Bia IPA - Birrificio Del Ducato (Italy)

Bia IPA - Birrificio Del Ducato (Italy) 6.5%

Full gold in a glass with a slight haze. The head faded fairly quickly leaving minimal lacing. The aroma is sweet, honey and grain with hops that smell of tropical fruits: papaya, nectarine and maybe some peach.

The taste is quite sweet with touch of candi sugar and caramel while still having a bitter bite and finish. To my taste this beer is heavily loaded with drying hops that you would expect in a pilsner or European lager; there are, no doubt, other hop types used as well since the hops character of this beer features more than dryness and some hops spice but also subtle tropical fruit flavours. However, this heavy use of pilsner hops stands out to me because its use in an IPA in conjunction with other types is interesting and I can't quite think of another beer that does it to this extent. Combined with the sweetness of this IPA, the hops come across as more nectar than resin with faint fruity notes of peach and tangerine that remind me of a zinfandel wine. Bia IPA is an interestingly subtle IPA that still packs in the hops but is different from those North American IPAs that tote loads of cedar and resin flavours.