The Wild Beer Co. 'Madness' IPA

Twitter drove me to drink! Well, this one in particular. With the huge number of new breweries that are springing up in the UK at the moment many must get lost in the white noise of the internet. The Wild Beer Co. seemed to have no such problem, I had heard about these guys on Twitter and various blogs a long time before I had a chance to try the beer... and I really wanted to try the beer. There's always the danger that breweries can't live up to the expectations that you might have of them, and of course the greater the expectation, the greater the chances. Wild Beer Co's beers certainly look the business; simple, powerfully eye-catching design urging you to get drinking, but what about the beer?

On popping open the bottle you're assailed by mouth (and almost eye) watering pine and pith hop aroma, which is I'm sure what gave that deer that expression on the bottle. It's just what you want from a summery American style IPA. It runs the full gambit of citrus fruit, they're all in there; lime, clementine, grapefruit. The finish is superbly clean, the dry bitterness cleansing the palate of all that citrus-sherbert goodness and throwing you into the next mouthful.

I could probably go on... Did I enjoy it? Well, I put in a well-overdue beer order this morning and I ordered pretty much everything else Ales by Mail had from Wild Beer. I suppose they lived up to the expectation.

6.8% abv. £2.88 (33cl) from Beer Ritz.