Autumn beckons

A change of season is upon us, and as we bid farewell to this strange sad summer, let's have a few beers.

Hey, remember Neomexicanus? Most of my experience with the semi-feral American hop came via St Mel's never-repeated experiment with it back in 2015. Now Rye River has decided to take it on with the latest in its Limited Edition Series: The Dropper. Tamed Neomexicanus variety Sabro has been used, as well as the newly-named crossbreed Talus (still only "HBC 692" when the label went to print). The beer is an American-style pale ale of 5.4% ABV, hazed with London Fog yeast to a translucent yellow-orange. The aroma is pithy: an instant reminder that Sabro, for me, has a lot in common with Sorachi Ace. There's a beautiful switcheroo on tasting, however. Where I was expecting bitter, and possibly plasticky, there's a gorgeous juice tang which is a little bit tangerine and a big bit grapefruit. It's invigorating without being harsh; refreshing without being thin; complex without being awkward. In short, it's a near-perfect pale ale, reminding me somewhat of the best pale English bitters with its soft drinkability, though obviously far too strong for that sort of thing. The brewery has pitched this as a daring feat of radical hopping but the result is pure and unfussy quality quaffing.

Maui Wowie is the latest terpene-infused "high PA" from Black's of Kinsale. It's a medium orange colour with what passes for a mild dose of haze these days. The aroma is fun and spritzy, a playful squirt of grapefruit juice in your eye as you're peeling. There's a similar fun sharpness in the flavour: satsuma pith and mandarin peel. Next to it there's a savoury side which the brewery is describing as pepper but to me it lacks piquancy, tasting more like cedar wood or balsam resin. The whole thing is certainly unusual, and in a good way. A full 5% ABV, it manages to stay refreshing and sinkable, though it's worth pausing to explore complexities you don't find in everyday IPA. This isn't for everyone but I fully regard "different" as a positive selling point at the moment.

It's been a while since Beoir Chorca Duibhne has featured on these pages, but my eye was caught by a new one from them in Redmonds because they've upgraded their usual stark labels for a picture of the local coastline. It's an Antipodean Ale, owing to the use of Galaxy for dry hopping, and a sturdy 6% ABV. In the glass it's amber coloured with an off-white head, though the aroma is all about the Munich malt richness rather than hops of any provenance. And it's far from a hop bomb on tasting, to the point of barely qualifying as IPA. Gingerbread, hibiscus tea, cherry bakewells and barm brack all feature. We are definitely in afternoon-tea territory. Very civilised. If this was an attempt at going all modern, BCD has failed. But it's a lovely, warming, flavoursome and traditionally-styled beer.

Dinner at 57 The Headline gave me the chance to try Popsicle, the latest from Hopfully. It's a session IPA of 4.5% ABV and very densely murky. The flavour opens on a note of fluffy peach and follows through to coconut, with some slight garlicky vapours drifting in at the finish, along with the chalky dryness I often find in these. It's quite a simple take on the New England IPA genre and offers nothing I haven't tasted before, but it's tasty and enjoyable, making good use of its modest specifications.

Had this been a normal kinda summer I would have drank this new Two Sides beer on tap at 57 The Headline or Brickyard, for whom it was brewed by Third Barrel, but it's a Different Kinda Summer, so it's a can at home. A pale ale at a pub-worthy 4.3% ABV, it's a similar pale and hazy yellow to Two Sides's previous summer banger, Two Yards. The aroma, too, is equal parts juicy and dank in a very enticing way. They queue up in the flavour, being bitter, herbal and dank first -- hello Simcoe -- and then fading out on vanilla and orange ice pops. It's a lovely combination, showing two of the US hop world's most delicious facets. There's a bill to be paid for that strength, though, and it is a little thin which offsets the hop impact somewhat. The plus side of that is sessionability: you could definitely down several pints of this without getting bored or overwhelmed. The draft version is available in both pubs (with food) if you want to try it as it was intended, but can is no hardship.

Next up, guess what: New England IPA. Whatever their individual merits there sure are a lot of these. Anyway, Devils Chimney is the exciting name, brewed by Lough Gill to 7% ABV. It's an orangey colour and quite thick set, something that matches the heavy orange-cordial flavour. That initial sugary twang fades quickly and is replaced by a slightly nasty plastic acridity. There's a little wax or pith bitterness too, which is more acceptable but still contributes to the harshness. I can see why brewers of this sort of thing go for the soft vanilla sweetness: something like that would really help this beer out. This is quite a rough, angular take on New England, drawing in elements from the sharper west coast style, but not to the extent that it improves things. It doesn't taste like everyone else's NEIPA, so there's that. Difference, again, is to the good.

Galway Hooker is having no truck with any of this and put "West Coast IPA" in block capitals on the front of the second in their Seafarer Series. To underline that, it's called Citrus. Hit me with those beta acids! Although this is the appropriate shade of amber, it's not pleasingly clear, looking quite soupy in the glass and topped with lots of busy froth. The aroma is fresh and, well, citric, with notes of pine and lime, though also a slightly juicy tone as well. They just can't help themselves, can they? Thankfully there's no soppy juiciness in the flavour. It's well balanced between sharp, dry hops and crunchy caramel malt. There's some rye in the grain bill which probably helps contribute to that sharpness. That said, it's not severe, or even especially bitter, and the lime's edge is softened by a floral perfume effect. An oily weediness rounds out the flavour. The murk has given it a soft texture, one that suggests the east coast much more than the west to me. Only when I'd finished it did I notice on the can that lemon juice, lime juice and orange peel were added ingredients. I'm not sure they brought anything that couldn't be done with hops. So this isn't a pure antidote to New England IPA but is very decent and unfussy drinking.

