Last ask of the cask task

It's the second and final installment from the October beer festival at JD Wetherspoon. You can read about the first 13 beers here. Will I get all 30 ticked off?

I'm sure the autumnal theme was deliberate, and it was an all-amber affair on my next trip to The South Strand. Conwy had that nailed on with Autumn Red, a 4.5% ABV "ruby" ale. It's on the darker side of red, and a bit murky with that. Centennial hops give the aroma some fresh citrus in with a warm cookie malt effect. The two aspects meld together deliciously in the flavour, for a gooey, spicy fruitcake or hot cross bun impression: dried lemon peel sparking against cinnamon and cardamom, with a thirst-quenching mug of black tea on the side. It's almost a bit busy, but I enjoyed its complexity. It's so rare to find a red ale done so well, and so engaging.

That was a tough act to follow, and I followed it with Barley Moon from Coach House. This is clearer, and several degrees sweeter, beginning on a powerful toffee aroma. The flavour doesn't move on from that. Although it's quite light-bodied at 4.4% ABV, it tastes sticky, of caramel and butterscotch. There's a tiny burnt-roast dryness on the end, which helps give it drinkability, but otherwise it's a one-note beer: not bland, but candy-sweet and with little else going for it. Could be worse, I guess.

This red ale trilogy concluded with Old Blighty from JW Lees. All I'll say about the pumpclip is I expected better from the venerable Manchester brewery, but sure we're all in a hurry these days. It's 3.9% ABV, paler than the previous two, and another murky one. Still, it's inoffensive. The body is thin, but it's one of those beers where that just makes it easily drinkable. A decent amount of flavour helps there, and it's a pleasant mix of red apple and raisin with a cereal bar crispness. It tastes much cleaner than it looks, and while no masterpiece of complexity, it's always welcome to get something tasty and interesting under the 4% ABV mark.

Good news! A rare style. Bad news! It's not one of the good ones. Mad Squirrel's Red Dawn is a pale mild. It used to be 3.7% ABV but of course the brewery busted that down to 3.4% ABV when it became tax efficient to do so. When that happens, and it's happened a lot in Britain, I take it as an indication that the brewery didn't care much about the beer in the first place. Anyway, this is a honey-gold rather than red, and has a very mild summer fruit flavour, meeting lemon candy on a treacle-tart base. So it's not watery in texture, but the flavour is watery. What's there is very muted, and tails off far too quickly. There's a slightly unpleasant soapy twang too, given nowhere to hide. I would love to be hailing this as a masterpiece of understated complexity, but it's too weak and dull for that. Light mild died of boredom: its drinkers' boredom.

Butcombe's Blonde Melissa is next: a 4.6% ABV golden ale. That doesn't sound like a thrilling formula, but it's a very decent take on the style. I want flowers and bubblegum and a little honey, and all of those are delivered in the flavour here. There's a reminder, too, of English golden ale's origins as a warm-fermented lager substitute, with a crisp cracker or poppadom dry side. In fact, this soft and subtle creation would be an excellent accompaniment for Indian-style food. If only Wetherspoon's take on that wasn't microwaveable ready meals.

Late in the run, two of my favourite English breweries of yore arrived side-by-side at The Silver Penny. From Adnams, Broadside Original. No, not that one. Or that one. This is a BRAND NEW version of the original, which seems self-contradictory, but that's not the kind of thing that would hold me back from drinking a 6% ABV English strong ale. It's a sumptuous dark garnet colour and smells equally rich and fruity, full of raisin and ripe black cherry. The flavour is even more intense, turning to tawny port and tiramisu. To avoid it turning sticky, there's a wide band of stout-like roast. It's beautiful. I don't know how it stacks up next to the other Broadsides, but it did remind me a lot of another classic of the genre: Theakston Old Peculier.

And Theakston supplied the beer on next to it: Salted Caramel Porter. I could smell this before it got near my face: sticky chocolate sauce, more than caramel. The flavour is unsurprisingly one-dimensional. If the intention was for it to taste of salted caramel then I don't think it was successful, but it does taste like salted-caramel-flavoured things. That is, a fudgey kind of sweetness, mixing chocolate, condensed milk and baked cookies. There is a tiny kick of salinity on the finish, but that's as close to complex as this gets. I'm sure the recipe was meticulously designed, but the end result taates like someone dumped a load of cake mix into a batch of porter; take it or leave it. For me, the half pint was fun, but that's my limit. 4.2% ABV does not always map to sessionable.

I scored another of the international collaborations with Mango IPA, purportedly from Lion of Singapore but actually brewed at Elgood's. The tropical fruit gunk is laid on thick in the aroma, making it smell like jam or mango chutney. Not unpleasant, but not beer. That drives the perfume flavour off the charts, leaving no room for hops, or anything else beer-related. That's especially unfortunate, because rare varieties Citrulicious, Warrior and Tetra are used, and I'd like to know what they taste like, but this pure gimmick isn't how I'll find out.

I hadn't intended Oakham's Dressed To Impress as a palate-cleanser but that's how it turned out. At 5.8% ABV, this is at the stronger end of the selection, and leans on its American hops, Belma and Chinook, in with modern English variety Harlequin. It's clear and golden, though the excessive head lets the visuals down somewhat. The aroma suggests pine and the flavour seals that deal. You get lots of weighty resinous hop oils: palate-coating and tongue-burning, the volatile vapours drifting up the sinuses while the dense malt warmth heats one's innards. It's quite a workout, and bears considered sipping. There's a bit of complexity among the hop forestry, a slight topnote of Belma's signature strawberry. Mostly, though, it's Chinook, an overlooked flavour hop, for old-school west-coast punchy fun. Oakham's reputation as the hoppy cask experts remains untainted.

And we stay at Oakham for their collaboration effort: Oolong ESB, from a recipe by Chinese brewer Urbrew. This is a brownish red shade and smells caramel-sweet, devoid of gimmicks. It's smooth and simple, definitely not relying on its hops (they all went into the last one) and it's not a million miles from the dreaded twiggy brown, which we have so far avoided. It's not one of them, though. The flavour is subtle rather than bland, and there's an enjoyable tannic dryness that might be the tea, but equally is usually a part of well-made bitter. There's some bonus milk chocolate, red grape and singed toast, adding up to a damn decent take on ESB. I hope the Chinese lad had fun on the brewday, because he didn't achieve much by way of imparting Asian flavours into English beer.

There was yet another red ale, this one from London's Sambrooks, called Afterglow. The festival guide calls it a "modern" red ale. It's hopped entirely with Fuggles. You can draw your own conclusions there. It doesn't smell of much, maybe some super-strong black tea, but that's as characterful as it gets. The flavour is all about the crystal malt, tasting of burnt caramel and hard toffee. I needed a couple of mouthfuls to get the hops, but they're there: the classic earthy note of Fuggle; a sober and serious metallic bite. It's a big 4.7% ABV, so has a decent weight to go with the malt-forward flavour, but I couldn't help thinking of it as an overclocked twiggy bitter, a concept that shouldn't be on anyone's brewing roster.

The festival's final day had me back in The Silver Penny for a pair of finishers, and one I particularly didn't want to miss. Before that, On Duty, by Titanic, presumably named for its low ABV of 3.4%. It's a very pale pale ale but has been generously hopped with an Anglo-American mix of Cascade, Columbus and Challenger. That's given it an harmonious blend of ripe stonefruit and a harder citric poke. They've done well to hide the compromised strength but couldn't prevent it turning a little watery in the finish: that's just physics. This works well as a deliberately low-strength beer and would likely make for a happy session, but as a beer in its own right, there are issues.

And finally, I was glad to just about catch Burning Sky East India Porter. This is another from the strong end of the list, at 6% ABV, and poured densely black with a nicotine-stained head. There's an appropriately grown-up aroma of dark roast coffee and burnt toast, so it was a surprise to find all the chocolate in the flavour. It's not sweet, mind: the chocolate is the high-end high-cocoa sort, but that's pretty much all you get. I had braced for bitterness -- tobacco, cabbage, marjoram and so on -- but it wasn't on offer. It's another psyche-out on the strength too, with no sign of the significant alcohol, although the texture was pleasingly creamy. As a straight porter it's excellent, and those are rare enough, especially on cask, that it still counts as a proper treat. I hope they sold a good chunk of it before it, too, was poured away as waste.

The answer to my initial question, then, is no. My final tally was 26 out of 30, and I must apologise to Nethergate, Brewster's, Castle Eden and Exmoor for not putting in more of an effort. Overall, the quality was good, with plenty more hits than misses. I credit that to the dark autumnal tendency in the line-up, though there were a good few pale 'n' hoppy beauts as well.

The JD Wetherspoon Beer Festival Will Return In... March.

The Festival of Ullage

The annual autumn beer festival took place across the JD Wetherspoon chain earlier this month. The three central Dublin branches kept the special edition beers fairly turning over, serving between two and four of the 30 at a time, changing every couple of days. Given how little interest there is in the cask beers of Dublin Wetherspoons, and especially unfamiliar ones, I dread to think how much of the beer is disposed of before the cask is even a quarter empty.

