Magic Rock Brewing 
Grapefruit Pale Ale
5.5%
Huddersfield, UK

Magic Rock are one of the best breweries in the UK. Fact. Their Cannonball, an IPA is a special beer that some might say is the best readily available IPA produced on these shores. I waxed lyrically about the beer very recently. High Wire, their pale ale is also, you guessed it, one of the best in the UK. How would a grapefruit inspired pale fare?

There was loads of chat on Twitter recently about how fruit inspired IPAs and Pale Ales will be the big thing of 2016. One of my favourite beers of 2015 was Beavertown’s Bloody ‘Ell, an orange inspired IPA. So I’d love to see breweries using more fruits in beers in 2016, plus it also means I can claim them as one of my five a day, perhaps. I have to be honest, Grapefruit is my least favourite of all the fruits. It’s bottom of the league, Aston Villa of the fruits. There’s nothing good about it. But you mix grapefruit with hops and it’s a different story.

It literally smells of grapefruit. I know people reel off fruits from smelling beers all of the time, sometimes I can’t get those aromas at all, but this smells as if tonnes of grapefruit has been poured into the beer. Which knowing Magic Rock, it probably has. It is a refreshing, crisp, smooth and incredibly easy to drink beer. Does it taste like a pale ale? Barely. Does that matter? Not for me. As I began saying originally, this is a beer type people talked about as a big one for 2016 and I can see why!

OVERALL: 4/5