Bottled. Hazy amber colour with a mediumsized off-white head. Aroma is sweet caramel, toffee, some mild citrus and toasted tones. Flavour is toffee, some toasted tones with mild earth and some slight wooden tones.

Bottle at Restaurang AG. Smell of hops, malt. Some caramel malt. Dark amber colour, beige head. Mild aroma of malt, hops, grass. Mildly bitter. Very light body.

How: Bottle.
Where: Systembolaget.
Appearance: Hazy golden colour with a white head.
Aroma: Passion fruit, malt, tropical fruit.
Body: Medium body and carbonation.
Flavour: Passion fruit, tropical fruit, malt, mango.

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Italian black IPA, the first tick of my trip to Sweden this week, at an Italian restaurant in Södermalm, Stockholm. Very thick and foamy, pale yellowish beige, cobweb-lacing, extremely stable head on a black beer with hazy dark purplish-brown edges. Aroma of toasted walnuts, dried wormwood leaves, bitterroot, coffee grounds, black peppercorns, unsugared black chocolate, chicory, dried thyme, black olives, pine resin, cigar tobacco. Clean onset, refraining from explicit sweetness as is to be expected from a good Cascadian dark ale, sourish and very spritzy in its carbonation, rather stinging; some dried fruit notes hovering over early signs of firm hop bitterness. Smooth, very toasted nut-like malt core, black toasted (burnt) bread, chicory-like roastedness in the end with its bitterness amplified - rather than taken over - by a very firm, very rooty and quinine-like, everlasting, tonic water hop bitterness, very piney and resiny, blocking nearly all malt slickness. Very bitter, a bit overcarbonated perhaps, but in all respects a more than exemplary black IPA, that can easily work as a model for the style in general. Another testimony of the Italians' determination to master every single craft beer style, this was a very pleasant surprise to a BIPA lover like myself.

Draft @ BrewDog, Malmö. Pours a hazy golden orange color with a small white head. Has a fruity rhubarb raspberry aroma. Fruity malty spicy rhubarb raspberry flavor. Has a fruity malty spicy rhubarb raspberry finish.