Beers Of London Series
32. The Kernel - India Pale Ale Double Citra 9.7%

This wasn't the post I was going to do this evening. Instead I was going to give my take on the LBAs London's Brewing event that I attended last Saturday evening. I do intend to write my take on it at some point, but for now you can read Matt Curtis's review here mainly because it's Matt who I went with. You may well read other reviews but Matt and I had a similar, but not identical experience, but it was certainly a very different experience to those who attended the afternoon session.
I digress. And I'm going back in time a bit.
In fact I'm going back a week, roughly half an hour after I had the Portobello Pale I covered in my last review. I wasn't actually going to call into Craft Beer Company but as it I had to go right past it to get to Farringdon station (I'm not fooling anyone here - I do realise this) it was rude not to call in, and I'm rather glad I did. There on the tap in front of me was Kernel's Double Citra, a beer I'd heard a little bit of buzz about on the those beery twitter-drums. Sometimes the beer of the moment can turn out to be tomorrow's mouthwash, or more often desirability does not equate to quality, but as this was a Kernel beer then I was prepared to take that chance. Purely in the interest of science you understand.
It pours a cloudy lemony-orange with the thinnest of pure white heads. The aroma is intense, in fact it's INTENSE. There's big pure concentrated satsuma juice that jumps out of the glass and slaps you round the face, forget the Tango man this is a beer that means business, and it's business is pushing orangey goodness like an underworld 'Man from Delmonte'. For all this it's actually quite soft over the tongue, in fact it's barely felt (or perhaps it has just numbed my palate), instead there's a huge boozy orange nebula that expands in the mouth and forces it way up through the nose. Concentrated curacoa orange drenched in satsuma juice, bitter, sweet and unctuous fills the mouth with a sublime intensity, it fairly drips orange oil, pulp and juice. The finish is oily too, and similarly intense, like you've eaten a whole box of oranges, all tightly compacted, in one go.
Don't worry if you can't get this on keg, if you're quick, and you know where to look, you might find some bottled. Don't miss out.