Pistoff

Was it the haze that attracted me to Pistonhead Haze Lager? Was it the Galaxy dry-hopping? The Swedish brewing know-how? Nothing wrong with any of these, of course, but the fact was I had three beers I wanted in my basket and it was four for €10 at Stephen Street News. Bring on the random factor!

The haze isn't done very well. It poured clear to begin with, then hard gritty bits which had settled on the bottom of the can crumbled into the glass. It evened out somewhat by the time between pouring and drinking, but still: not good visuals.

The aroma performed little better, sickly and syrupy, with a tang of sweat too. There were three months still to go on the best-before but I think its glory days were behind it. The flavour continued the sickly theme: orange concentrate and children's medicine. Galaxy at its best offers bright juicy mandarin; this is a dark mirror image of that. Thankfully it's a lager so the nastiness doesn't hang around. I still wouldn't recommend it, though. There are much better hoppy lagers out there, even on the bargain shelves.

A rate of Exchange

Like an increasing number of people, this blog is spending its birthday in lockdown. Happy 15th oulfella.

To mark the occasion I have retrieved something from the cellar that, honestly, I meant to drink a while ago and now seems the perfect excuse. I bought this bottle of The Exchange Δ Spontaneous Ale when I was at the brewery in Niagara on the Lake in 2018. It came lauded by local expert David Sun Lee, with a recommendation that it be let sit for a year before opening. Well, it got that, and a bit more.

Vital statistics: it's hopped with Hallertau, spontaneously fermented and aged in red wine barrels, finishing up at 6.7% ABV from a starting gravity of 1.051. The brewery reckons it's good for cellaring for up to a decade. It pours a deep autumnal golden, like filtered apple juice, and seems quite thick of body, with a stream of bubbles making their way lazily upwards.

The aroma is sharp and tangy; authentically gueze-like, which is a good start. Sure enough the flavour has plenty of that tang, shading a little close to vinegar for my preference, but with plenty of the earth and spice tones which make this such an enjoyable style. The ghost of the wine is present in a mild sweet and juicy side, making me think more of apples again than grapes, with a side order of Faro. This cider quality could be considered a flaw but I think it helps soften the otherwise very sour beer.

I'm glad I opened this now and I'm not sure I would age it much longer. Any more vinegary acidity could ruin it completely. Overall, this does a very good impression of Belgian geueze, and while it wouldn't feature in the top tier, it's better than several of the real thing that I've tasted. Chapeau to The Exchange, and to David.

Sunshine status

It's strange and charming that a brewery as established as Anchor in San Francisco still has new beers for me to try. Quite a raft of them are now available in Ireland and I felt I should do some catching up.

I'm a little confused by the name of Brewer's Pale Ale: Citra Hop Blend. If it's Citra, how is it a blend? Is it single-hopped? It doesn't say. 5.3% is the ABV and it pours a dark and hazy shade of yellow, topped with lots of bright white foam. The aroma isn't especially powerful, though I'll admit my bottle may not have been the freshest. It's quite sweet to taste: orange-flavoured chews and lime jelly. There's a mineral, alkaline, bathsalts buzz in the finish. When Citra is the headlining act I expect a solid kick of bitterness, but that's lacking here. As an easy-going American Pale Ale it's fine, but undistinguished.

On to the IPAs next, beginning with Fog Breaker, at 6.8% ABV. It pours like a a witbier, a greyish amber, with a disturbing quantity of gunky clumps floating through it. I think this beer might have died in the bottle. It tastes dead: a dull bread or biscuit quality, dried out and characterless. The brewery says there should be pineapple and yuzu in this; there isn't. A faint citrus quality hovers around the edges of the aroma but it's absent from the flavour. This isn't unpleasant, it's just a big shrug in a glass. I'm actually intrigued to find out what it's supposed to taste like because it can't possibly be this. Moving on...

Did you know the waters of San Francisco Bay are pollution-free? Me neither, but apparently this is ensured by the good ship Baykeeper, according to the label of a beer named after it. It's an IPA, of a full 7% ABV and quite a dense hazy orange colour. The label which speaks so highly of the boat tells us very little about what the beer is made from, other than it's juicy and fruit-forward. Turns out it's another orange-and-minerals job, not juicy but with a pleasing punch of hop. The high-ish strength is well used, giving it a rich texture and a pleasant warmth. Satsuma, tangerine and jaffa all feature in the middle, between the grassy bitterness up front and the long waxy finish. There's a very English vibe to it, that earth-and-orange character that makes me think of Fuggles hops in particular. Drop the ABV and throw it on cask and it would be convincingly Kentish. This is quite retro, but I like it.

