By It’s funny how some major cities are identified by their adopted beer.
Baltimore has Natty Boh. St. Louis has Budweiser. Milwaukee has Pabst or Schlitz, depending on who you ask.
For Pittsburgh, though, it’s Iron City, or “IC” for short. It’s not a great beer, and I take a lot of joy in threatening my Pittsburgh-dwelling friends with proclamations that we should spend an evening eating Primanti’s sandwiches and downing a case of IC Light.
So when I visited the Steel City recently, I stopped into a local pub called Ten Penny for lunch and a beer. Fortunately, there wasn’t any Iron City on the menu, so the server steered me to Killer Diller IPA from Spoonwood Brewing Co.
This IPA arrived in a tall glass which showed off its dark gold color and good carbonation. And at 6.7% ABV, the alcohol content isn’t too high.
There’s a ton of citrusy aroma which, given that it’s brewed with Bravo, Columbus, Chinook, Meridian & Equinox hops (which all skew toward citrus/tropical fruit flavors) isn’t too surprising.
It smells delicious, and it continues to the flavor, which has lots of grapefruit and orange, with a little lemon and a bit of pine. Combined with the slightly dry finish, it makes for what I’d consider to be a great west coast IPA.
If there’s anything that disappoints me, it’s that I can’t get it here in Maryland. If I was local to Pittsburgh, I could totally see this becoming my go-to beer.
After all, it kicks the crap out of IC Light.
Cheers!
