A multiplicity of hops

It's time for another rundown of all the pale ales and IPAs that have come my way from Irish breweries over the last couple of months.

Common Element is a new can from Dead Centre, a pale ale at 4.1% ABV, so equally at home in the pub, I guess. It's a lightly hazy yellow and brimming with tropical aromas -- mango and mandarin juiciness. That's done with Talus and Citra, though not smelling much like the latter. Juice is at the forefront of the flavour, buoyed up a nicely slick texture. After the initial tropical squeezings there's sweeter fruit candy and then -- oh hello Citra -- a sharp lime bitterness in the finish. I love this. There's a perfect balance of new-world hop attributes with enough of a malt base to carry them, and deliver them in very generous quantities at a properly guzzleable strength. This has core-range written all over it and I would welcome the opportunity to cane it by the pint.

Waterford's Crafty Hopster, brewing at Metalman, has released a second beer, following last year's All Hail. This is a rye beer called Rye of the Storm, 5% ABV and a misty sunset orange colour. Banana and clove are promised by the label, which aren't flavours I associate with rye but sure enough there's banana especially, with a little clove in the aroma, making for something that has a lot in common with weissbier. Any sign of the rye, then? There's a bit, not the squeaky bitter grass effect but a mild pepper element in the finish. They didn't badge this as a pale ale, and maybe it doesn't belong with the others in this round-up, but I'm not sure how else I'd classify it. Rye isn't enough to give it character and I can see why brewers tend to go hop-forward when it's involved. This is a bit sickly sweet without their presence.

The third in Galway Bay's Little Feelings series of pale ale features Citra Simcoe and Amarillo. I caught it on draught at the company's newest pub, The Beer Temple in Dublin city centre. As before, it's yellow and fuzzy, and the ABV has been restored to 5%. On the first sip I found it very savoury, showing lots of onion and caraway. That was a surprise, because the aroma promises the lighter side of hazy: sweet vanilla and tropical juice. This eventually emerges at the end of the flavour but it's a bit of work to get there, passing through grapefruit and lemon zest on the way. I'm not sure it was worth the effort. While passable, this has too many of the common flaws of the style to be properly enjoyable.

Meanwhile, the second in the Eight Degrees Original Gravity series is Kveik Pale Ale, hopped with Mandarina Bavaria, Simcoe and Cascade, and fermented with the titular Norwegian turbo yeast. Hornidal, since you ask. 5% ABV, it's a most unfashionable amber colour in the glass with plenty of foam on top. Mandarina gonna mandarin and there's a rasp of bittersweet mandarin skin in both the aroma and, especially, the foretaste. After that I get a dry, peppery spice. I don't normally associate any particular flavour with kveik yeast, but this suggests at least some sort of saison parallel. The dryness almost veers towards turning it acrid but there's enough juice to hold that in balance. A classic Cascade grapefruit vibe becomes more prominent as it goes and is fully complementary with everything else happening. This is a fun and interesting mix of west coast and farmhouse characteristics. Original indeed.

Even though The White Hag has initiated its Duo series of two-hop beers, the Union series of single-hoppers continues, its latest being the noughties favourite Amarillo. As always it's 5.5% ABV and built from Irish Ale malt for a medium yellow-orange colour. From my homebrew days I remember Amarillo having an an orangey character: jaffa and satsuma, or mandarin on a good day. It often doesn't come across like that out in the wild, but it does here, in a big way. The aroma has a sweet zest, like orangeade more than fruit. It's light and fizzy as one might expect, but the flavour delivered with that has a lovely oily resin quality, tasting of big and juicy jaffas first, turning to a more concentrated pithy bitterness at the end. It's a bit one-track that way, with no diversionary complexities, but that's single-hop beers for ya. I got an almost nostalgic kick from this, harking back to when hops like Amarillo were novel and exciting. That's a bonus on what is also a very tasty beer.

Galway Hooker has a new core range of 33cl cans, including its iconic flagship, the session IPA, and one that's new to me, badged as Hoppy IPA. It's 5.5% ABV and I can see they once did a house IPA of this strength for The Sliding Rock pub in Galway so perhaps this is a re-run of that. They say it's double dry-hopped, although it's clear and amber coloured. They say it's "full of citrus and tropical fruit flavours" but I get a very old-school vibe, both dry and sweet, with the tea and toffee of dark English bitter. There's a strong bitterness in the finish but it tastes more like the mineral/metallic effect of English hops than anything new-world. Cascade, perhaps? So while this tries on the clothes of modern IPA it's very much a throwback. And I like it for that. It's not a million miles from the original Galway Hooker Pale Ale, but denser and intenser. The brewery's acumen at dialling in flavours just so shows well, even if market forces cause it to describe it as something else. I encourage you to give it a whirl and make up your own mind.

Only a little stronger than that IPA is O Brother's newest pale ale, Sipping Soma. This is another one intended as a single-hop showcase, El Dorado this time. They can't resist putting a bit of haze in that, and it looks like a high-end unfiltered orangeade. It's quite an intense affair. It does confirm my preconception about El Dorado as the hop which tastes like Skittles and Opal Fruits and whatever other candies use those lab-formulated pseudo-fruit flavourings. But it really really concentrates them into something that has passed being jolly and colourful and into something a little more unsettling. For one thing there's a funk to the aroma; mouldy fruitbowl is not a good first impression. The flavour lacks any bitterness, and I think that unbalances the whole picture. The sweet fruit candy is fetid and stale, presumably a result of concentrating the flavours hard. It lightens up a little with a crisp cracker finish, but there's still a burn from the intense hopping, making it taste much stronger than it actually is. Here's another very representative example of the signature hop, but this time it's too much to be enjoyable.