My shift began, as it often does, at The Silver Penny. Just the two festival specials were on at the beginning, which is unusual for this branch. First up, Coastal Coconut from Salem, the craft-ish Batemans sub-brand. The sleight of hand with this golden ale is that there's no coconut but there is Sorachi Ace and Sabro, hops famed for their coconut flavours. And, indeed, they deliver. The light and pale 4.2% ABV base gives free rein to the hops and the oily, creamy, aromatic coconut effect is the beer's entire deal. There's almost nothing else happening, which is fair enough given the branding, although I did also detect a smidge of pithy bitterness, another standard and positive feature of the hops. A tiny complementary hint of honeycomb arrives in as the beer warms. It's still no masterpiece of complexity and I fear a full pint might have been more work than it's worth. The half was fun, though.

Keeping the alliterative theme going, next was Mauldon's Maple, a copper-coloured bitter with all-English hops -- Challenger and Fuggles. The name suggests sweetness, as does the colouring, so it wasn't a surprise to get a big hit of toffee in the aroma. That's in the flavour too, but where I was expecting sticky unpleasantness, the caramel is nicely balanced with a gentle pinch of burnt-grain roast. After a second or two, the classic English hop profile makes an appearance: a mineral and vegetal bitterness, almost harsh but stopping at merely assertive. This is seasoned with a tannic, almost oaky, dry side, which is the key to adding drinkability to this sort of toffee-forward bitter. This isn't usually my sort of beer at all, so it was great to find one executed so well. Brown bitter ftw!

Over at The South Strand, business began with Elgood's doing their best craft beer dad dance via New World Session, a 4.4% ABV IPA hopped with Chinook, El Dorado and Mosaic. And Bramling Cross: let's not go crazy. It's a straightforward golden colour and the American hops' fruit candy presents nicely in the aroma. Something goes a bit wrong in the flavour, however. I suspect it's the English interloper, which should be adding a blackcurrant tartness, but that goes through as a fragranced disinfectant twang; a harsh and phenolic smoky aspect that I think is part of the beer, rather than incompetent line-cleaning, but who knows. A weighty texture and bubblegum golden-ale sweetness only adds to the yuck factor. If this was an attempt at doing bright hoppy fun in the American way, it hasn't worked out.

From an American take to a Czech one, via Denmark: English Dream, a pilsner brewed at Batemans in collaboration with Mikkeller. It looks almost identical to the previous: clear and clean and golden, as befits the style, though the low-key sparkle from being served on cask definitely does not. It really doesn't resemble proper pilsner, and only part of that is the absence of noble hops. Harlequin, Target and East Kent Goldings? What were they thinking? The hop side, despite involving three varieties, isn't a big part of the flavour, and at the centre there's a gummy, sticky, blonde ale mix of brioche and bubblegum. Nobody would be fooled into thinking they're drinking pilsner. This is an up and down English blonde ale. If the aim was some sort of magic trick, it has failed to convince this part of the audience. Call it an English golden ale and it's fine. Don't go trying to appropriate pilsner if you can't do it properly, however.

It was a Scottish double early doors at Keavan's Port, starting on Flying South from Loch Lomond. It's rare to see a sub-4% ABV beer at JDW these days, but this was 3.7%, and although badged as hazy, wasn't, presenting instead as clear and white-gold pale. The aroma's combination of tropical fruit and herbs is unmistakably Kiwi, and that follows through to a bright and fresh flavour, delivering a fruit salad of mango, mandarin and kiwifruit with a backing of bitterer forest floor resins and pepper spice. The taste is impressive, and so is the texture, which is full and smooth. I guess whatever they did to make it hazy didn't take for the appearance but gave the mouthfeel that round soft fluffiness. If the Salem beer was a bold flavoured beer that could be difficult to drink in quantity, here's one just as characterful but with massive sinkability. Top work, and probably my favourite of the festival overall.

Its compatriot was Autumn Nuts by Cairngorm, declaring as a "copper ale" at 4.8% ABV. It is indeed copper coloured, and smells quite sickly, of concentrated caramel, butterscotch and stewed tea. The flavour is thankfully not as severe, and there's a decent dry bite with a kick of hop bittering to help balance all the caramel malt; Cascade and Perle keeping the score level. It is heavy, though, warranting sipping rather than quaffing. After the initial sugar shock I warmed to it. The use of an American hop variety was an inspired choice, with a grapefruit complexity emerging late in the finish and taking the beer away from twiggy red ale and into comforting American-style amber. And maybe it's the name, but I get a hint of hazelnut and pecan as well. This is enjoyably cosy overall, ideally suited to those drawing-in late autumn evenings.

Back around to the 'Penny, and Pinball Wizard. It's an oatmeal stout brewed at Adnams with UPP Liquids of Oregon, which is possibly the worst name for a brewery I've ever encountered. This is 5.5% ABV and nearly fully black, though showing reddish-brown murk at the edges of the pint. I don't know if it's an oatmeal thing, a cask thing or an English thing, but there's a familiar sweetness to this, giving it a feel of mild or old ale, more than stout. There's an enjoyable damson and blackberry jam effect which I associate in particular with Theakston Old Peculier. A hint of milk chocolate is as stouty as it gets. No roast and no hop bitterness means that this, while wholesome and basically good fun, fails to press the buttons for Proper Stout. Yeah, I'm fussy. Deal with it, UPP Liquids.

