This Smoked India Ale is one of Tiny Rebel’s “Tiny Batch Editions” and it’s a thing of strange beauty.
The colour is a dark and mysterious purple brown with a foaming cauldron of a head.
Hot Box smells of flowerbeds, wood smoke and lavender, it’s a heavy floral perfume that permeates the beer from start to finish.
You can make out the malts, all toffee and biscuits, and the hops are big and bold and leave a teeth shatteringly dry finish.
But what this beer has above all this is something all of its own.
The smoke here is purely a backdrop, a soft mist that warms you and fills out the edges, because the overwhelming thing in Hot Box is a gorgeous floral perfume full and rich with dandelions, roses, in fact a whole country garden of English summer flowers, not forgetting a very sensuous Eastern rose water and a big Parma Violet blast of sherbet and mown lawns.
And then as the smoke sets in you start to get a round meaty flavour, not unlike eating frankfurters outside.
The result of all this is that this beer may be a bit of an acquired taste for some people.
I for one think it’s magical.