Faithful to the end

From Fidelity I went straight to UnderDog where they were pouring a few festival-adjacent beers, including Jackie O's Carrots & Sticks. Because a bourbon-aged Belgian-style golden ale at 13% ABV is a brilliant idea after five straight hours of beer against the clock.

A dun orange colour, it felt more like a barley wine to me, packed with toffee and vanilla with a crunchy brown sugar sweetness. There is a real carrot cake quality too, partly suggested by the name, but also from a ginger or cinnamon spicing. That goes some way to prevent it getting cloying, but this is definitely one for the end of your session. The booziness leaves no doubt you'll be paying for it later.

The appearance of J. Wakefield at Fidelity was a highlight for a lot of punters, and a short time later UnderDog later had its Haterade. The menu board was no more forthcoming than "fruit punch sour", and that it's 6% ABV and a princely €8.95 for a small TeKu.

The liquid turned out to be a lurid pink colour, hazy like one of those syruped-up Belgian wheat beers. The aroma suggests something cleaner, however: a squeeze of cherry and the promise of serious sourness.

Promise delivered: the first sip gives an almost harsh acidity, a back-of-the-tongue tartness I associate with the more full-on sort of Berliner weisse or gose. That's not the main act, however. Next to the sourness is a veritable riot of pink fruit silliness. To the maraschino cherry is added raspberry, mango, pineapple and even prickly pear. The sweetness would be too intense to deal with, were it not for the super-clean souring. It tastes like it should be an intense, sticky, claggy candy-bomb, but somehow it manages to avoid that.

This is a supremely daft beer but it must have caught me on a good day as I really enjoyed it.

Fidelty will be very welcome to come back next year if it brings all the peripheral beers with it. Might even save myself the cost of a ticket.