Ever since one of Italy's very first craft breweries (simply called Birrificio Italiano to this day) launched the now famed Tipo Pils thirty years ago, combining German style Lager brewing with English style dry-hopping in days not yet influenced by U.S. microbrewing, beer lovers have made a case of recognising the resulting "Italian Pilsener" as a new substyle - the jury is still out on that today as there is no general consensus and the difference with IPL, originating in America a few years later, is a difficult one to maintain, unless of course one considers only European noble hops suitable for dry-hopping an Italian Pilsener. If so, then this Dok collab with one of Liège's leading craft brewers does not even qualify, as it contains New World hops... Anyway: can from the Delhaize supermarket at the Sterre in Ghent. Medium thick, snow white, elegantly 'Brugse kant'-like lacing, slowly breaking but generally well-retaining head on a clear, pale yellow blonde robe with greenish tinge and some large visible bubbles. Aroma of initially sourish sweaty grains like in some tropical macro lager brewed with rice, blossoming clover or chamomile, old dried lime zest, unripe green pear, sheep's sorrel, sweat returning, freshly cut giant hogweed, pond water, wet pebble stones, papier maché. Slightly sourish onset, hint of green sorrel leaf, perhaps even something very thinly green apple-ish, agreeable minerality underneath, slender sweetish and sourish 'pale' graininess, increasingly bittered by the hops, in a very floral way (chamomile straight from the fields) with grassy and slightly peppery side notes. Something vaguely citrusy does pop up - like dried lime peel, but not all pomelo- or tangerine-like, so that the net effect remains one of refinedly floral, green-fruity, grassy hops; their bitterness is quite pronounced, and lasts for a long time after swallowing, adequately quenching the thirst. I love it when Dok takes on a classic Lager style - even if Italian Pilsener is perhaps the last classic added to that family before the craft beer movement really hit Europe - because I recall vividly from earlier experience that they are really good at it, and this one, though perhaps not entirely true to the Tipo Pils archetype, does deliver. I could drink this for hours on a hot summer day (of which we still keep getting plenty this season). Not sure how long this was actually lagered, though: I cannot get rid of the impression that a more prolonged cold lagering could, perhaps, have made this Pilsener even better...