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The Top 10 Beers We Drank in February 2025
Roses are red...
Photography courtesy of Fort Point Beer Co. (on the left) and Scott Heaney | Untappd (on the right)
Top Stories of February:
Ambers are red; blueberry sours are blue.
In February, we drank a lot of brews.
Some from our “Best New Breweries of 2024.”
Others from breweries right next door.
We questioned if “Deep Fried Beer” is real.
And started a new series called Varsity Brews.
We paired our two favorite things—pizza and beer.
And we did all of this in the shortest month of the year.
So, without further ado, cheers.
In February, these were our favorite beers.
Hop Culture’s Top 10 Beers We Drank in February 2025
WE LOVE LA – Common Space Brewery
Los Angeles, LA
Logo designed by Priscilla Witte
Benefit Beer – Last month, we wrote about Hamilton Family Brewery’s benefit beer Beer Hug Beer which raised money for those affected by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
Similarly, Common Space reached out to us about an incredible initiative they started called WE LOVE LA. The international fundraising collaboration brought together over 180 breweries who committed to donating $200,000* to support those impacted by the LA wildfires.
As we mentioned, almost our entire editorial team lives in NorCal but has family or friends’ families who live in SoCal. With that in mind, we love seeing how breweries have come together to support their communities.
Participating breweries include Alvarado Street, Bottle Logic, Burgeon, Cellador Ales, Cellarmaker, Common Space, Fieldwork, Firestone Walker, Ghost Town, Harland, ISM, Moksa, Monkish, Moonlight, Pizza Port, Sante Adairus, There Does Not Exist, Three Weavers, Westbound & Down, Tripping Animals, Hop Butcher For The World, Burial, Bow & Arrow, Modist, pFriem, and so many more. See the full list here.
If you see this beer out in the wild, please buy it and know that one hundred percent of the proceeds go to help the recovery efforts in Los Angeles.
*Figure available at the time of publication.
Sour Patchwork 3 – Deep Fried Beers
Athens, NY
Photography courtes of Scott Heaney | Untappd
Smoothie Sour – The absolute antics at Deep Fried Beers caught the eye of our social media manager Magic Muncie, landing them a spot on our list of “The Best New Breweries of 2024.” “Based in New York, Deep Fried Beers / Night School is making waves with some of the most hop-saturated IPAs east of the Mississippi,” wrote Muncie.
Currently ranked on Untappd as the eighth highest-rated brewery in the entire state, Deep Fried Beers has produced twenty-six beers since opening and has received 9,965 ratings, earning them an incredible 4.23 average rating on the world’s largest social networking app for beer.
Deep Fried Beers Founder Johnny Osborne may not have actually deep-fried beer yet, but with some of these ginormously hopped IPAs, he has the gumption to probably do it one day.
Beers like Glamorous Damage, with twelve pounds per barrel of Citra and Mosaic, have given Deep Fried Beers its DNA. This imperial hazy still ranks as one of Deep Fried Beers’ highest-rated on Untappd with a 4.38 rating.
But as much as Osborne has become known for his uber IPAs, he feels equally proud of his imperial pastry sours.
For instance, Sour Patchwork 3, a mammoth Piña Colada-inspired 8% ABV smoothie sour fruited with over three pounds per gallon of pineapple, lime, and coconut.
“It’s just gigantic, essentially a big old Berliner weisse,” says Osborne, who likes to give those kettle sours to folks who say they don’t like beer.
It’s another favorite of Deep Fried Beers / Night School Operations Manager Nathan Gebhard.
“It is crazy,” he says. “You’re literally drinking just a plain old Piña Colada smoothie—fresh pineapple and coconut in a beer—but it’s also 8% ABV. How is this happening because it’s so good? It doesn’t make sense!”
While Osborne says this beer is gone, with maybe a few cans still floating around in the wild, keep your eyes peeled for anything Deep Fried Beers releases. Drink one, and you’ll surely jump down the rabbit hole.
And we’ll let you know once Osborne actually deep fries some beer.
Moonsmoke – Vector Brewing
Dallas, TX
Photography courtesy of Vector Brewing
Lichtenhainer – Considered a Lichtenheiner, an old-school tart German smoked wheat beer, Moonsmoke starts with a base of pilsner malt and smoked peach and cherry wood from TexMalt, a craft malt house in Fort Worth. “They have a little smoker out back that they built to smoke five hundred pounds at a time,” explains Vector Brewing Head Brewer Tomás Gutierrez, who tank-sours the 3.4% ABV beer until it reaches 3.6 pH. At this point, he reboils everything and adds El Dorado hops in the whirlpool, “just to get it up to 16 IBUs so it’s not too bitter but offset a little bit.”
