IPA Day: Craft beer drinkers unite. Today is your day

Need an excuse to enjoy a hoppy craft beer? Thursday is IPA Day, and that’s all the pretext we need to find a fresh, local India pale ale to toast with. IPA Day began in 2011, founded by Ashley Routson as a way to bring craft beer drinkers together over social media.

Back in 2011, there weren’t that many brewed-in-L.A. IPAs to choose from, but the craft beer culture is booming, and now there are plenty. Eagle Rock Brewery launched three years ago with Populist -- a resinous West Coast IPA, and the brewery is tapping special kegs and casks for Thursday’s celebrations.

Beachwood Brewing and BBQ in Long Beach is known for its many excellent IPAs, and while there is no special event planned at the brewpub for Thursday -- they say that “every day is an IPA day at Beachwood” -- there are sure to be plenty of hoppy pale ales on tap. Beachwood’s two latest bottle releases -- Melrose IPA and Thrillseeker IPA -- would also be excellent choices if you’re toasting at home.

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Smog City Brewing in Torrance does have plans to celebrate IPA Day by launching a taproom casks program with the tapping of Dr Hoo-Mango Hoptonic IPA. The cask-conditioned variant of the popular Hoptonic IPA has mango and peach juice added, and the brew was double dry-hopped with Simcoe and Chinook. The cask gets tapped at 4 p.m. and two other Smog City IPAs will be on draft as well.

If you’re in the Inland Empire on Thursday, you’ll want to check out Hangar 24 Brewery in Redlands. In addition to three production IPAs on tap, the brewery’s tasting room will feature the in-development “Experimental IPA” and six different pilot-batch IPAs that range from fruit-forward examples to session IPAs to a black IPA.

And that’s just scratching the surface of L.A. IPAs available today! Golden Road Brewing, El Segundo Brewing Co., and Strand Brewing all bottle (or can) local IPAs, and many beer bars and restaurants are sure to tap kegs of hoppy treats to celebrate Thursday.

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