Finally, one which feels like old Mr Anchor allowed his grandson to design a beer for him: San Franpsycho juicy IPA with peach and apricot. I thought it would be full-on emulsion but it's only slightly hazy: a bright and sunny golden colour. The aroma is strangely savoury: caraway, shading to rubber, which is worrying. None of that in the flavour though, thankfully. There are two distinct sides to the taste: one is an old school, bitter and clean west coast US IPA with a little crystal sweetness and an almost harsh rasp of citric hop bitters. And then there's the other aspect: the fruit. Does anybody out there remember Magic Hat No. 9? I don't know if it's still being brewed, but this has a lot in common with it. It's a sickly, syrupy, peach-and-apricot flavour which has very little to do with real fruit. It's like someone sprayed the glass with cheap perfume while I wasn't looking. It is not an improvement and it does not render the underlying proper IPA "juicy". A decent beer ruined by fashion, is my verdict. There's a lot of it about.

There's a lack of freshness and vigour in all of these. One could make an obvious observation that hoppy beer which has travelled from San Franciso to Dublin will lose much of its character on the way, but that's far from the case with lots of other American imports. I suspect that veteran Anchor is just taking a more old-fashioned and sedate approaching to its hopping regimes.

Kinnegar and friends

It's off to Kinnegarland today, to find out what the busy bunnies of Letterkenny have been up to.

Most recently, the Brewers at Play series saw the simultaneous release of numbers 5 and 6. The former is an Apricot Rosemary Sour, created for the Brewgooder project, best known (to me anyway) for the charity lager BrewDog makes for them. This one is a bright and opaque orange colour in the glass, looking and smelling like a fruit cordial. The smell is so sweet I'm not sure I would have identified it as apricot over any other concentrate. That slick and sickly syrup is at the front of the queue on tasting, but it's not the be-all and end-all. A herbal complexity rises behind it, oily and bitter, tasting more like the sharp pine of a classic west coast IPA than novelty rosemary. There's a certain perfumed spice too: an exotic waft of cedar or incense. It's not sour, showing only the fainest tang of acidity. This sort of thing is often quite thin, but here 5% ABV gives it a full and smooth body, carrying the complexity well. It's still a daft novelty, no doubt, but that rosemary adds a dimension of taste that's unusual, creative, and very enjoyable. Sweet fruit "sours" are ubiquitous these days; the opposite side of the hazy IPA coin. It's very pleasing to find one brewer doing something genuinely interesting with the format.

B@P 6 is called Uncle Grumpy, a collaboration with Boundary, and rosemary features again, this time in a saison. The ABV has dropped to 4.5% while the beer has dropped bright: a cheery clear golden colour. Primarily this is one of those dry and peppery saisons; very authentically Belgian tasting. The rosemary oil is apparent in the aroma, pushed up by a very active carbonation. It's sharp on a number of fronts: the fizz, the herb and the earthy saison character. Rosemary helps round it out, taking some of the edge off and lessening the severity. While it's unusual, it's not novelty for its own sake, and I could imagine a Belgian brewer making something very similar, if none have already. I wouldn't go so far as to call it an improvement on classic saison, but it's a fun and playful twist, and it was worth doing.

We finish on an interloper: Big Blue is from Edinburgh's Stewart Brewing and this time Kinnegar is the visiting collaborator. It's 7% ABV and described as a "spiced blueberry stout". Getting blueberry flavour into beer is a challenge at the best of times, doubly so for a stout, and spices? Forget about the fruit. This smells of cakey cinnamon from the very start, and the flavour doesn't get much more interesting: there's a little raisiny sweetness, some bitter roast and the loud cinnamon shouting over the top of both. None of it really stands out though, and the whole picture is less complex than I would expect for something of this strength. The texture is good -- full and soft -- but it doesn't make up for the lack of flavour integration. This is one of those kerr-azy collaborations brewers come up with collectively but which don't do the drinkers -- well, this drinker -- any favours.

I hope Kinnegar has some of that rosemary left over. There's a whole world of recipes it could be brought into.

Soft border

I had come to think of Boundary as being primarily a brewer of strong beers. They present very much in the contemporary US/Scandi fashion, and low ABV tends to be nothing other than an occasional novelty in that milieu. So it was a bit of a surprise when I pulled two recent Boundary purchases from the fridge to discover both were of a very modest strength.

