What Local, Award-Winning IPAs Tell Us About Beer in 2026

First there was the English India Pale Ale, clocking in around 5% alcohol and boasting a hop bill only nominally bigger than a pale ale. Once discovered by American microbrewies, it still took decades to ascend as the powerhouse style of craft beer. Ever since — American IPA merely became the largest category at the Great American Beer Festival in the 21^st century — IPA has branched out much like pizza has. Just like there’s New York thin crust, wood-fired Neapolitan, buttery Detroit-style and whatever they’re doing in New Haven with clams, IPA includes abrasive West Coast, soft and juicy New England, light-bodied session or small, various hybridized ones (see: grapefruit or other fruit, Black aka Cascadian Dark Ale), Cold IPAs for lager lovers and gradations of stronger double, triple and so forth.

When Tony Lawrence, founder of Boneyard Beer, explains IPA’s continued dominance with the laconic bon mot, “Hoppiness equals happiness,” he has a storied career dating back to joining Deschutes Brewery the year after it opened to back that up. That’s in addition to creating RPM IPA and growing it to become the bestselling draft IPA in Oregon (and, at least for a time, only Coors Light found its way into more pint glasses statewide).

“I think American brewers have spent a very long-time obsessing over how to push the boundaries of what hops can do,” says Lawrence. He notes that as sweetness and viscosity have diminished over the years, leading to the virtual extinction of the Northwest IPA (a style defined as much by its caramel malt backbone as its punishingly bitter resinous hops), “More hop techniques and formats, from whole flowers and pellets to oils and other products, allow hops to take center stage. Hops deliver an amazing range of flavor and aroma that simply can’t be matched.”

Of the 18 Boneyard beers on tap at their pub, over half are designed as happiness delivery vehicles, ranging from pale ales and a session IPA on the crowd-pleasing side to its infamous triple IPA, Notorious (11.8%) for hop addicts. At the third Triple IPA Throwdown (aka IPA3 Throwdown) earlier this year, in which 10 illustrious triple IPAs square off in blind taste tests, Notorious squashed all comers. Lawrence describes the style as “like a dry barleywine,” since the latter is deemed more of a malt bomb than a hop bomb, but you can’t build a beer that’s nearly 12% ABV without plenty of malt. Lawrence insists you don’t get to call a beer a triple IPA unless it boasts double-digit alcohol content. That said, he’s equally adamant that, “Balance is the defining characteristic of a Boneyard beer.”

Hazy IPAs or just hazies, as they’re commonly known, are IPAs that not only are unfiltered and opaque despite brewers cherishing clarity, but see their hops added predominantly in the post-boil whirlpool and/or dry-hopped so as to avoid early addition hopping that contributes bitterness. The results throw more tropical fruit notes than the pine and pith flavors that are the hallmark of a West Coast IPA. When it debuted at the 2018 GABF, it instantly became the most-entered category. It didn’t become a World Beer Cup category until 2022.

That same year, over at Bend Brewing Co., with brewer Sean Albecht first arriving in Central Oregon, he came in like a wrecking ball when he introduced “Better Late Than Never,” BBC’s foray into the world of hazy IPAs. Cut to 2026, and Albrecht added to BBC’s hall of fame with Because Science, which earned gold medals in both the World Beer Cup “Juicy or Hazy India Pale Ale” category plus the Oregon Beer Awards same category. And for good measure, Keyboard Warrior took gold in the OBA’s “Fresh Hop Hazy Pale Ale and IPA” category, thus cementing Albrecht’s bona fides since he slays the haze.

“The market is changing the flavor profile,” says Albrecht. “People want (their IPAs) lighter; they don’t want big IBUs (International Bitterness Units).” Whether customer preferences shift among the changing marketplace or brewers alter hop bills in reaction to customer demand, brewers are adroit at modernizing beer styles or even updating recipes of long-running brands.

Sunriver Brewing is one of Oregon’s most decorated brewing companies, including earning 16 awards for Rippin Northwest Pale Ale alone. At 6% ABV and shouldering 50 IBUs, the beer is firmly in the “strong pale ale” category, meaning it’s a half-step tamer than an IPA. Brewery director Brett Thomas points out that some elements of Rippin’s formulation remain the same since its 2016 debut — it employs Citra, Mosaic, and Amarillo hops — but if you were to sip a pint brewed in ’16 and one brewed a decade later, it’s the same spirit more than the same flavor or feel. That’s what happens when one brew crew has conjured up “hundreds” of different IPAs and hop delivery vehicles in that timeframe. “IPA we drink today is as different as possible,” observes Thomas, as its predecessors. He credits “Americanism.”

“It’s like Manifest Destiny of beer. We take things that are cherished by other cultures and make them our way, and now the rest of the world is trying to make American IPAs. The way the rest of the world considers us is we’re a bunch of cowboys. And we cowboy everything.” In the beer space, no style is more cowboyed than IPA.

Finally, we’ve got Bevel Craft Brewing, where co-owner/brewer Nate Doss has been voted brewer in this publication’s readers choice poll every single year since Bevel’s inception (and we will find out if Doss seven-peats when the 2026 results are published next month)! There is not a singular, flagship IPA that keeps the thirsty coming back to Bevel but the fact that 70% of the 10 house beers on draft are in the IPA realm. And Bevel is gearing up for its third Pursuit of Hoppiness festival where attendees are provided tasting tokens enough to sample a full dozen.

Just in the seven years since Bevel was established, Doss credits huge advances in hop technology, driven more by the largest hop growing region in Washington’s Yakima Valley over Oregon’s Willamette Valley, as the primary driver in IPA flavor profiles. In addition to whole cone hops and T-90 or pelletized hops, brewers now can order “cryo” (cryogenically concentrated) hops and CO2 extracts, similar to concentrates in the cannabis marketplace. “Hops are just getting better as far as options, from different fruit flavors, citrus flavors…The quality and consistency is fantastic.”

“I don’t think there is a defining characteristic for a Bevel IPA. We’re always moving around with different techniques that we either drink from other breweries or we hear through the grapevine, i.e. using some lager yeast, fermenting with warmer temperatures, using you know flaked wheat or flaked rice or you know things of that nature and then hop varietals. I think that goalpost is always moving as far as what you’re trying to make,” Doss comments. “So, the target for Bevel is to just continue to make great beer that people want to buy and give them a great experience. I don’t think there is such thing as a perfect IPA.”

This article appears in the Source July 30, 2026.