Craft Beer Spotlight: Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA

Craft Beer Joe

6 years ago

Passion Fruit IPA By Deschutes Brewery

The IPA is the most popular style of craft beer because it is so versatile. Brewers and drinkers both love seeing this style pushed into new flavors. One of the most popular ways to change an IPA is to add fruit to it. I’m a big fan of fruit flavored IPAs so picking up the Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA was an easy decision.

I’ve had lots of passion fruit beers and I’m rarely disappointed. In addition, I trust Deschutes to deliver a solid, high quality beer.

Let’s see if this IPA stood up to my expectations.

Review Of Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA

I enjoy a lot of IPAs. The style is so broad that I can almost always find one that fits my current mood.

If I want big and boozy, I can pick up a DIPA. If I want low ABV and approachable, a Session IPA is a good fit.

While there are so many to choose from, I have gotten into the habit of selecting New England IPAs over any other variation. There’s nothing wrong with that as it is one of my favorite styles. However, that does mean that I am overlooking many other great beers.

That’s why I decided to pick up the Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA.

This IPA is part of Deschutes Brewery’s “Just Tapped” Series. This includes beers that started in their brew pub and were popular enough to scale and bottle.

Deschutes Brewery Passion Fruit IPA has an ABV of 6.8% and IBUs of 65.

Here is how Deschutes Brewery describes their Passion Fruit IPA:

Passion fruit is in the Passiflora family. And Passion Fruit IPA is now in our Deschutes family. This IPA delivers a juicy, tropical hop character with a tart finish. Your mouth will have passion for this tasty brew.

Initial Thoughts

I’ve never tried a passion fruit outside of it being used in beer. So I really am not sure exactly what it tastes like.

From my experience with passion fruit beers, this fruit adds both tart and sweetness. It has a general “tropical fruit” kind of flavor to it. But it isn’t as acidic as pineapple.

So as I opened this beer, I had expectations of a slightly tropical, fruity IPA.

As I poured the beer, the aroma had a slight sweetness to it along with a nondescript hoppiness.

The color was a darker color than I anticipated. It is dark orange / reddish. It produced a thin bright white head.

Tasting Notes

What I like about fruited IPAs is their ability to take a fruit flavor and have it bring out more flavors from the hops. This is seen quite often in the New England IPAs that add fruit to the recipe.

This is not the case with Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA.

Instead, there are specific flavors that stood out to me as individual flavors. It has a noticeable earthy, floral hop flavor from the base IPA. This is one of the first flavors that you taste.

From there, you notice a fruity sweetness then it ends with a high level of tartness.

While I know that passion fruit can be tart, it was much stronger than I expected.

The bitter, sweet and tart flavors all stand on their own and do not merge with the other flavors. The best part about this is it allows the drinker to experience multiple flavors in one beer.

The downside is the beer doesn’t feel as put together as you may expect.

Final Thoughts

After enjoying this beer and writing this article about it, I realized something. My tastes in beer have dramatically changed over the past year or so.

There was a time when I think that this beer would have been exactly what I wanted from an IPA with fruit flavors.

But today, I want the fruit flavors to dominate the beer. My preferences in beer have definitely changed.

And this isn’t necessarily a good thing. While the fruited sour beer and New England IPA trends have been lots of fun; I wonder if they are ruining other fruited beers for us.

The Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA is a solid beer but I was left wanting more. Shouldn’t I be pleased when a beer delivers exactly what it says it will?

For me, this is a reminder that I can’t let beer trends skew my thoughts on what beer has always been. Yes, let’s embrace where we are going but don’t let that diminish what craft beer has always been.

Learn More About Craft Beer: What Is A Fruit Beer?

Conculsion

Enjoying a wide range of craft beers is something I make an effort to do. But as trends come and go, it is easy to get caught up in the new and flashy.

So we can’t forget about styles that we used to enjoy.

And the reality is fruited IPAs were one of the most popular trends just a few short years ago. Which makes re-visiting them really enjoyable.

If you are on the hunt for a solid IPA with some added sweetness and tartness from fruit, then Deschutes Passion Fruit IPA is a solid option.