Hopswitching

All of today's beers have featured on the blog before. Well, sort of. Breweries change their recipes all the time: hop availability, or lack of it, can be a bit of a random factor so change is inevitable. But there are plenty of other reasons too. It's generally a good sign when the brewery is up front with the drinker about it, and that's the case with each of these.

Lineman is first, with version four of their Electric Avenue pale ale, this one with Idaho 7, Citra and Chinook. As well as the hops, the ABV is the lowest yet at 5.1% ABV and it's considerably paler than previous iterations. The aroma is a luscious sort of bitterness, with honeydew melon gradually sharpening through kiwi fruit into full-on lime. No limes in the flavour, however. All is soft and sweet and summery, suggesting strawberry, mango, passionfruit and pineapple. If I hadn't read the varieties on the label I would have said with conviction that Mosaic was among them: there's even a tiny hint of savoury caraway, but otherwise a lot in common with White Hag's Little Fawn. It's beautifully refreshing and very downable. I love its brightness and freshness, and I'm somewhat surprised that it's done with dank badboys like Citra and Chinook. Regardless, very tasty stuff.

I was also surprised to learn it's coming up on four years since Rye River released its Whiplash homage Miami J. Back in 2018 it was a cutting-edge hazy IPA though the hops were mostly classics like Amarillo, Citra and Mosaic: not a thing wrong with them. But the edge needs sharpening and this new version is officially a collaboration with hop merchants BarthHaas, utilising Lupomax, Incognito and Spectrum from the drawer labelled "New Stuff". The rest is presumably the same: 6.5% ABV and a medium hazy orange. The aroma is funky and dank, and that's even more intense in the flavour. I get a mix of over-ripe apricots, extremely ripe and runny cheese, and fermenting silage. It's like it's gone through freshness and out the other side. As such, it's a bit extreme for my tastes. I like juicy tropicals but I don't think you can keep turning up the volume on that and expect it to improve. While I appreciate the artisanship that's gone in here, and what it's meant to be, I found it quite sickly and difficult, which wasn't the case with the much more balanced original.

I didn't really need an excuse to pick up another can of Western Herd Flora and Fauna, the champion Beoir Beer of the Year for 2022, but I got one. With a 10-hop double IPA I imagine there's plenty of room for switching things about, and with batch two they've replaced the Strata with Galaxy. It's still 9.45% ABV and a flawless golden colour, and still low on aroma, with only a kind of white lemonade sweetness to speak for all that malt and all those hops. The pine and the lime are still there, but I'm not getting the same level of oily dank richness that was a big part of the original. It's still beautiful: constructed with precision and not a thing out of place. But I can't help thinking there's something missing, and I don't know if that's because of the hop substitution or not. Still, if you have yet to have the pleasure of Flora and Fauna, this version is absolutely worth your while.

I haven't seen hop shortages in the beer news for quite a while. I guess that means that changes to recipes are more often at the brewer's discretion these days, which is good. I do wonder at what point a recipe deserves a new name, though. Those Electric Avenues don't have much in common with each other, for example.