One of Vector’s quintessential beers, Moonsmoke isn’t a style you see on many breweries’ tap lists, which is just one of the many reasons we named them one of our “11 Best Breweries of 2024.”
“In Texas, it’s hot as hell out,” laughs Vector Brewing Founder Craig Bradley. “You want something light and crushable that has a tart, lemony quality.”
But it’s the smoky character that really reels in people. “What the hell did I just drink,” says Bradley, is a refrain he hears quite often. Although smoked beers are foreign to many drinkers, Bradley says when he connects the dots to mezcal or scotch, “it really clicks.”
Those are the moments that make Bradley and Gutierrez the most proud. At Vector, there isn’t one simple, straightforward path. The compass is constantly changing, and they’re simply following whichever way the wind blows.
We’ll avoid more cliches here because that doesn’t feel right at Vector, but suffice it to say that getting lost is half the fun. And they don’t care what anyone else says.
“Everyone said if you put a smoked beer on tap, it will sit there for six months, and no one will drink it,” says Bradley. “I call bullshit!”
At Vector, they’re brave enough to make beers outside their comfort zone, so they encourage you to be brave enough to try them. “We don’t just have nothing but IPAs,” says Bradley. “We make cool, unique beers that make people go, wow!”
West Coast Ghost – Parish Brewing Co.
Broussard, LA
DIPA – For years, Parish has lived and died by its iconic hazy Ghost in the Machine. It’s one of our favorite beers, so we always pay attention whenever Parish riffs on it.
“Imagine if hazy IPAs never made their mark on the beer world,” poses Parish. “What if, instead of the hazy DIPA we know today, Ghost in the Machine became a crystal-clear West Coast DIPA?”
That’s West Coast Ghost.
Parish hits the West-Coastified version of Ghost in the Machine with that same Citra but puts this beer through a longer boil and higher hot-side hopping rates for a crisper, pithier, maltier beer.
“For a big DIPA, it’s still an easy-drinking beer with a dry, clean finish,” writes Parish in the beer’s Untappd description. “A tribute to the classic IPA roots that set the stage for the hazy revolution while still capturing the bold hop character we love.”
Kick Routines – Cellarmaker x Monkish
Berkeley, CA x Torrance, CA
Photography courtesy of Cellarmaker
Hazy – Pizza + beer. Is there any better match? When we want both, we head to Cellarmaker in Oakland, where we recently paired up a kickass Kick Routines hazy collab with Monkish with a Detroit-style piece.
The Citra T-90s and Cryo along with Nectaron and Centennial have been pushed to their very fruitiest in this beer for a silky, juicy hazy that perfectly cut through the rich oil of a delicata squash and pear pizza and yet complimented its delicate fruitiness.
How did we know what beer to pair with what pizza? We talked to the experts so you don’t have to. Hit the button and read our five-minute (okay, more like ten-minute) guide.
Rolling Thunder Imperial Stout – Rogue Ales
Newport, OR
Imperial Stout – Aged for nine months in handmade Rolling Thunder Works barrels previously used to age Rogue’s Dead Guy Whiskey, Rolling Thunder Imperial Stout is a true ba-ba-banger.
It’s one of our winter favorites and is now available in our Hop Culture Shop.
Hefe-Weizen – Paulaner Brauerei
Munich, Bayern, Germany
Hefeweizen – Although one of Munich’s oldest breweries, dating back to 1634, Paulaner has seen much success in the States. Paulaner USA imports brands from four different breweries worldwide, including Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Tsingtao, and Fuller’s Ales.
In the States, you can pretty easily find beers like Paulaner’s Münchner Lager, Paulaner Pils, Grapefruit Radler, and Paulaner Hefe-Weizen.
We recently had a chance to try three out of the four and have to say that we’re pretty impressed, especially with the Hefe-Weizen.
Packed full of those banana, bubblegum notes we love in a good, rich hefe, Paulaner’s Hefe-Weizen poured a shiny, silky gold with a fluffy cloud of foam.
We definitely picked up that almost Runts banana-like character, along with a touch of mango and pineapple. This beer has a good amount of zip, so pretty much, as soon as you finish a sip, you’re reaching back for more.
