A new lease on life

Hopfully has begun the next phase of its existence, becoming once more a standalone brewery having taken over the former Metalman Brewery in Waterford. They had been brewing there for a while already so it's probably not going to make much difference to their output, but it's noteworthy nonetheless. Today I have five new releases from them.

First is Pilz, a style they haven't dabbled in before. They say it's a "modern" pils, although single hopping with Hallertau Mittelfrüh seems pretty traditional to me. It's 5% ABV, a pale and somewhat hazy yellow colour, and declared gluten-free (<20ppm). It's rather plain fare, though delivers the pils basics, being dry and grain-crisp. The hopping has given it pleasant lemon overtones and there's plenty of palate-scrubbing carbonation. For a first attempt at cold-fermented beer, it's pretty impressive. It doesn't go anywhere particularly interesting or surprising, but perhaps that's the point.

A pale ale is next, called Kickback, and it's also gluten-free. This one is an appley golden colour and completely clear, smelling deliciously of fresh pine and dankness, thanks to Simcoe, Centennial and Cascade hops. The flavour goes the same way, with a weighty resinousness meeting zesty lime plus assorted herbs and flowers. There's a lot going on for something at only 4.3% ABV, and the resins give it a pleasingly long finish. It's an interesting mix of the fun and serious sides of hopping and I really enjoyed it, at least in part because my expectations were low, but that's on me. This is a tasty and complex pale ale and not at all a compromised diet-beer. Big American hops, loud and proud, in a neat little low-strength package.

These were quickly followed by a New England style IPA that Hopfully created as a special for top Dublin offy Craft Central. It Ain't Easy is 6.5% ABV and utilises a power combination of Nelson Sauvin, Simcoe and Mosaic, and very successfully, I might add. Nelson's almost chemical oily mineral bitterness is there in the aroma and foretaste, balanced in the flavour with all the soft tropicals of Mosaic at its best. Then there's a similar Simcoe dankness to the one found in Kickback, but much more subtle and less severe. There's just enough softness and vanilla notes to pass as a New England IPA, but only just. This uses its hops in a much more traditional way, to bring the punchy grassy citric bitterness. There's nothing juicy about the finishing Nelson burn.

To restore balance to the universe, a west coast IPA. Mindblown is west-coast in the modern sense, in that it's quite hazy. The aroma has that intense dankness that shades into cheese, though there's a fresher and spritzer lemon side as well. Simcoe, Citra and Centennial are the responsible parties. I'd nearly suspect some Mosaic too, as there's an immediate seed-like dryness in the foretaste which I often get from Mosaic. And while this is predominantly dry, there's an east coast softness as well. The ingredients list tells me oats were involved and that's something I would regard as a signature of New England IPA, yet here it is, doing its thing. I would go so far as to say that what we have here is a crypto-NEIPA, sharply bittered but unconvincingly disguised. Anyone looking for that bracing clean sharpness of west coast IPA will be disappointed, but they're probably used to that by now.

Finally for the moment, another Craft Central special, a sour beer with blackberry, blueberry and raspberry named, modestly, Portrait of Perfection. The very deep purple colour and tight pink froth put me in mind of those cloying concoctions from Omnipollo but the similarity ended there. This is nicely light bodied allowing it to be refreshing as sour beer should be. Oddly it's blackberry, not raspberry, which is dominant in the flavour. Both the raspberry and blueberry are present, and add a complexity. This recipe has been thought through, and the flavours are balanced and complementary. And although it's not sour sour, there's a pleasing pinch of tartness that stops the berries from seeming syrupy. Beers of this nature are commonplace and rarely exciting; this one does things better than most.

Despite the name, Hopfully has never really been a hops-first operation. The pale ale and IPAs here, however, shows that they absolutely could be if they wanted.