Also heading for the West Coast, because I guess Irish IPA is now a rap war by proxy, is Third Circle with their all-Centennial Centurion. We go up to 6% ABV here and get an extra punch for our trouble. Here is the no-nonsense dry and sharp heavyweight I was expecting: a grapefruit wrapped in crepe paper covered in balsa wood. There's pine aplenty, rolling oily late into the finish. It's almost a clear red-gold, though not quite, but without any trace of softness, roundness or any gentle caresses. That said, it doesn't go to extremes: no alcohol heat or hop-resin burn. This is clean and old-fashioned fun; a proper palate scrubber and a pleasing throwback to the old days when IPAs treated you cruelly and didn't call for days after. You have to be into that to like this, and while I'm glad there are options in the IPA sphere, I'm extremely happy to get one of these now and again. West coast done proper.

From the same brewery, the next under the Crafty Bear brand is a red IPA called Bimbos. Why? I don't know. It's an "Imperal Red" according to the label, and 8% ABV. I liked its clear deep amber hue and expected warming barley wine vibes from it. The aroma presents more of a modern hop fruitiness, backed by a promise of rich roasted malt. An odd mix comes through from the flavour, all of it at once. I found myself having to mentally slow the process down to pick it apart. Loudest is red liquorice ropes, candy-sweet with a mild herbal bitterness. Tangy strawberry jam runs alongside, then more traditional hop bitterness: crunchy red cabbage and sticky pine. Wafting over the top is a peppery spice, helping dry out any sugary excesses. The end result is rather good. It reaches the parts you might usually call on a barley wine for, being warming, complex an satisfying to sip, but it's also hop-forward and punchy. A best-of-both-worlds job, despite the poorly-chosen name.

Mind you, that pales in comparison next to Treaty City's decision to call their new one "Limited Bitch". Eww. This is also red, an IPA of 5.5% ABV and hopped with Summit, a bit like Metalman classic Windjammer. The aroma is earthy and savoury, not what one would expect from an IPA, even a red one. There's a little bitterness in the flavour, punchy in the foretaste but fading quickly. Then there's a burnt-caramel edge, some dry tannins and the thick toffee of a typical red ale. This doesn't have much going for it, its best feature being the full texture, so at least it feels like a good red ale even if it doesn't necessarily taste like one, and very little like an IPA.

Wide Street's first go at a mixed-fermentation lager didn't impress me much, but they've made another attempt, with one called Diversion. It's a bit of a beast at 6.4% ABV, hazy and yellow, and smelling sharply sour in a Pajottenland stylee. Sure enough there's a lot of sourness and a lot of funk in the aroma: vinegar time in the farmyard. The texture is thick and gummy in the way that Brett does but lager doesn't. A hint of peach and apricot peeps through the powerful acidity. This certainly doesn't fall into the trap of being neither one thing or another: it's unashamedly sour and funky. It took a bit of getting used to but I was into it by the end. Maybe a little more of that Bretty funk would have helped balance the extreme tartness better, but that's a minor quibble. Spare a thought for anyone who didn't read past the word "Lager" on the label.

I needed a comedown from such giddy heights of sourness so it was back to Lough Gill for their Wild Irish Gose. This has been out for ages and I was convinced I'd had it under a different name and branding. But nothing in previous blog posts matches the spec, so here we go. It's an unassuming 4% ABV and a perfect limpid gold. A lemon spritz is the opener and it doesn't get more sour than that, even when the briny salt follows it on stage. Coriander isn't listed as an ingredient but there's a definite herbal complexity in there. Despite the strength it has a full texture as well as plenty of cleansing bubbles. This isn't an exciting beer, but is enjoyable in an understated way. Just what I was after.

As is obvious from the above, properly dark beers are thin on the ground this weather, so I had to turn to a very unseasonal "hot cross bun pastry stout" from Dead Centre: Four Quarters. 6.8% ABV, it gloops out into the glass, oily and dense, briefly forming a dark brown head which quickly crackles away. Apart from a small cinnamon spice element, there's not much novelty about the aroma but plenty of rich and tarry stout-roast. The flavour is very strange, and not what I was expecting. For one thing it's quite dry, with a harsh zinc-ish twang in the foretaste. In the centre, a heavy dollop of marmalade, suddenly calling witbier to mind. It turns out that orange peel is an ingredient, so that explains that. As is cinnamon but it's a lot less prominent in the flavour than the aroma, coming across in a slightly medicinal/mouthwash way. There are raisins too, which I couldn't taste, and as an insurance policy to guarantee the hot cross bun effect, the ingredients also include actual hot cross buns. Isn't that cheating? All in all, this is a near miss. Pastry stouts must be heavy, thick and sweet, and the dry metallic side on display here prevents that. In the absence of other stouts it will do, and it's an idea that's worth trying again, but filling out the body is the first thing I'd address.

As the nights begin to draw in I'm hoping that dark beers will be easier to find for the next one of these round-ups.

Causes for celebration

Wicklow Wolf has never needed a reason to put out a beer before, but the latest pair both seem to have been the result of special occasions.

Marking one year since the move into their new brewery in Newtownmountkennedy, they've released a new beer, NTMK, a New England IPA with kveik yeast and Mosaic, Citra and El Dorado hops. It looks like a glass of orange juice and has that characteristic blend of vanilla, garlic and stonefruit in the aroma.  The ABV is 6.4% but it seems hotter, feeling thick and having a butane or kerosene heat at the front. There's a dry yeasty grit in the finish and both of these off-notes would be forgivable if the hop fruit were more pronounced. It's not, though. I get a faint echo of grapefruit as the aftertaste while the middle offers a smoothie-like combination of ripe banana, vanilla and sharp kiwi. It doesn't hold together very well, the various negative aspects outweighing the positive. One for the haze-at-all-costs brigade, perhaps, but not for me.

