Not long ago, I visited the Lagunitas Brewing location in Seattle, aka The Taproom and Beer Sanctuary. I spent some time sipping beers with Dan Schmelzer, who pretty much runs the show in Seattle, at least as far as the beer is concerned. He conceives the recipes, brews the beer, cleans the kegs, and so on. At that time, he shared some good news about his flagship IPA, news that has now come to fruition: Shilshole IPA is available in cans.

Dan operates independently, essentially, with a pretty long leash from the Lagunitas Brewing Company HQ in Petaluma, California. In other words, the beers he brews are his own. Although Lagunitas is a California-based brewery, and although the company is a subsidiary of Heineken International, the beers brewed in Seattle, and available at the Taproom and Beer Sanctuary, are very much local creations, brewed by someone with a solid history of brewing for local, Seattle breweries.

“Only available in the Seattle area, Shilshole Bay IPA is a bright and orange-citrus juicy PNW IPA chock-full of our favorite Yakima Valley hops and Skagit Valley malts, named after our favorite bays just down the street from our brewery,” explains Dan. “It is the flagship beer of our Homegrown Series. Everything that goes into this beer comes directly from Washington State.

The hop bill includes a few different hop varieties grown in the Yakima Valley: Columbus, Simcoe, Mosaic, Citra, and the Lagunitas-sponsored experimental varietal HBC-344. The malt bill includes grains from Skagit Valley Malting. 

“This golden, straw-hued brew has aromas and flavors of juicy stone fruit, pine resin, and dank notes, with a well-balanced bitterness and the classic, crisp finish of a Pacific Northwest IPA,” Dan says.

Six-packs of 12-ounce cans are currently available at the Lagunitas’ location in Ballard, with limited quantities headed for local beer-focused retailers soon.

For more news about recent beer releases, visit the Washington Beer Blog’s New Beer Releases page.