To begin, Nothing Left To Say, a rye session IPA of 4.1% ABV, dry hopped with Lemondrop and Cascade hops. It's a dull ochre colour in the glass, the head fading quickly. Its aroma is fresher and more exciting than the appearance might suggest, however: fresh satsuma lacing a distinctive grassy spicing. I guessed this one would belong to the rye. Sure enough, that peppery grass bitterness is a big part of the flavour, lending it an almost incense quality. There's a citrus sherbet in the middle, tart and tingly, and then an earthy, savoury finish which one could charitably describe as Belgian-feeling, but also as a bit mucky. While analysing all that I couldn't take my mind off the texture. Beers with this sort of complexity are usually heavy ones but this is very light. I genuinely couldn't decide between finding it pleasingly gulpable or unpleasantly watery. There are elements of both. On balance, I enjoyed it. There's enough rye poke and hop fun to deliver what's promised, and nobody can feel gypped by the description.

A straight-up pale ale next, Double Negative at 4.2% ABV, and this time it's Idaho 7, Simcoe and Azacca, to the tune of 16g per litre. It's a bright and opaque yellow, more Sunny Delight fakery than real juice. The aroma mixes sweet mixed tropical juice with a dry and savoury yeast bite, and the flavour mostly follows through on that. It's not dreggy, more crisp and husky, with overtones of crispbread on the finish. Before that there's a rounded orange juice flavour, less complex than the aroma, and a smack of garlic, bang in the middle. It's very, er, modern tasting, and as such I don't think I really like it. I'm sure plenty of punters will, however: I'm used to yeast-bite and garlic being things I just don't appreciate. And hey, at least there's no vanilla. Once again the low ABV creates a light texture meaning no flavour, whether good or bad, hangs around too long. It manages to avoid being offensive by being, well, inoffensive. If you're after a lighter take on those DDH IPAs you love, here it is. Otherwise I wouldn't really bother.

An interesting diversion, but I'm ready for my next Boundary to have a bit more heft, especially if they're going to insist on my paying close to a fiver a can.

Zany Lithuany

An "Australian Pale Ale" from Lithuania in a pint can? There was no way I was going to pass that by when I spotted it on the shelves of the local SuperValu, especially when it said "limited supply" on the tin. Volfas Engelman APA, from the "Tastes of the World" series, is hopped with Galaxy, Ella, Topaz, Perle and Kiwi interloper Rakau. It's a medium pale amber colour with considerable haze, some of which had been stuck to the bottom of the can and was unexpectedly disturbed.

No fruity Aussie hops in the aroma, or much else really -- maybe a slight nondescript citrus note. Same for the flavour, unfortunately. There's a sweet cereal core with artificial candy-fruit topnotes, but none of it very strong. The texture is light for 5% ABV and I would all but swear it's a lager rather than an ale. It certainly tastes like it's from a brewery used to cool fermentation. I had high hopes for something exciting but this is actually a bit dull.

To follow that, Vyšnių Kriek, another style from another place. It was only when I took it out of the fridge that I noticed the fancy embossed bottle wasn't a legit half-litre. You have to really search the label to find where they've hidden "0,4L". They, incidentally, are Kalnapilio-Tauro Grupė, part of Danish giant Royal Unibroue, under the Vilkmergės brand.

It looks well: a deep mahogany red with a head of pink fluff, just like real Belgian kriek, of the sweetened variety. The aroma is pure cherry syrup and I love its frivolity. It's as sweet as might be expected but doesn't taste artificially cherry-like. Instead there's a real sensation of biting into a maraschino. The texture is suitably smooth, full-bodied from 5% ABV, and yet the finish is clean with no cloying sugar left behind. This is very silly but delightful. And yes I'm aware that's likely a minority opinion.

There's a companion stout as well: Juodųjų Serbentų Stout. A pinkish colour with a peachy tint to the head foam had me reaching for the translator, where I discovered "juodųjų serbentų" are blackcurrants in Lithuanian. I could have just sniffed it, of course, because it smells powerfully of hot Ribena. The flavour too is all clangy sweet syrup to the same degree as the kriek. I don't like blackcurrant as much as cherry, and I was looking forward to a proper stout, so I was not as enchanted by this. As well as a complete lack of stout character it's annoyingly thin too. That prevents it being sticky but I would like more substance at 5.5% ABV. Unless you're more into blackcurrants than beer, give this one a miss.

And I couldn't let April 20th go by without something herbal. Aukštaitijos Bravorai has produced the medium-dark hemp lager called, starkly, Cannabis, with a picture of the plant in case you're too stoned to read. It's 5% ABV and the amber colour of Czech polotmavý beer, which is the broad genre I'd place it in. Chocolate malt is listed on the ingredients, but not much, I guessed from the colour. Yet the aroma is very chocolatey, like cake mix. The same goes for the flavour: cheap and dusty ersatz milk chocolate and sweet soft caramel. I'm very glad it's a lager so there's some modicum of cleanness and no long cloying aftertaste, but it's still a bit of an assault. You can pretty much forget about hemp flavour: that was unlikely to survive in this. Maybe there's a little peppery bite at the back of the throat, but that's the full extent of it. A very poor show this, and not at all the beer I was hoping for. Even as an amber lager with no gimmicks it's shonky as hell.

