Yazoo Brewing Company - Hop Perfect IPA

Hop Perfect has been Yazoo’s core year-round IPA for several years now, and it’s easy to see why. Presenting a light amber hue with a head of pale beige foam, this IPA offers up quite a bold aroma as we lean in for a sniff. Look for juicy and resinous notes with lots of big candied citrus notes evoking tangerine, orange, and grapefruit, backed by soft tropical fruits akin to mango and pineapple, and a dose of peach-like stone fruits. It’s quite multifaceted, as we’d expect from a blend of Mosaic and Citra. A pleasant thread of light caramel lurks below it all. In the flavor, the malts offer a sturdy backbone along with a nice dash of toasty wheat, setting a solid stage for those bold hops. And, all those fruity hop aromas come forth on the palate, with resinous citrus zest really taking hold along with firm bitterness to keep this brew dry from the start to the lingering finish, which hangs on with a grippy note of citrus rind. Cheers!

Yazoo Brewing Co.’s founder and brewer, Linus Hall, got his brewing start in a familiar fashion, purchasing a homebrewing kit from an ad in the back pages of Rolling Stone back in 1993. Linus was, as he phrased it, “a cash-poor college student living in an old farmhouse in Virginia, and brewing my own beer seemed a little less illegal than the pot-growing operation my other housemates were involved in.” His homebrewing habit continued after moving with his wife Lila back to Mississippi following college, and when the couple relocated to Nashville in 1996.

Fast-forward a bit, and Yazoo Brewing Co. opened up in Nashville in October of 2003, with a keg-only lineup of staple beers like Yazoo Pale Ale, Spring Wheat, Dos Perros, and Onward Stout. They quickly established strong local support for their draft beer, and their Hefeweizen entered regular rotation after picking up a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2004, just a year after Yazoo opened.

In only six years Yazoo outgrew its initial home base, and 2010 brought the purchase of a new brewing facility (including a 40-barrel brewhouse) in The Gulch, a historic neighborhood in Nashville between Music Row and downtown. If you’re in the Nashville area, be sure to swing by Yazoo’s latest taproom location—which they just moved into a few years ago. Having outgrown their spot in The Gulch, in 2019 they moved into a newly built facility in Madison, Tennessee, about 15 minutes away, on a 7-acre plot nestled along on the Cumberland River. The new place has got way more parking and great views from the patio. Learn more at yazoobrew.com.