New Schlafly American IPA This Summer

I was browsing Missouri events on BeerAdvocate and noticed a new Schlafly IPA will be offered at the Wine & Cheese Place Beerfest.  It says it is a trial batch of an American IPA, and that the bottled version will be out in June as part of the 8% seasonals. 

I like IPAs.  I like Schlafly.  Sounds like I will like this Schlafly IPA!

I wanted to make sure that this wasn't replacing Schlafly's Export IPA, which is a fantastic English style IPA, so I emailed them with some questions.  Here is their answer:

We are going to bottle this new American IPA this summer as part of our 8% abv Special Release Series. This is the series that includes the xmas ale, pumpkin ale, Export IPA and Extra Stout. So this is a seasonal and will only be available for a couple months.

We don’t have the art completed yet nor an official description. Here is something rough:

“Brewed with a big hop flavor and aroma, this dry hopped American style IPA has enough malted barley backbone to stand up to the intense bitterness.”

We brewed a lower abv version of this as our Festival Beer for our HOP in the City festival this past September and it was a huge success. Very Hoppy.

As this will release in the Special Release Series between the Export IPA (not going away) and the Pumpkin Ale...my guess is that it should be pretty different from the Export. One uses American Hops and the other comes from foreign lands.

I don't know if any of this will make it to KC before the June bottle release. I'm crossing my fingers for the Parkville Microbrew Festival