Kriek for the win, then.

Saisons and seasons

Marks & Spencer offers a significant range of beer styles under its own brand. OK, it's not exactly cutting edge -- no brut IPA or mixed fermentation ales -- but if you want to learn what, let's say, "saison" means, M&S is a safe space where you can explore that in a controlled environment. But how good a steer will this high-end grocer give you? I thought I'd find out.

I'm starting straight with M&S Cornish Saison, brewed by St Austell and I don't know if this is a twist on one of the brewery's own beers, as M&S editions often are. It's 5.9% ABV and perfectly clear, a bright gold colour: there's the first point of differentiation with most saisons. The flavour is properly saisonish, though, delivering a mix of herbal bath salts, crisp grain husk, honey and popcorn. It is all a bit muted, which I guess is to be expected from a supermarket take on the style. You do get an honest impression, however, so I consider this a success.

Moving on to advanced level, there's the Clementine Saison from another West Country operation, Arbor Brewery. This is roughly the same colour as the previous one with just a little more haze to it. And the flavour profile is broadly similar, in that it has the crisp dryness and a touch of spice as well. The farmhouse complexity is buried under a thick fruit syrup sweetness which I'm guessing is the clementine element. If the first one taught you what saison is, this one shows you what happens if you flavour it with clementines. Fair enough, and job done. It's not a great beer, though.

Are the above pair a fair supermarket representation of saison as a concept? Yes, I think so, in a broad supermarket way. You get a sense of the basics and can move on from there to more advanced saison, if you wish.

M&S operates a 3-for-€7 deal which is decent value, and I filled this one out with the latest in the seasonal hacks of Camden Hells. I didn't particularly like the autumn one but let's see what winter brings brought us, in the form of Camden Hells In Hibernation Lager. The strength remains constant at 4.6% ABV. It's the pale and hazy yellow of weak lemon drink, the head fading quickly to nothing. There's a pleasant citrus spritz in the aroma but the flavour concentrates that into a heavy syrupy, perfumey thing. The classic lager vibe which is the Hells signature move is buried under the hop concentrate here, unbalancing the whole thing. I don't know who needs to hear this but Camden Hells is fine as it is and doesn't need dicked around with. Yes I'll keep buying these so yes I'm part of the problem. Save me from myself, Camden Town.

Deep breath. So that's what I got when I went to Marks & Spencer.

Streaming service

A new pair from new Dublin brewer Lineman today, with some stylish new can branding.

I began with Torrent, a straight-up, no nonsense, no gimmicks porter of 5.2% ABV. Given the success of the brewery's Astral Grains stout, I had high hopes. Chocolate is the main feature here, sweet and creamy, in both the aroma and foretaste. After this there's a nutty bite, some coconut sweetness and a jolt of espresso on the end. That's enough, I think. Nothing complicated or weird; a good balance between the sweet and bitter sides. Pretty much everything you should want from a porter. Any chance of a cask?

The companion piece is a similarly straight-up, no-foolin', west coast IPA called Zephyr. It really does channel San Diego classics like Sculpin right from the beginning. It's a pale golden shade and smells sharply of grapefruit pith and peel. That squeaky dry citrus is front and centre in the flavour throughout, with just enough malt roundness to propel the hops on their way. It's 6% ABV but could pass for a degree or so more, with plenty of substance and even a little heat. Time was, I would have found something like this unpleasantly bitter and hard to take. Now it's a welcome change from the more recent trend for soft and sweet IPAs. This one tastes finished.

Could Lineman be our saviour from the stylistic silliness that continues to infect beer in Ireland and beyond? Recent releases suggest it just might be.

Best case scenario

With an extended pandemic situation upon us, theme beers were inevitable. The Third Barrel collective went big early on, bringing out an answer to the crisis from each of their constituent parts. They extremely kindly donated a whole case of the set to my personal lockdown.

I'll begin with the Third Circle offering, nobly titled For The Greater Good. The enigmatic description is "cherimoya and mango fruit sour". Bonus points to anyone who knows what cherimoya tastes like; I certainly don't. So it's an innocent 3.7% ABV and a hazy orange colour. The aroma has a fruit husk sort of character; the stringier bits of the pineapple and pulped gritty red apples. It's different and intriguing. To taste, it's not sour, but that wasn't surprising. Thankfully it's not sickly sweet either: no lactose or other unwelcome adjuncts here. There's actually very little trace of the base beer and instead it wears those fruits up front. I couldn't identify mango specifically, and as I said I haven't a scooby about cherimoya. To me, it has a kind of candy lemonade effect; more lemonade than real fruit as there's no bitterness. There's a sorbet element too, but again not as bitter. A lemon or pear icepop, maybe. It is extremely refreshing, in the way a light and juicy fruit drink can be. Some sort of extra bitterness might improve it: I'm thinking rosemary or basil. Overall, though, it's a very decent fruit beer and certainly offers something different to any of the others I've tried.

