Semper Fi

The Fidelity beer festival in July meant that a lot of Whiplash's international brewing buddies were in Dublin for a few days. That gave them an opportunity to get some collaborations in the tanks, which I got to drink a few months later.

We'll begin on a couple of lagers, and for the collaboration with Donzoko they decided to tackle light lager for some reason. Only When I Sleep is 4.2% ABV and certainly light coloured: a flawless shade of white gold. Instead of bland fizz or a metallic tang, the flavour instead is soft and tropical, with exotic notes of lychee, jasmine and rosewater. It's not at all what I expected. I guess they've taken the uninspiring specs and done something worthwhile with them. This is a proper easy-drinking thirst quencher, and the flavour complexity is dialled back enough if you just want to sink it. There's much more enjoyment to be gained from sipping it, however.

New York's Finback collaborated on Witness, a dry-hopped pils, and a strong one at 5.5% ABV. It's a beautiful warm golden colour and smells quite spicy and herbal, with incense shading towards weed. The can doesn't tell us which hops were used, but I suspect something Kiwi from the mix of grass, minerals and soft fruit in the flavour. The high strength means a full body and it's lacking the crispness of pilsner as a result. