Docteur Gab's Ipanema - This Drinking Life

Dr Gab’s Ipanema

www.docteurgabs.ch/en

Brewed by Brasserie Docteur Gab’s
Style: India Pale Ale
Puidoux, Vaud, Switzerland

Brasserie Docteur Gab‘s is a small regional and local craft brewery, based in the small town of Puidoux, in the Canton of Vaud, South-Western Switzerland.

It all started when a young and very eager Gabriel Hasler, at just 16 years of age was given his first craft beer kit. Excited he enlisted the help of his two good friends Reto Engler and David Paraskevopoulos, and set out on a quest to brew their first beer. After initially producing 20 litres in Gabriel’s parents’ kitchen, and then moving to Reto’s parents’ cellar, the young entrepreneurs soon needed extra space so that they could share their passion and talent with as many people as possible.

In 2004, the trio moved to Epalinges, in the district of Lausanne, and opened their first premises fully dedicated to brewing. Here, several 400-litre tuns allowed production to rise to 6,000 litres a year. They found their first trade customers and production quantities increased exponentially, even though brewing was still something of a side hustle.

In 2010, with a bit of education and degrees now under their belts, David, Reto and Gabriel dedicated themselves to their venture full time and increased output to 80,000 litres a year.

By 2018 they had vastly expanded with more output and fulltime employees so that a move to Puidoux, where they remain today, was on the cards, with more space and a doubling of production capacity, the team were getting bigger and more professional.

Review: 33cl bottle of Dr Gab’s Ipanema 6.0% vol.

Available throughout Switzerland in supermarkets, restaurants and selected bars and pubs. I picked mine up in Coop in an Interesting looking bottle, which doesn’t look very dissimilar to a medicinal bottle! A strange drab looking IPA bottle if I am to be honest -orange and black perhaps not the best colours to mix together!

Least we forget, an Ipanema is a beer that combines typical characteristics of a full-bodied and fruity IPA beer, with a light and pleasant taste.

Looks very nice on pour, we get a lovely golden orange hazy colour, with a decent sized white head, frothy and creamy. Not getting a whole lot from the bottle, it doesn’t fill my small glass, which is always a little sad! But overall, it is a very good looking beer, nice on the eye.

As for the aroma, it is soft on the nose, not so stark, a faint whiff of a typical IPA, getting the pine, the tropical fruits and the grassy hops but not much, very light.

Getting a very, very bitter earthy aftertaste in the mouth, even though the initial taste on the tongue is quite soft and bubbly.

Its overall quite tough to drink at the start, but once it settles down it is very manageable and drinkable, definitely a slow burner as I started to enjoy it the more I drank of it. In fact by the second glass, I found it not bad at all, and it went down much smoother over time, balancing out, and with me getting much more used to the bitterness. Experiencing malts, citrus, herbal hops and an orange zest.

The initial kick from the first few slugs does not last and goes missing afterwards to make this drink a smooth experience….. but I think it could have down with keeping that kick throughout, as it doesn’t linger at all.

A bit of an up and a down, I think I’d like to return to get a better feel for the beer and its certainly an interesting beer to drink.