IPA

For this years 3rd Annual, we decided to head halfway around the world to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina to celebrate IPA Day. We couldn't find any bars which were aware of the big day. In fact, no one we spoke to had even heard of IPA beer. We figured we would head to the nicest building in Sarajevo, home of the Sarajevska Pivara (Sarajevo's Brewery), and see what they had in store for the big international day honoring the India Pale Ale. To our shock and dismay, we learned that hops are largely absent with barley as the primary ingredient in all of the beer brewed there which is also distributed throughout the country in bottles. Our kind and gracious host and bartender Mirsad, who has worked at the brewery for over ten years, had actually not heard of our beloved craft beer style. Nothing even close to a bitter beer is brewed here but we hope one day it will be. After extolling the virtues of hops and explaining the history of the style we suggested a possible 150th Anniversary IPA next year as the brewery was founded in 1864. A large number of foreigners visit each day and we are guessing others would be curious to try a Bosnian-style India Pale Ale.

Our favorite of their current offering was simply called Premium, which takes five days to brew, has one of those nice metal-rubber-resealable opener type things, and features a magical capital M on the label which turns red from white when the bottle reaches proper chilled drinking temperature. Ironically they also offer a 0% alcohol by volume beer, which is about as far away from an IPA ABV as you can get.

All in all we were happy to spread the good word, and luckily we brought a small stash of Indie Pale Ale from Nantucket in case we couldn't find any out here- cheers from Eastern Europe and happy IPA Day to all!