Coconut is not a note most drinkers go looking for in an IPA. It shows up in Bank Hotel anyway, and the reason is a hop. Brasserie du Bas-Canada put the beer back in its online shop today, with a light touch of coconut sitting in the brewery's own tasting notes alongside intense tropical fruit.

Bas-Canada calls Bank Hotel a true classic and describes it as consistently one of its most popular beers. The brewery's site shows it among the regular lineup rather than as an occasional return. It is heavily hopped, 7.1 percent ABV, and packaged in 473 ml cans with a limit of 24 per person. The brewery says the tropical fruit and coconut blend into a rich, creamy texture.

Sabro is where the unusual part comes from. The variety was released in 2018 by the Hop Breeding Company, and it traces back to a wild hop found growing in New Mexico rather than to the European and American stock behind most cultivars. Coconut is its signature descriptor, usually named alongside tangerine and stone fruit. Brewers also tend to associate it with a soft, creamy mouthfeel, which lines up with the texture Bas-Canada describes. Citra beside it covers the more familiar grapefruit and tropical lift, which keeps the coconut in the position of an accent rather than the whole point.

The label takes the name literally. A dark purple building front stands behind a wash of pale green mist, windows lit and a pediment over the door, with BANK HOTEL set across it in tall pale lettering.

Bank Hotel goes on sale online at 11 a.m. today at bascanada.beer, packed at the Gatineau brewery rather than the Hautes-Plaines site. Orders can be picked up within the week, and the Gatineau tasting room is open today. It is released alongside the returning Passager.

Editor’s Take

Somewhere in New Mexico a hop was growing wild, minding its own business, and it tasted of coconut. That is the short version of Sabro, and it is still one of the more improbable things to have happened to brewing this century. The industry spent decades crossbreeding toward citrus and pine. Then somebody found a plant out in New Mexico that had quietly gone tropical without any help at all.

What Bas-Canada does with it here is the sensible thing, which is not very much. Citra handles the grapefruit and the tropical fruit. Sabro adds a light coconut edge and some of the creaminess. Then the beer is left alone to be a beer. There is a version of this recipe that leans all the way into the coconut and comes out tasting like a bottle of sunscreen, and this is plainly not that one. A beer people keep coming back to is usually a beer somebody knew when to stop building.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

The Coconut in Bank Hotel Comes From a Wild New Mexico Hop

A standing favorite at the Gatineau brewery, Bank Hotel pairs Citra with Sabro. That second hop is where the light coconut in its tasting notes comes from, folded into what the brewery calls a rich, creamy texture.

Source & Editorial