The festival contribution from Buckinghamshire's Rebellion is Knucker, billed as red and hoppy. It looks well: a clear dark mahogany shade, and there's a distinct bite of American grapefruit hops in the aroma. The flavour leads on that too, meaning the dark malt aspect is somewhat left behind. There's a certain sweetness, but not caramelised. Instead the hopping makes it taste of raspberry and plum. It's boldly flavoured, nicely weighty for 4.2% ABV, and I enjoyed it though was a little disappointed it missed the mark of being in the American amber style. You won't often find me commenting that a beer at this festival needs less hops, but here we are.

Next to it at Keavan's was another of the international collaborations: Varvar was invited from Kyiv to brew a Session Golden Ale at Hook Norton. This is my first time trying the national beer style of Ukraine, and it's a loose definition of "session" for England, as it's a full 5% ABV, making it one of the strongest beers in the festival range. It's certainly golden, and I thought it rather plain at first, showing a lagerish grainy character but not much else. Three sips in, however, it unfolded somewhat, delivering floral honey and light lemon zest. This is set on a beautifully soft texture meaning it fulfills its session remit perfectly, regardless of the strength. If there hadn't been more to try I would have very happily settled into a few pints of this bad boy. Ukrainian golden ale, it turns out, isn't hugely different to English golden ale, but seems to have a bit more hoppy pizzazz and definitely isn't just an attempt to make lager with ale techniques.

The next beer, Reggae by Otter, was only 3.4% ABV, so why not have a full pint, I thought. My first gulp of same told me immediately that I'd made a mistake. There's a nasty burnt rubber twang on this, suggesting a fault somewhere in the brewing or dispense processes. Normally, I try to taste past that, to find out what beer the brewer intended, but the brewer doesn't appear to have intended much: some light biscuit, cream-ale-like sweetcorn, and the vaguest of meadowy English hops -- Calypso, we're told, presumably in minimal quantities. I'd shrug it off if it had been presented as a golden ale or bitter, but a pale ale? It really doesn't deserve the designation. I didn't even get as far as considering the appropriative branding. It's a yuck all round.

We were back on the strong stuff a few days later, with two similar-looking golden beers. Yard Arm by Hook Norton is a 5% ABV IPA, brewed with a broad mix of English, American and New Zealand hops. There's a lightly zesty aroma for all that, suggesting waxy lemon peel and a spritz of lime. The flavour does have a few layers of complexity, however. There's a foundation of hard, flinty English-hop bitterness which contrasts with fruit candy and fizzy pop from the new-world varieties. A bonus level of distinctly American grapefruit lands in on top, while the dense texture gives the hopping plenty of heft and a long finish that almost scorches the palate with oily bitter resins. It's big, bold and tremendous fun, and one of those lovely lessons in how to do assertive hops well when brewing for cask.

That was a bit of a tough act for Salopian to follow, with their spooky looking 1000 Yard-Stare (the hyphen goes there? OK). For one thing, although similarly pale gold, it didn't look as good as the other, with an unpleasant greyish murk going on. I feared that might bring a less-than-clean taste, and it does: a rough and harsh cereal staleness that really compromises the hops. They're trying to deliver bright and fun notes of roses and bubblegum but are stymied with cardboard and burlap. Shame. The beer isn't honkingly off, but doesn't compare favourably with the similar one on tap next to it. A rare miss from Salopian, too.

A second oatmeal stout comes to the list from Orkney. Their Orca is just 4.2% ABV, although the obsidian black colour with a dark tan head was exciting enough to elicit questions from multiple drinkers between the bar and my seat. It is, indeed, an interesting creature. Like the other one, it's primarily sweet, and there's a lot of wafer and caramel at the front. Here, however, it's balanced by a strongly savoury herbal bitter side, enhanced with a seaside seaweed iodine tang, and a waft of turf smoke. You would never guess the strength: it tastes massive, passing from complex into busy. A full pint was hard slow work, but it's impossible to deny that this is stout without the training wheels. By the half way point I had stopped noticing the toffee, captivated instead by the spinach, charcoal and anchovy craziness, all of it assisted by the slick silkiness of the texture. Something of an acquired taste, it should be part of the entrance exam for anyone who wishes to publicly profess a love for stout. This is how the proper stuff tastes.

We'll stop here at the half way point. There's more to follow on Wednesday.

Fat friars

It's a function of nothing other than my advancing age that I'm bemused to see Northern Monk as part of England's brewing establishment. I remember them as young contract-brewing upstarts, a less-convincing BrewDog, but they're still on the go and don't seem to have been affected unduly by the general downturn in their sort of craft beer. Good for them.

