Life's rich pageant

My drinking life isn't all festivals, though it might seem like that on this blog lately. I do manage to fit the odd pint or can in between them. Like this lot, for example.

I don't know what it is about the term "wheat IPA" but I really expected the wheat to come first and the hops to be an afterthought. That's not the case with Bill's Wheat IPA, released earlier this year from Rye River. It's a middle-of-the-road 5.2% ABV and pours a glaringly bright pale yellow, but with only a gentle haze. "Wheat" doesn't always mean hazy in this mixed-up world of beer we have now. The aroma is softly citric, suggesting lemon sherbets and sweet meringue pies. The flavour has more of an edge on it: a squeeze of lime juice, some naughty herbal dankness and a savoury edge of fried onion. What the wheat brings is the softness: a luxurious pillowy texture which deftly offsets any hop sharpness. This is a non-bitter IPA without any of the New England trappings, and as such is yet another complex, high-end yet accessible Rye River beer, to be filed right alongside Francis' Big Bangin' and the Lidl American Brown Ale. Like the supermarket beers, the branding is understated but there's finely-spun gold inside.

With the announcement that Whiplash is staging a festival in July came a pair of new releases. We begin with Melody Day, a 2.8% ABV "micro IPA", like their award-winning Northern Lights, this time using Enigma and Simcoe hops. It's a murky pale orange, topped by a loose fluffy white head. The aroma mixes citrus pith and juice pleasingly, while the texture is surprisingly full for the strength, continuing the fun and fluffy theme. I got garlic heavily in the foretaste, building to a lime juice crescendo before fading to out leave a gentler vanilla, lemon curd and mango pulp sweetness. Just like Northern Lights this does a great job of squeezing real New England IPA character into a tiny package. The only telltale is the mouthfeel, but that lightness just means it's easy to drink and very refreshing. Perfect for outdoor summer sessions.

At the opposite end of the scale there's Nice Dream, yet another Whiplash double IPA, this one benefiting from Galaxy and Amarillo hops and the usual 8% ABV. Even cold from the keg the aroma was striking: a tart mandarin pith effect. The texture is thick and creamy, in keeping with the hazy yellow appearance. There's a layer of savoury yeast, but nothing drastic; a bitterness that's all hop aggression and quite charming with it; but the centre is those oranges, oscillating between spritzy orangeade, thicker cordial and real fruit flesh. No alcohol heat either. This is highly enjoyable, though the harsher elements do contribute more to the aftertaste than I'd like. Overall, though, a very decent example of Whiplash's stock-in-trade style.

12 Acres has tried its hand at trendy beer with its first canned hazy IPA: The Far Side. This is darker than most, a deep orange rather than yellow. The aroma is more like a weissbier than an IPA, providing a hot hit of butane and ripe bananas. The flavour offers more of that, and a sharp gastric acidity, but no fresh hops, no vanilla or garlic: none of the attributes of New England IPA, for better or worse. "Tropical fruit flavour and a juicy bitterness" says the can. Nope. There's maybe a slight tang of orange juice, but the overall picture is definitely more banana than citrus. The texture is moderately smooth, so I'll give them that. It's not a great beer, though, and definitely not a good example of the genre.

The Eight Degrees Rack 'Em Up series continues with Blue Ball: an unlikely combination of Vienna lager and cold-brew coffee. It's only 4.5% ABV and a pale yellow. I always think Vienna lagers should be darker, but that's just me. It's an interesting effect. There's the crisp and clean malt-forward lager, and then a different sort of crispness from the dark roasted coffee. The finish brings the coffee's oily warmth out, for an almost stout-like effect. I don't know that it works per se, but it's certainly engaging. Those oils, I think, turn it a little cloying by the time the can is half way through. I suspect the underlying lager doesn't have enough going on by itself to counterbalance them. This recipe is suited to being a one-off novelty but no more than that. "Anything but stout" was the brief. Most breweries use stout as the base when adding coffee for a good reason. Thanks to Bradley's of Cork for the freebie can.

Staying in Cork, Black's of Kinsale's latest is Pineapple Express, a sequel of sorts to the OG Kush cannabis-infused IPA they had at Alltech. It's a bright orange colour and a big 6% ABV. I'm certain I detected pineapple from the aroma, but that must just be the power of suggestion in the name as there's no actual pineapple involved in the recipe. That's backed up by a flavour which is in no way sweet, instead being bitter and spicy: a jolt of nutmeg before gentler herbal coconut. While assertive in its hopping, it's not severe, and gets extra complexity from sparks of resiny incense. The texture is properly thick, allowing the hop oils to linger long on the palate. This is really good, clean, hop fun with no perceptible gimmicks.

