Everything but the haze

After the positive performance by Bådin's saisons last month, I noticed there were seven other beers from the same brewery in the fridge at Craft Central. I took six of them, judiciously deciding that I didn't need their hazy IPA.

First and lowest-strength is Nightshift, a Czech-style dark lager. There's rarely anything to dislike in these. It looks well: the appropriate shade of cola-brown or dark garnet with a decent off-white head. The aroma says rich and wholesome, with elements of malt loaf, burnt toast and dark, viscous treacle. That made it surprising that's it's relatively light of body at 5% ABV, and very drinkable. 440ml is too small a measure for this, which does a very good job, I thought, of replicating a sessionable sort of dark lager, designed for venues where a multiplicity of beer styles is not part of the offer. That said, it's also far from bland, delivering a beautiful combination of earthy, savoury umami, lighter caramel and a decent poke of Mitteleuropa herb-and-grass hop bitterness. Full marks for style fidelity, then, which also means it's a very tasty beer. I can't think of anything I'd change.

Two West Coast IPAs follow, beginning on Hyperion, at 6.5% ABV. I requested no haze but the haze has found me: this is murky, though at least amber rather than yellow, and with a very handsome layer of loose bubbles. For hops it uses Galaxy, Amarillo and Centennial, which I associate with orangey citrus flavours, and this does have a significant sharp and pithy quality in the flavour. It's not clean, though: the murk makes itself felt in a fuzzy texture and a rough dregginess. It's not unpleasant, but it lacks polish and poise. The bitterness is also a little lower than I would have liked; we do not progress beyond pith into pine. Its aroma does much the same as its flavour, though adding a little spice to the fruit effect, presumably from the suspended lees. I had Bådin tagged as a brewery that pays attention to style fidelity, but I don't think they've managed west coast IPA proper with this one, and its raw roughness means it wasn't as enjoyable as I'd hoped.

Their second chance is Swim, a collaboration with Outer Range. The ABV goes up to 7% and the mist clears a little, but it's still an unacceptably cloudy orange for something calling itself west coast. The aroma is juicy, dammit, which is lovely, but off-style. The flavour is plainer, however, deriving from Krush, Centennial, Simcoe and Citra. I'm guessing the Krush is responsible for that juice thing, which manifests in the flavour as mandarin segments. There's something a bit off behind that: burnt rubber or plastic, and I'm blaming those dregs. Again the bitter side is low and it just doesn't zing the way west coast should zing. I got the impression that maybe IPA isn't Bådin's forte.

Hold on, what's this? Three beers in, I discover that while I definitely left one hazy IPA behind, I accidentally took a different hazy IPA. This hazy IPA is called Hazy IPA, which makes the mistake even more egregious. Making the best of it, I note that it's not all that hazy, and the bright translucent orange colour does make it more attractive than the two IPAs which went before. The aroma is extremely juicy, like real satsuma spritz and tangerine flesh, bordering on Fanta-grade sweetness. The carbonation is low and the texture quite weighty, which doesn't go well with the sweet flavour. While it doesn't taste any way dreggy, there's a candy-chew and undiluted squash character to it. The density and intensity are more than I would have expected for 6% ABV. Still, for all the fruit sugar, it's clean, and relatively inoffensive. I see that Nelson Sauvin and Motueka hops are included in the recipe but I didn't pick up any of their distinctive features, which is a shame. Overall, it's not a bad effort, and I retract my previous catty remark about Bådin and IPA. When they're meant to be hazy, the result is passable.

We're back on track with a stout next, similarly simplistically named, as Bådin Stout. Though a full 7% ABV, it looked a little thin on pouring, and is red-brown in the glass, rather than black, with a fast-fading head. The aroma is sweet, with lots of caramel plus an aniseed-candy herbal side. It's not thin, I'm happy to say, but it doesn't quite reach the realm of creaminess, and I wouldn't have guessed it's as strong as it is. The flavour is plain. Chocolate forms the centre and then doesn't go anywhere especially interesting from there. There's a little buttery toffee and a slightly acrid smoky side. Some coffee roast would have been nice; likewise proper hop bittering to take the edge off all the sugar, but neither materialises. Sure, this qualifies as a stout, but it's not a great one. Strong and dark doesn't have to mean sweet.