That said, I don't drink much of their beer. For today's post I picked three, all pretty chonky ones, to remind us that this model of brewing comes to us from the USA, where beer strength has little effect on beer price, and bigger is deemed better.

Unusually, I'm starting with a double IPA. It's called Above the Clouds and, as the name implies, is hazy. The can neglects to tell us what the hops are, but I'm sure it's some typical combination, because the whole thing is very typical. You've got your tangy mandarin segments, leading to slightly sharper lime zest; you've got your soft and fluffy texture with a vanilla and pink-marshmallow sweet side; and you've got a touch of savoury, soupy dregs, providing a slightly uncomfortable amount of hot garlic. Although it's heavy and a full 8% ABV, the flavour isn't a long one and doesn't build or cloy. In fact, I sauntered through the 440ml of this in jig time, which is not my usual approach to double IPAs. It's fine; the sort of beer that would have been dead exciting in Northern Monk's early days, but we've all had plenty of them at this stage, and there's certainly no call to be importing this type of thing into Ireland from Leeds.

Let's switch to stout, so. Heaven has featured here before, at a tap takeover in 2020, at UnderDog's first iteration. This is the 2026 vintage and by the looks of things they've simplified it, so now it's your basic chocolate and maple imperial stout, with no barrel ageing. Indeed, it's even a bit light for the style, at just 8.4% ABV. Still, it pours handsomely dark and dense, with a nitro-like pillow of off white foam. The chocolate aroma can be smelled from several rooms away, and when sniffed up close offers the 5D Augustus Gloop Immersive Experience™. Unsurprisingly, it tastes of chocolate. Equally unsurprisingly, it tastes of absolutely nothing else. The caramel of a Mars Bar, the shortbread of a Twix and the peanuts of a Topic are the nearest things to complexity on offer from this liquid selection box. It doesn't suffer from the anaemic ABV either: it's full and gloopy, palate-coating and belly-filling. The only thing I felt it was missing was heat. A bit of snoozy winter warmth would have fitted it better to the chilly evening on which I opened it. There's a parallel to the beer above: it's competently made, but lacks character and individuality: the sort of features that attracted people like me to beers like this in the first place, a couple of decades ago.

Things get sillier with another 8.4% ABV imperial stout, so I'm assuming it's the same base. This is Even S'More Death, adding marshmallow and biscuit to the mix. It foams bigly and took a couple of goes to pour. The aroma is as unsubtle as one might expect, absolutely pumping out the chocolate and sweet strawberry tacked-on flavours. I guess nobody wants proper stout in something like this, so expect no bitterness. I never thought I would say this, but the flavour makes excellent use of the marshmallow. The pink fake-berry foretaste adds something resembling a tartness to a beer that's otherwise darkly sweet malt and frankly unnecessary dessertish chocolate. The different aspects do go to extremes, but they go together, and there's a degree of balance to the loud candyshop character on display here. While still being exactly the kind of beer it presents as, it also avoids any upsetting lack of cohesion. There's just enough roast to pull the chocolate fountain effect back from the brink of unpleasantness. A bit of coffee, for the tiramisu effect, or Amaretto almond, might have improved the overall picture, but I'm guessing those are just different Northern Monk beers. This one, as is, was simply good sticky dessert fun. That has a place.

They all have a place, I guess, and one can't have too many strong stouts, even when they're adulterated with pastry flavours. I assume Northern Monk does plainer ones, and properly bitter IPAs as well. They're just harder to spot in amongst the noise of the imports fridge with all its novelties.

Wies'n season

It's the time of year when German beer is that little bit more visible in the shops and speciality bars. There are the seasonal Oktoberfest variants, of course, but it seems to be an excuse for distributors and retailers to put other sorts in there as well, to fill out the lists and embellish the theme.

At Tapped, they added Faust Sommer Festbier to the draught selection, offering a generous half litre for €7, which isn't bad in Dublin these days. It's a handsome deep golden colour with fine white froth on top. The appearance and its 5.4% ABV had me thinking I was in for a malty one but, perhaps because it's meant for summer, this isn't as sweet as I expected. It's quite light-bodied and the flavour opens on a bite of bitter noble hops, giving celery and salad leaves. The malt side adds enough cookie to balance this without overpowering it, plus a breadcrust element for bonus crispness. The end result is a masterpiece of drinkability. I felt I was doing it a disservice by sitting over it and letting it get warm. Chug and enjoy.

