Cheeky takeaway

An accident of the new Ryanair booking policy meant I had a check-in bag on the home leg of my recent trip to Leeds. To use that, I paid a visit to The Little Leeds Beerhouse, a small unit on an upper gallery of the Corn Exchange. Murky beer in colourful cans is very much the speciality here, but there are a couple of taps too. While making my picks I sipped on a Steady Rolling Man, a pale ale from DEYA. Possibly even their flagship.

I couldn't find what it's hopped with but my money is on Mosaic as juicy tropical mango is the principal flavour. This is presented in a light and thirst-quenching format. It's not very complex, however, making me wonder if it's just a single hop. There's a slight edge of sesame seed and a bit of yeast fuzz blurring the body and adding a pinch of grit to the flavour. I would still class it as clean, however, and straightforward easy-drinking. 5.2% ABV is maybe a little strong for what you get, but a full pint of this, or indeed a 440ml can, would be no hardship.

First of the cans to be opened when I got home was another DEYA job: Dust My Broom. It's a pale ale too, this time 5.8% ABV. Though opaquely hazy, obvs, it's a bright canary-yellow colour. The head is promising at first but fades out annoyingly quickly. There's quite a hot herbal thing in the aroma: eucalyptus and rosemary. Not very inviting. The flavour is spicy rather than herbal, showing nutmeg and mint. There's a savoury finish, but none of the promised juiciness. Amazing how often that happens. There should be a helpline. All-in, this is quite a bland affair. The texture is nice and fluffy but that's about the best thing that can be said about it.

Verdant is next, with a 6.5% ABV IPA called Neal Gets Things Done. No qualms about the head here: there's stacks of the stuff. Underneath it's a juice-like orange colour and smells powerfully of garlic. The flavour is more oniony: the leathery green outer layer, in particular. A sharpness follows behind this; a leafy acidity which I'm guessing is hop-derived, but doesn't taste like happy hops. Lime rind, maybe, if you close your eyes and think tropical thoughts while drinking. Savoury sesame finishes it off without providing any further fruit-flavoured relief, and a boozy heat settles in the belly afterwards. "The latest juicy explosion from the juicy explosion specialists" exclaims the marketing. They're either lying, wildly optimistic, or I'm missing a receptor gene. Either way, this is another one not for the likes of me.

The next beer is my first from London Brewer Pressure Drop. LLBH didn't have the famous Pale Fire so that'll have to wait for its début on these pages. Instead I got Bosko, another 6.5% ABV IPA. The label boasts it's in the west coast style but it's hazy, though on the dark side of orange. It suffers from that perennial canned IPA problem where you can't see the dregs when pouring, so that landed me with some unwelcome extra haze. The aroma is a pleasant mix of marmalade and crisp biscuits. The flavour takes a bit of getting used to, however. Where "west coast" implies a definite cleanness, this is fuzzy like a New Englander. It has a similar level of fruit sweetness, the citric snap buried under candy fluff. It's OK, just a little rough around the edges. A few turns in the centrifuge would do it no harm at all.

It had been a while since my last Burning Sky beer so I picked up a couple of those in their old-fashioned glass cans. First out is Arise, a session IPA. It's a zesty chappie, pale hazy yellow with lots of fizz and a sharp kick of lemon spritz. The brewery's acumen with farmhouse fermentation is discernible in the background dryness and a touch of wild spicing that comes out as it warms. It's OK, but I found it hard to get past the thinness and gas; a session on this would be hard work, I think. And I was surprised when I checked the ABV to find it's a full 4.4% -- it could pass for a whole point lower. Other breweries do this kind of thing better, and perhaps IPA is not Burning Sky's area of expertise, which is fine. Next!

Saison Provision is one of their well-regarded classics, and I was a little surprised to discover I hadn't tried it before, only the gooseberry-infused version. The geuze-like aroma surprised me, though if I'd read the label beforehand I'd have known that it has Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces added, and is foudre-aged: that explains the smell perfectly. It's not as sour to taste as a geuze, however, showing no more than a mild yoghurty kick. There's a lemon tartness, and a soft wheaty grain flavour marking it as a saison, but it lacks the earthy spices that the style does best. Meadowy flowers and grass come through in the finish. For me, this falls between two stools, sacrificing the hallmarks of great saison for that sour and funky character, but not doing it as well as other high-end mixed fermentation examples. Maybe some ageing would calm it down and smooth out the sharper edges.

The branding may be exciting, but thrills are thin on the ground flavourwise with this lot.