This beer from Insel Brauerie, on the island of Rügen in the German Baltic coast is an IPA with a difference. To borrow words from the brewery’s own site, they describe the beer as being “strong, full of character, Nordically rough-edged…the roar of the Baltic Sea captured in the glass.”
Simply calling this beer a Double IPA would really do it an injustice, and have the drinker expecting this beer to be something that it doesn’t ever want to be.
We have a rich malty backbone supporting a beer with lots of hop character for a single hop beer. Only 100% German Magnum hops are used here, but the beer is fermented over a bed of pinecones and pine branches. And as is common for the Inselbrau beers, the beers are open fermented.
It definitely adds a resinous piney character, without it being sweet in nature. Quite the opposite in fact, with the beer having a dryness that makes it a very refreshing beer that finishes dry and slightly bitter with a pleasant earthy, piney aftertaste that lingers.
The label declares this as ‘seltenes bier’ which means ‘rare beer’. You probably won’t have a more interesting DIPA in a while.