Wednesday 22 December 2010

India Pale Ale (Meantime)


The brewery is very proud of this beer, and understandably so, its won many awards, and even has a page devoted to its heritage.

The cork pops gently, like champagne's less pretentious brother. Pours a beautiful Amber, the smell is outstanding, floral, fresh pine, hints of caramel.

Initially slight bitter on the tongue, developing to a more warming malt, sweetness and equal fruity bitterness dance hand in hand into every corner of the mouth, amplifying the malt again and again.

The finish is a diverse echo of hops reminding you this a IPA of pedigree. A long lingering finishes of reoccurring fruit notes, not overly dry, with final note of raw malt husks.

10/10 Outstanding, without doubt the best English style IPA I've had. A very special beer.

Time for you History lesson : The history of the IPA has more myth than fact, I'm not going to begin to try and cover it here, when so many people have done such amazing work on it. If you are interested i suggest you read the following, as like QI most things you know are probably wrong. Zythophile has an excellent blog, with a well a researched article here
The excellent Shut up about Barclay Perkins blog, also has several great articles here

Failing that, you could just drink it and enjoy it.

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