Hoptical Illusion (Brass Castle Brewery @BrassCastleBeer) By @SpectreUK

Some months back a big box full of beers turned up on the doorstep after Cinabar had been shopping online. This Hoptical Illusion pale ale is the second beer I'll be blogging about from the Brass Castle Brewery. There isn't much information on the can as to why it's called what it is, and there isn't an optical illusion on the can itself. So I reckon I'll just pop open the can of this 4.3% volume pale ale and see what happens...

On opening the can there was an immediate excitable explosion of beer froth and bubbles. After years of preconditioning I can catch a frothing can opening in milliseconds. As soon as I heard the dangerous sounding fizz and saw the froth bubbling out my mouth was on the can. I'm proud of myself to say that not a drop of this Hoptical Illusion pale ale was wasted whilst writing this blog.

On pouring the beer the froth took a bit of time to calm down, and I'm an ex-barman too! This pale misty golden pale ale smelt of crisp citrus hops with a touch of herbal hops in the background. Quite the combination of hops to try. There was a sweetness from the pale malts to begin with that just about sneaked through the bitter struggle of hops that were so busy trying to out flavour each other they hadn't noticed. The crisp mixture of hops comes into its own after the sweet malts, giving way to a more polite "after you, sir," kind of motion into the aftertaste.

This Hoptical Illusion pale ale is a very flavoursome beer indeed. It has a confusing mass of flavours to begin with not knowing whether to be bitter or sweet, but quickly sorts itself out into a pleasing order of pale malts and then bitter crisp hops. Delightful. Cheers!