Boundary hopping

An assortment of pale ales of various sorts from Belfast brewer Boundary today. They love a bit of haze so I'm not expecting to see through any of these.

We'll start with some Idle Chatter, a 4.5% ABV pale ale hopped with Mosaic and Cascade. Boy is it hazy: all the eggy yellow. There's a certain chalky grit to the aroma but also lots of lovely and fresh hop oils suggesting limes, peaches and honeydew melon. Flavourwise it goes all in on the tropicals, the Mosaic giving it full pineapple and lychee, with a squeeze of ripe mandarin for good measure. The Cascade plays a counter melody of citric bitterness, its normal earthy quality becoming a more trendy dank funkiness. I was extremely sceptical going into this; it looks and smells a bit like one of those hoppy hazy beers done badly, so I'm pleased to find it an absolute joy.

I picked that up along with another very similar beer -- same strength, same style, same colour -- called You Asked For This, this time hopped with Idaho 7 and Azacca. I didn't drink them side-by-side so can't do a direct comparison but this was also pretty good. It's a little more old-fashioned, however, eschewing tropical fruit for notes of aniseed, poppyseed, orange cordial and garlic. It's seems thicker, heavier and altogether more serious; not a bad thing, just different. I thought there would be more of a fruit-candy kick from those particular hops but it has chosen an alternative direction. That's OK, you still get plenty of hop for your buck and lots of character at a modest strength.

Next we are Suitably Ashamed, which is an IPA at 6% ABV. Yep, hazy again, though a deep shade of orange, rather than yellow like the others. Azacca, Citra and Amarillo is an interesting combination, suggesting both sweet stonefruit and bitter citrus to me. A sniff gives little away but on tasting it's the bitterness to the fore: lemon and lime to begin, but growing in intensity, becoming a burnt rubber effect by the end. Luckily the body is light and the finish is quick, so the unpleasantness doesn't last long, but this isn't a beer I wanted to spend time with. There's a hardness which is out of character for haze, and again Azacca's rainbow fruit effect is absent. It's not unpleasant, but I'm not sure what it's trying to be.

The finisher is a brand new style on me: white double IPA, or possibly double white IPA. The Elements of Joy, a collaboration with Queer Brewing, includes orange zest and coriander, and certainly looks like a white IPA, being an opaque pale orange-yellow with lots of gritty bits throughout. The aroma is at once herbal and juicy, assorted tropical fruits turning ripe and mushy in a medicine cabinet. That medicinal thing is all the flavour does, piling in aniseed, cardamom, garlic and rosemary. The sensation is like walking into a Victorian manor house pantry in midwinter: wholesome, but somewhat threatening. Full use is made of the 8% ABV to really push the special effects and put some heat behind them. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I liked the laugh-out-loud audacity of it, but it's not easy or even particularly pleasant drinking. As a drinker I feel it's taking advantage of me, trying to do things to my palate I'd rather it didn't. I'm rarely a fan of white IPA, and I think that goes double for white double IPA: too much, too hot and too strange.

A good start got lost quite quickly with this lot. They weren't the usual flaws I find with hazy beer, and there's definitely no consistent house unpleasantness -- I'm fully prepared to believe that the ones I wasn't keen on simply didn't suit me. I'm disappointed by the lack of zing, however. Haze should involve a softness and a tang that I didn't get from most of these.