Way back in the day, before craft beer rose to prominence, if a bartender served you a cloudy beer, you might send it back and start questioning the cleanliness of their tap lines. In today’s beer world, though, receiving a murky beer is considered by many to be an attractive feature.
This distinct visual is the calling card of the hazy IPA, a beer style with its own cloudy look. As any old-school East Coast hophead may tell you, hazy IPAs are essentially New England IPAs with less regionally-focused branding. When you find one — whatever it’s called — you’ll know it once you pour it into a glass and see an orange-hued liquid vaguely looking like fresh, pulpy juice. Filled with tropical and citrus fruit, underscored by a nuanced bitterness and creamy mouthfeel, hazy IPAs offer a refreshing alternative to the West Coast IPA’s piney, intensely bitter notes.
Hazy IPAs have been part of the mainstream bar scene for years, thanks in part to popular nationally distributed breweries and brands like Sierra Nevada Brewing, New Belgium Brewing’s wildly popular Voodoo Ranger line, and Samuel Adams. But this juicy beer style is ripe for exploration beyond the household names. Because there are a slew of lesser-known brands to consider, we’ve compiled a list of 11 breweries to get you started on this journey of discovery.
A couple disclaimers before we take the plunge. First, the intention of this list is to take a deeper dive into the category. While this obviously means we’re skipping the industry heavyweights easily found on the commercial market, it also means we’re moving past a few smaller brands that are relatively well known in beer geek circles, like Alchemist, Tree House, and Trillium (which are all exceptional). Secondly, some of these beers admittedly may require some sleuthing of various intensity to purchase. This isn’t designed to make things difficult. It’s just the nature of the beast — beer beyond the macro level tends to be intensely regional.
Lawson’s Finest Liquids
Lawson’s Finest Liquids arguably sits at the cusp of graduating from a lesser-known brand to relatively widespread status. The Vermont-based brewery started as a small home production in 2008 but took off when it launched its flagship Sip of Sunshine IPA in 2014. Now the brand enjoys national distribution. These elements alone put Lawson’s in a terrific position to be the gateway for broader hazy IPA exploration. In addition to the Sip of Sunshine, Lawson’s has a hazy brew called Hop Wired that leans further into that juicy, citrus-forward style. Expect layers of floral notes on the nose and bright, tropical fruit on the palate, complemented by a well-balanced hoppiness to round out the experience.
Two Roads Brewing
The soul of Connecticut-based Two Roads Brewing and its “take the road less traveled” philosophy is its master brewer, Phil Markowski. The award-winning craft beer icon and author has spent more than a quarter-century pushing the boundaries of what could be possible in the craft beer sector through innovation. The brewery’s hazy IPAs reflect his capacity for thinking outside the box. Its Two Juicy Hazy Double IPA, for example, delivers a distinctive pop of lychee interspersed between more traditional orange and grapefruit notes.
Fiddlehead Brewing Company
While juicy citrus and tropical notes are hazy IPAs’ calling cards, the style does leave room for bitterness. Vermont-based Fiddlehead Brewing Company leans into this philosophy with its eponymous, generally classified IPA. It contains the hallmarks of a proper hazy: It’s opaque in the glass and features a clean, refreshing finish. There’s also a bitter bite thrown into the mix, and the brewery doesn’t shy away from this element: On its website, Fiddlehead lists its primary tasting notes as “dank, pine, resiny.” These elements suggest boldness, but they are mellowed out by the brew’s fruitier characteristics. This balance yields a hazy IPA that hardcore fans of the intensely bitter West Coast IPA style can appreciate.
Other Half Brewing Company
Outside of New York City, Other Half may be vaguely familiar to the casual craft beer drinker, particularly those in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic region. It’s a different story for NYC residents. The Brooklyn-based brewery was largely responsible for kicking off the city’s IPA craze with its dank, West Coast IPA-style concoctions when they launched in 2014. While Other Half is now best known for its hazy IPAs, its take on the style draws influence from those early days, resulting in a wide range of hazy selections. And we do mean a wide range: Other Half has produced hundreds of hazy IPAs over the years, grouped in categories with names like Chroma and Munchies. We suggest starting down the brewery’s rabbit hole with one of its flagship cans, like Green City.