Meanwhile Franciscan Well did the full-spectrum media launch with Pilgrims, a new pale ale. It shares its 4% ABV with the previous release, Archway: a beer which, for me, torpedoed the remnant of the brand's credibility last year with its vapid taste and try-too-hard marketing. Still, as always, everything gets a fair shake on this blog and I approached my freebie growler with an open mind and a clean palate. Diacetyl. This pale copper job is packed to the gunwales with sickly, buttery diacetyl, especially in the aroma, but stuffed into the flavour as well. It's hard to believe a professional tasting panel for a multinational corporation gave this the thumbs up. It's not heavy and slick, however: for balance there's quite an astringent tannic dryness, while the hops bring a hard, metallic, boiled-sprout tang. To my mind it's closest to the more severe sort of English bitter: Shepherd Neame on a particularly bad day. No, I did not like Pilgrims and I think the recipe is horribly flawed. I'm sure that won't prevent it selling by the bucketload, however.

Following Galway Bay's Crispmas Hell from last December was a new lager for spring, simply called Helles. It's the same 5% ABV, though entirely without haze this time. I thought it might have been literally the same beer, left lagering until now, but the hops have been changed from Mittelfrüh to Saaz, and the water tweaked as well. It's on the dark side for the style and goes big on grassy bitterness (no surprise), the malt only arriving late: sweet and cakey. I was wary of being served my pint in a frozen mug, but it did the beer no harm, and suited the warm afternoon that was in it. This balanced but bitter job is definitely a better fit for summer than Christmas.

And then along came yet another 5% ABV helles from Galway Bay, this one called Trellis. It has been given the distinction of the Motu blend of New Zealand hops plus oats and flaked wheat. The clean lager base is left largely undisturbed, offering soda-water minerals and faint golden-syrup malt. From this follows a layer of spinachy hop bitterness and a softer, sweeter, white-grape effect. It's interesting, enjoyable; but an improvement on the basics of helles? I don't think so. I needed to pause to enjoy the hops, catching the bitterness in the foretaste and the long fruit finish. I prefer a helles I can just knock back. As a hoppy lager, however, it's well ahead of most of those billed as "India Pale" versions.

New from Kinnegar is Barrel Hunter, the latest in their Brewers At Play experimental series. No barrels were involved, but Hunter was: this is the third beer I've had which utilises the Irish heritage malt. It's 5.5% ABV, a pale orange with a slight haze, and offers an intriguing perfume aroma. This expands on tasting into a mix of sharp mandarin citrus, sweet rosewater and spicy cedar. The latter is the strangest feature, lending it almost the feel of a saison. Though the carbonation is high, the texture is decently full, with a definite oiliness. It reminded me a little of a bitter from an old-school English brewery, one of the ones with a very distinctive house yeast. I can't tell you what produced the alchemy in this beer: the exotic barley, a quirk of the yeast, or something else. It's an engaging fellow, anyway, and  -- bottom line -- enjoyable to drink.

My exploration of Boundary's current range continues with Tobi, the first lager of theirs I've tried. They're claiming a Bavarian influence here, although it's a pilsner. The ABV is a helles-like 5.1% and it's an only slightly misty shade of polished gold. The head is promising at first but fades all too quickly. Similarly, the hopping provides a fresh herbal aroma then vanishes on tasting. Instead, the flavour is quite fruity: not full-on banana, but with a sweet edge of apricot and fig. Thankfully the finish is quick and the stickiness short-lived. I think I would have got more out of this had I been drinking it cold-cold, allowing it to be the clean and crisp refresher it's probably meant as. At a slightly higher ale temperature it just doesn't have enough going on.

Staying up north, a collaboration between Beer Hut and Lacada next: 2 Player, a double IPA. Taster kindly provided by Simon. A sizeable 8.1% ABV and lurid yellow in colour, it pumps out strong and raw red onion as the aroma. The flavour is mellower, mercifully, showing sweet orange cordial at the centre, with the onion relegated to a balancing contrast role. The use of lactose gives it a certain heaviness, but not an excessive amount, and there's a pleasing lack of alcohol heat. I'm not sure subtlety was meant to be part of the spec here, but it achieves it, being a calm and measured example of this extreme style.

If your electrolytes need balancing, YellowBelly have just the beer for you with Tide's Out, doubling down on the saline, being a seaweed gose, brewed in collaboration with Neptune Brewery of Liverpool. It's a pale clear golden colour and the aroma and foretaste are dry and biscuity, like a cream cracker or waterbiscuit. Tangy salt and herbs drift in behind this, adding a briney slickness to the mouthfeel, ensuring that 4% ABV doesn't mean it's thin. The sourness is a contributor to the tang as well, lightly done with a gentle gooseberry or redcurrant flavour. Overall it's a crisp and tasty example of the style and, despite the kerr-azy added ingredient, not far off the archetype.

