A beautiful coppery-amber colour with a lasting white head, this IPA from Cape Town-based brewery Gallows Hill certainly looks the part. But does it deliver on aroma and flavour?

It smells great – fruit salad and a touch of spice (from the magnum, I imagine). Fruit-wise, I got stone fruit (peaches and nectarines) rather than the citrus fruits you usually associate with centennial hops.

There’s not a great deal going on in the malt department, aroma-wise or indeed on the palate, but I don’t consider that a negative. Instead there’s a pleasant bitterness that grabs the sides of your tongue, a slightly grassy flavour and a nice clean finish. Speaking of finish, this is a bottle-conditioned ale and while it was a pretty good example (no floaters, no off-flavours), People might not appreciate losing the last 30ml or so of a fairly pricey beer. The last sip is of course entirely drinkable, but the end was so muddy, it would probably only be hardened beer nerds who’d be happy to swig the yeast.

Overall, it’s a pretty good IPA, though it lacked a little wow factor (particularly on the nose). Gallows Hill’s packaging is awesome and I can totally see people taking the toe-tags home to collect. And if Im correct in thinking that the Marais brothers are continually changing their hops, the tags will indeed be worth collecting (they specify which hops were used in each batch, so you can take beer geekery to a whole new level and try to get the full set).

How much: Around R27 for a 440ml bottle in liquor stores, upwards of R35 in bars.

Where: Gallows Hill’s beers are not widely found yet, though you can get them in bottles at Roeland Liquors. The beers are distributed by The Beer Merchant and can be found at Tokara Deli, Firemans Arms, Redemption Burgers and Beerhouse on Long, among others.