Øl in

I had decided to pick up a few To Øl beers for a blog post as there are always plenty of them about. At the same time, The Fine Ale Countdown podcast was coming to the end of its dry-January run and Gavin gave a highly complimentary (even for Gavin) account of the brewery's Implosion non-alcoholic beer, declaring it the best of its kind he'd ever tasted. Well. I had to drop one of those into the basket at Molloy's too.

They've gone for the New England genre in style, and it has all the soft texture that belongs in there. The aroma is properly juicy while the flavour has a pleasant sweet lemon and mandarin quality. But behind it there's a worty quality hovering in the background, the sort of thing that's absolutely typical in the non-alcoholic milieu. It's far from unpleasant, however, and does a reasonably good impression of the real thing. Thanks for the recommendation, Gav.

Moving on, I sometimes forget that session-strength stout is a rarity in lots of other countries, though I'm always keen to try them when they show up. To Øl's is called CHAAARGE! and is a very modest 4% ABV. It's nitrogenated in the can with a widget, and that all worked out well: a hiss of gas, a surge of bubbles and a stable creamy head. The body beneath it looks correctly black also. There is an aroma, and it's dominated by sweet chocolate, backed by drier cereal. I was afraid it might be a bit sickly, but it fully lives up to the dry billing. There's even a pinch of metallic hops in the finish, matching and balancing the milk chocolate. The nitro deadens things a little, of course, but there's still plenty of tasty character here, in a very smooth and drinkable package. Chaaarge indeed. If the aim was to do this in the way that comes naturally to good Irish breweries then mission accomplished.

Another big ABV jump, to 7.5%, brings us to Whirl Champions 2021. I haven't really enjoyed the hazy IPAs from To Øl since they moved to their own brewery, but this one carries the imprimatur of several accomplished hazemeisters, including Dublin's own Whiplash. Strata, Citra and Ekuanot are the hops and there's not much wrong with any of those so I was all eager expectation when I popped the top.

It's quite dark for a high-end hazy IPA: an unattractive shade of earwax orange. The phrase "super juicy" appears on the label, and that's the first mistake. The aroma shows a little tropical fruit, but rather more savoury spring onion and garlic. On tasting, the fruit all but leaves the picture entirely. There's a high level of bitterness which may be hop-derived, but doesn't fulfil the juicy promise, and is horribly earthy, gritty, dirty: exactly the problem of the previous To Øl IPAs. I fear the other seven brewers may have wasted their time contributing. After the grit and pushing through the garlic burn, there's a tiny flash of cantaloupe in the aftertaste, but it's not how juicy ought to work, and the garlic is straight back in the reflux. Bleuh.

I declare the stout to be the stand-out beer of this selection. What can we do to get breweries worldwide making this sort of thing as a matter of course?