Dark and stormy

It's a small selection from Tipperary mavericks Canvas today, one blessed by two stouts, I'm pleased to say.

Smoking your own malt is very on-brand for the brewery, and they've enlisted local barbecue restaurant De Roiste's to do the necessary on the heritage barley grown and malted on the brewery farm. They've put it into Mike's Legacy, a stout of 4.3% ABV. It looks like a proper stout in the glass, a rich dark brown with a generous crema on top, although the extensive floaty bits bobbing around the body are a little off-putting. The aroma is a tarry bitterness which hints at the smoke but is also within the parameters of a heavy stout. This isn't heavy, its texture light with lots of fizz. A classic dry-stout roastiness is the core of the flavour; toasty to the point of ashen yet still somehow quenching and refreshing. The smoke is subtle and adds a savoury meaty side which is entirely complementary to the roasted malt. The result is very wholesome and old-fashioned tasting and I got a sense of warm bottles by a fireside of long ago. We're not told who Mike is, but this is a fine legacy for anyone.

It's only a couple of weeks since I last had a ginger beer on here, and here's another, with a very similar name: Zingiberi. This is no easy quaffer, though, but an altogether more serious drink. It's 6.6% ABV and a deep orange colour. We are promised a "fiery kick" by the label but I didn't really get that, merely a gentle ginger spicing -- gingernut biscuit level but no higher. The heavy gravity gives it a sort of creamy, yoghurty fullness, which is unusual, and a little unsettling if I'm honest. Lemon is listed in the ingredients but I can't taste its contribution. I think this falls between two beer styles: it has the heft of a strong ale but is missing the malt and hop flavours that make them worthwhile; and then it's just too heavy to be a refreshing ginger beer and doesn't carry enough spice to be a daring novelty. I'd go back to the drawing board with this, dial back the malt and increase the ginger.

You don't see too many historical recreation beers in these parts but here's Canvas Extra Stout, based on an early 20th century recipe from the Magee Marshall Brewery in Bolton. It's black, it's fizzy and it's 6.7% ABV, which all says "extra stout" to me. There's a slightly wild fruity sharpness in the aroma, the cherry of a Flemish red. The flavour follows that with a high-attenuation dryness within which is a red mix of summer berries and rosewater. You get a modicum of roasty mocha too. I prefer strong stouts to be richer than this; it's a little too thin and perfumed to be properly my sort of thing, but it has a lot going for it -- a kind of lightly soured Belgian charm.

Canvas's unique idiosyncrasies are very manifest in this lot -- it's a brewery full of daring recipes and unorthodox processes. The beers provide much to ponder, and that's part of the value.