The hop fiends in the Stone Barrel corner of the brewery have come up with Cabin Fever, an IPA of the DDH persuasion, 7% ABV and dry-hopped with Enigma. It's a pale and hazy yellow-orange, as one might expect, and has that characteristic aroma of cloying vanilla sweetness and sharp alium: spring onion, especially. You have to wait for the flavour to complete the full house: hard and hot alcohol with sharp dreggy yeast. A certain amount of pithy jaffa finds its way through this, and there's a degree of peppery spice, but overall this is not my kind of thing. Too boozy, savoury and gritty all at once. Add to that my new cardinal sin for hazy IPAs: it tastes very similar to lots of other ones. The previous beer was charming for its uniqueness; this one speeds rapidly in the opposite direction.

An imperial stout to finish: Third Barrel The Space Between Us, bourbon-aged and 9.5% ABV. It smells deliciously roasty, rich and oily like fresh-ground coffee; dry, but with a promise of brown sugar and cream. The texture is thiiick, almost syrupy, giving the flavour plenty of room to manoeuvre. And manoeuvre it does: the coffee turns sweeter, like Tia Maria; then there's hazelnut, cocoa and a tart tang of cherry. The barrel ageing has been done with a light touch, imparting complexity but no unsubtle bourbon twang. It doesn't even taste as strong as it is, and that's a good thing. It's not spectacular, nor pulling any showy tricks, but it's a class act all through.

Two out of three ain't bad at all, and the brewery is certainly doing its bit to keep my diet varied.

Farmhouse rock

Today's rough theme is Belgo-American farmhouse beers, which frankly may as well be a style in its own right at this stage. Here's how it's shaking out on both sides of the pond, illustrated via some Tekus in UnderDog.

I like Crooked Stave's beers. By and large they've managed the subtlety and nuance that working in the sour vernacular demands. So I was happy when a new one showed up on the UnderDog roster: Mama Bear's Sour Cherry Pie. Ignoring the name, the liquid looked a bit grim: a dark and murky purple, like the junior infants have just washed off their finger paint.

Sour cherry and hard oak come through in the aroma, which is OK but there's a worrying absence of spices. Sure enough on tasting it's mostly hard vinegar with only the faintest lacing of red fruit: raspberry as much as cherry. There's a lack of refinement; a raw muddy quality that beers like this shouldn't have: maturing it in barrels ought to mean it actually matures.

I got through my 33cl of it. There's just enough fruit fun to make it bearable (ha ha), but it is not a well-made sour beer. It feels like someone has decided that sourer is better, and that is objectively not the case. Belgians are just as capable as Americans of making this mistake too, of course. Nevertheless, Mama Bear should clean up her act.

It's always fun to see American specialists in Belgian-style beer working with the originating breweries of what they do. Hill Farmstead and De Ranke springs immediately to mind. I'm sure there are others. Today's second offering involves Dupont and Allagash. The latter is one of the highest profile US breweries whose wares aren't available in Ireland, so it was exciting to see them show up even if it's just by way of Belgium-brewed collaboration.

The beer is called Brewers' Bridge and it's definitely a saison and definitely in the Dupont mould. Primarily it demonstrates that crisp appley effect of Saison Dupont, with a little honey and melon added for fruity complexity. I confess I can't taste what the Americans brought to the party here: no brashness or weirdness, for better or worse. I'm often critical of the daft and barely-drinkable results that brewery collaborations sometimes produce. This has more of a sense of Dupont showing Allagash how to create a classic saison in all its subtle and balanced complexity. And what brewer wouldn't want that?

I had hoped one or other of these would give me the Hill Farmstead or Jolly Pumpkin effect I was craving, but it wasn't to be.

On the 'lash

Two recent releases from Whiplash today, both in the pale 'n' murky 'n' hoppy vernacular that their adoring public adores.

The first one is a modest pale ale called Safe Changes, just 5% ABV and using Ekuanot, Idaho 7 and Azacca. It's every bit as fruity as that combination implies, opening with mango and guava, turning to sterner lime and grapefruit in the finish and passing through floral jasmine and honeysuckle on the way. The oats give it a very thick mouthfeel, meaning the powerful hop flavours run the risk of turning it cloying and busy. It doesn't quite go that far, though, staying on the drinkable side of punchy. This isn't the sort of thing I usually like, and it took me a while to figure why. I think it's the lack of interference from the murk: no grittiness, dregginess or savoury downers, and no vanilla or garlic either. It's a lesson in getting haze right.

