Business as unusual

It's a new start for Dublin's DOT Brew, launching a new core range of beers for (I think) the third time in its six-year history. This time there are five of them, with the first three landing in early May.

Let's start simple, with Solo, a pilsner. At 4.9% ABV and a clear colour, it meets the basic requirements. "A slightly modern fruity twist" is promised, which faintly rang an alarm bell: would this be hopped up American style, or something? That's a no, but the aroma and foretaste delivered a waft of apple, which is more a flaw than a twist. Luckily it's very brief and in no way interferes with the beer being a proper pils. The body is fuller than most, which is pleasing, but despite that slightly off-kilter fruit tang, it finishes cleanly and drily. There's a little spark of sulphur too, adding another strange but still welcome aspect to the flavour. I'll always be a fan of big grassy hops in pils, and you don't get that here, but what you do get is an excellent balance of the accessible and characterful. A properly cold draught pint would be very welcome.

A session IPA is next, called Loose. It's only 3.5% ABV and is a gritty fellow, pale and murky with extra murk lying at the bottom of the can for the unwitting pourer. All that makes me think "table beer" more than session IPA, and indeed it has a lot of the typical pithiness of that style. It's a good pithiness, though, with the mix of juice and bitterness found in a lovely ripe jaffa orange. The chalky dry earthiness of the murk does interfere with this a little, and it's a beer I think could stand to be let drop out into something cleaner, but is more on-trend this way, and still quite tasty. Best of all, though light bodied it's not at all thin nor harsh -- problems that often beset beers of this nature. If you're going to go light, pale and hazy, this is how to do it.

The full-fat IPA is Go Go at 6% ABV. Two kinds of oats are boasted of on the can, and so it's hazy, though quite dark with it; orange rather than yellow. The aroma is lacking somewhat, with a little nondescript fruit and an unsettling savoury side as well. As is the way of these things, it's that savoury thing that dominates the flavour, all poppyseed and caraway dryness. The texture isn't pillowy as advertised but quite thin. All-in-all, this didn't deliver on its promises. Where it's not unpleasant it's rather bland, and while not actually flawed, it's not up to the standard of modern Irish IPA, hazy or otherwise.

Of course special-edition beers are still a big part of the DOT offer. Today's selection begins with General Population, a New England IPA of 6% ABV. It's a dark orange for the style, not one of your trendy yellow emulsions, and the aroma is pure and clean orange juice. That takes a turn to the tropical on tasting, adding pineapple and mango to the picture, softened with an effervescent sherbet buzz. This is backed by a considerable alcohol heft, with almost a burn in the finish: moreso than I'd expect given the reasonable strength. I'm such a NEIPA cynic that I was genuinely surprised how clean it was all the way through, but it is. In a world where beers of this sort are commonplace and everywhere, it's still a delight to find one as well-made as this, all clean and full-flavoured. Haze sceptics take note.

This was released alongside a triple IPA called Silhouette. No haze here: this is a crystalline amber colour with an aroma that's all malt; bready and biscuity. It's quite dry to taste, with a dose of tannins and a slight crepe-paper roughness. The hops hold back, providing little more than a background of oily resin and citric pith. The result is perhaps a bit more barley wine than triple IPA, lacking punch but making up for it with understated sippable smoothness. I think 9.5% ABV is on the low side too, another factor in me dinging it on style grounds. It's fine, though. I enjoyed it as an after dinner beer and I commend it to you on those grounds.

A few weeks later Rhyme N Reason hit the shelves. This is a blend of barrel-aged pale ales cut with a lager. It's a medium orange colour, opaque with plenty of foam. The label saying the barrels had been bourbon before Irish whiskey went into them is redundant: it's very apparent from the huge vanilla aspect of the foretaste. There's even the sour-mash lime effect, and this big whiskey thing hits against the pithy citrus hops to create something like an Old Fashioned, Highball, or similar sweetened bourbon cocktail, garnished with a sliver of coconut. For all the sugar and booze it's only 5.2% ABV and quite thin on it. It's a weird disconnect, the tasting big and feeling thin. Overall it's not the most subtle one of these that DOT has done, and I much prefer when ex wine barrels are used rather than bourbon, but the charm of DOT's signature spritz-meets-funk is still present, and that makes it a good beer.