Zero Gravity Craft Brewery
Another brewery from the heart of hazy IPA territory, Zero Gravity was founded in Burlington, Vt., in 2004, and strongly emphasizes the importance of community. Of course, brewing an excellent beer helps to build such a strong community, and Zero Gravity excels in this area. Its hazy IPA, Cone Head Haze, uses a trio of American and New Zealand hop varieties to create a crisp hazy bursting with tropical fruit and backed by a nuanced piney bitterness.
Industrial Arts Brewing Company
There are two things about Industrial Arts Brewing Company: First, it’s massive. Based in Beacon, N.Y., the brewery’s custom, German-built brewhouse measures a whopping 70,000 square feet, the largest brewery in the Hudson Valley. Second, it’s about as technically advanced as an independent brewery gets, and everything in the process is built to optimize efficiency, from its mashing to its kegging and canning lines. Fortunately, size and speed do not come at the expense of quality. Based on the popularity of its hazy IPA, Wrench, they enhance its goodness. Built around a generous foundation of Mosaic and Citra hops, the beer has generated high praise among beer aficionados for its balanced, approachable flavor profile.
Gnarly Barley
Sometimes, you just have to pick up a beer based on its name. If the beer is great, then it’s a win-win. The Hammond, La., brewery’s signature hazy IPA holds such power. Its name? Jucifer. It’s a moniker dripping with such goofy, dad joke-level punny goodness, it practically compels you to buy at least a can if you see it in the wild. You’ll be glad you did. This dry-hopped devil is a hop bomb of bold, juicy flavor that leans hard into tropical flavors like mango and papaya. These brazen flavor notes juxtapose a soft, supple mouthfeel, which may compel you to rush back to the store and pick up a few more cans.
North Park Beer Co.
The greater San Diego beer scene doesn’t shine quite as brightly as it did when brands like Stone Brewing and Ballast Point were rising to prominence. But it’s still a craft beer epicenter, and it comes as no surprise that the region’s breweries are capable of pumping out quality hazy IPAs. North Park Beer Co. provides a splendid example of such stylistic prowess. Its flagship hazy, DDH Art is Hard, gives astute imbibers a clue to the beermaking process. The “DDH” stands for double dry-hopped, a brewing technique where hops are added to the brew twice mid- or post-fermentation. In this case, the tactic leads to a tropical delight marked by punches of orange, pineapple, tangerine, and guava. It’s the kind of flavor expression one may expect when East Coast style meets California sensibility.
Mast Landing Brewing Company
Mast Landing Brewing Company started out in a garage as part of a homebrewing project in Freeport, Maine. It’s since moved into a proper brewing space and opened a pair of tasting rooms, and it uses its larger platform to highlight the subtle differences that can set one hazy IPA apart from another, even if they’re coming from the same brewery. It’s in a ripe position to do so — its current roster of beers includes seven iterations of the hazy IPA style. Its easy-drinking label, A Beer Named Duck, is possibly its most accessible for the casual craft beer fan. Featuring a delicate expression of citrus and tropical fruit and clocking in at a modest 5.2 percent ABV, this label delivers an excellent example of a sessionable craft beer.
Bearded Iris Brewing
It’s a bit weird to visualize a time when hazy IPAs had to be introduced to a market, given how seemingly ubiquitous the style is now in 2026. But that’s exactly what makes exploring a brewery like Bearded Iris Brewing so much fun. Opened in 2016, the Nashville-based brewery brought the joys of locally made hazy IPA to Music City, at a time when pale ales and hefeweizens dominated the local craft beer scene. Ten years later, its hazy IPAs are well established yet still turning heads based on their high quality. They’re not technically stamped hazy IPAs on the label, but they consistently contain the style’s elements, like layered juiciness and zippy tropical fruit.
Threes Brewing
Threes Brewing may be the most definitively New York City brewery within the five boroughs. Its reputation for producing exemplary beers goes well beyond the Big Apple’s borders, and its award-winning hazy IPA Logical Conclusion leads the charge. The tasting notes on the website — ripe peach, gushers, fluffy wheat, coniferous, white minerals — suggest an odd hodgepodge of flavor whimsy in each can. Judging by its acclaim, it works. Threes Brewing also enjoys a rather robust national distribution, making it easy to stock a prime piece of New York essence into your fridge.
