Trouble again

Once one of the busiest Irish breweries with regard to new releases, Trouble has settled into a groove in recent years, offering a solid core range with only occasional bouts of playfulness. Today's post isn't about a sudden return to the old days, just two reformulated recipes from the brewery's past.

In 2015 there was Hardwired, later scaled down to Wired, and now back as Rewired, still an oatmeal IPA. There's fresh mandarin up front, followed by a growing dankness, packed with spicy grass, turning bitter and pithy towards the end, finishing on a galvanic kick. It's massively thick and sticky, even for a porridge-based, hop-heavy 5.8%-er. Resins coat the tongue, line the palate and follow you around for some time afterwards. It's quite a workout, but worth it: one of those welcome antidotes to New England-style beer.

Voodoo Logic was a sticky imperial stout released at the end of 2017. It garnered a bit of criticism, including from me, for being overly sweet, concentrating the maple syrup in its flavour to an overpowering level. The 2020 revision brings the ABV down from 10.1% to 9.2%, which doesn't seem like much of a change but it's made a big difference. This is considerably bitterer than the previous edition, showing lovely tar and tobacco notes behind the sugar. There's a slight violet perfume, some liquorice and a Turkish coffee herbal effect, showing that the sweetness hasn't been vanquished, just rendered more nuanced. The finish is quite quick with no cloying stickiness, just pipe tobacco on the lips. Lovely balance in an extreme beer, here: a recipe that has very much grown up. I hope it'll be around for another while.

Reviving and revising old recipes isn't very fashionable in the novelty-driven modern beer scene, but these two examples show that it's well worth doing.