Hooray for the Protocol!

I can't really keep up with all the beers from all of the breweries in Northern Ireland, even the fraction of them that get sent down here. It causes me no end of guilt. So, as the year draws to a close, by way of apology, I picked one each from four of the busiest and gave them a spin.

Boundary is first, of course, being the one that turns out the new releases at the fastest pace. And though they definitely have a soft spot for hazy IPA, other styles do get a look in too, like today's pilsner: Sufficient Intimidation. "Crisp and refreshing" is the claim on the label but I'm not sure it manages it. Yes it's a light and pale lager of only 4.4% ABV but it's still thinner than this sort of thing should be. With that comes a sour lemony tang which is also out of place. Husky grain puts in an appearance in the finish, albeit not enough to qualify the beer as crisp. There's an amateur homebrewish quality to it, overall. I know Boundary are better than this, but maybe lager isn't their milieu.

A hazy IPA comes next, from Lacada, and is called Herring Pond. This 6.4%-er arrived about this time last year but took a while to find its way to these parts. I caught it 19 days before the best before. It's one of the orange hazy jobs but on the paler side of that spectrum, with some worryingly big clumps of grit at the bottom of the glass. According to the label I should be looking for Sabro, Citra and Mosaic and, as is its wont, Sabro takes the lead: yes, it smells of coconut. The flavour strikes an interesting balance between Sabro's jangling coconut and Mosaic's soft mango and lychee. Citra's citrus is AWOL, but good luck to it, I don't miss it. The overall effect here is not something I've encountered in other beers, even though the hops are all commonplace. It really harnesses their best features fantastically well (not you, Citra) while still giving the drinker all the peach and mandarin juicy goodness that makes hazy IPA semi-worthwhile. Nice job, Lacada.

Bring The Thunder is the macho name on a sour beer from Beer Hut, albeit one brewed with the girly-cosmetic flavourings raspberry, cherry and coconut. I was expecting something that tastes of lip balm. It is pink, in fairness, but there's plenty of sourness. It's clean and light-bodied too; none of your yoghurty thickness or cloying syrup. Coconut and raspberry aren't flavours I would put together naturally, but they're both very prominent in the aroma and they don't clash, creating a kind of old-fashioned confectionery effect. The raspberry comes first in the flavour, intensified by the punchy sour culture. Gradually, the acidity is replaced by oily coconut which forms a long-lasting finish. The cherry is the loser in all of this. I'm sure it's present, but gets utterly lost under two other kinds of tartness and a more assertive variety of red fruit. It's still a great beer, though, edging towards busyness and silliness but not doing either to an unpleasant degree. One was plenty, but it was fun.

The set tops out on 7% ABV with Heaney's Look! No Hands. We're predictably back on hazy IPA, this one a dark orange colour with a combination of Aussie hops: Ella and Vic Secret. It smells dank and savoury, of raw scallion and fried onion. On tasting it turns from vegetal to mineral, with a hard talc-like powdery dryness. This is set on a thick base making the whole thing chewy, rough and a bit of chore to get through. There's a certain fruit sweetness, albeit coming across like something tropical but fibrous. A little of the initial savoury allium side creeps in as it warms and flattens, which it'll do because it's impossible to drink quickly. I feel I didn't get sufficient reward for my efforts here.

I think that's a fair cross-section of what's going on up north; some gold, some not so much. It's a particularly welcome return to form for Lacada, while I know both Heaney and Boundary are capable of better.