The Altfränkisch Klosterbier from Klosterbrauerei Weissenohe is not a seasonal special -- I'm reasonably sure it's here all year round, but for some reason I've never tried it. This seemed like an opportune moment to squeeze in a review. It's another pretty beer, its auburn colour making it not quite a dark lager, but something different from a pale one. The aroma suggests darkness, leading on a sweet caramel malt aspect, with a light sprinkling of green hop. It's weighty too: chewy and full, much bigger than the previous beer but only 5.1% ABV. Hooray for inefficiency. The flavour places the caramel right in the centre, so while it may not look fully like a dark lager, it tastes like one. There's a vibe of doppelbock about this, and more than a little of the sticky, orange American-style Oktoberfestbier, which may be suitably autumnal but is not in its favour. Behind the residual sugar, the noble hops taste a bit musty, and the combination of sweet and stale makes for difficult drinking. I think this one gets filed with those German lagers which simply aren't to my taste. I don't encounter them as much as I used to, but they're still out there.

It's not just the importers who are treating us to lagers in October. Coming soon, I'll have a look at what a couple of Irish brewers have done recently in this space.

Capri-Sun, le déluge

Let's get this over with.

Anyone paying attention to the speciality beer market in Ireland lately will have noticed that we've picked up a fruit lager habit from the UK. The shelves are awash with them, all 4% ABV and in ranges that seem mostly centred on peach and blood orange. I tried a couple of them during the summer and, unsurprisingly, wasn't very impressed. With so many more to get through, I've decided to do it one post, ripping off the band-aid, so to speak.

I started at the O'Hara's end, and the remaining two from their Bohem line. Bohem Lager Cut With Peach is their head-on take on the archetype, Jubel, although I've never had that and it isn't sold here, so I'm not in a position to compare. This looks as one would expect, pale and mostly clear. The peach additive is very obvious from the aroma, and resembles a cosmetic more than real fruit. That could have made the beer sticky, but instead it's quite thin. The lager is present as fizz but very little else: there's no malt or hop character here, and I suspect that may be something of a theme going forward. There's the peach syrup, however, as advertised and subtle as a brick. It's not horrible, but I didn't find it enjoyable. The one-dimensional taste might be forgivable if there was more beer substance to the product. As is, there's very little to like here.

The blood orange one was covered in the post linked to above, and the Bohem trilogy is completed by Bohem Lager Cut With Lemon. Same visuals as the above, though the aroma is rather more subtle, hinting at sweet lemon flavouring, rather than honking it out. It's still a watery lager base, of course, and this time the additive doesn't do much to offset the blandness. It's the effect you get from a slice of lemon floating in your mineral water, and if that's what you want from your beer then you're in luck. I think I preferred the low-key approach here to the strong perfume of the peach, but that doesn't mean this one is good. It strikes me that anyone who actually wanted a lemon-flavoured lager would want it more lemony than this. If you're not going all-in with the syrup, what's the point?

The other series I started in the previous post was Wicklow Wolf's Cúpla Beers, with the peach one. Now I'm staring down the barrel of two more. Cúpla Beers: Lemon is as you might expect. It looks like a cloudy lemonade and smells similar, with a little bit of zest and a heap of sugar. The flavour opens with that, including an almost saccharine metallic tang, but it doesn't double down on the syrup. I found the peach version retained a trace of proper lager in the background and this does too, though you have to look for it. That's not at all to say it tastes like proper beer. I found the fruit flavour builds quite quickly, eventually gumming up the palate, and I was glad it's only a 330ml can. With all the low-calorie, low-sugar guff on the label, I suspect they intend customers to drink more than one of these at a time. I wouldn't.

Instead, and probably not advisedly, I moved right along to Cúpla Beers: Tropical. What does that mean? The label helpfully tells us that's passionfruit, pineapple and mango, presumably delivered in separate tubs rather than one big drum. I liked the look of this one: it's clearer and darker than the lemon, so at least looks more like beer. The aroma is very artificial, however, and likewise the flavour doesn't taste like any of the advertised fruit. Instead it's pure candyshop. I'm getting Jelly Babies, with overtones of Fruit Pastilles and the saccharine tang again, here calling to mind some weird off-brand chew sweets from the more disreputable sort of convenience store. Ghastly business. It's honkingly sweet, messily flavoured and utterly artificial. I defy anyone but the most hardened Kopparberg drinker to get through more than one of these. Ack. I've honestly tried to give all of these a fair assessment, and point out their positive sides. This has none. I take back any suggestion that going "all in with the syrup" is a good idea.

Rye River, to its credit, puts its name and logo on the cans of its series, albeit in a missable pale grey on white. They've called it 225° and it's "the angle of change", apparently. The change from proper beer, perhaps. Anyhoo, we'll start with 225° Peach. It's the pretty standard medium gold colour, with perhaps a slight greyish cast. The peach aroma is fantastically colourful, and enjoyably perfumish, missing any artificial twang. It's heavy textured and a bit syrupy, but the peach taste, like the aroma, is remarkably real. There's a fleshy sumptuousness up front, like ripe and juicy stonefruit. It finishes quickly, however, and where the competition sometimes put a bit of crisp lager character, here there's nothing. The peach is great, but that's all there is. A dash of Archers schnapps and a splash of soda water would give you a similar effect. Probably. Don't actually try that. Drink this if you like things -- but not necessarily beers -- that are peach flavoured.

