Stone IPA

While I haven't had time to search out a beer-snob store here in town, I'm constantly surprised by the great beer lists that I find in bars and restaurants when I go out. Most places typically carry brews from one or the other of the two local brew-pubs, but in addition there are many with great bottle selections of Belgians and some Germans. And last night I found a place with draft Stone IPA, one of my absolute favorites from a great brewery.

Their IPA is dark gold with a malt richness that really gives it plenty of weight to balance the generous hopping. It gets surprisingly high drinkability marks in my opinion for being such an aggressive beer, probably due to the superb balance of flavors. Both the hop and malt flavors are complex and complement one another well. A friend compared it to the Harpoon IPA, which is lighter and has a floral nose with some dry bitterness in the finish, but the Stone is just a larger, more complex beer.

Also, to clear up some terminology, what does "bite" mean, FretlessC? I interpret is as some sort of harshness or perhaps an aggressive bitterness either in the roasted flavors of the malt or the hops, but I think a description would be helpful.