AKA – IPA of the year?

Every so often, a beer comes along that makes your eyes light up – instantly, on the first taste. Everything comes together. AKA IPA from Cromarty Brewing is absolutely just such a beer. Released a couple of weeks ago, it’s only the sixth beer produced by Craig Middleton on his Black Isle-based kit. That’s something frequently overlooked – the new brewers in the market today really hit the ground running.

We’ve followed Craig’s brewing career since the beginning, so I feel almost duty-bound to pick up each of his new bottles when they appear. AKA fair knocked my socks off. At first, the aroma is all piney and resinous, but some grapefruit and lemon are in evidence as well. It smells fantastic. The flavour is grapefruit, lemon and lime, balanced really well with resinous pine – which, as you go, becomes sweet and sticky on the finish. It’s fabulous.

Every December we publish our six best new British beers of the year (and no, I don’t really know why we do six). AKA is a shoe-in, as we stand – even in the midst of all this stunning beer, and all these new producers. Beers like this demonstrate how far we have come – alongside all the superbly-made traditional beers, our brewers now make things like this – as good as anything that swans it’s way over the Atlantic. Drink this instead.

Edit – For another review of AKA IPA, head to Magnus’s thisbeerblog. Also, in far better words than mine, McNeillR sums up how this beer could do against some of the other hop-forward IPA’s available – “A real sit down and take notice beer here. Would easily stand up against the palate impaling hop quality of a Kernel or ping of a Magic Rock as well as the bold malt refreshment of a Flying Dog or Odell.”