Players

Kinnegar's Hazy Session IPA is the 8th in their Brewers At Play series, and if you want an indication of how much of a stranglehold this style has on Irish beer, the 7th was also a hazy session IPA. This is slightly stronger than its predecessor: 4.6% rather than 4.2%. It's a beaten-egg yellow colour and smells both fruity and spicy, offering tropical mango and guava with pink peppercorns and nutmeg. Nice. A harsh yeast bite lets the flavour down, turning it cottony and savoury from the get go. And around that it's just garlic and water with a mere hint of grapefruit on the finish. Overall, a prime example of this sort of thing not suiting me. Too much interference from the bits I depend on brewers to take out.

Number 9 retreads some familiar ground for Kinnegar: a Sour Lime Gose, calling to mind the lovely lime & Basil Behemoth Berliner weisse they brewed last year. This is just 4.1% ABV and a bright shade of orange, exactly as hazy as the IPA. The aroma is disappointingly sweet: a sticky citrus candy rather than clean salt and sourness. Thankfully there's a lovely pinch of tartness waiting in the foretaste, setting the tone for a complex and serious beer, not ice-lolly daftness. The lime is real and oily and bitter, like the shred in lime marmalade. After the initial jolt, it fades out on a clean saltwater tang. To balance the sour it's big-bodied given the strength, with a lovely soft and effervescent texture. Gose purists will still rankle at the inappropriate flavours, but I found it a jolly nice beer and a cut above how most brewers do sourness with fruit.

The programme accelerates into double figures with a Rye Lager. I'm not sure I've ever met one of these before. It's a middle-of-the-road 4.4% ABV, and both looks and smells like a standard pale lager of no particular style: fresh bread and cracked grains. The rye makes itself felt in the flavour. On an otherwise plain base there's the sharp grassy kick rye tends to give, almost gastric in its acidity. But because this is a lager, it doesn't hang around and fades quickly, leaving just a trace of bitterness in the finish. The hops aren't listed but I'm guessing they're something traditional and German. They don't get in the way. This is no Rustbucket but does offer an interesting twist on the Standard Lager Experience. I guess that's the point of an experimental series.

The titular brewers of the project, then, appear to be having fun. With hazy pale ale out of their system I look forward to trying the next one: No. 11 Cherry Sour is on the way to me.