Jupiter
American IPA · 33 cl bottle
Seven degrees under a color that doesn't declare it
€5,50
What it is, and what is in it
The color is pale yellow and the alcohol content is seven percent: these two things almost never go together, and that's the first thing to know about this beer. It looks light, but it isn't.
The style is American: intense hopping, intense aroma and flavor, and a sharp bitterness on the palate – forty IBU – that isn't softened by the malt but stands on its own. There's no caramel sweetness found in amber IPAs; here, the malt acts as a base and nothing more.
Top-fermented, unfiltered, unpasteurized, re-fermented in the bottle.
- Fermentation
- Top fermentation, natural bottle conditioning
- Filtration
- Unfiltered, unpasteurized
- Ingredients
- Water, barley malt, wheat, sugar, hops, yeast.
- Allergens
- Gluten (barley malt, wheat).
What it is like
Color
Pale yellow
What the brewery drinks it with
The pairings declared for this beer.
- Roasted meats and cold cuts of all kinds
The label’s terms, explained
What an IPA is
India Pale Ale. The name comes from the pale ales the English shipped to India in the nineteenth century: more hopped and stronger than the others, because hops and alcohol preserve. Today it no longer preserves anything, and IPA has become the name of a family of beers in which the hop — in bitterness and in aroma — comes before everything else.
What «American» means
It indicates the school, not where the beer comes from. American IPAs were born in California in the nineteen-eighties and differ from the English ones in their hops: the varieties from the north-west of the United States give citrus, resin and tropical fruit instead of the grassy, earthy notes of the European ones. That is where the intense aroma and the sharp bitterness this family carries with it come from.
Color does not tell you the strength
The color of a beer is decided by the malts — how much they have been roasted — while the alcohol is decided by how much sugar was in the wort and how much of it the yeast converted. They are two independent levers: you can have a jet-black beer at four per cent and a yellow one at seven. Looking at the glass to guess the strength does not work; it is written on the label, and that is the only place to read it.
Wheat in a barley beer
Alongside the barley malt, the brewery declares wheat. Wheat carries more protein than barley, and the proteins hold the head up: a beer with wheat makes a denser, longer-lasting head, and gives a fuller feel in the mouth. It is a cereal containing gluten, and that is why it appears among the allergens together with barley.
What IBUs are
International Bitterness Units: the laboratory measurement of the bittering compounds the hops have given up to the beer. An industrial pale lager sits at around 10-20, a pale ale between 30 and 45, a modern IPA often goes above 60. It is not a scale of taste: it measures what is in the liquid, not what is perceived, and a malt with little sweetness leaves the bitterness more exposed.
What it says on the bottle
The mandatory label information, transcribed from the label of the size on sale.
- Ingredients
- Water, barley malt, wheat, sugar, hops, yeast.
- Allergens
- Gluten (barley malt, wheat).
- Alcoholic strength
- 7% vol.
- Contents
- 33 cl bottle
- Place of production
- Produced in San Pierino, Fucecchio (FI)
Where and how it is made
Daniele Nespeca, per Birrificio Aries, in Fucecchio.
A two-hectoliter brew · from barley to bottle, all in house
All 76 products by Birrificio Aries- How it is made
- Selection of raw materials, barley milling, mashing, filtration, whirlpool, yeast pitching, primary fermentation in fermenter, secondary fermentation in bottle or keg. All stages on-site: 2 hl brew kettle and two 600 l temperature-controlled stainless steel conical fermenters.
- Other sizes
- 33 cl bottle; 24 l keg.
The brewery’s other beers
Gli elementi
Il cielo
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