Beer Review: Great Notion Brewing – Pretty Hop Machine
Style: West Coast IPA ABV: (Varies by batch, usually around 7%) Hops: (Typically Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe, or similar modern classics) Vibe: Industrial crunch meets Pacific Northwest resin.
The Juice Masters Pivot West
Great Notion Brewing built its empire on opacity. They are the titans of the thick, sweet, fruit-forward Hazy IPA and pastry-inspired sours. So, when they decide to drop a West Coast IPA—a style defined by clarity, bitterness, and dryness—it demands attention.
“Pretty Hop Machine” is a clear nod to the industrial angst of Nine Inch Nails, suggesting that this beer isn’t here to cuddle your palate with lactose and vanilla; it’s here to grind gears. It’s a fascinating test: Can a brewery famous for maximizing softness pivot and deliver the requisite crunch of a classic West Coast?
Appearance
Pouring this into a glass is immediately disorienting for a seasoned Great Notion drinker. It’s… see-through.
Pretty Hop Machine pours a brilliant, clear golden amber. It’s not crystal-filtered brilliant, possessing that slight “modern West Coast” glimmer, but you can read a newspaper through it. It builds a robust, fluffy, bright white head that demonstrates excellent retention, leaving sticky, intricate lacing down the glass as it drains.
Aroma
The nose is where Great Notion’s pedigree for intense aromatics shines through, even in a different style framework. It doesn’t smell like an “old school” caramel-heavy West Coast IPA; it smells like a modern interpretation.
It is aggressively pungent. The first wave is pure, dank resin—think walking through a pine forest after a rainstorm. This is immediately followed by intense citrus zest: vibrant grapefruit peel and oily orange rind. There is a very subtle underlying tropical note (maybe a hint of unripe mango or passionfruit courtesy of Mosaic/Citra). Still, it is firmly restrained by the savory, green, dank elements. The malt presence on the nose is barely there, just a whisper of cracker to hold the hops up.
Flavor
The palate confirms what the nose suggested: this is a West Coast IPA built for the modern era.
The attack is crisp and biting. A substantial, clean bitterness hits the sides of the tongue immediately—a welcome sensation for those tired of zero-IBU juice bombs. The flavor profile is dominated by resinous pine sap and pithy grapefruit. It’s savory and bright simultaneously.
Unlike their NEIPAs, there is almost no residual sweetness here. The malt bill is incredibly lean, offering just enough pale, bready support to keep the beer from feeling thin, but stepping back quickly to let the hops do the work.
Mouthfeel & Finish
This is where the style pivot is most evident. The body is medium-light, significantly lighter than GNB’s usual offerings. The carbonation is high and spritzy, acting as a scrubbing agent on the tongue.
The finish is the star of the show: bone dry, crisp, and aggressively bitter. The lingering aftertaste is pure pine resin and citrus rind, begging you to take another sip.
Pretty Hop Machine is a resounding success and a flex of brewing versatility.
Great Notion hasn’t just made a West Coast IPA; they have made an excellent, modern West Coast IPA. They utilized their skill at extracting massive hop aromatics and married it perfectly to a lean, bitter, and dry base. It manages to feel nostalgic for the 2012 IPA boom while tasting thoroughly contemporary.
If you love Great Notion‘s aromatics but sometimes find their NEIPAs too sweet to drink more than one, this is the machine you want to plug into.
Available at SF Tequila Shop