Chicagoist's Beer Of The Week: Spiteful IPA

By Jason Baldacci in Food on Jan 16, 2015 10:30PM

Since we've seen some above freezing temperatures this week, we're going to go ahead an recommend a beer that would be more appropriate for Spring or Summer, and save the stouts and porters for the frigid weeks ahead.

Spiteful IPA comes to us from a very small operation on the north side of the city. It pours a pale gold color in the glass, with lemony, floral hop notes on the nose. On the palate, those hops ride strong through the entire flavor profile. They're pleasantly tropical up front, and quite juicy, but they pack an earthy punch on the backend that lingers on the finish. There's enough of a malt backbone to balance the recipe, but not much sweetness to speak of. This one is practically bone dry to accentuate the complex hop flavors in the beer. At 6.2% alcohol content, Spiteful IPA is deceptively light-bodied and easy drinking, but will be best enjoyed by the self proclaimed hopheads out there.

Spiteful Brewing is what we refer to as a nanobrewery. Essentially, that means that they're brewing on a very small commercial system that would look familiar to anyone who's ever homebrewed in the past, it would just look a bit larger. We've seen a lot of these nano-operations pop up in the past couple years here in IL. These are super startups, oftentimes thrown together on shoestring budgets, typically born out of a love of homebrewing and possibly some disdain of a previous career. We'll be brutally honest: Sometimes the beers being produced at nanobreweries worry us a little bit, since these aren't the most experienced of brewers and they're taking a lot of risks by throwing all kinds of adjunct ingredients into the brew kettle. On the flipside, though, there are certainly beers being produced in this capacity that are absolutely solid, like the Spiteful IPA.

Spiteful IPA is available in 12oz cans in a handful of places around town. Check beermenus.com if you'd like to pick some up this weekend.