More haze? More haze. YellowBelly came round to help create Sunshine & Showers, a NEIPA based on their their previous joint effort, last year's Super Soaker, but with the ABV inverted, going from 2.7% to 7.2%. It looks very juicy, opaque yellow with a sunset tint of blood orange. The aroma is a little harsh: gritty chalk and hot vodka. Its flavour works much better, centred around a real pithy and juicy ripe citrus. The heat is still there, but it's perfectly complementary. The best part is the bitterness, an invigorating tang that's too often missing from beers of this sort. It's not an easy drinking fellow but there's plenty to enjoy while working slowly through it. Definitely a cut above, as this sort of thing goes.

I don't know if the next occasion will be the 2020 hop harvest and the resulting Locavore beers, but that must be coming up soon. And I was pleased to see that their excellent 5th-birthday stout will be out again next week to mark their 6th. Cause for celebration indeed.

Sick burn

I have a soft spot for stupid macho chilli beers, even though they're almost always awful plasticky messes. The awfulness doubles down today with one from English brewery Fallen Angel, a regular on Pumpclip Parade back in the day, for its cringeworthy soft-porn branding. In my defence, I didn't buy this one, I was given it, and its label is not pornographic even though the beer is called Fire in the Hole. The artwork is cringeworthy, in fairness. One final note before we go in: the beer is coming up to twelve years since the short shelf-life was up, but it is bottle conditioned, so should be fine right? Right? Let's see.

Zero points for the visuals. No head formed for more than a second and under where it was there's a horrible looking swampy mid-brown soup. I'm only drinking this because you're insisting on it. "Cajun vinegar" probably best describes the aroma: a sharp sour tang with a sprinkling of paprika and black pepper. Maybe things will be OK. Fire in the hole!

Pepper and vinegar is pretty much the extent of it. It's good that I like both of those things. It's not unpleasantly acidic -- it's good vinegar, acceptable for a Flanders red or the like. An initial pepper piquancy leads on to a back-of-the-throat burn. Though the body is thin, there's a base of vanilla and banana which doesn't go, at all, but I don't hate this.

The world of high-end Belgian beer is changing. There's a sudden rush of new authentic lambic producers, and established producers of traditional sour beer making daring recipes, all of it plainly driven by the insatiable market on the other side of the Atlantic. If one of them produced a chilli lambic, this is how I imagine it would taste.

You won't like this, and I don't for a second think it left the brewery like this in 2008. But I drank all of it and quite enjoyed it, sip by sip. Go figure.

Mikki tickin'

Gosh there sure are a lot of Mikkeller beers around these days. I still think of the Danish contract brand as the high-end, epitome-of-craft that it was a dozen years ago so it's slightly jarring to see it presented as keenly-priced every-day beer. Still, the product is generally good and I've been filling my basket.

First today is Hallo Ich Bin Raspberry Berliner. I was underwhelmed by its mango sibling in 2017. Let's see if a more orthodox fruit suits it better. It's an attractive cherry-red colour, for a start, with quite a decent head on top. The raspberries provide the aroma, one which is missing the promise of tartness to come. Sure enough it's only mildly sour, with the sweet ripe berries parked squarely in the centre of it. It's a clean sherbet sweetness to begin but turns to sticky candy and then jam as it warms on the palate. A sugary residue is left behind when it exits. It's only 3.7% ABV and as such is easy-going fare -- the syrupy side never quite becomes awkward or unpleasant. I had been hoping for something with a bit more of a kick, though.

The next three are all low-to-medium strength pale ales, which has me wondering if there really are lots of different Mikkeller beers around after all.

Lightest of the lot is Evergreen which purports to be a "New England style session IPA". Do they make IPAs at 3.5% ABV in New England? I doubt it. It looks very watery: a wan yellow with just the faintest effort at haziness. The aroma is a pleasant mix of lemon and vanilla -- a meringue, or possibly even a posset. The biggest surprise is that it's not as thin as it looks. They've utilised the bulking effect of New England yeast to fill out the texture nicely, giving it a smoothness that fits its sweet side well. The flavour is balanced, continuing the lemon dessert theme, though also showing a more assertive bitter stream, the sort that might have come across as harsh had the mouthfeel not been so accomplished. I went in sceptical but was utterly charmed by this little fellow.

Something a little more ordinary to follow: a straight-up pale ale called Side Eyes, at 4.6% ABV. This is a clear amber colour with a handsome head, features which would have been entirely non-noteworthy previously but have become rare here in the Haze Age. On sniffing and tasting I deem this below merely "ordinary" and into downright dull. There's an echo of the lemon sweetness from the previous beer, to the point of me thinking that it's actually a leftover and that this one is so characterless it offers nothing to replace it. I get a certain pale-malt crispness of the sort found in plain mass-market lager, and the very faintest of hop oils, but no real bitterness and no fruit either. I had reached the end of the glass before I was able to pick out any distinguishing features. On the plus side there are no flaws but I still wouldn't recommend it. Definite side eyes from me.

Last up is Heated Seats, another pale yellow one, this time pretty much opaque. Our ABVs top out at 4.9%. The aroma is similar to Evergreen -- lemony and dessertish. Its texture isn't as full, though again it's perfectly acceptable: light and clean without being thin. Rather than lemon, the flavour is orangey. First impression is of fizzy vitamin C tablets, then a fresher, real sense of mandarin. There's a modicum of dankness with this, and the finish is quick. This is simple and tasty; refreshing and quaffable; a gulper not a sipper. It's as enjoyable as Evergreen but not as impressive within the ABV. Nicely done, overall.

