives at the front of the palate and stays through the finish, drying out completely. The malt backbone is adequate but clearly in a supporting role. Medium body, medium carbonation. The ABV sits at 6.9%, which you feel mildly — no alcohol heat, but a pleasant warmth in the chest after the glass is done.Stone IPA has been somewhat overshadowed by the hazy trend, and Stone themselves have leaned into tropical variants and Double IPAs to stay relevant. But the original remains one of the cleanest articulations of the style’s values: bitterness is a feature, not a bug.🍺 Style: West Coast IPA📊 ABV: 6.9% · IBU: 71🏭 Brewery: Stone Brewing — Escondido, CA★ Rating: 4.2/5For West Coast IPA purists, this is still the standard. Bold, bitter, and completely uninterested in your approval.
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