Happy squash

I have become quite blasé about top-tier hyped-up American breweries' wares landing in Ireland. They're mostly hazy IPAs of the sort any brewery can make, and it's entirely unnecessary to ship such things across the Atlantic. But Jolly Pumpkin got my attention when it landed, though to be honest it's a while since I saw any hype about them.

Bam Bière seems to be some class of a flagship, described simply on the can as a farmhouse ale and oak aged. It's a medium orange-yellow in the glass and quite opaque. The aroma is a fun mix of fruit salad -- with pear, mandarin and lychee in particular -- meeting a very Belgian saison spicing and a lacing of farmyard fun. That's a lot of complexity already for something that's only 4.5% ABV. There's a floral, perfume intensity in the foretaste, mixing bergamot and lavender with softer white grape. The body is quite thin and that renders the flavour a little harsh, accentuating the bitterness. It's still very tasty, though. There's too much going on for it to be refreshing, but it still just about works as a sipper. I came to it with a preconceived belief that Jolly Pumpkin is the master of Brett, barrels and all that good stuff, and this one did nothing to convince me otherwise.

The inevitable brand extension is Bam Noire, which isn't noire at all but a reddish brown. The strength is the same and I guess they've merely done a light hacking with the malts to make it dark. The aroma is drier and toastier, at the expense of all the fun flowers and fruit in the previous. The flavour too is toned down. You get a decent level of sourness, like dark cherries, plums and damsons. Then there's a woody, splintery side, with a hint of tarry pitch, finishing dry and almost acrid. This really is the dark side of the offer, lacking the bright and spicy fruity fun of the other, and it's a worse beer for it. There's less going on, and what's there is fine but not at all exciting. I've tasted by-the-numbers oud bruins from Belgium that were along these lines and none of them I would like to drink again. My Jolly Pumpkin has feet of clay.

Still, that's only one disappointment out of a raft of superb wild fermented American beers. They'll need to produce several more that don't suit me to be esteemed less by me, and honestly I can't see that happening.