So I guess Mikkller is just an ordinary brewer now, making a mix of good and less-good beers. This is what it looks like when a hype merchant grows up.

Styling moose

Two beers today from Hop City, the fake-craft arm of Canadian giant Moosehead. When big breweries pull this sort of trick the results are rarely any good, though I did give the last ones I tried a qualified pass. Let's see how they've handled the switch from bottles to cans.

Commuter is a session IPA. It's a beautiful deep amber colour, and perfectly clear with a dense and lasting head: the sort of appearance you'll generally only find in a classic German bock or Märzen these days. A zesty aroma is down to Mandarina Bavaria hops and there's a sizeable dose of orangey goodness in the flavour too. Behind it, there's a lager-malt crispness and then a herbal/mineral bathsalts complexity. With a bit of warmth on board, a balancing toffee sweetness emerges, before a last-minute pinch of dry bitterness provides the finish and aftertaste. It's all done at 4.1% ABV and it's exactly light-bodied enough to be properly sessionable. Perhaps there's something to be said for a lager giant trying its hand at flavoursome, hoppy, drinking beer.

That bodes well for their take on one of my favourite under-brewed styles: black lager. Sure enough, they've pretty much nailed it with 8th Sin. This is 5% ABV, which I thought was a little on the strong side but it's well used, creating a rich and creamy texture. So we're more in the Czech tmavý end of the black lager spectrum, rather than the crisp schwarzbier that I, for no reason, had been expecting. Bitter liquorice and smooth milk chocolate team up and contrast beautifully with each other, the herbal side giving it a lasting finish. As a sideshow there's a little caramel, just enough burnt-toast dryness, and a noble fresh-cabbage green side. It's far too long since I had a good black lager so I should hold myself back from proclaiming this a masterwork, but I enjoyed it a hell of a lot. To anyone else in Dublin on the lookout for decent dark lager and missing the Czech pubs, get into this forthwith.

It seems I sorely, and unfairly, prejudged Hop City. These are both quality offerings, created with care to be flavoursome and engaging while also showing the expertise and quality control that comes from an industrial-sized operation. They're also reasonably priced and a little more generous than the norm in their 473ml cans. Neither should be overlooked just because of where they're from.

Romanian plain

Timişoreana is far from my favourite brand of Romanian macro lager. I'm an Ursus man. Always have been, and likely always be. You can disagree, but you can't change the facts. An unpasteurised Timişoreana, though? I'll give that a go.

The Timişoreana Nepasteurizată came from Polonez -- a wonderful source of weird stuff from the eastern reaches of this continent. It's 5% ABV and a rich orange shade, looking bright and wholesome in the glass. The aroma is a little sharp and vomity but there's none of that in flavour. On the minus side there's not much of anything in the flavour. I'm used to beers with no foretaste and a kick on the finish, and those that put everything up front then tail off quickly. This creates both of those effects without the corresponding taste part. I ended up letting it warm, just so I could get a bead on it.

There I found a middling lager syrup and vague noble hop pepperiness. Nothing like you'd find in good European lager though, more like a scaled back ghost version of Budvar or Augustiner Pils: what might happen if they too were passed around between SABMiller and Asahi, God forbid.

"Inoffensive" is a word made for this beer. There's none of the crap lager badness -- boiled veg, sharp tin, sickly sugar -- but all character has been thoroughly removed from the ingredients, by a process other than pasteurisation. Pass me an Ursus.

Whole Wild world

Beers from Somerset brewer Wild Beer have been steadily arriving in off licences over here for the last while. I've been gradually picking them up, usually to fill out a 4-for-€10 offer and sticking them in the back of the fridge. Today I'm taking them out for a spin.

Not really knowing how to decide a drinking order, I started on the lightest: Yōkai, at 4.5% ABV. No style is given, presumably because it's all about the weird ingredients and the pre-existing universe of beer genres is irrelevant. Or they just forgot. I'm going to call it a blonde ale as it's a bright golden colour and full-textured. At first I thought it was clear but there are large clumps floating through it. The head disappears quickly leaving an oily film on the surface. The ingredients, then, are yuzu, seaweed and Sichuan pepper. The latter is the most prominent, though it's a gentle spicing. A tiny citrus tang must be the yuzu but could equally come from some American hopping. I don't know what the seaweed ought to contribute -- maybe the gummy texture -- but I didn't get the umami promised on the can. The spec suggests something exciting but, while it's not dull, the flavours don't pop with fruit and spice as I'd hoped. Perhaps its muted nature is meant to suit it for delicate Japanese cuisine, but that heavy texture doesn't: I'd take a crisp dry lager with my sushi over this.

Citrus, passionfruit and pine are promised on the label of Quantic, a session IPA, but there aren't any added ingredients, it's all done with Simcoe, Mosaic and Cascade hops. The floaty bits are finer in this and it's a similar sparkling gold as the previous one. The aroma offers parallel fruit candy and resinous dank streams and that's kind of what the flavour delivers. The sticky fruit chews are most prominent, definitely passionfruit-flavoured rather than the real thing. The texture is light and there's plenty of fizz which helps keep things clean and hold the sweetness in check, but I think a session on this would still be too much before long. The more serious oily bitterness flashes across the palate late, fading quickly and leaving little aftertaste. It's interesting. It produces the kind of flavours that are more commonly found in fruited novelty beers, and somehow I feel better for knowing it's just hops. Whichever variety they used for flavour, they definitely got their money's worth from it.

