Postponed journey

Musgrave's Journeyman range has been around for a while now at SuperValu and Centra. It's brewed by Stationworks and bears a cosmetic resemblance to the brewery's own Foxes Rock line. With the recent uptick in beer quality at Stationworks I decided it was high time I tried them.

I started out on Journeyman Session IPA, the lightest of the bunch at 4.5% ABV. The colour was a surprise: a bright and even orange colour, showing no sign of the over-processing one might expect of an own-label supermarket beer with over twelve months on the best before. The aroma is sharper than I expected: a bracing squirt of lemon juice up the nostrils. Candy malts emerge, tentatively, on tasting: tangy orange travel sweets. They're overset by a stronger citric bitterness; those lemons again, this time acidic enough to add a slightly vomity or aspirin note to proceedings. That was stronger when the beer was fridge-fresh, but disappears into the background as it warms up and balances out. It's not Ireland's greatest session IPA by any measure, but it is a characterful and flawless hoppy quaffer and worth dropping into your 4-for-€10.

It seems a little odd to have a Journeyman Pale Ale in a range with a Session IPA but here it is, just a smidge stronger and a little darker. There's a pleasant orange sherbet aroma which develops on tasting into a herbal bathsalts tang alongside the fruit. A smooth lemon-tea tannic character rounds it out. The texture is just heavy enough to give all of these flavours room to move while still keep it light and thirst quenching. It shares quite a lot of its character with the Session IPA but is better balanced, I think  While not terribly complex, this is enjoyable and tasty with plenty of hop oomph.

Next is Journeyman IPL, which ordinarily I would have opened first, but I decided to follow the ABV up from 4.6% to 5.2%. It's another hazy one, though this time a pale gold. For a refreshing change, this IPL does actually taste and feel like a lager. There's a clean crispness at the heart of it, offering refreshingly dry and husky grain. And to be honest I found myself wishing they didn't bother India-Paling it. The hopping is harshly metallic: a similar profile to the session IPA but rendered too intense by the cleaner base. I found myself trying to ignore the acidity and pay attention to the decent helles that underpins it all. That didn't work, though. This is just unbalanced and difficult to drink. It's trying too hard, but maybe that's just in the nature of the style.

From lager back to ale, and Journeyman IPA, at the same strength but coming in a dinky little can. This is thicker, darker, and altogether more serious looking than the previous. With the thickness comes the dankness and there's a real old-school west-coast vibe here: fresh American hops, oily and green, with peppery spices. At the end there's lovely sharp bite and I'm pretty sure it's the same metallic kick found in the others, just better integrated and given something substantial against which to provide balance. This is the best of the set, and in the own-brand battle, up there with Rye River's Grafter's IPA for Dunnes, if a little off the pace against their Crafty Brewing IPA for Lidl.

Overall, this lot met most of my expectations and in a couple of cases exceeded them. Well played, Stationworks.