I guess if you want coffee, you have to ask for it. It's an ingredient in The French Dispatch, a 10% ABV imperial stout created in collaboration with French brewery Prizm. There's vanilla too, so I was expecting another very sweet job, but got a pleasant surprise. The aroma doesn't give much away, showing a little chocolate sauce or caramel, but nothing especially distinctive. The flavour, however, makes excellent use of the coffee, bringing all the complementary oily, roasty fun which matches well with the toasted grain and caramelised sugar. The vanilla is restrained, for once. I would normally expect a big hit of milk chocolate due to its effect, but here it's all the high-cocoa dark sort, which is much classier. There's an excellent balance to this, keeping sweetness, booze, and the novelty gimmick factor in check, while still being sumptuous and satisfying: perfect as a dessert beer.

Don't trust Bådin with west coast IPA seems to be the takeaway lesson from these six cans. I'm sneakily happy that I made a mistake and inadvertently bought one of the hazy IPAs, because it helped make sense of those other two. Overall, the brewery seems to know what it's doing, which is very much normal for Norway, in my experience.

German bite

It's lager time! This pair was selected from the bottles at Redmonds of Ranelagh. That, their ABV, and their general Bavarianness is about all they have in common.

I've had a Doppelbock from Kloster Scheyern before, but this is my first time with the more modest Kloster-Gold Hell. I'm assuming a very ordinary sort of Helles (Tucher brews it), though the strength is on the high side, at 5.4% ABV. It's a flawless gold in the glass, pale with a hint of aquamarine. Its fine white head crackles audibly, like a TV ad for breakfast cereal. The aroma indicates that it's going to be sweet, adding a sliver of ripe pear to spongecake malt. That high-ish ABV doesn't add much to the body, and it's light. Coupled with the soft sparkle, this is very easy drinking. The somewhat muted flavour also contributes. There's no fancy fruit, just quite a plain base of fresh white bread. Noble hopping is evident in the finish, where there's a rasp of bitterness; leafy like lettuce or raw spinach. I'm not a big fan of that, but it doesn't disturb the beer's equilibrium, in fact it adds to it. This is no superstar, but it's well-made and characterful, providing the fuss-free easy-going comfort-drinking for which I look to Helles.

Hasen Original claims to be a naturally cloudy Kellerbier, though there wasn't much haze in evidence when I poured it, even after giving the bottle a proper jiggle, merely a token skein of sediment. This is a degree darker than the previous, more amber than golden. Still, the head is properly fine and generous, in the Bavarian way, and it's another relatively light beer, gently conditioned to accommodate big satisfying gulps. The Keller side of the offer gets busy right from the start, adding a dry and crisp cracker snap. That doesn't mean it isn't cuddly: a softer layer of bready malt, brown this time, follows the husk, adding a different sort of rustic wholesomeness. Hops don't feature, but I don't mind. The malt-driven flavour is restrained enough to not require balance, and I don't really miss noble hops when they're not present. This is exactly the simple, sessionable, rustic lager that it's presented as. Again, it's not going to blow anyone away with an awesome riot of anything, but it's very nicely done, in a way that you really need to go to Bavarian beer to find.

Neither of these deserves picking apart on some English-speaker's beer blog. They are normal, standard, well-made German beers of the sort one takes for granted over there. I'm sure the price I paid for them in Ranelagh would give a fit of the vapours to any drinker from their locality, but I'm glad to have the option without needing to catch a plane.

Go collab yourself

Today's beer is a coffee porter, brewed by Third Barrel for TwoSides, the beer-brewing arm of Brickyard the pub. It's a collaboration with Grindstone, the coffee-brewing arm of the same business, which operates an adjacent café, and that's the name they've given the beer.

An enthusiasm for coffee shines through in the labelling: we're told it was roasted at Dublin roastery Blind Monkey, and is a combination of Santa Izabel from Brazil and Santa Monica from Colombia. I'm a little sceptical about the variety specifics mattering much when they're used in a beer, but if it means the creators had some extra fun designing the recipe, then I'm fine with that. There's a bit of heft to this, at 5.8% ABV, and it's an attractive, shiny, vinyl-black.

There is something a bit different about the aroma here: it's not just coffee. There's a nuance of tart red berries and roast chestnuts. The nutty side is very pronounced in the flavour: dry and savoury, rather than sweet. There's a not-unpleasant hint of fried onion, and then a herbal bitterness, which might be hop related, but equally could be the coffee again.

