A wolf in the shadows

With dark beers not exactly en vogue at the moment, it's pleasing that one of the island's best breweries, Wicklow Wolf, has a fan of them at the helm. I almost whooped when I saw that Locavore 2020 was going to be a stout again, but before that, two more from the dark side of Newtownmountkennedy.

Guardian of the Galaxy is a collaboration with DOT Brew and is a double black IPA. It's a style that has always been niche, but Galway Bay's Solemn Black and YellowBelly's Bushido have been stellar examples and set the bar high. I like that they chose the hops not based on the sensory effect of their combination but on the spacey names: Galaxy, Strata and Comet. It smells like it worked: that gorgeous mix of green veg, citrus fruit and fresh coffee that shouldn't gel together but it does. There's a little extra candy in there, suggesting this won't be as bitter as most of the breed. That proved to be an unfair prejudice: there's dank and resins aplenty on tasting, as well as lots of citrus pith. There was something a little artificial about the latter: marmalade, shading to jelly. The ingredients cleared that up by listing blood orange (extract? oil? syrup?), and I don't think that adds anything positive, but it's separate enough from the dark malts and dank hops to not interfere. On the malt side it's not so much roasty as smoky, a balanced kind of acridity, and the finish is proper new-world hop bittering; the sort of dryness that big black IPA presents better than any other style. There's enough novelty here for those who like silly craft beer, but there's a no-nonsense backbone too. A warmth from 8% ABV makes it ideal after-dark winter drinking.

Also 8% ABV is Apex Tiramisu, third in the Let's Fuck About With A Perfectly Good Oatmeal Stout series. The dessert effect is achieved with coffee, cocoa nibs and lactose. It smells strongly of coffee, one of those dense ristrettos made of barely-diluted beans. The coffee effect is there in the foretaste too, though a little gentler tasting. It's a coffee richness, not just roast and bitterness. But that's about it for complexity. Having crunched the bean on the surface and licked the coffee powder, I expect the cream cheese and boozy sponge to come next in a tiramisu but they don't materialise here. What you get is a jolly decent big coffee stout, untroubled by lactose or brown sugar. I like that. It tastes serious, grown up, and un-fucked-about-with. If you were looking for a stout that actually tastes like tiramisu the way the S'mores one last month tasted of s'mores then you'll be disappointed, but you deserve that. This is punchy, dry and stimulating; a real, how you say, pick-me-up.

Neither beer is perfect, but both kept me happy all through drinking them. Is this Ireland's best dark-beer brewery? Lineman might be up for the challenge but the wolf still leads the pack.