Although nothing can replace going to Munich and getting these beers fresh from the source (which we might just do this year 😉), having these four Paulaner beers on shelves will tide us over until we get overseas.
Two-Hearted – Bell’s Brewery
Kalamazoo, MI
Photography courtesy of Bell’s Brewery
American IPA – We’ve been lucky enough to chat with former Bell’s Founder Larry Bell about the entire history of Bell’s Two Hearted; it’s an incredible, indelible beer. So when we sat down with the recent awardee of the Sir Geoff Palmer Scholarship for Brewing, Galadriel (Gali) Hernandez, we weren’t too surprised to hear that this beer first got her into craft.
But we were reminded of just how much we love this double IPA. And we got a little thirsty.
So, when we sat down to write the first in our new series, called Varsity Brews, featuring Hernandez, we did it with a Two Hearted in hand.
We encourage you to do the same and read about Hernandez’s childhood domino games, successfully brewing her first spontaneously fermented beer, and how she hopes to mentor other BIPOC brewers.
Non-Alcoholic KSA – Fort Point Beer Co.
San Francisco, CA
Photography courtesy of Fort Point Beer Co.
Non-Alcoholic Kölsch – It’s not often that a brewery opens its doors with a flagship kölsch, especially when Fort Point Beer Co. Founders Dina Dobkin and Justin Catalana opened the iconic SF brewery in 2014.
But the brewery planted a flag.
So we shouldn’t have been surprised when Fort Point announced its first-ever non-alcoholic beers this past January, anchored by Non-Alcoholic KSA and Non-Alcoholic Villager.
Fort Point took over three years and twenty pilot batches to nail the recipe for NA KSA. But boy, did they nail it. Non-Alcoholic KSA is light and crisp. We find that body is the hardest character to nail in an NA beer, and KSA crushes it. All while maintaining the flavor KSA is known for—slightly citrusy with a light-honied malt backbone.
“Our goal wasn’t to make a great NA beer,” Mike Schnebeck, director of brewing innovation at Fort Point, said in a press release. “We wanted to make NA beer that tasted like the real thing.”
Throughout Fort Point’s over ten-year history, the brewery has proudly represented the city of San Francisco through alcoholic products. Now, they have an NA brand to carry on the torch.
“San Francisco has always been a part of our DNA. The city inspires the styles we brew, the stories we tell, and the way our brand looks and feels,” Fort Point Chief Brand Officer Dina Dobkin said in a press release. “We’re proud to be the only San Francisco-based brewery making non-alcoholic beer in six-packs. We hope NA KSA and NA Villager deliver a sense of nostalgia, whether drinkers are enjoying an old favorite for the first time in years or just enjoying Fort Point in a different way.”
To put everything in perspective, we brought the six-pack to a party of primarily sober friends. These cans disappeared first.
Mind Haze Watermelon Rage – Firestone Walker Brewing Company
Paso Robles, CA
Photography courtesy of Firestone Walker Brewing Company
Shandy / Radler – When Firestone Walker released its first hazy, Mind Haze, in 2019, the beer developed a bit of a psychedelic cult following, eventually expanding into Mind Haze Brain Melter and Mind Haze Cosmic Crusher in 2024.
So we were stoked to see Firestone Walker’s next Mind Haze generation hit shelves earlier this year—Mind Haze Rage.
A series of three “lemonade-infused turbo radler” beers, Mind Haze Rage “will set minds wandering into waves of juicy goodness,” according to the Paso Robles-based brewery.
Of course, we had to test this out ourselves.
We can confirm that all three drip with Jolly Rancher-like goodness, evoking what seem to be far-away thoughts of sun, summer, and shandies at the moment.
“Mind Haze Rage is an evolution of an age-old style, the radler. Part beer. Part lemonade,” said Firestone Walker Brewmaster Matt Brynildson in a press release. “As brewers, we’re curious tinkerers, committed to exploring where beer can go next. Mind Haze Rage is our latest result in this pursuit, and we’re thrilled to share it with the world.”
We kept returning to Watermelon Rage the most. Since we don’t often see this flavor in beer, we were a little skeptical that Firestone Walker could nail it.
But Brynildson and his team at Firestone Walker crushed it with an 8% beer that’s deceivingly refreshing, tart, and sweet.
Prepare to have your mind blown.
If you’re looking for a good place to start with Mind Haze, you can’t go wrong with the OG, work up to Cosmic Crusher, and then get ready to Watermelon Rage!
