My neighbor and I spend a lot of time trying to find unique beers for each other. He got home late on Friday, so I ended up popping open the bottle I got for him instead of gifting it. It’s an 8% double IPA with 70 IBUs. It’s named after the infamous California Highway 395. If you’ve never driven it, it’s a long stretch of a two-lane highway that run through the hottest and dryest parts of California like the Mojave desert and Death Valley. The particular California stretch it’s named after is capped at the North by Bishop, the South by Victorville, the East by the Barker Ranch made famous as the Manson commune, and the West by Sequoia national forest . The highways is dangerous, gets washed out a lot, dips dangerously into multiple flash flood ravines, and is tedious to drive. Interestingly, Mammoth brewing turned all of those liabilities into something good. IPA 395 is crazy good. The label states that they wanted a really dry IPA seasoned with local sage and juniper berries that could age well over time. While I can’t taste the individual ingredients, they blend to make a rich but very dry IPA. Though it doesn’t taste like it, it reminds me an an Indian tonic water in terms of dry and bitterness. They also claim that it is brewed to smell like an Eastern Sierra thunderstorm and in fact, it does have a slight zing when it first hits your tongue. This is the best beer I’ve discovered in recent memory. They say it’s modeled after their Epic IPA which is more commonly available, but if you see one of these–you definitely want to grab as many as you can carry.
