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Hop Culture’s 5 Best Things in the Shop in May
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Spring is in full swing, and so is our beer fridge. Whether we’re hunting down a grail release, craving something crisp and seasonal, or just looking for a reliable go-to that never disappoints, May delivers on all fronts. The taps are flowing, the ratings are climbing, and the Hop Culture Shop is stocked with some genuinely exciting stuff right now.
Every month, our team digs through the noise to find the beers and boxes actually worth your time and money—not the dusty shelf-sitters, not the hype-bait, but the releases that earn their reputation one sip at a time. We’re talking highly rated, community-vetted, seasonally perfect picks that reflect what’s truly exciting in craft beer right now.
This month’s list runs the full spectrum: a top-rated box packed with grail-worthy names, a stunning Italian pilsner built for warm afternoons, a bold red IPA that just snagged gold at the Untappd Community Awards, and a classic hazy IPA that’s been earning its place for over two decades. Oh, and a glass worth raising.
These are the three best beers—and one standout glass—in the shop right now.
Hop Culture’s 3 Best Beers in the Shop This Month
Top-Rated Box
The crème de la crème just leveled up.
The Untappd Top-Rated Box is back—and this time, it’s higher rated, higher ABV, and higher intensity than ever.
We’re not just talking about hype. We’re talking about the beers your Untappd friends won’t shut up about. The ones that disappear in seconds. The ones you trade for, chase down, and screenshot.
Inside this next-level drop, you’ll find:
🍻Anchorage
🍻Mortalis
🍻RAR Brewing
🍻Side Project Brewing
🍻CLAG Brewing
🍻Brujos Brewing
From ultra-luxe barrel-aged stouts to absurdly decadent smoothie sours and dialed-in hazies—this is a lineup built differently.
Straight heaters.
Every beer in this box earns its spot the only way that matters: through ratings from the Untappd community. That means you’re getting the best of what everyone’s talking about right now.
And like any true grail release…it won’t last.
We kept quantities tight to keep quality high.
Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
So if you’ve ever wanted to drink at the very top of the mountain—this is your moment.
Marlowe Artisanal Ales – Smells Like Spring
Italian Pilsner – One of our “Best New Breweries of 2024,” Marlowe Artisanal Ales focuses on pub beers, highly drinkable ales, and lagers. And actually, we think that makes this spot pretty underrated. In our humble opinion, we see no reason why Marlowe couldn’t crack New York’s top fifteen or even the top ten top-rated breweries (they currently sit at twenty-eight).
Half Time Beverage COO Jason Daniels actually turned us onto Marlowe Brewer and Owner Zac Ross in 2023, telling us that he is “making some of the best beer I have had in a while, if not ever.”
We’ve enjoyed many Marlowe beers over the years, including The Broken & The Dead, an incredibly highly rated 4.16🌟 American brown ale brewed with Cascade, Centennial, and a touch of Columbus hops, and Marlito, a 4.06🌟 Mexican lager with heirloom corn.
This year, Marlowe hit us over the head with brilliance again with Smells Like Spring, an Italian pilsner collab with mixed-fermentation masters, The Seed, in New Jersey. Marlowe delicately hops this 5.3% lager with Hallertau Mittelfrüh and Amira hops from the HVG co-op in Germany, adding a light dry-hop of Amira at the end of fermentation. This 4.21🌟 Italian lager, with its clean, crisp, lightly lemony bite, is an absolutely perfect homage to a season of blooming and renaissance.
WeldWerks Brewing Co. – Rojo Rising
Graphic courtesy of Untappd
Red IPA – WeldWerks is no stranger to awards. In its over-a-decade-long history, the Greeley, CO-based brewery has racked up tons of recognition at both the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup and was named best new brewery by USA Today’s 10Best Reader’s Choice Awards in 2016.
A gold winner during the Untappd 2026 Community Awards in the Red IPA category, Rojo Rising continues WeldWerk’s string of excellent creations.
Achieving a somewhat mischievously hard garnet color, this red IPA presents a plethora of produce-aisle citrus before backing into a bready finish with just a hint of pine. Medium-bodied, but robust enough to stand on its own in a forest of hoppy offerings, Rojo Rising certainly rises above the rest.
Bissell Brothers – The Substance
Photography courtesy of Hop Culture
Hazy – When Noah and Peter Bissell started Bissell Brothers in Portland, ME, in 2013, they brewed only one beer for the first nine months—The Substance. Yes, that’s right—before Swish, before Reciprocal, and before LUX and Nothing Gold, there was this dialed-in hazy.
The brewery’s flagship has endured over the last twenty-three years, earning a formula-breaking 4.12🌟 on Untappd in an incredibly crowded category. Brewed with one-hundred percent Maine-grown grain and “a plethora of Pacific Northwest [hop] varieties both new and time-tested,” Bissel Brothers describes this beer in its Untappd description as “Dank, citrus-forward, and herbaceous.”
🚨JUST ADDED 🚨BeerAdvocate Big Beers Barrel Glass
Photography courtesy of BeerAdvocate
BeerAdvocate and its long-standing collective of beer geeks have been tasting and debating beers since pretty much the dawn of the internet.
Toast to the good times past and the better ones to come with BeerAdvocate Big Beers Barrel Glass.
Engineered for those bottle shares you still have with friends and big, boozy barrel-aged stouts you want to share, this new epic drinking barrel reminds us why we got into drinking in the first place—for the love of beer.
