Tasting Notes: Thornbridge: DDH Jaipur

Thornbridge: DDH Jaipur (England: IPA: 5.9% ABV)

Visual: A lightly hazy lemon juice coloured body, with some carbonation and a medium sized white head.

Nose: Pineapple. Crushed custard cream biscuits. Grapes. No evident bitterness. Smooth. Grapefruit.

Body: Lychee. Smooth front then rapidly growing bitterness. Pineapple. Cake sponge. Tart green grapes. Light flour dust. Orange zest.

Finish: Pineapple. Dried banana. Tart grapefruit and pink grapefruit. Dry passion-fruit. Gritty assaulting bitterness and gritty hop character. Lychee. Tiny choc limes.

Conclusion: I was nervous on the pour of this, as, like the can said on the side, it is lightly hazy, and on top of that the aroma was very smooth and totally lacking in the bitterness and hop I was hoping for from a Jaipur variant.

It’s not that the aroma was actively bad, it has lovely set of tart fresh notes, and quite sweet overall, but it lacked the bitter punch I look for in an IPA. This was especially worrying as the standard Jaipur was a delicious assault of hops flavour wise.

The body similarly seemed smooth for a few seconds on sipping, further worrying me … and then the bitter assault hit. Still heavy, with still that slight grittiness to the bitterness in the finish. The grittiness isn’t my favourite thing in general, but here it was not too heavy and was a welcome relief that this still was going to give me the old bitter friend I wanted, just juiced up.

So, yeah there is the added fruitiness, waaay fruitier, lots of pineapple and grapefruit notes, even expanding into unexpected lychee at some points, and then with drier passion-fruit in the finish.

Far more complex fruit than the standard Jaipur and far tarter, making it seem kind of NZ styled IPA at points.

I don’t know if Jaipur has changed recently, very recently it seems to have got harder to get in supermarkets for some reason, but based on my memory I slightly prefer the more straightforward style of standard Jaipur for general drinking. However as an occasional fresher version and more complex one to drop in occasionally this is lush.

Background: Ok, I’m going to admit I am a tad confused by this one. The can describes it as “The same recipe as Jaipur but is double dry hopped. Yet it is made with wheat and is slightly hazy. Now I googled and modern Jaipur it turns out is made with wheat … was it always so? I could have sworn it was not back in the day. It definitely looked clear on the eye and seemed a darker colour than this one was. I dunno, so I’m wondering if Jaipur had its recipe changed some time along the line or if double dry hopping can make something look this different.

Any which way, the can says this was launched “As part of the 15^th anniversary of Jaipur in 2020” and is now part of the core range – which is probably how I found it in Waitrose, and as a big fan of Jaipur as a nice solid bitter IPA drop I decided to grab a can and give it a go.

Music wise I decided to go with Bad Religion: Recipe for Hate as backing music. Oddly that was not a deliberate choice due to musing on the recipe, that part was a coincidence, just needed some good punk with all the shit going on in the world, and both the title track and “American Jesus” seem very relevant right about now.

Update: This has now been renamed to “Jaipur Hazy”, which explains the hazy look and the different style to standard Jaipur. I knew something weird was up. It is a beer I enjoyed, as the notes show, but I am glad they renamed it as, while enjoyable, the hazy nature definitely made this different from the beer I expected from a double dry hopped Jaipur.