The quiet Americans

Californian veterans Firestone Walker have three beers for us today. 

Has the brewery stopped numbering its Luponic Distortion series? By my reckoning this one, released last November, is No. 17 in the sequence, but it doesn't say that on the can. As always, they're cagey about telling us which hop varieties they've used in this IPA, one created to show the hops off. They claim lime, blueberry and pomelo are what the drinker will find in the taste. I didn't. Well, lime maybe, but there's a soft citrus as well: mandarin or kumquat. It's clean and clear with that, and although 5.9% ABV is easy drinking. Exciting it isn't, and it's definitely not as complex as the brewery makes out, but it's refreshing and tasty. Can't fault that.

Two IPAs with west coast sensibilities in a row? That's the Firestone Walker way. The second is Double Jack, a stonking 9.5%-er. Look at that colour! It's a bright, almost lurid, Lucozade amber in the glass. The head on top doesn't last long. Warming sticky malt is the centre of the flavour, though clean -- not full-on hot. If anything it's at risk of being plain. After the golden-syrup foretaste there's a mild zesty marmalade kick and some heavier resins, but nothing more complex than that. Even allowing for the four months that had passed since the beer was canned, there's not much going on here. It would work as a nightcap or a cold-day warmer, but isn't really something that will require your whole attention.

A Chocolate Cherry Stout for dessert, though a modest one at 5.5% ABV. Maybe it's them cherries, but it's quite red in the glass, topped with a rocky head of beige foam which left a pleasing lacing. There's a light touch on the pastry here, relatively speaking. The first impression on tasting is classical roasted dryness and no more chocolate than you'd get from a rounded and sweet, but ungimmicked, stout. It needs to warm a little for the cherry to emerge, and then it's only at the back, a wisp of Bakewell tart or throat lozenge. I liked its unfussy quality. Perhaps it's because so many other breweries add lactose and/or vanilla to beers like this, and although ingredients aren't listed I would bet neither features among them. Balance and understatement of this sort are both welcome and overdue in the pastry stout world.

Nothing world-beating in this lot, but some good drinking. I'll be keeping an eye out for Luponic Distortion 18, which should be heading this way soon.