Toast IPA Beer (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK

I'd rather Toast next year with this beer rather than this year. Someone said on Twitter recently that the main challenge of 2020 is just to survive! Morbid start to a blog I know, but I'm waiting for the attack of the Giant Fire-breathing Hades Ants, just after the mutant zombie plague, and the alien invasion from the planet Gooob! Laugh if you like, but 2020 does seem to be going that way…

Toast is a 4.5% volume Session IPA, which is quite strong for a session beer. I found out some time ago that session beer was drunk during break times in the old days when workers could drink between shifts or at lunchtime. Nowadays a good session beer may be drunk between people rioting and soon avoiding zombies… and then of course it'll be avoiding the Giant Fire-breathing Hades Ants, mark my words! Anyway, this "citrussy hoppy" India Pale Ale is vaunted as "Planet Saving". I'm not sure how, maybe I should drink it to find out…

Oh, on the back of the can it does state that one third of all food produced is wasted. This Toast IPA is made with fresh (thankfully) surplus bread, with all its profits going to charities fixing the food system. So maybe planet saving after all? I've had a beer like that in the past, and as far as I can remember I really liked it. This Toast IPA is made by the World Top Brewery in Yorkshire, using malted barley, and Amarillo, Ahtanum, and Liberty hops, and of course bread.

On opening this deep golden Toast IPA it has a sweet malted barley aroma to start with, which is mixed with citrus and fruitiness from the three hops. On taste the sweet pale malt springs to the fore, which seemed curiously absent on opening. The hops immediately pounced on that sweet malted barley flavour. Those three hops jumbled over and over each other washing around my tastebuds with their fruitiness and citrus undertones. This is a complex brew indeed and not as toasty flavoured as I remember the other beer of its ilk. If pushed there was a flavour of something else in the background, but I'd be more inclined to say that was the mixture of wheat, oats, and soya in the ingredients.

Apparently this Toast IPA is suitable for Vegans. I'd be happy to sit down with one or more Vegans and Toast a few of these beers, whilst discussing the prospect and flavour of honey on toast, and how that could possibly be perceived as a bad idea. I mean, it can't be the end of the world can it? That's for the Giant Fire-breathing Hades Ants!