This was released alongside Let There Be Stout: a beer name that really spoke to me. I should say re-released as there was a version of this on limited release two years ago but I never got to try it. This one is slightly weaker at 4.8% ABV and describes itself as a "straight up Irish dry stout". Can't argue with that. It's cola-brown in the glass and smells pleasingly roasty, in a slick and slightly sweet coffee sort of way. The texture is smooth, belying the strength, while the flavour is fabulously complex. The creamy coffee meets crisp wafers and chocolate chip cookies, before a properly hop-bittered finish, of sprouts and spinach. Straight up it may be, but few brewers make stout of this calibre, and more's the pity. It might be a little too intense an experience to manage by the pint, but sure stick a cask of it on and we'll see.

Of course there's a Teeling collaboration to throw into the mix and this one is called Blue Sky Thinking. I'm on record, I think, as a sceptic of doing things like ageing pilsner in ex sherry and bourbon Irish whiskey casks, and I feel justified by that here. It's possible to taste that the base lager is good: full-bodied, decently bitter. But any subtleties have been smudged over by the oak, which adds signature vanilla, with some toasted coconut and a slight limey sourness. These things aren't bad in and of themselves, but they work so much better in a pale ale than they do here -- see Rhyme N Reason above, for example. The label proclaims the beer to be "super crisp" but it's not at all, and I place the blame squarely on the barrels. So, while this may indeed be "Blue Sky Thinking", such thought experiments aren't always worth repeating.

Our final three were originally part of a box set that DOT released for Christmas and have just recently begun finding their way in the world as singles. Lightest of the bunch is a 3.8% ABV table beer called Think and Wonder, Wonder and Think. It's a pale and hazy yellow, smelling both spritzy and herbal, like a bath bomb or a high-end summer cocktail. The texture is light without being thin, allowing for a rounded and nuanced flavour. That gives you citrus zest, mixing orange, lemon and grapefruit elements, plus oily rosemary and sage. A combination of Sauturnes-barrel-ageing and Brettanomyces fermentation gives it a luscious, gummy quality: white grape and Fruit Pastilles. The complexity is stunning for the strength and I could see it working wonderfully by the 75cl bottle. I drank my small can as a sun-downer on a beautful summer's evening. I hope it brought a bit of sunshine into some people's Christmas.

We Are The Music Makers, The Dreams Of Dreams says the next one, an unusual blend of pale ale and porter, aged in Merlot barrels, finishing at 7.5% ABV. I didn't know what to expect from all that. It's a dark amber colour and smells very woody and vinous, more like Rioja than Merlot. There's a touch of spicy sourness in there as well. The texture is smooth and it feels aged, a bit like a pale sherry, though without the oxidation. The pale ale's hops add a little citrus bitterness to the foretaste before it moves on to a heavy sweetness, just staying on the good side of sippable rather than full-on cloying. I'm guessing the porter contributes to the overall richness though I think I detected a tiny hit of milk chocolate in the flavour too. It's an interesting concoction, and works well as an aperitif, having points in common with Aperol or Campari. I recommend enjoying it as-is without being too concerned about how it has been put together.

Finally, a whiskey-aged extra stout called A Day Without Sunshine Is Like, You Know, Night. It's verging on imperial at 8.9% ABV, though the colour is an innocent dark brown rather than jet black. The mouthfeel is light and gentle and the flavour predominantly sweet, mixing sugared coffee with honeyed whiskey, and not much by way of hops or roast. The mellowness verges on the boring, for me. It's so smooth that there's very little to cling on to; no distinguishing features. It's not a bad beer by any means but at the end of 33cl I had very little to say about it. Perhaps more extreme stouts, loaded with vanilla and spirit and dark malt, have conditioned me to expect less subtlety. This is a subtle sort of big barrel-aged stout.

That's probably enough for now. I'm looking forward to the rest of the new core beers arriving in due course, plus whatever works of barrel-driven creativity land with them.