Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Firestone Walker emerged as a leader in American craft brewing in the 2000s. All the hallmarks were there. Cool, somewhat complex/obscure branding? Yep. Pale ales with the IBUs cranked all the way up? 1000 percent. Weird beer names? Well, eventually.
That brings us to 2023, where another round of new releases from the California brewer means another trip to the Beverage of the Week column. Psychedelic Arcade is a West Coast IPA that headlines Firestone Walker’s latest IPA mix pack. But since it comes with three friends, I figured we’d review them all.
Well, review three of them and then plagiarize an older review of the fourth beer, Hopnosis IPA, which I covered back in November. Will the brewery’s new rye IPA be another Firestone hit? Or will it be merely a pretty good beer?