Tropical New Brunswick

I've written before about how much I enjoy the beers from Hop City. For the fakeout arm of macro lager brewer Moosehead they make some good stuff. There was one in the fridges of Dublin offies that I hadn't got round to yet, and that needed to be resolved. So step up Big Tiki, described as a "tropical punch blonde". It's not blonde, though, pouring a bright red shade. I didn't have any cocktail umbrellas to hand but feel that one would have been appropriate.

It's sweet, of course, almost janglingly so, with a strawberry ice lolly foretaste. There's not much beyond that. The can promises pineapple, cherry, passionfruit, mango, guava and papaya, but if they're really there they've been mulched into an amorphous blob of generic fruity sweetness. At least it's not cloying: after the initial hit, the candy goes away respectfully quickly, as the brewery's lager chops kick in.

Overall, this is quite an artificial alcopoppy job, albeit not the worst of that sort. It promises a lot more fun and complexity than it ends up delivering. "Limited release" says the can. Good.