It turns out many members at Northern Monk have a soft spot for a certain Caribbean grapefruit flavoured soft drink which rhymes with King. Most of us at one time or another have mixed it in with regrettably large pours of various spirits at gigs or on student nights out. Despite this, the idea of recreating this drink in grapefruit IPA form got a big thumbs up from all.

The base beer has a hefty proportion of wheat in the grist, plus some flaked oats, with the goal of rounding out the mouthfeel. Dextrin malt also helps with this and adds a stickiness to the mouthfeel. As a third strategy, we added unfermentable maltodextrin sugar. We hopped with Chinook, the classic west coast hop variety, largely due to the zesty grapefruit notes it contributes to the style. In fermentation we added 600kg of concentrated grapefruit juice, replicating the percentage of the fruit in the canned soft drink. The results may or not work great as a mixer, we obviously do not endorse such experiments..!