Goose Island - India Pale Ale

Who says the yanks can't make beer?! Old men who drink watery bitter and sit around in dank old pubs that haven't changed since Churchill died and talk at length about pipe smoking and their inability to chew any more... That's who! American beer is, I believe, now in and around the top 5 beer in the world as far as taste and consistency go and Goose Island IPA is another in a long trend of excellent, fruity, heady, smooth, true drinkers' drinks that has no airs, nor graces, and knows just what it's supposed to be: A tasty beer for people who fancy a nice pint.

On a list of things that Chicago has given us, I would easily rank this up there with the likes of deep dish pizza and the wrestler CM Punk. The fruitiness to it is just so soft! It's as silky as the toilet paper of a Venetian prince and the head sticks to the glass as if it were riding on a bus full of children with special needs. The honey notes and honeyed amber hue help with it's drinkability but it could look like a car accident between 2 butcher's van and a hearse and it'd still taste like the bitter sweet tears of a Norse god.

I got this beer for around £1.80 and for that money you can buy a bag of Haribo or, if you'd prefer, a big sign saying "I'm a big, stupid, dummy for not spending the money I spent on this sign on Goose Island IPA, which is totally badass."

It's so hard to get this kind of quality for any less than £2, you could spend between 3 and 10 quid to get an AMAZING IPA but if you see this in whatever shop you happen to be in and it's priced below £2 then you buy it! You buy it or I'll beat you with my scathing words!

Food suggestion: Nothing too spicy, take anything with chilli completely out of the equation. I'd have this with a pizza, which sounds cheesy... But they say that ingredients, food and drink from the same habitat go together well. Pair this up with a Chicago style deep dish pizza, heavy on the meat, heavy on the cheese... As if there's any other way.

Drink this if you like: Rich IPAs like The Kernel (which is an absolute stunner) or smooth, hoppy, Helles like Green Daemon by Hopdaemon (which is also delicious.) If you're a fan of the IPA in general then you can't go wrong with this, it's an absolutely delicious beer.