Beers Of London Series
35. London Fields Brewery - Pale Ale 3.9%


Unless you've been living under a rock, or possibly had no access to twitter during the weekend of 4th-5th May and the following week, you can't have failed to notice the negative publicity London Fields Brewery received for its hosting of the London Brewers Alliance Festival London's Brewing. I have previously commented that my experience was somewhat different, however regardless of that I did actually get to have a look around the brewery and have a couple of beers at the Tap Room with two well known bloggers @NateDawg27 and @totalcurtis. The Simcore India Black Ale was superb, a delicious blend of malty liquorice and citrus hops, and the cloudy Wheat beer made all the right noises and tastes with its honey-lemon tartness and dry grassiness. It's somewhere that I plan to return to soon as the beers were all in fantastic condition as you might expect, and reasonably priced. You may recall that I reviewed the Delta IPA earlier in this series and I found its flavours rather muted but still intriguing, so you can understand that I was anxious to try another of their bottle-conditioned beers.
Brewed with Galaxy hops from Tasmania, it pours a beautiful orange-amber throwing a billowing pillow of a  rocky off-white head. The aroma has loads of sticky sweet lemon, tangy tangerine juiciness and crackling pear drop with a sprinkling of white pepper spice. Quite sharp over the tongue it seemingly launches itself at the back of the throat with a huge snap of mango, a dash of fermented pear, a twist of sour lemon, a shot of grapefruit, all put in a cocktail shaker with some sanguinello, strained into a water-bomb and burst in the mouth spraying its gooey goodness in all directions. It's a deliciously sticky and sharp tropical citrus juice explosion with a few grains of white pepper on a thin bed of uber-moist fruit cake in the mix just upping the ante a little. The finish is mouth puckeringly dry and tart as that juicy sharpness fades slowly away leaving a deliciously oily film coating the whole mouth. This truly is a fantastic beer, delivering a bit fat tropical smack in the mouth full of intense fruit flavour. Get it if you can, or simply get yourself over to their Tap Room. Fresh beer is usually the best beer.
**Addendum: Have heard from London Fields today that this beer has sadly been de-listed, so if you've got a bottle (and Ales By Mail have some left) then you have a rarity. Don't hang on to it though, drink it now and savour the flavour, it won't get any better.