Ordinarily, the sour fruity one would come at the beginning of the sequence, but with 5% ABV, Kalamansification is the last of today's cans. Kalamansi joins cherimoya under "fruit I'd never heard of until beer." It's in here with hibiscus, which adds its usual pink colour and strong cherry-raspberry flavour. The base beer is tangy and clean, and the two sides work well together, creating something refreshing and summery. There's a certain full sweetness, like ripe pear, and maybe that's the kalamansi, but regardless of the individual elements, it all works harmoniously; just tart enough, perfectly clean, complex without being busy and ideally suited to the balmy summer evening on which I drank it. A printed can suggests this is in regular production, and if so that's good news: it's worth coming back to. An antidote to soupy and sugary fruited sour beers.

I thought the one in the big bottle would be a roaring powerhouse so left it to last but we're actualy stepping down in ABV with The Blend 2017 at 4.9%. This was a prize in BrewDog's Beer Geek Awards three years ago and I had been looking for an excuse to open it. What's been blended? The label isn't specific, just some stuff to try and create a geuze. It looks the part: the colour of polished brass. The aroma is sharp and cidery, suggesting geuze to an extent but lacking the oaky spice of the best stuff. The flavour does better. There's the mineral gunpowder kick that's one of gueze's top features, and a crisp white-wine cleanness. Bretty funk adds a seasoning, and then a vinegar tang introduces a slight misstep on the finish. Overall, though, it's pretty damn good. Not too sour and no rough edges. Close enough to the real thing for me.

Interesting recipes have always been Wild Beer's thing, and it's good to see that continuing. I look forward to seeing what they bring out of the larder next.

Kiuchi cutesy coup

Until recently, the Hitachino Nest beers from the Kiuchi brewery were imported into Ireland by the Yamamori restaurant chain. That was fine, and I was glad they're around, but it did tend to limit their availability. Recently, however, distribution has moved to a full-time beer importer, Grand Cru, which has made them more accessible and added a couple to the range which I hadn't had before.

Hitachino Nest Amber Ale is one of them. It's a much deeper colour than most amber ales, a deep shade of mahogany, topped with lots of froth. It poured thickly, seeming denser than one might expect for 6% ABV. The doppelbock visuals are carried through into the aroma: it smells of liquorice herbs and chewy toffee. The flavour adds burnt caramel to this, and a lager cleanness. Very doppelbock indeed. As such, it's enjoyable: flavoursome, filling and warming. Maybe not the best choice for al fresco drinking on an August afternoon, and not at all like the American standard for amber ale, but quality is quality.

The next one calls itself a Real Ginger Ale, something that suggests light summer fizz to me. The reality is 8% ABV and dark red again, this time murky with it. There's a gentle spice in the aroma, though otherwise we're dealing with another malt-heavy medium-dark ale. And so it goes with the flavour: this is very sweet, an assortment of chewy caramels, buttery toffees and chocolate pralines. There's no kick from the ginger, and only the faintest of contributions to the flavour. If handed to me blind I would likely guess this is an English strong ale or barley wine: what heat there is is solely derived from the alcohol. Like the previous beer, this one confounds expectations, but doesn't do as good a job of it. Though without obvious flaws, it fails to deliver on its basic promise. That anthropomorphic ginger root on the label need not look so delighted with itself.

The Hitachino Nest range is extensive, and most of them have never arrived on these shores. I would love if Grand Cru's new arrangement means we'll be getting more of them. In the meantime, the also-highly-unorthodox Nipponia remains the best of the bunch. Try it if you see it.

Light motif

Low-strength German oddities isn't a theme I've tackled on here previously, as far as I can recall, but I do like to mix things up, so here goes.

Radler isn't really odd, but then it doesn't count as beer either, in Germany. This one is Grevensteiner Naturtrübes Ur-Radler, 48% lager, 52% lemonade at 2.5% ABV. I expected it to be hazy and yellow because radlers are, but it immediately confounded me by being a dark bronze shade and almost completely clear, at least for the initial part of the pour. Perhaps I should have given the bottle a rattle before opening. It smells of dried lemon and herbs, like the sort of mixture you might use to season fish in Mediterranean cookery. The flavour is very sweet, but not in the usual radler way. It's cleaner and smoother, with a dry and tannic lemon tea quality. There's even a mildly herbal hop bite. This doesn't taste like some fizzy pop topped up with lager. It's altogether classier, refined and refreshing. The sugar doesn't hang around on the palate, nor lump together in the stomach. A nice twist from Team Veltins.

But if even that is too rich for your blood alcohol, Schlenkerla has an offering, which I think is new, at 1.2% ABV. Hansla is the same dark brown colour as the rest of the stable, and has a familiar aroma of the burnt crunchy bits around the edge of a roast ham. They haven't compensated in the texture and it's quite watery as a result. This means there isn't the same meaty richness as with the classic Märzen, though it calls its intense flavour to mind. Instead there's a dry acridity, like real wood smoke at its most stinging and inconvenient. That works well in the high-ABV end of the series -- the urbock and oak doppelbock -- but is an encumbrance here. The aftertaste is a lingering raw beechwood that's a little out of character for the brand. Yes, it's thirst-quenching, despite the smoke, but so thin that it doesn't really feel like beer, more a smoked savoury soft drink: I could be persuaded it's a variant of kombucha or kvass or the like. Interesting as an experiment, but not something I would make a habit of, even if I found myself labouring in the fields around Bamberg. For more on the historical background of what's going on here, see Andreas's blog.

I like when German beer shows its reputation as staid and samey to be inaccurate. There's always more to explore even when you think you've seen and tasted it all.

Virtual Belgium

I've not been one for recreating at home or online the things I used to enjoy but can't currently do. I'll appreciate them all the more when they return for real. I have, however, found that distinctive-tasting Belgian beer brings me on an imaginary excursion to the Low Countries every time I drink it. I've begun serving it with cubes of cheese and celery salt on the side, to help the trip along.

Today's beer, St Bernardus Extra 4 was a bit of a surprise when I saw it on the off licence shelves. The St Bernardus range is very commonplace in Belgium and has been sold here for years, but I had never before noticed this particular one. Obviously I snapped it up and had it ready for my next virtual holiday.

It's a mere 4.8% ABV and pours pale and hazy, like a witbier. The aroma and flavour are very much those of a Belgian blonde ale, however, with overtones of tripel. It smells like fresh white bread dipped in honey while the flavour combines a gentle citrus pithiness with peach and honeydew esters, finishing on a hard wax bitterness. The body is very full and it could easily pass for something much stronger. Above all, it tastes extremely Belgian and is a perfect accompaniment to imaginary travel.

And for the hop-dodgers...

It's round two of the Boxtravaganza selection today. As with the beer that kicked off yesterday's pale ales, the first is a low-strength one at just 3.5% ABV. It's from Horizont in Budapest, their Berliner Weisse with Guava & Passionfruit. From the brewer's introduction on the festival live feed I know it's a full 20% fruit. I'm not surprised there's a lot of fruit in this opaque custard-looking job. The initial aroma is a slightly alarming farmyard funk, settling after a moment to proper tropical juice. And tropical juice is largely how it tastes. The base sour beer is present to an extent, enough to stop it from turning cloying but not enough to give it a proper edge. On balance, yes: it delivers what one might expect from the description. It's not especially complex or exciting though. They have a whole series of these and I suspect they're more interesting to formulate and brew than they are to drink.

A palate cleanser was welcome after that and next in the official drinking order was 310 a blonde ale from Santa Monica Brew Works. This is 4.8% ABV, a perfect clear golden and single-hopped with Summit. The aroma is atypical: dry cracker, pencil shavings and honeydew melon. What? That dryness takes up most of the flavour, scorching my palate a little. A sweetness follows that, more sticky honey and lemonade than cool refreshing fruit, accentuated by low carbonation. I found this quite difficult, which I'm sure is not the intention behind it. The brewer said its origins were as an alternative to Budweiser and it seriously lacks that beer's cleanness and ease of drinking. My palate got the scrub it needed, but I was very unthrilled by this.

Today's blueberry beer is Outdoorsman, a "triple fruited sour" from Gipsy Hill featuring blueberries and bananas. Unsurprisingly it's very smoothie-looking: an opaque beetroot purple. And like yesterday's muffin thingy, the aroma is spicy first, in a Christmassy way. There's a properly sharp sourness lurking behind this, which is promising. Sure enough the texture is light and the tang is there in the finish, clean and tart, though tasting more of cherries than blueberries to me. Before this, a swirl of sweetness; milkshake and ice cream. I like the contrast, the two sides complement each other really well. It's soft and cuddly, but not jarringly sweet; assertively tart but not severe. I wasn't expecting to like this but it's spot on -- complex yet accessible; silly but well-made.

It took me a moment to decipher what the angry red things on the label of Mont Hardi's beer were. Beetroot! (Betterrave, en français.) It's called Bête-Raves Sauvages ("Wild Beast-Root", perhaps) and is a saison of 5.9% ABV. Comparison with our native beetroot saison, Hopfully's excellent Beetjuice, immediately sets a high bar for it. There's lots of fizz as it pours and the colour is a pale pink. It smells sweet -- oddly so -- with the caramel and grapefruit of an old-fashioned American pale ale. Not what I was expecting. There's quite a lot of that in the flavour too, though also a definite earthiness which I'm guessing is from the root vegetables. I get a slightly solvent-like funk too, which may be down to the warm-fermented saison esters. This isn't very impressive. Though fizzy it lacks crispness and there's none of the fruit or spice alternatives that make saison worthwhile. Even the novelty ingredient is muted. Taken all together it amounts to little more than a very basic pale ale. Beetjuice has nothing to worry about.

Pilot's contribution is a Lime & Pepper Gose. It pours a clear golden shade, fizzing briskly before settling down to something quite heavy and without a head. There's a bit of salt and lime in the aroma but nothing which prepared me for the frontal assault of lime cordial in the flavour. It is drenched in the stuff, the thick texture spreading it across the palate in a way that's both sticky and tangy. Some briny salt does its best to balance it but without much success. Disappointingly, I found I could could locate no trace of the alleged organic black pepper that's supposed to be in here. All things considered, it's a bit severe and one-dimensional. It is at least properly sour, but more in a lime-sucking way than any microflora complexities, and you can forget about any refreshment given the thickness. Much to grumble about; I'll just move on.

I thought from the name that Jam Up The Mash by Collective Arts would be a murky double IPA or the like, but no: it's described on the can as a "dry hopped sour", the brewery website telling us it's a mixed fermentation and uses Vic Secret, Mosaic and Citra. It's pale and lightly hazy in the glass, again not too concerned about keeping a head. The aroma is tart and spritzy with some carefree summery citrus notes. This goes full-on juicy on tasting, with delicious mandarin at the front supported by pineapple and mango. At the same time there's lots of sourness, a distinctly lactic twang which is a little bit much but doesn't disturb the equilibrium. This is a beauty, using high-calibre hops but not overdoing things, resulting in big flavours while still staying accessible. I'm a fan of sour-'n'-hoppy in general, and this one absolutely pushes my buttons.

