The 5 Absolute Best IPAs Of 2025

The variety that craft beer was founded on is alive and well heading into 2026, but one style undeniably rules the scene. We're talking, of course, about the IPA. The IPA has many substyles, so there's something for everyone, but all of these different expressions are bound by their delicious exploration of fragrant hop character. Whether you like your beer bracingly bitter or tropically sweet, the overall IPA category is rich with options just waiting to become your new favorites.

2025 was a banner year for IPAs, ranging from piney, resinous West Coast IPAs to juicy, fruity hazy IPAs with balanced American IPAs, crisp cold IPAs, roasty black IPAs, and more in between. Alas, not every IPA is a banger — especially considering the style's popularity, plenty of offerings on bar menus and store shelves may have been rushed to market to tick a box. With over 9,000 breweries in the United States currently, there's a whole sea of IPAs to sift through, and that sheer volume makes the true treasures shine even brighter. We're highlighting those gems here by rounding up the very best IPAs released in 2025. As some of these are still being brewed, if you see them at your local bar or bottle shop, order up and count on an exceptional beer-drinking experience. Or, you can at least add these breweries to your list for when you're looking for your next favorite IPA.

In Broussard, Louisiana, Parish Brewing Co. has had a hit on its hands for a while with its Ghost in the Machine Juicy Double IPA. And over in San Diego, North Park Beer Company has earned fans with its Hop-Fu! Double Dry-Hopped West Coast IPA. What happens when you put two of the country's best IPAs together? A monstrously good explosion of hops, of course.

Ghost-Fu! West Coast-Style Double IPA is a collaboration between Parish and North Park. Inspired by how Hop-Fu! is truly a master class in the piney, resinous, citrusy West Coast style. Parish teamed up with the Californians to learn some of their techniques and bring their own hop expertise to the table. Putting hops' ability to both bitter and flavor beer on full display, they utilized Simcoe Dynaboost, Citra, Mosaic, and Amarillo hops to fashion a true best-of-both-worlds IPA. It combines Ghost in the Machine's juiciness with Hop-Fu's bright clarity for a tasty study in balance.

Since starting out in 2014, Hop Butcher for the World has been on many in-the-know IPA fans' top brewery lists. The Chicago-based facility, which has had a taproom since 2022, seems unafraid to go where few breweries have gone before in terms of maximizing the hop intensity of their IPAs. Ttried and true expertise that allows these beers to remain balanced and crushable even with explosive fruit and botanical aromas. 

Orange Moss was an especially crave-able example in 2025. It's a 7.5% ABV double IPA with Citra, Simcoe, and Tangier hops. When you see "double IPA," you can expect more alcohol than in a standard India Pale Ale — about 7.5% to 10% ABV compared to 5.5% to 7.5%. With increased strength comes increased flavor intensity. Brewers go bigger on their hop profiles. In order to balance any resulting bitterness (plus the booze of these beers) with some residual sweetness, they'll also bulk up the malt bill a bit. So you can expect more body. Orange Moss hits all of these crave-worthy mouthfeel, aroma, and flavor factors while remaining on the lower end of the double IPA's ABV range. It's especially a must for citrus fans. It delivers wave after wave of refreshing orange, grapefruit, lemon, pineapple, and peach notes, tempered by a hint of drier pine. 

With several locations across North Carolina, Burial Beer Co. is a jack of all trades — and master of them, too — when it comes to diverse beer styles and even non-alcoholic beers, wines, and THC beverages. They're especially known, though, for their ability to dial flavors up to 11 while still presenting beers you just want to keep sipping, from rich barrel-aged stouts to IPAs bursting with bouquets of different hop aromas. One of their best of 2025 was Between Now and Death. 

This hazy IPA is double dry-hopped. Hops are added during the stage of the brewing process when the malt and water mixture known as wort is boiled for sterilization; hopping at this step contributes bitterness to balance the sweet-leaning malt. But if brewers then want to add even more hop aromas — from peach to pineapple to rose — without increasing bitterness, they "dry-hop," adding hops during fermentation or afterward. "Double dry-hopping" is either dry-hopping at two different stages, dry-hopping with double the amount of hops, or both. It can be tricky to unlock bold, complex hop flavors this way without getting some harsher green notes, but Burial is a whiz at this, and Between Now and Death is proof. With Mosaic, El Dorado, Motueka, and Riwaka hops, it captures tropical papaya, guava, pineapple, mango, and lime. Cocktail fans waiting for their gateway beer should give this one a try, and die-hard hop connoisseurs will be delighted, too.

Van Beer is a hazy IPA from one of the country's hazy IPA virtuosos, Great Notion Brewing in Oregon. It's lush and velvety thanks to oats in its malt bill, which add some creaminess and body, amplifying the beer's fruit flavors and balancing its refreshing hop bitterness. What's extra exciting about Great Notion hoppy ales like Van Beer is that they get special, new releases each year during the hop harvest — these are known as fresh hop beers. 

Typically, hops are dried and either shipped to breweries as whole cone hops or — most commonly — pressed into pellets. But every year during the hop harvest in August and September, some brewers will get hops just as they're picked. If they use them nearly immediately, not processed or dried, these are called wet hop beers. If they're dried, the resulting beers are fresh hop beers — but the hops are indeed still incredibly fresh, usually going into the brew after only 24 to 48 hours of being picked. This creates beers that express the terroir of the hops. A beer from a particular year's harvest will be completely unique and never exactly replicated again. 

With Strata hops, Great Notion's 2025 fresh-hopped Van Beer was especially complex and intensely flavorful, dancing with herbaceous notes as well big bright and subtly sweet fruit flavors like strawberry and melon. Essentially, this was already a stellar IPA with a new 2025 twist that somehow only made it even tastier.

WeldWerks Brewing makes some of the best craft beers in Colorado, which is saying something considering that the state has long been a hotbed for creative, delicious brews. Goth Umbrella is a black IPA. This isn't one of the styles you're most likely to see at many breweries, but that just makes it all the exciting when you spot one, especially one as good as Goth Umbrella. Sometimes called a Cascadian dark ale, this kind of IPA utilizes darker malts to give hoppy notes of roastiness, coffee, dried fruit, and chocolate. It's like getting to enjoy a dry stout and an IPA at once.

Goth Umbrella is hopped with Citra, Columbus, El Dorado, Talus, and Lemondrop hops. It takes you on a flavor journey from roasty coffee and chocolate to piney hops, with hints of citrus keeping the profile bright. It's like walking through a pine forest in the winter while drinking a delicious coffee or hot chocolate; it's rich but dry-finishing and easy-drinking, and beautifully complex.