Aldi beer that's fit to drink

The O'Shea's range at Aldi, brewed by Carlow Brewing, has been given a brand overhaul. Rather than pick out what's new or reformulated in the line-up I thought I'd just take all five and give them a going-over. No harm in refreshing my opinions almost a decade after I first introduced O'Shea's here.

The lager is now called To Helles & Back. Immediate plus points for the appearance here: a rich, almost amber, sunset gold. Shame the head doesn't last long, fizzing away to a thin froth shamefully quickly. Weedpatch noble hops present in the aroma and there's a decent density for only 4.4% ABV. Plenty of flavour too: cake and candy malt contrasting with sharp, slightly tinny hops. None of it is subtle so I don't think Helles is the best style designation for it -- pils would be more appropriate in my view. Sharing shelf space with both Spaten and Rheinbacher puts this in a tough position and I don't think I'd switch my preference from either. I like TH&B's moxy, though: it's bolder and louder than supermarket own-brand lager needs to be, so I absolutely wouldn't dismiss it.

Pale ales make up the bulk of the selection, of course, and we begin with Trick of the Light session IPA. No quibbles about head here: a tall stack of froth rises above the slightly hazy body. The aroma is fun: a sunny breeze of orange and lemon sherbet with a hint of something more serious and bitter behind it. Sadly, the flavour is less interesting. There's a little pithiness, and that sweetshop fruit zing hangs around in the finish, but nothing much in the middle. It's only 3.8% ABV so this shouldn't really be surprising, and what's there is good and enjoyable. I found myself wanting more, however. Nevertheless, this does fulfil the session IPA remit perfectly: a modest dose of hop fun in a beer you could drink several of in a row. Another qualified thumbs-up from me.

We're back to clarity with Pale New Dawn pale ale, promising "tropical and grapefruit flavours" from the limpid rose-gold liquid. Sherbet again in the aroma but this time more of a punch in the flavour. I had been harbouring hopes of a west-coast lime kick, and while it's along those lines it doesn't go the whole way, hampered by a mere 4.8% ABV. It is properly bitter however: dry on the palate, showing the invigorating mouth-watering effect that made American-style pale ales so popular in the first place. There's a little pine resin, a bite of crunchy fried onions, and then a mild soapy twang on the finish, the only feature I didn't like. This is OK but isn't quite the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone that I think they were pitching at. The previous one did more interesting things at a more modest strength so I don't see this as a trade up.

None of the labels tell us about the ingredients in these, but there's an intriguing clue in the name of the IPA: Summit To Say. Mind you, the soft melon and peach tastes more like Mosaic than Summit to me, but I'll take it. There's plenty of bitterness too, delivering a pithy punch of grapefruit. The two sides are complementary and make for something quite enjoyable: a fruit salad up front with a pithy kick on the end. The aroma isn't up to much -- peach nectar and a waft of marker pens -- but no matter. It's clean, nuanced and fresh-tasting. This is the strongest of the sequence at 5% ABV but it rocks the punchy complexity of something a fair bit stronger. Our hop parade is over, and I think the session IPA impressed me most, but this is a close second.

A stout to finish, and very much in the O'Hara's wheelhouse. Good things are expected. Cold Dark Heart is the ominous name, 4.5% the ABV. And it's bang on. There's a cocoa seam running all the way through it, passing burnt toast, Turkish delight and light-roast coffee on the way. On the one hand it's a boringly solid Irish stout, but on  the other, nobody makes new ones of these any more so having even a re-labelled one passing my way was downright thrilling. The texture is perfectly full, no wateriness, and nothing that flags it as a cheapie. There are no high notes; no distinguishing features; nothing, as they say, to write home about, but it's thoroughly enjoyable and more satisfying than any amount of American hop twiddling.

American hop twiddling is what you get from the next pair. Both are released under Aldi's The Hop Foundry label, and while the beer is clear, the provenance is not. I've seen Brains and Hogsback both referenced as possible parents. Let me know if you have the definitive answer.

Hop 'Til You Drop is a 4% ABV "triple hopped pale ale" made with Citra, Summit and Galena. In the glass it's a lager-yellow colour. "Triple hopped" is one of those nonsense marketing terms which should be a bit of a red flag, yet I still naively expect such beers to have a decent hop aroma. They never do, and this is no exception; just a vague cap-gun smoke chemical spice. It's dry, though thankfully not thin, and the hops are present but muted, tasting a little overcooked and certainly not fresh and zingy. There's an overall marmalade effect which puts this much more in the British Bitter category than anything American. It's OK for a cheapie but talks a much bigger game than it delivers. No, I'm not surprised.

We may as well crack on with its stablemate The Hop Stepper, which I was secretly hoping would taste of baa, na na na naaa, na na na naaa, na na na, na na na. It doesn't. It's darker: the amber colour of strong tea, with a tannic aroma to match. First Gold, Summit and Chinook are the hops to look out for so there is some English pedigree. The flavour is rather dull, however, with the biscuits-and-sick bittersweet styling of poor brown bitter. OK, that sounds worse than it is. Mostly this is just heavy and dull, and whoever put "hop forward pale ale" as the description on the can had never tasted the beer, or possibly even hops. If you're hankering after this sort of very basic bitter perhaps you could find a place for it, otherwise don't bother.

Finally for today, another one of those amusing off-brand takes on "premium" lagers that Aldi provides purely, I imagine, for my own amusement. I hope the label designers have fun with them. Moretti is the target this time, Aldi's take being Birra Mapelli. Like the other lager above, it looks the part: golden with a fluffy head, exactly like it belongs on a sun-kissed Italian terrazzo. Its ABV is modest at 4.6%. There's an alluring noble-hop greenness in the aroma while the flavour opens on a dry crunch of pale malt. There's a very slight hop tang behind this, more tinny than vegetal, bringing a modicum of balance. It's still sweet and malt-forward, though, and very much best quaffed cold. A syrupy side wasn't long emerging. Like their Peroni knock-off, this one is better than the real thing. Don't expect fireworks, but if your summer trip to Italy is going to be a virtual one you could do a lot worse than a few of these.

Carlow has the upper hand among this lot. Don't be fooled by the fancy-dan 440ml cans and their backwards-baseball-cap artwork, nor the take-offs of popular brands. Half-litre bottles of Irish is where the real hop action is at Aldi.