There had to be a double IPA, of course: Telephone Line is Whiplash's eleventy-fifth version of same. Yellow and opaque is par for the course, with an outlier ABV of 8.1%. The flavour starts off sweet: a stewed peach and pineapple effect with a little vanilla custard on top. For hop bitterness you need to wait for the finish but it is delivered eventually, balancing the picture in the end. Pleasingly, that balance remains in situ for the duration. Other examples of this style have a creeping garlic taste as they warm up, or turn distractingly savoury. This doesn't. Looking for flaws, there's a little more yeast bite than I would deem completely acceptable, and there's a sharp alcoholic kick, although the beer isn't hot or soupy. All-in, it's quite a decent example. No revelation, but at the same time I have low standards when it comes to murky double IPAs and am overjoyed when they're not actively unpleasant.

So here's Whiplash making the kind of beer we expect Whiplash to make. Seems fair.

The lock-in

All packaged beers for this random round-up, understandably, I hope.

The first is the first offering from a brand new brewer, Crafty Hopster, based in Waterford and brewing at Metalman. They kindly sent me a couple of free cans. All Hail is a pale ale, just 4% ABV but a more serious, dense-looking shade of amber in the glass. It's not hazy, only slightly misty. The can has lots of text on it but tells us almost nothing about the beer. To my nose, the hopping is some juicy American combination as it smells gorgeous, of fresh lychee, mango and passionfruit. That translates directly to a sorbet effect in the foretaste; a mouthwatering fruit sweetness with minimal bitterness. The finish is quick and the mouthfeel understandably thin, but this isn't to the beer's detriment and may actually help keep the sweetness from cloying. It's deliciously sessionable, in fact. I suspect that the delicate hop flavour won't survive long in the can so I hope they can get this into drinkers' hands quickly. It's well worth a go if you see it.

Not so much a brand new brewery as a reborn one, Brú is now under the management of the former Carrig brewery and is in the process of relaunching its range, including revamped Brú recipes, some beers carried over from the Carrig days, and some completely brand new stuff. Osiris IPA is in the latter category. It's 6.2% ABV and a pale orange juice colour. Citra, Ekuanot, Mosaic and Enigma are the hops, giving it quite a juicy aroma, though with a slightly off-putting rubbery element too. And that's the main thing I got from the flavour -- sulphur, burnt plastic, maybe some chlorophenol, with the citrus flesh hovering behind it but mostly buried. This may just be one of those hop combinations that sits awkwardly on my palate, but I'm not sure it is. When racking my brains for where I've tasted it before, I came up with former Brú IPAs Rí and Darkside, so it's presumably in their system somewhere. Even though I know this beer to be spanking fresh, it tastes dusty and stale to me. If there's an issue beyond my shonky sensory acumen, I hope they get it sorted before taking things further.

Back to the pale-and-hoppy 4% ABV theme, and a new one from White Hag, Phantom, which they've had the audacity to call an IPA. It's the yellow emulsion colour of lemon curd and I get very little aroma, just a light citrus spritz. Thin texture again, and here it is more of an issue: it feels like it's trying to be one of those full and smooth New England types but the substance just isn't there. The flavour starts juicy, but then I was interrupted, and when I came back to the glass after it had warmed and flattened a little, it had turned savoury: a little garlic and quite a lot of sesame. This shows the standard features of a New England IPA, to the point of seeming samey and unimaginative, but they're also quite muted and distant. After the Brett fireworks of Little Olcan, Phantom seems like a misstep from the brewery, or at least something not up to their recent standards.

As if to underline that, here's Talti, the new White Hag saison which has spent two years barrel ageing. It has come out a slightly hazy yellow and pours very fizzy. I wondered if the fermentation has entirely stopped, and if the mere 4.4% ABV stated is accurate. That said, it's light and spritzy with a counter-melody of farmyard funk. The texture is crisp and the high carbonation prevents the Brettish stonefruit from clogging up the palate. I would like a little more body to carry the complex flavours but I also appreciate the session strength at which they've delivered it. Another funky tour de force from White Hag here.