"Blood orange ice pop" is a new sort of IPA for me, delivered via the YellowBelly-Wicklow Wolf joint Super Soaker. We continue the extra-low ABV trend with just 2.7% here. It's a hazy beige-orange colour with a loose and lackadaisical head. The milky lactose is very apparent from its aroma, with the hops providing more of a spicy note than fruit or bitterness. The flavour is almost savoury: pepper and nutmeg against a creamy texture on a sugary base layer, like one of those eggy winter cocktails. The orange side of the equation is faint, with just a trace of sticky tutti-frutti candy and a surprisingly hard bitter-hop kick right at the end. Possibly it's this last element that makes the beer remarkably drinkable for all the syrupy, gungy goings-on. Maybe the low alcohol helps. I can't say I was a huge fan of this, but that mix of spice and fruit certainly held my attention for the full 440ml.

We crank the ABV up to 3.8% for the next Wicklow Wolf -- Eden session IPA: so powerful it has to be packaged in a smaller can. This one feels like the ABV, being much thinner without the benefit of lactose. The oats seem to be asleep on the job. The clear amber colour was unexpected in this Age of Haze, though the clean flavour was a pleasant side effect. I'm not sure I really enjoyed said flavour, though. The can promises juice from a combination of El Dorado, Chinook and Cashmere, but I got a dry and grainy tannic effect with lots of husk and crust. There are mild sherbet overtones, but nothing I'd call juicy, and its rather austere astringent qualities are accentuated by that overarching thinness. There's a definite lack of fun in this bony, scowling fellow.

Shane from DOT kindly delivered a couple of bottles to me at the weekend, including this Rum White Barrel Aged Lager. I wasn't a fan of the last go at barrel-ageing lager so approached this one with caution. The strength is the same 5.2% ABV, suggesting it's the same base beer, but obviously we have rum barrels this time instead of wine. Nevertheless, it tastes much more like wine than rum, showing the beautiful apricot and gooseberry juiciness of a delightful summery new world white. The fizz is quite busy, which adds to the crispness but interfered with my enjoyment of all that lovely fruit. A tiny peppery spice kicks in before it clears off the palate lickety-split. It's a lovely beer and would make for an excellent aperitif, though I'd be quite happy necking it in great big pints too.

And speaking of great big pints, hot on the heels of the new Hope beers at Rye River Rising (see last week's posts) comes another new pair in hop-forward styles. We're up to 14 in the brewery's Limited Edition series, and that's an India Pale Lager of 4.5% ABV. There was a warning signal in the aroma: vanilla and raspberry suggesting something more New Englandish than lagery. The flavour is sweet, no question, but not the way I feared. It's mostly an orangey spritz, with extra thick hop resins and a hard grassy bitterness at the end. This is enjoyable, very full-flavoured in the hoppy Hope way, but it earns my usual complaint of not being lagery enough. I think it's the resins which undo the mature cleanness that lagering brings.

Hop Hash IPA is the brewery's summer seasonal, a sequel, I guess, to last summer's magnificent Hop Hash DIPA. It's beautifully clear, if a little headless. Pith dominates the flavour: jaffa, shading to grapefruit, with a lacing of sweeter mandarin and satsuma. All the citrus, basically, with only a slight savoury edge of red onion. The heavy texture suggests more than 5.5% ABV, but like the previous one I think the effect is down to its hop oils. Much like its DIPA predecessor, this really gets the most out of hops: the essence, the very quiddity. Great stuff this hash.

Finally, I have been a bit rude about the brut IPA style of late, but I still wasn't going to turn down a freebie can of the new limited edition Boyne Brewhouse one when it was offered recently. Et Tu Brut IPA is the chucklesome name, and it comes in a highly informative can with lots of vital statistics. One of same is the belter of an ABV: 7%. It pours the requisite pale yellow colour and the high alcohol is apparent from both the texture and taste: for a beer defined by its dryness, it is considerably sweet and sticky. At the front of the flavour is quite a harsh lemon-rind bitterness, turning to hard candy by the end. But that's all you really get: once again with brut IPA, I think enzymes have allowed the character to be fermented out of it. What's left is OK to drink but I don't really get the point of it. Et tu? indeed.

Woah that's a lot of beers. I'll pause for breath here, but there's lots more new Irish beer still to be covered. They, and you, will just have to wait.