UK OK?

With election day looming in the country next door, I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at some of the beers from over there that have been showing up on tap over here.

Kirkstall makes regular appearances on both cask and keg. We begin with the normal-sounding Kirkstall Pale Ale, setting the tone for most of the brewery's offerings albeit much clearer. It's quite a dry affair with a powdery chalky feel. This turns to bathsalts with the addition of a pithy hard citrus and bright meadowy flowers. It's only 4% ABV, making it light and very drinkable, but there's plenty of interesting flavour to explore as well.

The Pale Ale isn't lacking in American hop characteristics, but they've dialled that side up even further in Oregon IPA, brewed with freshly harvested Strata hops. The ABV is a still-modest 4.5%. It's a thick chap, though: weighty with slick and dank hop resins. Lime ice lollies and citrus rind sit up front, with a backing of sweeter meringue and savoury onion. It hits the New England beats very well, but in a gentle and balanced cask bitter sort of way. Beautifully done.

Also from the UnderDog handpump there's Humle, a 4.4% ABV pale ale, hazy and bright yellow in colour. This shows a marvellous blend of sweet smooth vanilla and punchy lime. Despite appearances it's very clean-tasting too, with no interference from yeast or other murk. This is very much a quaffer rather than a sipper; not madly complex but far from bland. What it does, it does very well indeed.

They're fond of a collaboration beer at Kirkstall, and I'll start them with one they created with Track from Manchester. It's a hazy pale ale called Out of Focus. This is pleasantly both peachy and pithy with a big and soft sherbet texture: effervescent fruits giving way to another slightly dry chalky finish. Again it's easy to drink, though unnecessarily strong at 5% ABV. I could imagine a few of these sneaking up too quickly on the unwary drinker.

Next is By Twelve, a collaboration with Mondo. It's another hazy one, though this time it runs big on minerals: no fruit juice or weed here. From the first sip there's that chalky effect, backed by a citrus bitterness and a cordial sweetness. This is one of those cask beers beers where I think lower temperature and a bit more fizz would help it. As-is it's OK. Again not what anyone comes to Yorkshire cask beer to drink, but if it's going to be fundamentally modernised, why not like this?

Northern Monk is the next Kirkstall collaborator, creating yet another hazy pale ale, this one is 4.5% ABV, and called Music & Silence. Once again it's very sweet, with a familiar lemon and lime ice cream effect and the chalky dryness at the end. I found it quite heavy and cloying, not an easy drinker like most of the above. It's probably the closest of any of them to a real New England-style IPA but that's not a point in its favour.

Switching to Northern Monk's own work, Powerhouse 006 is the only one from that sequence to come my way. It's a fuzzy yellow double IPA with a trace of garlic in the flavour but also lots of gorgeous peach and pineapple juice and a wisp of sweeter vanilla. At 8.2% ABV it would be within its rights to show a significant alcohol burn, but there's pleasingly none, just a smooth texture for the fruit to bounce off. Yeast bite is present, but again understated, providing a useful bittering balance for the sweetness. This is a textbook example of how the style ought to be done.

They're not above the odd pastry stout at Northern Monk, hence Pete's Dark Past, a 7%-er with added chocolate, caramel, lactose and vanilla. It tastes like a caramel wafer biscuit, which I think was the point. There's a bit of hazelnut going on as well, though it's lacking proper stout characteristics like coffee, and even the chocolate side is on the down-low. I would like to think that the era of drinkers being wowed by candified stouts has passed. They need to be significantly better made than this basic offering to impress.

We've had a steady stream from Newcastle's Wylam, including the IPA If 6 Was 9. This includes wheat in the grist and results in an extreme thickness. Mosaic hopping comes across as a concentrated garlic flavour, with a slick and sickly streak of orange oil. The garlic comes back as a long, lingering finish. Prepare yourself for an intense experience when approaching this.

To follow, as we are all aware, Change is Inevitable. Rye IPA, to me, means something copper-coloured and sharply bitter so I was surprised to get this custard-looking double dry-hopped job. And it tastes how it looks: a bright and sweet mango juiciness with just a minor counter-melody of hot garlic. It's only 5.5% ABV making it approachable and easy-going. The flavour profile will be very familiar to people who like these sorts of beers, and it's not a bad example. A moment of silence, then, for anyone who bought it in the expectation of rye flavours.

A strong finish comes in the form of Macchiato, Wylam's 10% ABV hazelnut praline coffee porter. It's black and headless, smelling strongly of cold brew coffee. The flavour is intensely sweet, tasting mostly of milk chocolate, and the texture is surprisingly thin. I got very little beer character from it: no roast, no bitterness and not much booze warmth either. It gets a little oilier and nuttier as it warms, but not any beerier. This is strictly for the chaser of novelty, I fear.

We finish up down in that London with a couple from FourPure. Their Asahi stablemates Magic Rock collaborated on one called Driftwood, a session IPA at just 3.4% ABV. It's a pale and cloudy affair with a spritzy citric bite and a background minerality. There's plenty of substance for the strength and no trace of wateriness. An invigorating hard hop bitterness finishes it off. This offers a lot of new-world hop fun at an amazing ABV and it's a shame there aren't more beers like it.

On at the same time in UnderDog was FourPure's Hummingbird, described as a raspberry hibiscus sour. It's a dark pinkish-purple colour, unsurprisingly, and very syrupy. This is another one of those jam bombs with hardly any sourness to speak of. At 5.4% ABV it's no soft drink but it tastes far too much like one. Pass.

That's all I have for today. See you after the results come in.