Beers Of London Series: 50. Weird Beard Brew Co. - Amarillo Belgian IPA 7.5%

Beers Of London Series
50. Weird Beard Brew Co. - Amarillo Belgian IPA 7.5%

So it looks like I've reached number fifty in this series.
When I started it off a few months ago I really had no idea that I would go on for this long, but with the feedback I've had from people I respect I think it will be going for quite some time yet. The beer coming from our nation's capital currently is of the highest order, I have quite a lot of bottles in stock the new stuff, and the new breweries just keep coming and coming.
However for this half-century of reviews I've decided to go with this, the latest offering from Weird Beard Brew Co. Single Hop Series (number three if you're counting - the Nelson Saison was number two) for two reasons.
The first is that the Weird Beard beers are a bit of a crowd pleaser so I suppose that you could say that I'm pandering to that a little, however they are producing some of my favourite beers right now so perhaps you can forgive me on that score.
The second, which I'm sure your also aware is that today, August 1st 2013, is #IPADay, so it's a beer that fits that criteria rather nicely too.
The Amarillo Belgian IPA is based on an award winning homebrew called Roaring Queen (I'm quoting and elaborating from the bottle here as there's currently not much info on their website as I write - now even a picture of the label). Belgian beers aren't normally known for the overt hoppiness of their beers but with new breweries such as De Dochter van de Korenaar and beers like Brasserie lefebvre's Hopus this is changing slightly. The Amarillo hop is one that you will have come across before so without further ado, and because I'm can't wait to see what this tastes like, I'm going to open the bottle. I picked this little beauty up from Ales By Mail yesterday and it's still on the site now, but I suspect it won't be for long.
It pours a beautiful golden orange, deep juicy and vibrant it positively glows with juiciness, and with it's fluffy off-white head on top it grabs you by the cheeks and forces your nose (well it does mine anyway) into the glass to take a long hard sniff. What an odour it is too. It's big and juicy with oranges, lemons, lychee and limes, but there's also a faint medicinal edge like the mentholatum (deep heat) smell  that I remember from the rugby changing rooms of many many years ago. Initially soft on the lips, it bites hard as it hits the tongue releasing a huge juicy explosion of lemon, lychee, watermelon and mango, and in fact it's completely overwhelming in its beauty and flavour but it doesn't last long and fades into a gooey, stickiness as the Belgian yeast asserts itself and guides it down a more traditional path. I say traditional, but with all that juiciness it has much more of a citrus fruit edge than you would normally expect to find. It tails off rather politely with some lovely sweetness, slowly drying but never losing that fruity flavour. I picked up a little of the alcohol at some points, it is 7.5% after all, but these were never the same points twice which was a little beguiling, and the further down the glass I drank then the less pronounced this became before gradually disappearing altogether.
I know that whatever I write that you're probably going to want to drink this beer, particularly if you've got this far into my review. Rest assured, you certainly won't be disappointed.