After the peach, there must be blood orange, though the boffins of Celbridge have decided that can't carry a beer by itself, hence 225° Blood Orange & Yuzu. They've lost the grey element, and this is a bright and sunny yellow shade. So far all of these have tasted at least somewhat like a soft drink, but this is the most Fanta of the lot. And I don't mean that woke, hazy yellow Fanta that it was forced to become in the 1990s; I mean the lurid neon-orange sticky stuff that was little more than sugar, water and tartrazine, which made a man of me before the EEC banned it. Probably. Anyway, fake orange is how this smells, and that is heavily the flavour. It's real sugar to begin with but turns unpleasantly to saccharine by the end. The word "yuzu" makes me think of calm, peaceful and above all ordered, Japanese arboriculture. This beer has none of that. At best it's a retro soda; at worst a cloying sticky mess of clagging, clashing sugary citrus goop. The callback to childhood soft drinks was pleasant, though, even if I doubt it's pitched at ageing GenXers. Sorry if that's not helpful, but you probably already know whether or not you'll be buying this. And I can guess which.

From there to 225° Pineapple & Grapefruit. Maybe the citrus will give us some bitterness, I hoped. Nope. There's precious little by way of grapefruit in this. They might have used plenty of it, but the pineapple sweetness drowns it out. That leaves it tasting pretty much like pineappleade, though I will confess that the last time I drank a glass of that, it was delivered by the mineral man and came in a thick returnable glass bottle, so we're in retro soda territory again. Like a fizzy soft drink, it's mostly watery and, well, fizzy. There's virtually no beer character in this, and nothing resembling complexity, despite two different headline additives. I will grant that its tropical styling makes it refreshing, and maybe even a bit fun, but there are more interesting colourful fruity booze drinks in this space. That a proper brewery is reaching for some of that action is a bit cringe, as the alcopop drinkers like to say.

The range finishes with a curveball. Maybe they've been deliberately aiming to reference the kids' drinks of the 1980s, because the last of the set is 225° Blue Raspberry, a flavour known only in these parts from Slush Puppies. Sadly, the beer isn't blue, though I will note on the visual side that this had the best head retention of any of the ones covered. The first sip reminded me of the other context for blue raspberry: bubblegum. It tastes exactly like one of those purple gum spheres with the candy shell coating. I'm now convinced Rye River is after the ageing GenXers. There's no other reason for this to exist. I mean, the intense cloying nature of it means it doesn't work as a refreshing beer, and it goes without saying that it doesn't taste of beer at all, least of all lager. We're leaning fully in to the late 20th century's candy and I have nothing else to say about it: either you're entertained by that, or you'll hate this beer. I guess with the phrase "Blue Raspberry" we shouldn't have expected anything else, but I'm still shocked by the brazenness of it.

"Brazen" is probably the best overall descriptor for the 225° set. They go hard with the flavouring and give no quarter to the beer side. That's an approach, though I don't know if it's within the spirit of this whole genre, where there's usually at least a token nod in the direction of actual beer.

Rí-Rá has just one contribution to the form, peach flavoured and with a horror of an AI-generated label. That's not how leaves work, you stupid clanker. Juicy Peach is more subtle than the other peach ones. The fruit doesn't quite shout, though it is unmistakably there, particularly in the aroma. On the flavour, it's muted; everything is muted, in fact. There's a very basic macrolager crispness: that's fizzy, with all the character of mineral water. There's no more than a dash of peach flavouring, which jumps quickly in then out of the taste, leaving it plain and dry at the end. Maybe I should be thankful that this isn't horribly sugared up, but I don't see the point of it. I suddenly have a new appreciation for Rye River's lash-in-the-syrup approach. At least that made me feel something.

The fruit lager phenomenon must be making enough of an impact in Ireland that Aldi (for whom the UK and Ireland are the same operation) decided we needed their take on Jubel as well. Confusingly, it says "Anti Establishment" on the side of the can, a reminder that their non-mainstream beer knock-offs were originally intended to copy BrewDog, of blessed memory.

Joiva Lager is the non-infringing name they've come up with, and we'll begin, of course, with the Peach Session. It smells very perfumey, though not specifically of peach, more a general fruity cosmetic or lip-balm vibe. One major point of difference is the texture: it's soft, at almost nitrogenated level, which really helps its drinkability. What doesn't help is the intense sweetness. As with the aroma, it's at a distant remove from real peach, while stopping short of saccharine chemical concentrate. This is more like a ready-made dessert or preserve; something that did involve real peaches somewhere early in the process. While it's a big sweet hit up front, it finishes decently quick and doesn't cloy as it goes along. It doesn't taste like proper lager, but if you are going to add the syrup to one, this has hit a fairly innocuous level of concentration.

