Stella Artois this is not

A-ha! Thornbridge’s Italia Pilsner appears in the post — for me one of my favourite brewery’s long awaited cracks at the Pilsner style, something I recall asking Kelly Ryan about before he left for NZ, something I was really looking forward to, Thornbridge’s final frontier, to make a beer with time and cold maturation on its hand. And to make things even more exciting, brewed in cahoots with Birrificio Italiano, who make one of my favourite beers in the world — Tipopils. I’m not going to hang around for this fella so here goes — spritzy and cheeky in the mouth, it’s got a delicate lemoniness, almost reminiscent of lemon sherbert, an Epsom salts freshness, a gentle giant of a carbonation that reminds me of Augustiner with a lingering, long loving kiss of firm bitterness that at the end that needs to be fed by another gasp of beer. Is it to style (I say with next week’s Brewing Industry International Awards in mind, from which I shall be blogging) — who knows, who cares. What I do know though is that it’s a mighty brew, a new age Pilsner that shines with the bitter lemony character of Bavaria while mulling with the body and fatness of Bohemia. I must admit that I adore it.