Vocation Brewery, Life & Death
If you're from Yorkshire, you'll enjoy this one. If you're not, you'll still enjoy it
Brewery: Vocation Brewery, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.
Brew: Life & Death
Type: Indian Pale Ale (US Style)
ABV: 6.5% (2.2 UK units)
Price: £1.79 (Tesco)
Life & Death. I read that as "This beer will pick you up and give you a boost, but drink too much...well, you'll feel like death!", and with the Grim Reaper looking at you ominously from just above the 6.5% mark on the can, it wouldn't surprise me. I'm just having one can, so you'll have to find out the after effects of a few yourself, if you so wish.
Vocation are, according to their website, constantly rated as one of the top 10 UK breweries, so I'm expecting good tastes here alongside the apparent smells of tropical fruits and fruit salad taste, with a malty backbone.
Well Vocation, you have not disappointed. With a light straw colour as it splashes into the glass, the beer settles into the promised rich golden colour, that brings honey to mind, while the thin head that forms sits for a little before disappearing. Bring it up to take a mouthful and it's impossible to miss the initial smell of hops. With three kilos used in each brew, no wonder it's so prominent.
The hoppiness gives way to a real mix of different citrus fruits, most noted, limes and grapefruit. This refreshes you before you even take a sip. But the point of beer is to drink it, not just sniff it, so on we go.
That fruit salad taste is right in there but no matter how much my brain worked, I couldn't pin point exactly what fruit this salad would consist of. The closest comparison I could draw was the little Fruit Salad sweets that were commonly found in the draws of Woolworths (blast from the past) pick and mix stands. Maybe that's what they mean? But I suppose it was more on the citrusy side than the sweet.
This ale is light in weight, bold and powerful in flavour and gives exactly what the can says. That malty taste comes through right at the end and lingers before you take the next gulp. The flavour is a bit of a funny mix at first and not sure I'm quite used to it yet, but I'd still have it again
Now I was sat on my veranda/ balcony on a roasting week day evening when I tried this and it was possibly the most suitable time to do so. The beer fit with the surroundings and the temperature and it really did give me that boost I mentioned earlier.
This is a very interesting beer, but if you don't like those pink and orange chewy sweets, or citrus, it's probably not for you, but try it anyway, you may be surprised.
Rating: 3/5