Peach, as we have discovered, is the easy level. For today's finisher, at long last, it's Joiva Lager: Mango Session.  It's a pale chap, looking clear and innocent and yellow in the glass while smelling pleasantly cake-like, with essence from the baking aisle which could pass as tropical fruit, or a number of other sweet-treat-adjacent aromas. I will admit that it's been a long time since I've eaten a piece of actual mango, but I'm reasonably sure they don't taste like this. There's a strong element of girly cosmetics again, overly sweet and plainly beyond juice into processed concentrate. While it lacks any proper beer characteristics, it doesn't build unpleasantly, so ends up tasting like a drink-and-forget alcopop. That's a failure for a beer, but for a cheap supermarket ready-to-drink it's fine. File it with the Malibu cocktail knock-offs and everyone's happy.

I didn't think there would be eleven beers when I started this post. I sincerely hope I have, as the kids like to say, catched 'em all. However, I'm also painfully aware that brand extensions are very much a thing in this market, and of how easy it would be to make new versions of these using the same recipe but a different tub of gunk. Just give me the winter off, breweries. Please?

Up my Street

After a series of not-very-well-received (by me) "normal" beers, Wide Street makes a triumphant return to the sour game with Wildwood, a 5-year bourbon-aged affair, and a surprise find on the taps at The Porterhouse last month. It pours a gorgeous rose-gold shade and smells decadently of fine sherry: unmistakably oaked though without the honking vanilla of fresh bourbon.

The body is fuller than I would expect for a highly attenuated beer of just 5.5% ABV, and that gives it a pleasing slickness, helping accentuate the taste. The vinous theme continues, here more Burgundy than sherry, with notes of cherry, raspberry and redcurrant. And while it's plenty sharp, it's not harshly vinegary. The whole is mature, balanced and refined, reminding me somewhat of Rodenbach Classic. Excellent work, and a welcome return to form. I hope there's more like this waiting in the vessels at Ballymahon.

The brewery has, however, also produced another more mainstream offering, if you can call something badged as "west coast pils" that. Cheat Code is 5% ABV, hopped (generously, we hope) with Nectaron, and pours pale and quite hazy. The aroma immediately offers that fragrant, slightly floral, edge of stonefruit, where peach and apricot start to resemble lychee and white plum. Yum. Sometimes that indicates that this is really a pale ale in a thin disguise, but from the first sip this is clearly a proper pilsner.

A dry crisp bite precedes all flavour, and it's light bodied. Its fruity character comes entirely from the hops, and isn't a function of accidentally warm fermentation. That takes a moment or two to materialise, and isn't the juice-fest implied by the aroma. Instead, it's bitter, in quite a grassy, herbal, noble sort of way. I wasn't expecting that, but it's tasty. Although the buying guides for Nectaron all emphasise its tropical character, it is a descendent of Saaz, and I think that side of the family is manifesting in the flavour here. The grass tang coats the palate and gives the beer a surprisingly long finish, even with quite a thin body and little malt character. I had fun with this. It's first and foremost a well-crafted pilsner. Any modern hop colour on display is a bonus.

Two very different beers here, both excellent. Neither is an IPA, you say? Why, I hadn't noticed. I'm sure that's merely a coincidence.

Yes, today, Satan

Duvel's Tripel Hop IPA range is a fun bunch of beers, and I like that the brewery has resisted the urge to fire out new ones every couple of months. No need. The Citra and Cashmere regulars are plenty to enjoy. At the same time, I don't object to them being joined by Tripel Hop Krush, although I notice it is somewhat weaker than its 9.5% ABV siblings, and indeed regular Duvel, as it's only 8.4% ABV.

In the glass it's pale and hazy, as Duvel tends to be, and the dry-hopping doesn't leap out in the aroma, though there's a hint of tropical fruit in with the more typical Belgian fruit esters. The flavour mixes those two sides deftly. While it may be weaker in alcohol, it still tastes plenty strong, the warm fluffy malt mattress forming a firm base for all that follows. Krush's tropical candy effect lands on the palate simultaneously with a harder old-world hop bitterness and the white pepper and peachy apricot of an unmistakable Belgian fermentation. It's a contrast, but there's no clash, and it's neither a New England dessert IPA nor a sternly powerful Belgian thumper, but does show the good elements of both.  

I don't think it's quite as bright and bold as the other two in the series -- especially Cashmere -- but it belongs, bringing exactly the right mix of Belgian strong golden ale and American IPA. This used to be the future of beer, and now it's pleasingly retro. Either is fine with me, and I'm happy to wait for a few years with these three before a fourth version is created.