Portland-based Green Zebra Grocery recently took a page from the Zupan’s Markets playbook and teamed up with a local brewery to collaborate on a custom “house” private label brand of beer: Green Zebra IPA. Level Beer worked with the grocery chain to craft this first India pale ale, and Green Zebra plans to work with additional breweries moving forward.

According to the press materials about the beer, “The health-focused grocery store let Level Beer know what their customers’ favorite IPAs were and they custom fit those flavors based off their tastes.” From that Level developed this recipe which features New Zealand and Oregon hops, although there’s no mention of the specific varieties. The IPA is 6.3% alcohol by volume and packaged in 16-ounce cans.

The marketing agency sent me two cans to sample; here’s my review.

Appearance: Orange color with copper highlights and a bit of unfiltered haze. Head is off-white, fine and lacy, with good legs.

Smell: Tropical fruit salad that’s a bit sweaty, and there’s a touch of green onion. Herbal hops with a touch of mint. Low, almost no malt nose.

Taste: Savory green hop flavor that offers light bitterness and nicely mellow fruitiness that showcases some guava, pineapple. And yes, that minty/green onion/scallion savory note that I find in these newer hops. There’s a tasty, soft cereal malt character that is a good backdrop for the hops.

Mouthfeel: Medium body, soft and fluffy malt that’s lightly creamy, at the back it’s lightly herbal and bitter as it finishes.

Overall: Overall a well built beer. Nice fruitiness, good aroma, though the more I drank the more I was thinking that it could be more “pale ale” than “IPA” because it was so easy drinking with mellow bitterness and that luscious malt.