Some Spanish IPAs, o EE-PAHs

Your average beer in Spain has an IBU rating similar to the age of my students, and the oldest one I teach is 10 years old.  As someone who can’t get enough hops, I suffered from severe IPA withdrawal for the first month or so that I was in Spain.  And although the cheap and wonderful wine, as well as many a gin tonic, helped ease my pain, I was still hurting. 

Slowly but surely, however, I was able to find some quality IPAs after a little hunting.  The first one I had was from Kadabra, a brewery out of León. It’s not the best I've ever had, but at the time it was just nice to have a beer that seemed to at least have heard of hops before.

 

The Cibeles IPA is also pretty solid, and living in Madrid, it’s the most local you can get. 

 

I’ve also had the Domus Aurea IPA a couple times at Tierra, the resident Chipotle stand-in in Madrid, and although their burritos aren’t as good as their American counterpart, they do offer a solid selection of craft beers, American and otherwise.  Domus is a Toledean brewery, and their IPA offers a complex hop profile while still being smooth. 

 

The watershed moment in my IPA hunt is when I paid a visit to Más que Cervezas and threw myself at the feet of their expertise.  I was rewarded with several quality recommendations.   

The first was a damn good IPA or here EPA (euskadiko pale ale). The brewery is Laugar and they're located in Gordexola, Bizkaia in Basque Country. 

The second was Kince Lupulus Double IPA brewed by Keltius Cerveza Artesanal in Ourense, Galicia. Kince is a play on quince (15), so there are 15 different types of hops or lúpulos used in the brewing process.  This one stands up against practically any IPA I’ve had in the states and packs quite a punch. 

The third one wasn’t technically an IPA, but it’s also one of the most unique and tasty beers I’ve ever had, in any country, so I’ll include it here.  It’s a winter honey style ale brewed by La Socarrada out of Xàtiva, Valencia.  It’s brewed with rosemary (romero) and rosemary honey (!), and it was declared the best beer in the world in 2012. 

 

It presents itself as embodying the essence of the Mediterranean, and it is by far the best example I’ve experienced of a beer made in Spain that really embodies the unique terroir (to borrow the wine term) of Spain and offers something special and unprecedented in the beer world, whereas a lot of them tend to be much more imitative of American or British styles of brewing.  If you’re going to try any of these beers in this list, go with this one.  You won’t regret it.