Hysterical Beer Fans Judge Best IPA

Hysterical Beer Fans Judge Best IPA

It’s happened again, Epic Brewing Company collects another trophy for its latest highly hopped India Pale Ale. This time at the 10th Annual West Coast IPA Challenge held at the Malthouse in Wellington on Friday 28th July, with its latest beer release Epic Hysteria IPA.

For the first time in 10 years, Epic has received the trophy for People's Choice, amongst a line up of 26 other IPA’s. Each beer has to be a first time release to the market, and breweries have to be invited to enter the competition.

Owner, Luke Nicholas says “when you are releasing a beer for the first time, along with 26 other brand new IPA’s you never know what surprises will be on tap. So it is a real honour to have the public vote our beer the best from the line up of 27 amazing IPAs”.

“The West Coast IPA Challenge at the Malthouse has become the breeding ground for some of the best IPA’s created and released in New Zealand. Many of these beers have gone on to be mainstays in the portfolios of the brewers that have won in past years.” says Nicholas.

This year is also the second consecutive year that Epic has received the Ricky Bobby Award, for coming in second place. Last year it was for the massively hopped 8.8% abv Epic Thor Double IPA. No other brewer has received this award two years in a row.

Epic Hysteria IPA is part of a new series of beers from Epic based on the recipe of the highly successful Armageddon IPA. Each batch release has had the recipe changed slightly, to focus on a different combination of hops to see if it's possible to brew a better beer than the hugely popular Armageddon IPA.

This latest trophy comes hot on the heels of winning Best NZIPA with Epic Hop Harvester at the Queenstown based NZIPA Challenge held at Smith's Craft Beer House last month, and Best IPA with Armageddon IPA at the New World Beer & Cider Awards earlier in the year.

Epic has previously won the West Coast IPA Challenge at the Malthouse four times. This competition has been the birthplace of such great Epic beers as Armageddon, Hop Zombie, Lupulingus, Thor and now Hysteria IPA.

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