Coast Beer Co DDH IPA

Coast Beer’s IPA was a surprise to me when I reviewed it not long ago. It looked the business on pouring, had a cracking head and aroma, packed in so much flavour and had a great mouthfeel. Coast Beer’s offerings are brewed at the De Proefbrouwerij brewery in Lochristi, Belgium, and it seems they certainly know a thing or two about non-alcoholic beers, being the chosen brewing location for several other alcohol-free beer companies. So I was highly anticipating my next Coast Beer tipple, which shares the same name as the one previously mentioned, but with the addition of 3 important letters – DDH. But what do these letters stand for?

DDH stands for ‘double dry hopped’. We’ve talked about dry hopping before – it’s the practice of adding hops to a beer during or near the end of the fermentation process, in an attempt to retain the tastes from their essential oils, and lessen the bitterness you get when you boil them. So a double dry hopped beer means they just add twice the amount of hops right? Not necessarily, it can also mean that the hops are added at two different times during the brewing process. Whatever interpretation of DDH is used, the sheer volume of hops used in the brew must mean the result is an aromatic hop explosion. I was very impressed with Coast’s IPA, does this mean I’ll be double impressed with their DDH IPA?

Pouring out from the can we get a pale straw coloured liquid, which is much hazier than the previous IPA. The head is still a decent size, similar to it’s little brother. On the nose the dominant aroma is of tropical fruit, with citrus being relegated to more of a background presence, along with a whiff of peach and apricot. The sweetness is certainly less pronounced too.

Fruits of all kinds are again with us as we taste, with tropical passionfruit, grapefruit citrus and peach being dominant. However this time there is less of a fruity sweetness and more of a bitterness to the taste, though it’s still nowhere near a bitter as a standard IPA. The mouthfeel is good and thick and the creaminess of the IPA is still there. The carbonation is slightly muted, and we get a bitter fruity finish.

Whilst there are differences between this DDH IPA and Coast’s standard IPA, I’m struggling to pick a winner between the two. This DDH is less sweet, but the juicy fruit flavours are covered up by more of a subtle bitterness, and the body of the standard IPA remains king. They’re both wonderful non-alcoholic beers, my advice is to give them both a try!

Nutritional Information (per 100ml)

0.0% alcohol by volume
33 calories energy
0g fat
7.9g carbohydrates
3.8g sugar
<1g protein

(taken from the side of the can)

Ingredients

Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast