Brown under

Today it's the return of the New Zealand contract brewer Yeastie Boys. Only two of the beers are brown but I couldn't resist the title.

The first they've called Shadow of the Dog but I don't know why. Neither do I know where it's brewed -- they're usually good about putting provence on the can but there's none here. It's a dunkelweizen and it feels weird to be drinking one of those in a 33cl measure. Authenticity doesn't seem to have been a concern, however, as it's a piddling 4.6% ABV and has damn all head retention. The aroma is as banana-filled as I expected, but there's a nice ashen roasted dryness there too, to counter it. In the mouth it's fizz first, then banana candy, fading out swiftly on toffee and bourbon biscuits. It's hard to impress me with this style, and it's not even a great example. An unsurprisingly thin texture is the final insult. Maybe it was fun to devise and brew but I don't get what they hoped to achieve with something both cloying and watery.

American-style brown ale is an altogether more promising prospect. YB's is called Dream Sequence and is an unAmerican 4.8% ABV. This has been brewed at and in collaboration with Utopian Brewing in Devon. It's a clear chestnut brown, with rather a better head than the dunkelweizen. Lots of hops in the aroma: lemon sherbet and bitterer pine, which smells like good times ahead. The pine is ascendant in the flavour, but tempered by a café crème sweet smoothness. There's a light roast, a smear of dank resins and a chunk of Fry's Turkish Delight. A lot going on, then, and all of it's good. Yes it's lighter than any American example I know but that doesn't compromise it. This is worthy of going toe-to-toe with the excellent American-style brown that Rye River makes for Lidl: if you like that, this is worth your while too.

And so to the inevitable hazy IPA. Born Smiling "tropical IPA" may not have been intended as hazy, but the sediment fairly clouds it up on pouring. The tropical side comes from added mango. Let's find out if that was a good idea. Its aroma isn't up to much, just a trace of that inappropriate funk that sometimes comes with fruit pulp in beers. The foretaste was a real surprise: a ping of pink peppercorn spice that's delightfully whimsical. This mutates on the tongue into a hard citrus tang, mouthwatering like a segment of grapefruit. Softer tangerine and apricot wraps itself around it, the complexity very much hop-derived, thanks to Nelson Sauvin and Hallertau Blanc. I'd have expected more of a grape quality from those two but I'm not complaining. This is no simplistic novelty fruited IPA, it's very well constructed, each separate element contributing positively to the whole. And despite the complexity and a big 6.5% ABV, it's light and accessible too: win win.

I like that Yeastie Boys aren't slavishly following fashion with these, ploughing their own furrow and, apart from a false start, doing so rather well.