While not all of Colorado’s beer snobs will march in lock-step with me like the Soviet Army in Red Square, Superpower’s growing list of accolades help authenticate its goodness—a fresh-hop version won a silver medal at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival in the fresh or wet-hop category. Superpower’s color, drinkability and taste mean the rest of the Colorado craft beer scene has some catching up to do.

In the glass, Superpower is a beautiful golden color with a slight bubble of carbon dioxide defecting to the top of the clear liquid with a foamy white head that flies away like a MiG fighter in Top Gun. That’s not a problem—my guess is that most beer lovers will consume their Superpower as fast as a centrally planned economy takes to stifle individual entrepreneurship. Get your nose close to Superpower, and its aroma will fill your nostrils with a combination of flowers and citrus. This helps inform the wonderful flavors about to wash over your tongue, which are balanced well enough to retain a nice, clean hoppiness with enough malt to keep it from going to Chernobyl levels. Any IPA fan will recognize Superpower’s superior taste instantly, but others may get the idea that its bitterness is more Stalin than Gorbachev. I’d call it pleasantly bitter. Hop flavors run towards the citrus side of the hops spectrum with a little floral and fruit mixed in. Superpower goes down easy at 6.5% ABV and ranks with any of the IPAs from Oregon or California, so look for many more accolades to come its way.

Superpower will go with plenty of dishes—I drank mine with chicken wings and thought the combination went well together. Whenever I eat a steak, though, I have an IPA like Superpower next to my plate. IPAs also go really well with carrot cake, as would Superpower.

While the letters “IPA” tend to repel the less-adventurous beer drinkers of the world like “ICBM” used to tamp down fledgling democracy movements in the Baltic states, Superpower should be sampled by just about everybody. As a bonus, the folks at Comrade believe in pouring “proper pints,” which means your $6 will get you an actual 16 oz. pour of Superpower, not 14 oz. and a bunch of foam. So for the average person’s hard-earned rubles, Superpower is nothing short of “the bomb.”

Comrade Brewing Company, 7667 E Iliff Ave.; 720-748-0700

Photo via Comrade Brewing Company