After the excitement of last year's pool ball beers, Eight Degrees have followed up with a new themed limited sequence for this year: the Irish Munro Series. First up is Hill of the Serpent, a black IPA, though they've gone with the wankier "Cascadian dark ale" as the description. I guess it's the word "serpent" in the title that means two decimal places were necessary in the stated ABV: 6.66%. No brown half-measures in the colour here: it shows up as a dark ruby when held up to the light but is otherwise a pure glossy black. Tar bitterness leaps out of the aroma: Cascade, Centennial and Chinook is the classic combination at work. And yet, the bitterness is restrained on tasting, leaving room for the pine and grapefruit hallmarks of those hops. The dark malt gives it a smooth and stoutish texture, combining with the hop citrus to create a fun spritzy candy thing on the end. I usually prefer my black IPAs with a little more punch but I was definitely charmed by this calm, balanced and classy number. It bodes well as we begin the ascent through this series.

The spirit of Kellyanne Conway is channelled in the new one from O Brother, a dry-hopped sour ale called Alternative Facts. It looks like most beers in this style: that wan hazy yellow, and the ABV is just 4%. There's little sign of those hops in the aroma, and the can neglects to tell us what they are. Similarly the flavour has only a very faint lemon barley water quality, and not much sourness either. It's vaguely wheaty, with a tang of old sweat, but watery more than anything. If it wasn't fresh into the can I would swear it had been sitting on a shelf too long. Poor show.

"seasonable" is the description on Wide Street's latest, though I resisted the urge to sprinkle it with salt and pepper. The Wild Table - Ariana is presumably the first in a series of table beers, this one using German hop variety Ariana. It's 4.1% ABV and a very pale white-gold. For some reason I thought it would be dry and crisp but the aroma is rich and fruitsome, packed with ripe peach, mango and cantaloupe. Fruity and funky in equal measure, goes the flavour: a sticky Gewürztraminer, finishing on a note of drains that won't come clean no matter how much disinfectant is poured down there. It's not unpleasant, but it's challenging too: by no means the introduction to Brettanomyces that Talti offers. For me, three mouthfuls took care of the can. The foretaste is very moreish and it's best not to let the finish unfold too much. I'm none the wiser as to what Ariana hops taste like but I look forward to the next in the series.

I feel like Larkin's Lore is an old friend at this stage. I first tasted their doppelbock for barrel-ageing at the brewery last June. It (or a version) arrived for a limited draught run a couple of months ago, and now, I think, it has reached a final form as a rye whiskey aged canned doppelbock: ten months from start to finish, says the label. From the 10.3% ABV of the last iteration it's now a whopping 11.5%. It's a beautiful clear mahogany and smells very boozy: a rich and smooth oaky whiskey quality. On tasting, the spirit is strong: a bourbonish mix of warm vanilla and honey, with added coconut, hazelnut and cocoa. It's all very mellow and relaxing, helped along by the silky texture. The lager side is a bit lost in this, playing no leading role, just supporting all the barrelly special effects, but I appreciate its sacrifice. This is up there with the best of barrel-aged powerhouses, and I'm thinking of De Molen's sublime Bommen & Granaten in particular. "Very limited edition" ends the can blurb. Jump on this quick then.

Just A Minute is a very DOT sort of DOT beer: a blend of pale ale and lager, aged at some point in the production process in bourbon, rum and Irish whiskey barrels, finishing up at 8.6% ABV. I had no idea what to expect. It's a pale and hazy colour, looking a bit like a kellerbier. The carbonation is very low and it was tough getting a head on it. The texture is thick too, making it feel a bit lifeless, overall. There's a kind of vinegar burn in the aroma, or maybe it's just the lime acidity I often get in bourbon. Does it get better in the flavour? Mmmpf. Not really. There's quite a cloying oak-sap sweetness with a thick dollop of orange cordial, and then a watery hollow finish, presumably because there's lager in the mix. This sort of thing works well in saison, where it can bounce off the earthy and spicy flavours in the base. Here it's all about the bells and whistles but the fundamentals aren't strong enough to carry them. I don't mind paying €5.35 for a daring experiment, but having done so I hope this combination is now put on ice.

Brehon scored a brewery-defining hit a couple of years ago with its award-winning Creann Breatha barrel-aged stout, still regularly available bottled and casked. At long last, here comes the follow up: Red Right Hand, a bourbon-aged barley wine. The wine side of the analogy is often left out of the equation but this really has a red wine flavour -- something fruity and Italian, a Barbera, maybe. Add a candy and caramel malt sweetness and just a little sawdusty oak fuzz. I expected the bourbon to add a sticky vanilla layer and/or spirit heat, but it doesn't -- the flavour is subtle, balanced and integrated. The overall classiness is helped by the full texture, aided further by 11% ABV. And a 500ml bottle? Mwah!

