Pulp Truck IPA Review: Marsh Island Brewing’s Hazy New England IPA

Pulp Truck IPA is Marsh Island Brewing’s flagship New England IPA, the beer that has quietly outsold everything else this small Orono, Maine brewery makes since it landed on shelves back in 2016. I rate it 4.02 out of 5, a score that lines up with the roughly 7,000 community ratings behind it. The can lists 6% ABV, and IBU is not published for this beer, so I am not going to hand you a made-up number. What Marsh Island does tell you is the hop bill: Mosaic and El Dorado, tuned for pineapple, orange, and grapefruit character rather than raw bitterness.

Pulp Truck IPA at a glance

If the phrase hazy IPA or New England IPA is new to you, my guide to what actually makes a hazy IPA different covers the soft body, low perceived bitterness, and cloudy appearance without treating haze as a gimmick. Pulp Truck earns the label honestly: it is built around juice-forward hop character rather than bittering hops, and the brewery brought it out in 2016, well before the style went fully mainstream on the East Coast.

What is Pulp Truck IPA, and who brews it?

Pulp Truck IPA is brewed by Marsh Island Brewing, a family-run operation in Orono, Maine, right next to the University of Maine campus. The brewery started as a conversation between a convenience store owner, her craft beer manager, and a master mechanic, and turned into a real business in 2015 when Jim and Alice Swett, along with their son Prentiss Swett, converted a vacant convenience store at 2 Main Street into a brewhouse. Head brewer Clay Randall brewed the first batch, Downrigger IPA, in August 2015, and the tasting room opened a year later.

Pulp Truck followed not long after, added to the lineup on November 10, 2016, and it became the beer Marsh Island is best known for outside its home region. The brewery has grown steadily since: a 3-barrel system gave way to a 10-barrel brewhouse in 2018 to keep up with demand, and the Swett family opened a second location in Hampden, Maine, expanding out of the original Orono building for the first time in almost a decade. Marsh Island now distributes across Maine through Central Distributors of Lewiston and into New Hampshire as well. For more on how ABV numbers like Pulp Truck’s 6% are actually calculated, see our explainer on beer gravity and ABV.

Pulp Truck ABV, IBU, calories, and ingredients

Pulp Truck comes in at 6.0% ABV, a comfortable, sessionable strength for a hazy IPA; strong enough to carry hop oils and body, light enough that a 16 oz can does not wear you out. IBU is not published by Marsh Island for this beer, and I would rather leave that field honest than guess a number for a style where perceived bitterness usually runs well below the lab figure anyway. Retailer listings put calories around 220 per can, but that is a third-party estimate, not a number I have seen confirmed on Marsh Island’s own packaging, so treat it as a ballpark rather than a nutrition fact.

The confirmed hop bill is Mosaic and El Dorado. Mosaic brings a wide-ranging fruit character, often described as blueberry, tangerine, and pine all at once, while El Dorado leans tropical, closer to pineapple, pear, and stone fruit. Together they explain Marsh Island’s own tasting note for this beer: pineapple, orange, and grapefruit. The can also states the beer is brewed with lactose, a detail that shows up on the ingredient list at retailers like Hannaford. Lactose does not ferment, so it adds a bit of body and a rounder, slightly sweeter mouthfeel without pushing the ABV up, a technique more associated with milkshake IPAs than a straight NEIPA, and it is a useful clue to why Pulp Truck drinks softer than its hop bill alone would suggest.

The malt bill itself is not published. In most hazy IPAs, brewers lean on 2-row pale malt with wheat or oats for body and that classic cloudy look, but that is a style-level assumption, not a confirmed Pulp Truck recipe detail. If you want to understand how a number like IBU is measured and why it does not always match how bitter a beer tastes, our guide on what IBU actually measures is a good next stop. As someone who has been brewing at home for more than a decade, I can tell you a hop-forward IPA like this one lives or dies on hop freshness and how carefully the brewer manages oxygen exposure after fermentation, not just which varieties are on the bag.

How Pulp Truck tastes

Pulp Truck pours a deep, hazy gold, almost orange-juice colored, with a thick off-white head that holds together for a while. The nose leads with orange and pineapple, a little tropical sweetness up front before a grapefruit-pith edge cuts in behind it. It smells like juice more than it smells like hops in the classic resinous sense, which is exactly what Mosaic and El Dorado are known for delivering.

On the palate, the lactose addition makes itself known immediately: this is a soft, rounded beer with a body that feels closer to a milkshake IPA than a crisp, dry NEIPA. Orange and pineapple carry through the middle, with a bit of stone fruit sweetness, before grapefruit pith brings it back toward dry on the finish. Bitterness is low and mostly perceived through that citrus-pith character rather than any real hop bite; this is not a beer chasing a bitter finish, it is chasing juice.

Carbonation is moderate, which suits the fuller body, and the beer stays easy to drink across a can rather than turning heavy or cloying. I would serve it a touch above fridge-cold in a tulip or a wide-mouthed glass so the aroma has room to open up; ice-cold locks up the fruit notes this beer is built around. Our guide to serving temperature and glassware covers this in more detail if you want to get the most out of any hazy IPA, not just this one.

How Pulp Truck compares with other hazy IPAs

Pulp Truck sits on the sweeter, softer end of the hazy IPA spectrum, closer to a milkshake IPA than a bracing, bitter NEIPA. If you have tried our review of Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing, Pulp Truck is fruitier and rounder, trading some of Hazy Little Thing’s citrus snap for a heavier, juice-like mouthfeel from the lactose. It is also a useful contrast to our Pleasantly Hazy IPA review, which leans drier; Pulp Truck is the pick if you specifically want that softer, dessert-adjacent lean.