This is certainly no ordinary coffee porter, and anyone looking for the straight-up coffee-beer experience will be disappointed. Indeed, even the beer side of that equation is lacking. This has the creamy feel and light carbonation of good porter, but I didn't find much by way of chocolate or dark malt. It's still enjoyable, however, in its own odd way. I'm not in a position to say if the coffee is well represented in the flavour, but it certainly makes a singular and distinctive contribution. If coffee porter is your thing, here's a fun twist on the norm, which is still a very decent beer.

Rockies II

For the second week in a row I'm starting with a selection of beers from a brewery in Colorado. Odell is rather more familiar than last week's Bootstrap, and its beers are generally top-notch, bordering on iconic in places. I see a couple of potential challenges to that reputation among today's lot.

The "Sippin'" series of sour fruit beers hasn't been Odell's best work, in my opinion. Today we have Sippin' Blackberry: no surprise what the fruit is, but they've also added that pink Himalayan salt, for gosey notions. It's a dirty, murky pink emulsion, with something of a greyish tint. As usual with this sort of beer, the head is gone in moments. The aroma doesn't say much, only a mere suggestion of tart berry. The flavour, too, is understated, and maybe that's for the best. It might have been a sticky cordial, but it's not. The clean flavour includes a definite salinity, so they got some value out of that bonus ingredient. It's only 4.5% ABV and light-textured, with a busy fizz pummelling the palate. I'm guessing the blackberry has mostly fermented out, because there's no more than a trace of it, largely confined to the finish, and not really specifically blackberry; just a generalised hedgerow purple. It's fine. I could happily drink more than this 12oz serve. It's a bit plain to have been shipped from so far away, however.

The next beer is the one which made me particularly apprehensive. I have never understood the appeal of Mexican-style lager to the sort of fussy drinkers who buy beer from the likes of Odell. That it's a degenerate style is evidenced by the front-and-centre role of sweetcorn in the recipe, which gives this one its name: Kernel. It looks like an industrial lager: a bright clear yellow, and we're two-for-two on rubbish head retention. Unlike the last beer, the aroma isn't just minimal, it's non-existent. No surprise there. It has a certain amount of substance, 4.7% ABV providing an acceptable amount of body, so it's not one of those watery ersatz-Mexican affairs that you might find round here in a longneck bottle. That doesn't mean it's good, however. Flavour is hard come by. A little malt-syrup sweetness; maybe a hint of dry grain husk, but not enough of either to give the beer anything I would call character. I was genuinely tempted to squeeze a wedge of lime into it, just so it would have something going on. You would want to be a superfan of Odell, this style, or both, to make it any way worth your while. For me, like the last one, there's just not enough taste action.

That meant all expectation was on the final beer, a double IPA. They couldn't possibly not deliver here. Wire Walker is 8% ABV and specifies that it's in the west coast style. And they mean it too: it's very nearly as clear and golden as the lager. Finally, a worthwhile aroma: it's a classic citrus bite, blending oil and zest. That heralds a very old-school flavour, in quite a delightful way. Before anything else there is malt. While not the full-on toffee sweetness of crystal, there's a honey or golden syrup character, adding weight and texture but not so much heat. The hop bitterness is next, and it's perfectly balanced: punchy without turning harsh. The initial hit softens rapidly, grapefruit and pine fading to sherbet lemons and Seville orange marmalade. For such a strong beer it's incredibly drinkable, and I reckon it's the balance that does it. In particular, making the malt a major part of the offer is one of those ideas, along with cleanness and clarity, that lead commentators like me to opine that IPA has lost its way somewhat, here in the haze age. This beer is how it used to be done, and it was good. I guess it isn't madly dissimilar to Odell's magnificent flagship IPA, but I haven't had that in a while, so a reminder about it is always welcome.

I was right to be suspicious. Fruity sour ale and Mexican-style lager are not things that even a brewery of Odell's calibre is likely to excel at. Double IPA, however, is right in their wheelhouse. Here it's delivered crisp and tangy, in what's now essentially a heritage manner. Far be it from me to suggest any brewery stick to what it knows best, but if IPAs made you famous, maybe do more of that.

Picking favourites

It's been a while since I last had any beer from Marks & Spencer. The former high-end UK grocer used to be reliable for sturdy, traditional bottled beers of the bitter and pilsner sort, and it still stocks those, but I noticed more of a turn to contemporary beer fashion lately. 440ml cans, for one thing. I picked these two because they're produced for M&S by two of my favourite English breweries, so it seems like someone on the beer-commissioning side at the company has taste.