Kildare Brewing's Baby Boom has been around a while but I'm only just catching up with it, thanks to the good offices of Martin's of Fairview. It's a milk stout and a middling 4.8% ABV, pouring black but a murky red around the edges and successfully retaining its loose head most of the way down. A pleasant coffee aroma leads on to quite a light textured and surprisingly bitter stout, but in a good way. It lacks the rounded sweetness I associate with milk stout, leaning heavy on the latte aspect instead. Crisp and nutty roast is at the centre, with a tang of green-hop bitterness and a little lactose cream flavour, but as an afterthought. Style purists may have issues with it; I just thought it was a nice stout, despite the lactose rather than because of it.

Brewing lag time being what it is, they're one emergency behind at Wicklow Wolf, the latest being an imperial red ale brewed to aid the Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund. It's a souped up version of their core amber ale and is called Fighting Wildfire. An innocent clear ruby colour in the glass, it gets to work early on the hop front: the unmistakable coconut aroma of Sorachi Ace wafting up immediately. It doesn't look thick but turns out very full-bodied, in keeping with its 8% ABV. The pithy side of Sorachi comes out here, shading a little unpleasantly towards burnt plastic in the finish. On the plus side, there's lots of toasty roasted grain and a considerable alcohol heat, making it every bit as pugilistic as the name implies. You'd want to like ordinary Wildfire, and/or the Wicklow Wolf Sorachi Reds that came before it, in order to get value out of this. If those beers left you wanting more then your prayers have been answered. Imperial red ales rarely do it for me; add a few fistfuls of Sorachi, however, and I'm on board.

Finally, Cashmere Thoughts, a beer which gave me angora thoughts. This new double IPA from The Format looks fuzzy and fluffy in the glass, a deep opaque orange. Pure fresh-squeezed orange juice is the aroma, all sweet and zesty. There's a hint of that in the flavour, moreso in the finish than up front. The foretaste is a strange mix of sharp dregs, booze heat and chalky minerals. That's not fun and worlds away from the juice. In the middle there's some nice peach but it fails to complete the picture. This is nearly very good, just let down by that hot dregginess. Once again but cleaner, please.

That's it for now. At time of writing, I'm sorry to say, there's no danger of content drying up on here. The shops, my fridge and my notes backlog are all still bounteously stocked.

Dipping the toe

Beer from Manchester brewery Wander Beyond arrived in Ireland recently. I had never tried their wares so was curious, and remained so even when I failed to find anything in a style I usually like, and the pricetags to be very much on the hefty side. Still, everyone gets a fair shake here so I went as far as drinking two of them, to ascertain if I wanted more.

First up, at UnderDog, was Anura, described nonsensically as an "imperial Berliner weisse", being 7% ABV. It arrived an opaque beetroot-purple colour, smelling intensely of fruit sherbet and chalky candy. I don't know what actual fruits or syrups they've dosed this with but to me it smelled of cherry and raspberry. It's sweet, certainly, but it avoids full-on stickiness owing to a dry quality which the brewery might want to badge as sourness, but it's not. Once that mild bite clears the fruit away there's nothing left but a watery finish. This is very simplistic fare, one dimensional and doing little to justify the near-lambic-level price.

And now for something completely different: a canned pastry stout called Cassiopeia. It goes for about a tenner a can and I have my legendary wife to thank for springing for one and splitting it with me. Salted caramel is the stated pastry of choice and it smells very caramelly; sickly sweet but not very salty. And the flavour? Sweeeeet. Pink marshmallows, fudge, nutty nougat, cherry jam and concentrated chocolate-flavoured syrup: not the posh kind. This is sweet enough to push through to the other side and become a metallic clanging twang in the finish. It's awful. Not Omnipollo-Yellow-Belly awful, but quite far along that road to sugary perdition.

I'm not intending to wander beyond these two examples. I was right to suspect they wouldn't suit me and I'm therefore not going to pursue this brewery any further, for a while anyway.

Not so fast

Drinking AleSmith Speedway Stout feels like catching up on my homework from 2010. Back then it was the talk of the online beer world and regularly topped best-beer lists in American publications. I don't know that it still does. To be honest I wasn't sure it was still being brewed.

The specs are that it's an imperial stout with added coffee, something there wasn't as much of back then. It's a whopping 12% ABV, because stronger means better, maan, and this version isn't barrel-aged.

The aroma is a little unsettling -- a buzz of marker pen and some meaty autolysis. It's gentler to taste, starting surprisingly light-bodied, for one thing. The coffee is present, though in a subtle, understated way. The next thing to arrive is a luxury liqueur heat, more chocolate than coffee flavoured. The finish is ashen and dry.

It's good, no question, and the bitterness is pitched pleasingly higher than most of this sort these days. It's not spectacular, however. Like many iconic beers, once past the height of its fame it can be hard to see what the fuss was about.