Inside the wider juice-bomb category, Pulp Truck compares well to XXX OJ and Son of Juice, both of which chase a similar orange-forward profile, though neither uses lactose the way Marsh Island does here. If you liked the tropical, fruit-heavy direction of Bodhizafa or Yellow Rose, Pulp Truck belongs on the same shortlist. And for drinkers who want to go a step further into full-on candy territory, Cloud Candy IPA pushes even sweeter than Pulp Truck does.

Marsh Island itself sells a bigger version of this beer, Pulp Tandems DIPA, a double dry-hopped 7.8% ABV take on the same recipe, along with a fruited variant with added pineapple. If Pulp Truck is the beer that hooks you, Pulp Tandems is the next one to look for on Marsh Island’s tap list.

Food pairings for Pulp Truck

Pulp Truck’s orange-and-pineapple sweetness and softer body make it a strong match for anything spicy or fried. My first pick is Thai food, especially a pineapple curry or a spicy noodle dish where the beer’s tropical fruit plays directly off the heat instead of just cooling it down. Grilled shrimp or fish tacos with a citrus-forward slaw work for the same reason. If you want a deeper dive on matching heat and sweetness generally, our beer and food pairing guide has a good framework.

For something heartier, this beer holds up well against barbecue, particularly a sweeter glaze or a fruit-based barbecue sauce, since Pulp Truck will not be fighting the sugar the way a bone-dry West Coast IPA might. Our beer and BBQ pairing guide gets into more detail on matching smoke and sauce styles. It is also a fine tailgate cooler pick since it is easy-drinking at 6% ABV; see our list of best beers for tailgating for more in that lane, and if you are headed further outdoors, our best beers for camping roundup covers similarly packable options for a Maine-style trip into the woods.

On the cheese side, a mild triple-cream brie or a young gouda works better than anything sharp or funky, since Pulp Truck’s sweetness needs a creamy counterpart rather than competition. If you are planning a proper side-by-side tasting with a few hazy IPAs, our home beer tasting party guide is a simple way to structure it, and our beer and dessert pairing guide is worth a look too, since Pulp Truck’s lactose-softened sweetness genuinely straddles the line between a food beer and a dessert one.

Where to find Pulp Truck

Pulp Truck is a core, year-round beer for Marsh Island, not a rotating small-batch release, which makes it easier to track down than most hazy IPAs from a brewery this size. It is distributed throughout Maine, including grocery retailers like Hannaford, and into New Hampshire through Craft New Hampshire. It is regularly on tap at Marsh Island’s own Orono taproom at 2 Main Street, and I found check-ins for it on tap as far out as Bar Harbor and even a Boston-area sports bar, so it does travel with visiting Mainers.

I was not able to confirm a Saucey listing for Pulp Truck; it is a regional Maine brand without the kind of national distribution that gets a beer onto Saucey’s shelves. If you cannot find it locally, the five hazy IPAs below make honest substitutes rather than a dead-end search.

Similar hazy IPAs to try

Since Pulp Truck itself is not listed on Saucey, here are five genuine hazy or juice-forward IPAs with live product pages and their own product photos. None of them are exact clones, but each one lands somewhere close to Pulp Truck’s fruit-forward, easy-drinking style.

Hazy Little Thing is the safest, most widely available pick if broad distribution matters most. Hazy Hero and Hazy Like a Fox both keep the same soft, juicy focus Pulp Truck is known for. Aloha Sculpin is the closest flavor match given its own tropical El Dorado-adjacent profile, and Liquid Candy is where to go if you want to lean even further into sweetness than Pulp Truck already does.

My verdict on Pulp Truck

Pulp Truck earns its 4.02 rating by doing one thing consistently well: juice-forward hop character with a soft, lactose-rounded body that never gets exhausting across a full can. Mosaic and El Dorado were a smart pairing for the pineapple, orange, and grapefruit profile Marsh Island was chasing, and the fact that this beer has stayed a core, year-round release since 2016 tells you it holds up to repeat drinking, not just a first impression.

My main reservations are the same gaps you will find on plenty of small regional breweries: no published IBU, no official calorie count, and no confirmed malt bill. None of that changes how the beer actually drinks, but it matters if you like comparing spec sheets across cans. If you are near Maine or New Hampshire, Pulp Truck is worth seeking out at retail rather than settling for an alternative; if you are further afield, the five picks above get you close.

FAQs

What style of beer is Pulp Truck IPA?

Pulp Truck IPA is a New England-style hazy IPA brewed by Marsh Island Brewing in Orono, Maine, brewed with lactose for a softer, rounder body.

What is the ABV of Pulp Truck IPA?

Pulp Truck IPA is 6.0% ABV.

What is Pulp Truck’s IBU?

Marsh Island Brewing does not publish an IBU figure for Pulp Truck, so a precise number should not be assumed.

What hops are used in Pulp Truck IPA?

Pulp Truck is brewed with Mosaic and El Dorado hops, giving it pineapple, orange, and grapefruit character. A detailed malt bill is not published, though the can confirms the beer is brewed with lactose.

How many calories are in Pulp Truck IPA?

Retailer listings put it at around 220 calories per 16 oz can, but that figure comes from third-party sources rather than an official Marsh Island Brewing spec.

Where can I buy Pulp Truck IPA?

Pulp Truck is a core, year-round beer distributed throughout Maine, including grocery retailers like Hannaford, and into New Hampshire. It is not currently listed on Saucey; the five alternatives above are practical substitutes if you cannot find it locally.

Community rating and hop-bill data for Pulp Truck IPA and Marsh Island Brewing beers referenced above (aggregate score, rating count) is compiled from public beer-tracking community data.