N/Alien Church

The beer

Bright tropical and citrus hops over soft malt — hop-first, the right order for a hazy IPA, and not a caramel pile. That is the style signature; the score is about whether it holds.

Most alcohol-free IPAs thin out by the middle and read like hop water. This one keeps a soft malt cushion under the tropical fruit, with gentle bitterness that neither scrubs the tongue nor disappears. The soft body is the achievement; the fruit is the pleasure. Soft and lingering afterward, the hop fruit carries farther than the bitterness.

Eighty-eight is the point where the glass stays coherent as a beer: juicy, still intact through the middle, served cold from the can. A fuller IPA would bite harder and drier. As it warms the malt rounds and the citrus stays — pleasant, a little less bright, still very much a beer.