Adnams has long been a partner, and brewed many a slightly-tweaked version of their main beers for M&S. This one is original, as far as I know: Spruce Tip Pale Ale. I like a bit of the botanical now and then. As well as the spruce, there are juniper berries too, and the can promises "a hint of zesty lemon". It's a medium gold colour and very slightly hazed. The aroma does give off that zest, though more like lemon candy than the real thing. It's light-bodied and crisp, almost lager-like, with a modest ABV of 4.8%. In the flavour, the lemon is more than a hint, it's the whole deal. That makes it very refreshing, all summery sorbet and lemon-drop candy. What's missing? Oh yes: the spruce. I thought there would be a bit of greenery in the taste too, but there's not. The whole thing is very simple and fairly undemanding. I had hoped for something more novel and interesting, so it was a bit of a let-down. The Adnams quality shows through, and I could easily drink a lot of this. But there's no excuse for such a waste of spruce, not to mention the juniper berries. We move on.

While I'm not the Siren fanboy I once was, they do make exceedingly good stouts. They've brewed the canned Nitro Stout for Marks & Spencer, where it sits near the very decent bottled one that Carlow Brewing has been making for them since the beginning of time. This can is not widgeted so it's on the drinker to pour it vigorously to form the appropriate head. For possibly the first time in my experience, that works, and I got a pleasant-looking crème-caramel puck of foam over the pure black body. Vague milk chocolate is all the aroma offers from that, the nitrogen doing its usual nefarious work of muting such features. Full marks for the texture. I'm sure that making this a silky charmer was goal number one, and it absolutely is; light enough to be gulpable at 4.6% ABV, slick on the palate, but not cloying. There's no big bold flavour, which is a little disappointing but perhaps to be expected. What impressed me most is that it's not predominantly sweet: the aroma had me fearing a Dairy Milk overload. Instead, it has a dark chocolate character, with a real cocoa bitterness and a rasp of toasted grain. It meets the specs of draught Irish stout, but very much the better sort, with enough going on in the flavour to be suited to tasting instead of just drinking. While not up to the mark of Siren's best work (I had secretly hoped it was Broken Dream in disguise) it meets the requirements of just-Nitro-Stout-thankyou extremely well.

I can't be too critical of these because they're both jolly nice beers with not a thing wrong. It is evident, however, that they're for the supermarket, and have a crowd-pleasing, low-common-denominator factor about them: created to the spec of someone who wears a suit rather than overalls. To be expected from Marks & Spencer, I guess.

Two dai for

What I like in particular about Japanese beer, and I've not had a whole lot of it, is the tendency to come at things at an oblique angle, creating recipes that even the try-too-hard craft brewers of the west don't make. Last month's delicious sweet potato ale was one example, and today it's a new one for me from Kiuchi's Hitachino Nest range, about the only brand of Japanese-brewed beer you can buy in this country.

It's called DAiDAi Ale, daidai (橙) being Japanese for a type of native orange, and is an IPA made with Fukure Mikan mandarins and a selection of French hops. Is anybody around here doing that? Thought not. It's a lovely sunset amber colour in the glass, mostly clear, with only a fine misting of suspended sediment. There's no mistaking the oranges in the aroma, one which is at once zesty and oily. The hops don't get much of a say beyond that.

While it may smell a little like a soft drink, the mouthfeel is very grown-up and heavy, channelling a strong bock or even barley wine. The 6% ABV may have something to do with that: plenty of texture but not so much heat. Still no prominent hops in the flavour, and where I feared there would be syrupy orange concentrate there's only quite a subtle fruit presence up front, fresh and zesty, though understated. The surprise, however it's done, is a peppercorn spice, adding a warming piquancy which balances the weighty malt well. More orange arrives late, this time bringing a peel bitterness.

For a beer badged as an IPA, the lack of hop character is a bit of a fail, but it definitely delivered the pleasing kooky oddness I was hoping for. It's lovely to find a beer which, in a good way, tastes like nothing I've encountered previously.

Strap in

Beers from Bootstrap Brewing of Longmont, Colorado were a surprise find in a Dublin off licence last month. I assume we have Grand Cru Beers to thank for their presence, sharing transatlantic cargo space with Ska and Odell. Regardless, it's always nice to welcome a new visitor to the neighbourhood. What have we got here?

