Citrus IPA Greene King (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK

I've gone for blogging about a bizarrely summer ale this week. It's been pretty grey outside and ducking between short bursts of a little sun and mainly long showers isn't much fun for anyone. We're into the grim stormy season now with cold dank days ahead until Christmas. I'm even planning to have a glass of spiced meed wine that I've been saving for autumn and the winter months with my mince pies later. So I thought I'd dust off the last of my summer ales to cheer everyone up a bit.

The label of this Citrus IPA explodes with colour. Described as 'easy drinking', the ingredients state anything but. This Citrus IPA is flavoured with grapefruit and mandarin. I do love grapefruit, especially grapefruit juice for washing down my Full English Breakfast as a waker-upper whilst on holiday. I also do love mandarin, mainly as the flavouring for jelly! I'm not sure how mandarin will taste with beer, but a decent punch of citrus is promised from the flavourings and the Chinook hops and Mandarina Bavaria hops that this beer from Greene King, in Bury St. Edmonds, was brewed with.

On opening the bottle there was a heavy citrus blast from the hops and also the fruit, which mixed well with the pale malt aroma. It was a delicious smell. It made me want to taste it. Impatiently I waited for the over fluffy head to go down a little and the ale to settle. It's been a long time since I've been a barman, so my pouring skills are sometimes a tad rusty. On taste this 4.6% volume deep golden India Pale Ale is quite strong on the fruity mandarin to start with. This fruitiness combines with the citrus bitterness from the grapefruit and also the two varieties of hops, before the sweetness from the pale malt and crystal malt shines through towards the aftertaste. This is a beer that I'm sure would go well with a spicy fishy dish. Not really for a dark stormy night, but it did cheer me up rather than warm me up. The spicy meed wine is for that later!