This week we're taking a look at one of Duration's core beers, their answer to a West Coast IPA.
For those of you that don't know, Duration is a Norfolk farmhouse brewery founded by the mononymous Bates, formerly of London's Brew By Numbers, and his wife Miranda Hudson. Bates and Miranda first found the site for the brewery in 2017, but building work meant they didn't start brewing there until October 2019. They used the years in between though to do a ton of collaborations and cuckoo brewing in order to start building their reputation and get their core beers, like Dripping Pitch, out into the world.
Dripping Pitch is described as a West Coast IPA, and it definitely has the bitterness to back that up, but it's also got a lot more than that, in a way I feel many others don't nowadays. It's super fruity, not only with fragrant sweet orange but also with huge flavours of mango and stone fruit, making it a little softer and richer than maybe a typical all-citrus/pine West Coast IPA. Resinous and pithy too, its bitterness runs all the way through as a support, rather than as an assault on your palate at the end. It's so incredibly well-balanced, rich and fruity but with the kind of bitterness that makes you take another sip just as you were going to put it down. It's clean but not astringent, with a lovely mouthfeel, as though it might be a bit hazy, even though it's not.
At the risk of alienating West Coast IPA-lovers, who definitely also enjoy this, I think this is the perfect West Coast-er for a New England fan keen to try something new. It's got all the fruitiness you would be familiar with but in a different setting, as it were, and I think is the perfect first step if you're thinking about switching sides. (Don't tell Beer Twitter that you're allowed to like both.)
*I forgot to mention the alcohol level, perhaps because I had absolutely no idea when I was drinking it that it was 6.7%–it certainly doesn't feel like it.
Poppy Simon