O Brother also presents us with an Ikigai: we've all met a few of those, right? It's badged as an "oat cream IPA", a label I've seen before but remember little about. The can tells us it's brewed with lactose and oats to 6.1% ABV, plus Citra and Comet as hops. In the glass it's a typical New England opaque yellow. Despite the milky sugar component it smells very savoury with a spice of matchheads and some bitter greenery: spring onion and spinach. In the foretaste the vegetable side increases massively to a full-on garlic-oil burn. After a second this gets balanced, if that's the word, with a sweet vanilla element which I guess is the lactose flexing its muscle, though there are plenty of non-lactose hazy IPAs that have this as well. For all the unfruity seriousness I rather enjoyed what it does. It's big and bold, yet smooth, avoiding turning chalky or sharp: a big softie, in short. Awww.

Two new ones from Trouble next, beginning small on Little Monster. This 3.5% ABV pale ale is a hazy yellow shade and features a bright and spicy sherbet aroma with hints of bitterer lemon peel. As one would expect, the body is light although not to the point of tipping into watery. Mosaic features on the hop bill and I can definitely taste its mango and passionfruit flavour, the same sort of thing that makes White Hag's Little Fawn the masterpiece it is. Sabro is in there too and there's a pith and coconut finish with which it marks its territory. Of the Azacca and El Dorado there is less indication, but what's there is enough for a very sessionable creation like this. The blend of tropical juice and citric bite works beautifully, creating something that justifies a close sensory inspection but works equally well as a quaffer. I would be very happy to see this on draught.

Its companion is a modest double IPA of 7.6% ABV, called Lights Out. It's a deep orange colour and slightly hazy. Sabro, Mosaic and Columbus are the hops and I think the Mosaic is winning, at least in the juicy and tropical aroma. There's a substantial backing of candy malt behind it. The flavour is fun. First of all there's a big and greasy texture, reminiscent of a much stronger beer. On top of that, the Mosaic's pineapple and mango meets the others' bitter pith, creating a very realistic exotic fruit cocktail. After the initial sharpness, it settles back to juice with a long mandarin finish. It does a lot of the things that the good yellow emulsions do, and there's no danger of grit or garlic or vanilla. Just juice 'n' booze, baby! I like.

We go back to The White Hag next. The brewery has form for Brett-infusing its hoppy classics, notably with Little Fawn to create Olcan, but a couple of years ago they also did it to their west coast IPA to create Brett Barrel Aged Bran & Sceolan. I missed it first time around but they've brought it back for the 2020 vintage. Hoo-wee, it smells of Brettanomyces: that classic Orval mix of wet logs, ripe peaches and gunpowder spices. There's still a trace of the dry and hoppy IPA left in the flavour: it's thinly textured and there's a pinch of grapefruit and some watermelon. You need to look closely for that, though, because up front it's all of that greasy funk and sparky saltpetre that's familiar from the best of Belgium. It's gorgeous, basically, and amazing that I got it in my local SuperValu for €3.50 the can. The complexity and the balance of flavours make this one of the best beers in the country right now.

The late summer release from St Mel's was called, appropriately, Lúnasa, a double IPA. It poured a dense, dark, amber colour with a lot of ominous haze. The aroma is similarly ominous, being very savoury, giving rye bread, poppy seed and herbed sausage: not what one would hope for from the promised cocktail of American hops. The flavour is a rather more pleasant, but it's bizarrely devoid of fruity characteristics: citric, juicy or otherwise. Up front it's strongly bitter, and I get an impression of rye grass in particular, even though rye isn't among the ingredients. Following behind is a slightly harsh diesel and metal tang, the bitterness building and never quite fading, eventually coating the palate in mechanical grease. At 7.1% ABV it's light for a double IPA but there's more heft than the number suggests. While I appreciated the assertiveness, and I liked the wholesome bready quality, I wasn't really a fan of this, finding it too harsh and too distant from the norms of American-style double IPA, in both its west-coast and hazy iterations. Basic ol' me is not ready for such a brave take on the style.

Hopfully has done some large cans! Hooray! I get to use my large Hopfully glass. First up it's Tangerina, a big lad: an 8.5% ABV double IPA with (surprise surprise) tangerine juice. It's a Fanta-coloured hazy yellow but the aroma doesn't suggest juice or soft drinks: it smells quite dry and savoury; grain and boiled veg. Not unpleasant, but not especially enticing either. First impression on tasting is of a hot and heavy beer, slick textured and syrupy. So there's the sweetness, and it is orangey -- cordial, fading to oily peel. The savoury side is still there: hot garlic and caraway. I expected this to be fun but found it all quite serious. It's nearly fun, it's fun-adjacent, but I think the big alcohol throws it off kilter. There's a good idea here, but it needs toning down.

Finally, as a nod to the guys' native Brazil, there followed Copacabana, a New England-style IPA with coconut, as well as Sabro hops for extra coconutty excitement. It's suitably hazy, a pale orange colour with a loose-bubbled white head. The aroma is a creamy sort of coconut, reminding me of sun cream primarily. A sharper citrus lurks behind it. Unsurprisingly, the coconut is a major part of the flavour. Set on a soft texture, there's a real feel of piña colada about it, at the expense of its beeriness. A pinch of limey citrus in the finish pulls it back from the brink. This is still very much a novelty, however, going all in on the coconut special effects. The result does taste quite exotic, in both the tropical and unusual senses of the word. I liked the boldness of it, that it's not aiming to be a slight twist on an established and fashionable beer style. It's very much its own thing, and whether or not it's for you will depend heavily on your opinion of coconut in beer.

I don't have the data to hand but I get the feeling that the release rate of new pale ales and IPAs among Irish breweries is falling, with a more diverse offering taking up the slack. That's not bad thing, frankly. It could be a while before the next one of these.