The grand finale is Szilvás Gombóc from Mad Scientist, an "imperial pastry sour ale" made to resemble the Hungarian plum dumplings after which it's named. I guess it's the 10% ABV that earns its place at the tail end of the Boxtravaganza list. The deep wine-red colour had me thinking it's hazy but it's actually completely clear. The aroma is strong, sweet and spirituous: the kirsch and slivovitz that I like to have accompanying me on journeys through eastern Europe. Add a thickness to that and the first taste comes across like cough medicine until the sourness kicks in. There's a sharpness like from real plums only moreso, pinching the jaw and inducing a wince. The sweet and sour sides are too equally powerful to complement each other; instead you get parallel flavours, but both are interesting and pleasant to sip. I thought I wouldn't like the booze and busyness but I eventually settled in to it, enjoying the sharpness, the sweetness and the warmth all on their own terms. This needs time to be appreciated, and might even work as a sharer in dinky liqueur glasses. Regardless it's very well made and more than just a gimmick.

Well that was fun, but let's have it at the brewery next year, yeah?

Hag-in-a-box

25th July would have been the fourth Hagstravaganza festival at the White Hag brewery in Sligo. As a workaround, the organisers gathered together a mix of local and international beers (and one cider), most of them not otherwise available in Ireland, and sold them by the box. Boxtravaganza was born. On the day there was a full program of livestreamed edutainment, and since then I've been gradually getting through the package at a sensible pace.

I noticed two distinct strands in the beers: the pale ales and then the sour, farmhouse and whatnot. That's how I'm splitting the reviews, beginning today with the former.

We start soft -- it says so twice on the front of the can -- with Cloudwater Pale Ale. It's a de rigeur hazy yellow at 3.7% ABV. A new take on English bitter? There is a decent bitterness in with all the sherbet, mixing a spinach greenness with lemon meringue pie filling and honeycomb candy. The texture is absolutely as advertised, all pillowy candyfloss yet still light and easy-drinking. It's rare, for me anyway, to find a beer of this nature that's properly pintable, but here it is. The balance and simplicity is beautifully pitched. One to convert the murk-sceptics, perhaps. Had the festival been running for real this wouldn't have worked half as well in a small sample serving.

Things turn weird very quickly with the next English pale ale: Much Ado About Muffin from Siren, described as a "blueberry muffin pale ale". Feedback on the day was that it was quite an accurate recreation. It's a clear purple colour and rather lacking in carbonation, as indeed is a muffin, I suppose. The aroma is spicy rather than fruity and this unfolds into cinnamon and clove in the flavour. Lemon, vanilla and blueberries are all promised in the description and I got none of that. I get a certain sweetness, but it's secondary to the spicing, and there's definitely nothing I'd call hop character. There's nothing cake-like about the texture either, it being quite thin, even for 5.5% ABV. This isn't a bad beer, or one ruined by brewers getting over-creative, but it doesn't have a whole lot to say and certainly doesn't live up to its own hype. Moving on...

Brewfist's Zona Rossa was created to mark Lombardy's dubious honour as the first part of Europe to enter lockdown. It's a pale ale, surprisingly pale in fact. I maintain a belief that if a beer colour appears in the name, the beer should be that colour. This isn't red, it's a clear and sunny yellow. The aroma is gently spritzy -- a squeeze of lemon and some lighter honeydew. It doesn't taste much more exciting. A bite of lime rind bitterness, a rougher but not unpleasant herbal side, and then a honey thickness for balance. It's a little old-fashioned, fitting more on the hoppier end of English blonde ale than American pale, I think, but it's enjoyable nonetheless.

Then we're back in England and bang up-to-date for my first beer from Salt in Yorkshire. They're offering a Sabro Vermont Session, which tells you up front all you need to know. Sabro is that hop that tastes very similar to Sorachi Ace to me, so I was intrigued to find how it works in a fluffy pale ale. The aroma is lovely, a blend of sweet and citrus like key lime pie. A deeper sniff brings the pithy Sorachi-alike to the surface. There's plenty of substance for just 4.2% ABV; a proper New-England softness, but light too. Rather than sweet vanilla or tropical juice there's a strong citric bitterness contrasting the meringue sweetness, turning to mushroomy umami in the finish. That sounds like it shouldn't work, and it's definitely unorthodox, but quite tasty with it. It would be good to see more breweries playing around in the hazy IPA space. This is a demonstration that it can bring us to interesting places.

Round Corner from Leicestershire is also new to me, and their contribution is a west coast IPA called Hopping Spree. My busy backdrop doesn't show off the colour very well but this is a beautiful pale copper shade and bright like polished brass. Phwoar. The aroma is only lightly citric, not what I'd expect from the crowded mix of Centennial, Cascade, Amarillo, Simcoe, Mosaic, Citra, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. A waxy bitterness is the front and back of the flavour, delivering an initial punch and then a long dry finish. The middle is fruitier, however, and I'm guessing that's Mosaic holding its own against the high-alpha heavyweights while adding softer notes of cantaloupe and apricot. A hint of crystal-malt caramel contributes a different sort of balancing sweetness. Despite such subtle flounces this is still a proper, serious, west-coaster -- 6.6% ABV lends it plenty of heft. You really get everything you could ask of the style from it, unless your tastes run to silly 100 IBU throat-scorchers. Mine don't. I really enjoyed this.

