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| IBAV Tasters Manny and Bat Sheva join the old blogger for their first taste of Shapiro's Session IPA for 2023. |
Last week, the Shapiro Brewery in Beit Shemesh launched its 2023 version of Session IPA at the child- and pet-friendly Silo Café, right here in Jerusalem. Your old blogger was there, joined by IBAV Tasting Team members Bat Sheva and Manny, to give you our first-hand report.
Amid the sprinklers and the wading pools which were there to refresh the guests on this steamy day, we quaffed down our draft Session IPA with complimentary bread and watermelon.
This is the second summer in a row that Shapiro has brewed and marketed its Session IPA, whose low alcohol volume (4.3%) and light, refreshing taste make it a wonderful beer for the season.
Tamar Shapiro, one of the partner/siblings who was at the launch, told me that this year's version is brewed with four(!) hop varieties: Idaho 7, Azacca, Simcoe and HBC 586. (That last one is an experimental hop variety that hasn't even been named yet.)
The 2022 edition had Mosaic, Amarillo and Citra -- and you can read about that one here.
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| The 2023 version of Session IPA from the Shapiro Brewery in Beit Shemesh: Refreshingly bitter with aromas and flavors of grapefruit, lemon and pine. |
The yellow-colored beer has only a hint of haze. Our beer from the tap had almost no head and was very mildly carbonated. (When I drank a bottle of the beer later on, it was much more carbonated and had a large foamy head.) The aroma was citrus hops, predominantly grapefruit, and pine. The taste had a bite of refreshing bitterness, grapefruit rind and lemon zest. The finish was bitter, dry and refreshing.
The Tasters did not think the Session IPA was a "wow" factor beer, but we had no difficulty enjoying every drop on this scorcher of a Jerusalem summer day.