Southpaws

A quintet from Colorado's Left Hand today, all courtesy of the 4-for-€10 at Stephen Street News.

Wheels Gose 'Round is the almost-punning opening entry. I didn't read there were raspberries in it, nor notice the cartoon raspberries on the can, so got a bit of a surprise when it poured a pinky purple, topped by a pale pink head. It's branded for the brewery's charity cycling team and I guess that's why it's a light 4.4% ABV with a sweet soda-like flavour to match. You really have to use your imagination to pick out any sourness or salt, but I think the latter is really there at least. Coriander isn't even listed among the ingredients. Of course raspberry dominates the flavour, as it tends to, though I think the accompanying lemon peel helps rein it in and gives it an extra tart citric bite. For all the sweetness, it's clean and not sticky, but it's still very far from tasting like a proper gose, or even a beer at all, really.

I paid closer attention to the ingredients of Juicy Goodness before I opened it, learning that it's not a fruited pale ale as I assumed, but a golden ale which achieves all of its juice through hops alone. How much juice? Not very much. It's spicy at first: peppery, like grapefruit rind can be, then there's a savoury seed-like taste, with unpleasant overtones of burnt plastic. The citrus fruit emerges from under this and it's syrupy-sweet, more like cordial than juice. Though an innocent clear gold and a modest 5.5% ABV, this is a little bit nasty, the perfumed candy-and-plastic double act lasting long into the finish. It's not clean, not refreshing, and certainly not juice.

No ambiguities about Left Hand IPA: it's an IPA. I wish they'd told me it was can-conditioned, though, as I got a few cheeky skeins of yeast murking up my glass at the end of the pour. The aroma is quite muted while the flavour is strongly bitter. There's a little bit of that plastic and then a harsh and bitter effect: boiled spinach and candle wax. Some candied limes take a little of the edge off, but it's still largely edge, lashing the tongue with its sharpness without any fresh fruit or sweet malt to lighten the load. Unusually for an American beer over here, this has a best-by rather than a packaged-on date which means I don't know when it was canned but the brewery thinks it'll be OK for another two and half months. That leaves me wondering if it had any hop subtlety to begin with as there's certainly none now.

Months after these three were consumed and reviewed, a new set arrived in. It included Polestar Pilsner, which claims to be German-style but looked much more the wan and watery yellow of an American light lager. It's not that bad, but I don't think I'd deem it German-grade either. While there's a very decent noble-hopped grassy and herbal bitterness, it is rather thin: inappropriately so for 5.5% ABV. The texture is soft rather than crisp, which means the hop bitters sit and build on the tongue instead of letting it be scrubbed clean. This beer has a certain character of its own, but not quite enough, I felt. I kept waiting for the flavour to unfold, to assert itself, and that never happened. Pilsner doesn't have to be the quaff-and-forget beer style, but this example is.

I had higher hopes for Pixan, a pepper porter, two words I'm a fan of and there's no reason they wouldn't go together well. It looked good in the glass: a crystalline black with ruby highlights and an off-white head. The flavour, again, doesn't quite work. The chilli is properly spicy, scorching the back of the throat a second or two after swallowing. It's set on a pleasant chocolate sweetness which complements it well. But. They seems to have decided that smoke would be a good addition. I don't know if peated malt is how they've achieved this, but the harsh phenols suggest it might be. Instead of adding a sophisticated complexity this just makes it taste, again, of burnt plastic, really stripping the beer of class and poise. And again it's thinner than it should be: 7.2% ABV suggests a substance that this just doesn't show. It's not offensive, and the long chilli afterburn is actively enjoyable, but it seems that a few minor tweaks could have made it an altogether better experience.

A bonus sixth beer arrived out of sequence via Mace on South Circular Road. This is Saison au Genièvre, described by my server as a gin-lover's dream. The juniper is definitely apparent: rounded and juicy berries are at the centre. There's a strong layer of seasoning, showing saison's white pepper and thick salty brine, and it's that thickness that is the beer's downfall. At 6.8% ABV it falls into the "strong saison" bracket, and the end of it I don't like. It's too heavy and cloying, the spices not getting enough clear space to spark on the palate, drowned by a weight of malt that's not sweet or sticky, but is just too...much. I want everything to be the same except drier and cleaner, and proabably about 2% ABV lighter. In gin terms, this has been prepared with a very heavy tonic.

Not a great bunch, this. The fizzy pop clone was the best of them, which is frankly a surprise from an established player in one of America's beeriest states.