Passionfruit Pale Ale (Co-op @innisandgunn) By @SpectreUK

Pretty much the worst beer I've ever tasted was a passionfruit flavoured ale. The worst beer I actually ever tasted was brewed with bananas. Yes, that is not a typo, it really was made with bananas. I wasn't excited about the banana beer. I don't particularly like bananas, so I figured it was just a joke by Cinabar to buy it me in the first place…

I do like passionfruit though, especially when it's mixed with something else, such as orange juice. I remember at the time just before I opened the passionfruit beer how optimistic I was. How much I was looking forward to trying something new and how innovative it sounded. Besides, how could I not like it? And then I tasted it and it was one of the sourest beers I reckon I've ever tried.

So, we're still in some form of lockdown. I'm not sure if anybody really knows what we're supposed to be doing anymore and to what scale of lockdown, but let's just say that if we did have some form of leadership in the UK from at the most a hundredth of what a fairly averagely well led country requires to function, we probably would know what form of lockdown or non-lockdown we'd be attempting to adhere to. Okay, so that's a bit bitchy, but seriously if you can stomach it for more than thirty seconds; watch our news. Anyway, there are still problems getting certain items from the shops, so what does Cinabar find on one of those possibly life threatening journeys outside of the house? Yes, it's another Passionfruit ale!

Okay, so this passionfruit pale ale is produced by a favourite brewery of mine called Innis & Gunn. I don't know what they were thinking at the time or what they suddenly have against me, but now I'm supposed to open the can. At 4.4% volume I can't imagine by any stretch that this beer is going to be strong enough to dull my tastebuds enough to not be able to taste it. Indeed on opening the beer there was a strong fruity smell of passionfruit amongst the mosaic and citra hops, just before the sweet pale malted barley. This 'Tropic Like It's Hop' certainly lives up to its name in its aroma.

In the taste the passionfruit is there right from the get-go, and yet it's not the sour passionfruit that I was expecting that the first passionfruit beer I tried, it was in fact a sweet fruity passionfruit mixed amongst some well thought out hops. This is the flavour that I was hoping from the first passionfruit beer I tried. It's that fruity sweetness of passionfruit that goes so well with just about anything it's mixed with. That refreshing tropical fruitiness that revitalises you on a baking hot day such as today. The initial fruity passionfruit flavour almost dances around the biting and zingy hops, and then skips around the sweet pale malted barley into the aftertaste and off into the distance. Mmm… I'm so glad Innis & Gunn didn't let me down!