The latest excellent release from Santa Clara Valley Brewing is no surprise

Santa Clara Valley Brewing (SCVB) calls their latest release, a Double IPA, "Valley Surprise". The only surprise would be if it sucked.

SCVB Brewmaster Steve Donohue has long demonstrated his considerable skills with hops well back to his days with Firehouse Brewing. Valley Surprise is the latest in his long list of these examples and a very worthy follow-up to SCVB's highly successful Electric Tower IPA. Valley Surprise has plenty of strong, punchy tropical hops flavors with a slight resiny finish.  Even better, it's a very dry Double IPA with virtually no sweetness letting all those great hop flavors come through.  It's a welcome departure from a lot of sweeter tasting West Coast Double IPA's, some of which border on tasting like sickening hop syrup.

I picked up at bottle at San Jose's Royal Liquors and also had some at my neighborhood hang-out Campbell's Little Lou's BBQ.  You can find it a plenty of other locations and my guess is you'll be seeing it around at SF Beer Week.