Points of order

A rapid catch-up with some beers from London brewery Five Points today. They've been fairly throwing them at the Irish market and I can't hope to keep up. Here's what's in the backlog.

There's a series of single-hopped cask bitters which have been popping up at UnderDog in recent months. The only one to coincide with me visiting was Green Hop Fuggles, and I'm on record as not being much of a fan of this classic English variety, so I was apprehensive going in. I shouldn't have been. It's lovely. I suspect a lot of Fuggles went into this as it's sharply herbal and bitter, to the point of being spicy, and none of the nasty soil flavour I associate most with Fuggles. There's a decently sweet base to balance it, with notes of toffee and fruit candy. I tend to prefer a bit more tannin in my brown bitters, but this one is perfect without it. It's still English bitter with the volume turned all the way up.

I wasn't that impressed by the last fruited pale ale from the brewery, Field Day, back in April. I still took a chance on JUPA when it landed, claiming pineapple and mango flavours on the front of the tin but not listing either of them on the ingredients. I guess we have to use our imaginations. It's a pale hazy orange in the glass, with not much aroma. I braced myself for the wave of fruit in the flavour, but no: exactly like Field Day it's all savoury sesame and caraway; aggressively so, drying the palate and offering only the faintest, distant citrus fruit. Not offensive, but definitely disappointing.

The brewery's fifth birthday saw a slew of collaboration beers land in at UnderDog. I began working through them with the Table Beer, a copper-coloured offering at a daring 2.2% ABV, with Wiper & True sharing responsibility. I got an odd tinny tang from this, like you'd find in a cheap English supermarket bitter at around the same strength. It's saved somewhat by mild grapefruit and a surprisingly rich layer of toffee, serving to make it helpfully thirst-quenching. But that metallic tang kept niggling me all the way down.

I thought I was on safer ground with the Magic-Rock-assisted IPL, failing to notice the formidable 6.5% ABV. It's not shy about reminding you either: there's all the syrupy thickness of a super-strength lager with a powerful, and slightly harsh, bitter finish. "Tropical" said the breweries' description, something I didn't get from it at all. It tasted classically German to me; a weighty, chewy märzen or Dortmunder. I'm sceptical about the India Pale Lager style to begin with, and this was a classic example of the "India Pale" being superfluous.

Good old Belgian Wit, that most reliable and accessible of styles, wasn't going to let me down, was it? This one, aided by Burning Sky, was a middle-of-the-road 5% ABV. But that's where the safe and mainstream aspects end. Witbier generally has a gentle citrus bite; this one was pure meringue pie perfection, concentrating the lemon sweetness into a luxuriously smooth confection. And yet it's not hot or sweet, the dessert aspect giving way to an aperitif (stay with me) full of spicy black pepper, thyme and rosemary. The texture is soft yet light and the combination is a bright and summery zippy homemade-lemonade thing. I have a tendency to fall back on the classics with witbier -- St Bernardus and even Hoegaarden. If you're going to tamper with it, however, here's a masterclass in how.

The most outré of the lot is the Blueberry Sour on which our own YellowBelly collaborated. Deep purple with a cerise head, it lays on the fruit flavour strongly, giving a first impression of fizzy Ribena. It's only 4.3% ABV and is quite thin, but turns jammier as it warms up. There is a real blueberry flavour and a persistent Berliner weisse sourness, so it's exactly as advertised, even if it doesn't do anything very exciting within that.

We finish on a bottle of Old Greg's Barely Wine from 2016. It poured iceman-flat, a hazy dark red colour. There's still a strong aroma: a toffee and sherry buzz that reminds me of English classic Thomas Hardy's. The "wine" part of the name gets a proper outing in the flavour, a raisin and cedar richness, like something dark and red and Iberian. The "barley" bit elbows past that, bring malt's caramel and treacle. A scratch of old-world bitter green hops finishes it off. The sweetness is maybe a little too much in charge, but that's a minor quibble: it's an excellent beer. I fully expect later vintages are worth ageing.

And right on cue, a fresh bottle arrived at a bottle share, via brewery rep Francesca. Though labelled as the 2018 vintage, this was brewed in late 2017. It was very different to the above, starting with the colour: a bright orange-amber instead of wine-red. It showed a zesty, spritzy flavour on top of a toffee base: a bite of satsuma and kumquat. There's much less warmth here, despite the ABV climbing from 9.2% to 12.4, and there's no sign of the classy richness of the older one. I expect that will develop in time, though I can't imagine they'll end up identical. It's tasty now, and likely to remain so for a number of years. Win-win.

One of your classic mixed bags here. At least Five Points can't be accused of standing still.