Flying Luponic

Firestone Walker is today's brewery of interest, starting with their take on the new category of low-strength, low-calorie IPA.

Like recent reviewees Oskar Blues One-y and Lagunitas Daytime, FW Flyjack is 4% ABV, and it wears its 96 calories as a badge of honour on the front of the can. Though badged as a hazy IPA it's very pale and watery looking, and barely hazy at all. The aroma is excellent, though: an enticing citrus/tropical buzz. That carries happily through to the flavour, with gummy apricot and cantaloupe, some mango, tangerine and a splash of pineapple. What lets it down is the texture: these sorts of flavours need a bit of substance behind them and here they're given no foundation, just a watery fizz. There's no time to enjoy the taste before it fades off the palate leaving just a carbonic burn. It's not a bad beer by any means, but it's annoyingly tantalising in the way it offers a superb flavour profile compromised by a need to stay light-bodied. If you start from a position of wanting a 96-calorie beer, however, I can't think of one better.

To get a proper kick (5.9% ABV) I turn to the Luponic Distortion IPA series. I last tried the 13th iteration, and this is No. 14, though the series itself has moved on a couple since. "White Grape, Mandarin Orange, Passion Fruit" yells the can in all-caps, presumably in an attempt to influence what you taste before you taste it. It smells sweet and quite sticky, somewhere between Chewits and red vermouth. The flavour is much more interesting, however: lots of weedy dank and oily winter herbs like rosemary and sage, plus a dollop of the same creamy coconut so dominant in the last one. Since it's not the freshest, it's possible the subtler fruit aromas and flavours have disintegrated, but what's left is still a perfectly drinkable American IPA.

Life moves pretty fast, and we skip 15 to reach Luponic Distortion No. 16, a mere three months in the can when I opened it. The silly fruit thing seems to have gone by-the-by and there's a more serious bitter resin quality here, leaning in to savoury courgette, ripe red apple and a sharp finish of wax and match heads. This is a taciturn, chin-stroker of an IPA, the sort they don't make much these days. More than the matured examples I had before, I would believe that this has had the aroma and foretaste subtleties aged out of it, but that can't be true -- it's relatively fresh but I guess just less interesting and less enjoyable. Nowt wrong with it, and if you're a haze-hater you should buy all you see, but I was underwhelmed.

Still, the great thing about numerical series is that there'll be another one along in a minute.