1. Prison City Pub & Brewery Mass Riot 
City: Auburn, NY
ABV: 6.3%
The verdict: The best IPA of 247 is from … upstate New York? Bet you didn’t see that coming! And neither did we, although it wasn’t a complete surprise for me. I’ve been a Prison City proponent since this past fall, when I tasted their beer for the first time at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. At that festival, the brewery (only 10 months old at the time) took home a silver medal for Belgian pale ale, but it’s time to clear off plenty of space on the mantle, because this will surely just be the first of many accolades for an outstanding young brewery that is now planning a second, full production facility. Note to local government: GET THESE GUYS A GRANT, STAT.

In terms of profile, Mass Riot is a huge, massively tropical, unabashedly juicy hop bomb. Orange juice hits hard, as does pineapple juice and grapefruit candy. Resinous flavors on the back end help rein things in only the slightest bit, but this is definitely a juicy IPA first and foremost, and a moderately sweet one as well. One tasting sheet dubs it “Caribbean pale ale” for its tropical flavors, while another refers to it as “The Big Juicy.” In the finals, it was particularly beloved despite having a little bit of age on it, with one taster writing “Rich and fruity, cantaloupe and citrus, a beautiful combination.” Likewise full in terms of mouthfeel, it seems significantly bigger than its 6.3% ABV, with a body that goes on for days. It’s truly a decadent IPA, and we can’t wait until Prison City is producing a much larger amount of beer so we can taste it more often. In the meantime, we’d settle for just one more taste. It’s our #1 American IPA, out of 247. 

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