Witch hops?

The Union Series of single-hopped IPAs from The White Hag reaches numbers five and six with a couple of new additions late last year.

I opened the Azacca one first. It gets busy with the fruit early on, the aroma giving off sweet clementine and apricot, exactly as I'd expect from this hop. There's a decent kick of bitterness: Azacca's tendency to make beers taste like Skittles is held in check by a pleasant pithy bite. The candy is still in there -- I'd be disappointed if it weren't -- so as a showcase for the hop it works well. There is a bit of a fuzz to it, however: a grittiness that spoils the enjoyment a little. Overall, though, it's good fun. I might have liked the hop flavour to be a bit stronger but I can also see how that would run the risk of turning it too Skittleish.

The other half of this pair is the iconic Nelson Sauvin. Does this hop still have the power to turn heads as it did a decade ago? The visuals and vital statistics are the same as the above, and the aroma is quite muted, just vaguely juicy. But the flavour: oooh, that's Nelson. Here the bitterness has been appropriately dialled back -- Nelson in quantity can be a bit severe -- and there's all the luscious cool white grape, ripe peach and canned lychee that made the hop a celebrity. You also get a little, but only a little, of the sharper pitch of pith harshness, and it serves to balance the beer well. Welcome back, Nelson. Missed you bro.

An addendum to this pair is an ESB White Hag created as a collaboration with Manchester's Cloudwater. For us Irish, that particular initialism has long signified our beloved national power company, rather than "extra special bitter", so it was inevitable that a brewery in these parts would name one Electricity Supply Board. Turns out it was White Hag. The beer is a lovely chestnut red colour, and crystal clear. It's the picture of a cask pint, though a short-poured and unsparklered one, given the 440ml can and poor head retention. The aroma has the proper mix of dark fruits, nuts and chocolate: properly and seriously beery. It's a couple of years since I last drank the Fuller's original, but this strikes me as having very similar features. Brown sugar, raisin and cinnamon spicing give it a mince-pie foretaste, and then a sharp and acrid bitterness creeps in behind. Don't be misled by the colourful can, this is serious and traditional fare, using all of its 6% ABV to deliver a malty powerhouse.

Azacca is the modern interloper here. ESB and Nelson Sauvin IPA seem strangely retro in the rapidly moving world of beer fashion. It's nice to be able to look back over one's shoulder now and again.