The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 10: Whiplash

We hadn't heard much from Whiplash during its brewery build in the latter half of this year, but ahead of completion they gave us Six Million Ways, another of their stock-in-trade New England-style IPAs. They've really doubled down on the murk here: it's a milky orange-grey colour and the grittiness comes right through to the texture, feeling almost like sand in the mouth. There's no doubting the commitment to hops, with the first sip delivering a tasty citrus juiciness which is too short-lived. Behind it there's a burn of garlicky hop oils and a dreggy sharpness: the usual things I dislike about beers like this. Yes it's bang on trend and is doubtless garnering both ooohs and aaahs from the crafterati, but it was one and done for your correspondent.

After cancelling a number of bookings they went back on the European festival circuit in late autumn, launching three new beers the remnants of which formed a mini tap takeover in UnderDog a couple of weeks ago. All three were dark, which was pleasing but most unWhiplash.

Bowsie is a brown ale of 4.5% ABV and served on nitro, alas. It opens with a surprising hard bitterness -- there was me expecting soft caramel and latte. It does calm down into coffee and cocoa after a moment, but does nothing more interesting than that. The heart and soul has been scooped out of this beer by cold relentless nitro, leaving a hollow, watery quality. Curse you again, nitrogenation! Stop ruining flavour!

From brown ale to brown porter, and Smell the Glove. This is one of my favourite styles, though I prefer them lighter than the 6% ABV here. The thick and sticky texture suggests something even stronger. Quaffing is out of the question. The flavour begins on salty milk chocolate and then there's a tangy Guinness-like sourness and a pinch of green vegetal hops. Some cherry and raisin add a fruity complexity to the end. It's old-fashioned, I guess, though somewhat lacking on the malt front -- it definitely needs more brown. Overall it works, just not in the way I was hoping for.

This set finishes on a big 11%-er, Fakey Cake Maker imperial stout, Ireland's first Vic & Bob tribute beer. Coconut, hazelnut, coffee and muscovado sugar went into this. It's very thick, very hot and, as implied, very cake-like. The coconut dominates with the coffee backing it up, and that's all you get until it warms up a little. This is pretty much the sum of its parts, offering nothing unusual either good or bad and pulling no extraordinary tricks. One small one was plenty.

And just in time to make the deadline, the first beers from the new brewery to come my way.

Sky Burial is heralded as a recipe they've long wanted to make but never had the equipment to do it on. A highly specified custom brewkit was the solution so let's see what new level that brings us to. It's an IPA of 6.4% ABV, hazy but not completely opaque, to about witbier standard. The aroma is bright and tropical with a hint of weedy dank beneath: so far, so good, so balanced. Resins coat the tongue and there's a bitter herbal spice: raw rosemary and chamomile, but only briefly. It doesn't fade, exactly, but it takes a back seat to rising sweet fruit note: mandarin and mango. Is it madly different to what has gone before? No. It is good though. To ding it, bitterness turns a little garlicky when it gets any way warm, while there's an unpleasant grittiness from that modest murk. Still, it avoids the worst excesses of modern hazy IPA, delivering fun fruit and invigorating hop bitterness. This bodes well.

The companion piece is a double-dry-zested ("DDZ", because high-end beer needs more codes) pale ale called Whirlpool of Love. There's no gimmicky fruit in the aroma, just a blast of very real, very fresh hops as soon as the tab is pulled. It's a sickly-looking emulsion in the glass, though the ABV is a respectable 5.2%. There's not much zest in the flavour either, but lots of heady Citra dank so it's not missed. Though the finish is bitter and slightly gritty there is a thin lemon-dessert streak: posset or meringue pie. Mostly, though, this is a bright and banging symphony in Citra, hitting a lot of the hophead-favourite notes usually found in beers several points stronger. I might even consider it sessionable were it not for the €5.25 price tag. That brewery has to be paid for somehow.

My palate is insufficiently sophisticated to regard this pair as markedly different from Whiplash's contract brews, but I enjoyed both a lot more than Six Million Ways. I hope the standard stays up.