We're off to Milano next, to Birrificio Lambrate and their double dry-hopped American-style IPA Fà Balà L'Oeucc. This is a middling 5.8% ABV and a typical hazy yellow. The aroma is exceptional, though: jumping with tropical fruit and dank weed. I figured I was in for a treat until I caught that crunchy savoury side that too often comes with it. That kills the fruit in the foretaste, giving instead a dry sesame seed bite alongside the thick and bitter oily resins. Peach and mango make a late appearance, wafted up on some sweet vanilla. This beer is a bit all over the place with a couple of nice features but too much interference, mainly from that dry caraway/sesame seed thing, the scourge of so many supposedly juicy beers.

Alefarm of Denmark follow that with their Union & Hyde IPA, 6.2% ABV and brewed with Enigma and Topaz. Its appearance is the new normal: eggy yellow with a meringue head. The aroma is an enticing fruit salad of pineapple, white grape and tinned peaches and that comes straight through into the foretaste. There's a middle which is harder -- the acidity of kiwifruit, gooseberry and a certain weedy dank -- then the sweetness kicks in again for a fruit-chew finish. The gravity is well used, making a beer that's filling without turning cloying or hot. This is a good example of how hazy IPA can be done cleanly, so even if the flavours and texture aren't to one's taste, one can still appreciate that it has been well made.

One of the major coups pulled by the organisers was the inclusion of a Kernel beer in the set. With none of us planning a trip to Bermondsey to get our fix any time soon it was very welcome. IPA Nelson Sauvin Vic Secret is the beer. Though shot through with a few skeins of yeast on pouring, it's no London Murky. The head is perfectly formed and lasting, something very often absent from most modern IPAs. A concentrated dank hop funk greets the nostrils, with the promise of fruit-flavoured candy behind. It's very heavily textured, even at 6.5% ABV. There's a velvety smoothness that again is atypical. The flavour, though hop-forward, matches that weight. There's a concentrated grape overtone, a lot of oily resins and a dusting of white pepper on top. I found it pleasingly old-fashioned if unspectacular. It's an IPA-drinker's IPA: strong, bitter and displaying the hops for hops' sake with no silly twists from the yeast or other ingredients. I think I expected something with more punch but was very happy with the mellow affair I got instead.

Today's set finishes back in America, with Green Cheek's Member' IPA, another can of west-coast nostalgia. Though a full 7% ABV it's a very pale golden colour topped by a crackling white head. The aroma is funky, even a little cheesy, which is not what I'd expect from all-Mosaic. Unfortunately, they have used Evil Mosaic in this, the one that tastes of dry sesame seeds and caraway instead of luscious peach and melon. That's a real shame. This is another dense one too, which concentrates the jagged taste, spreading it waxily across the palate. As a single hopper no other nuance is on offer here, so if you don't like the main flavour then tough.

A bit of a bum note to finish round one on. Tomorrow we'll follow the event's other track, of beers that aren't pale ales, and see where that gets us.

Dancing to the beat

Remember brut IPA? The sub-style's brief moment in the sun a couple of years ago has left one survivor in the off licences of Dublin: Ska Brewing's Moral Panic. It has been around more or less since the craze began, and since it's still around and stocked freshly, I thought it was about time I gave it a go.

The pour gives us something pale yellow and hazy -- looking very summery in the sunshine -- and the flavour is a spritzy sea-breeze of salt and lemons. I was surprised to find it quite sweet: the lemons are candied, and a little syrupy. The brut-ishness comes in the texture, a watery hollowness that makes it very easy to drink but I think is preventing the taste from being as assertive as it could be. There's a certain tangy minerality in the background, though not as much as I was hoping for. This looks like a witbier, tastes a bit like a witbier, and can be put to similar sorts of duties, as an outdoor summer refresher, albeit slightly on the strong side for that, at 5.75% ABV. Still, don't expect any style-shaking peculiarities.

For something more up-to-the-minute and down-with-the-kids, here's a hazy IPA called The Hazy IPA. As always when a biggish American brewer puts one of these out in sufficient quantity for it to reach here, I have Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing in mind. A tough contest.

This one is 6.5% ABV and is indeed hazy: a juicy-looking pale orange. The aroma is an enticing cross between orangeade and citrus sorbet. It tastes more serious, however. There's a little garlic or spring onion and a definite booze heat, sending double IPA vibes, punching well above its weight. The juicy citrus side -- satsuma, tangerine -- runs in parallel with this, a separate sweet counterpoint to the allium acidity. An earthy yeast bite finishes it off, adding nothing positive. They have managed to get the distinctive features of hazy IPA into this one. If the style is really your thing and not an affectation, then having a cheap and accessible mass market version should be a cause for celebration. Me, I'd take Sierra's answer over this any day. The rough edges that Ska has left here don't suit me.

A late addition to the set is The Aggrolite, a "lo-cal" session IPA, I guess for the benefit of those unconvinced by Ska's move into the hard seltzer realm. 4.2% ABV is comedically low for an American beer, and there's a thinness to the texture which over there they would likely expect from something this ridiculously compromised. For us, where it's perfectly normal, that's less acceptable. It smells like an old-school American IPA with a heavy dose of toffee-like crystal malt studded with jaffa-pith hops. That doesn't gel at all well with the mouthfeel; in fact it's completely out of keeping with the rest of the profile. It was quite a surprise to find it deliciously juicy and modern tasting, coming across like real mandarin flesh, the sensation just as you bite into a segment and the juice runs out. There's a faint aspirin or chalk twang in the finish but that juice comes back in the aftertaste. Once I learned to stop smelling it, I really enjoyed this. It's clear and clean too, another beer that shows murk is not required for juicy freshness. Lessons!