Lightest of the four is called Chillax, described as a "pineapple gold ale". The can lacks an ingredients list or any further information about the contents, while the brewery website merely rephrases the strapline to "golden ale with pineapple", so there is actual fruit in it. It's beautifully clear and brightly golden, although the fast-fading head lets it down on the appearance front. The aroma seems orthodox for a golden ale, with an enticing waft of warm honey. Though only 4.5% ABV, it has lots of body; a certain slickness to the mouthfeel and minimal carbonation, which I liked, effect on the head notwithstanding. The advantage of using a neutral golden ale as the base for adding fruit is that you get lots of fruit, and this has loads of fruit. Specifically, it tastes more like the liquid from a can of pineapple chunks than a beer. There's only a faint dryness in the finish to suggest malt's grain husks or possibly even some severely dialled-down hopping. Otherwise, pineapple is all there is, but it's at least subtle. There's more a sense of the fibrous flesh than overly sweet concentrated extract, the intensity just high enough to shield it from accusations of blandness. I wouldn't say I'm a fan, though: there isn't enough beer character to make this properly enjoyable, but, honestly, I thought it was going to be sickly and disgusting, and it isn't. The occasional understated novelty beer does nobody any harm.

The ABV leaps to 6.2% for the next one, called Boat Snack. It's a hazy IPA, if you've ever heard of such a thing. Apparently they're quite popular. It's not all that hazy, mind: pale yellow and fully translucent. They've done a better job of the head on this one. The aroma is sweetly citric, suggesting lemon curd and lime jelly, with maybe a harder grass bitterness in the background. Full marks again for the texture, showing the pleasant softness that is one of the style's endearing features. I'm not sure I'd award many style points for the flavour, but it's delicious. Instead of haze's vanilla and dregs, there's a clean and quite west-coast leaning bite of grapefruit and lime, growing as it goes to include more intense pine resin as well. Not what I expected, but I'll take it. The aftertaste is juicy, in fairness, but I wonder if the mouthwatering effect of the bitterness is at least partially responsible for that. This is lovely, and I'd say there's enough soft and fresh fruit to keep the cloudy IPA fans happy, but I like the idea that it's an undercover west-coaster. Style noodling aside, it's a well-made, fresh-tasting showcase for American hops. Par for the course up Colorado way, I imagine.

Hazy IPA is followed by "Juicy IPA". This could be the only brewery that draws a distinction between such things, and I very much doubt that many consumers do. Lush Puppy is the name, and it earns its place in the sequence by being everso slightly stronger than the previous, at 6.3% ABV. It's amber coloured, with powdery dregs which followed the mostly-clear beer into the glass at the end, murking it all up. There's little juice in the aroma, only a colourful candy sweetness, and that rather subdued. The flavour does deliver, however. OK, it's not a fresh-squeezed effect, but there's a quite beautiful mix of Sunny Delight or orange squash meeting a much more realistic zesty pith. Despite the strength, and a gummy-slick texture, it's nicely refreshing and slips back with indecent ease. I've had a few beers recently that made me think of summer -- maybe it's the abysmal grey weather we'd been having -- and this is another of those. It's fun, colourful, accessible, yet with plenty of multicoloured hop fruit complexity to keep those boring chin-strokers happy. Something for everyone.

Top that, says I. Last up is Insane Rush, an IPA to take your time with, at 7.6% ABV. "Made with crazy hops" says the can, in lieu of any useful information. I think we're going back to the '90s here: it's clear and a deep shade of red-amber. Please note also that head: a perfect dome that wouldn't look out of place on a macrostout fetishist's Instagram feed. With the colour comes the malt, and this tastes every bit as crystal-laden as it looks. Foil-wrapped toffees from a 1980s confectionery tin is the base, buttery as you remember. And, just like in the good old days, that foundation is used to hang some extremely unsubtle hopping: enamel-stripping bitterness, packed with pine acidity. Grapefruit? It's not that delicate. Thankfully, the punches are sufficiently pulled on all fronts that it never becomes difficult to drink, though this is a closer approximation of the American IPAs I drank in the early-2000s than pretty much anything produced under the latter-day "west coast revival". It's fun, just like those old-timey hop-bombs were. Though, as such, it's a nice place to visit, but I'm quite glad that hop-forward beers have progressed since, and not everything in that genre tastes like this. I liked it, but more as a nostalgia trip than as a tasty beer. Approach it accordingly.

There we go. That's Bootstrap. I don't know if we'll be seeing more of their wares over here, but while they're no Odell, I welcome their presence in this era of hardened borders and inward-looking perspectives.