CLEVELAND, Ohio – Craft-beer fans in Northeast Ohio have long known about Fat Head’s Brewery’s Head Hunter IPA, but the ale’s popularity also has extended past the Buckeye State, with its shelf full of medals.
It latest honors: The India Pale Ale has earned Craft Beer & Brewing honors as an “Editor’s Best of 2023.”
The Middleburg Heights brewery’s beer won gold awards this year for American IPA at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup. Now, the magazine has included it among its best 20 beers of the year.
The magazine blind-tasted more than 1,000 beers to narrow the field. Breweries from 14 states made the list. Fat Head’s was the only winning entry from Ohio.
Because of the timing of the brewery’s submission to the magazine, the editors wrote in their summary the beer had almost no chance to crack the list. But they were pleasantly surprised with its flavor profile.
Head Hunter is 7.5% alcohol and is a dry-hopped, West Coast-Style IPA.
Matt Cole, the brewery’s co-owner and master brewer of the 15-year-old brewery, was proud of the inclusion.
“It’s astounding to reel off such an amazing series of honors and be considered a benchmark for the style,” Cole said in a press release.
Here’s the magazine’s full list.
Related coverage
Ohio breweries earn record number of medals at Great American Beer Festival
Ohio breweries garner World Beer Cup medals; here’s who won
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I am on cleveland.com’s life and culture team and cover food, beer, wine and sports-related topics. For my recent stories, here’s a directory on cleveland.com. Bill Wills of WTAM-1100 and I talk food and drink usually at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays. Twitter: @mbona30. My latest book, co-authored with Dan Murphy, is “Joe Thomas: Not Your Average Joe” by Gray & Co.
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