Die Grünen

Green cans and Germanic styles are all that connects today's pair of offerings from Irish breweries. Any excuse for drinking two in a row.

For their 25th Limited Edition, Hope came up with the revolutionary idea of not dicking about with a gose. The result is Classic Gose, a brightly golden 5%-er. As it happened I had been drinking Bayrischer Bahnhof's Original Gose not long before so had a memory to compare it with. I don't think it's as good. The Leipzig one has a floral complexity and a precisely crisp texture; this one is softer and more saline. There's also a peachy fruitiness which speaks more of new-world hops than old-fashioned German beer. As a modern take on gose I liked it, and definitely appreciated the lack of dicking about, but I found myself wanting more from the coriander and the sourness. Pucker me up!

Hopfenweisse has never really caught on in a big way. I guess, like India pale lager, bunging in extra hops doesn't automatically improve a style. And on that negative note, let's see how Metalman got on when they tried it. Their Escape Velocity is 6% ABV which is a fair bit lighter than the Brooklyn and Schneider original. It's still plenty thick, though: an opaque fuzzy yellow with a fuzzy mouthfeel. The flavours of IPA and weissbier bump up against each other in quite an unsubtle way. The first hit is sharply bitter lemon peel, followed swiftly by green banana and butane. This fades out on a raspy chalky dryness. It's... interesting. Challenging. For me it's just a bit too busy: every sip required processing time to deal with. More than anything I wanted to clean the grit out of it and let a softer fruity side through. I would class this as an experiment that didn't quite work.

I mentioned on Monday that local brewers are doing less by way of pale ales recently, and here's an example of what we're getting instead. Whatever about the individual merits of this pair, I'm fully on board for the diversity they represent.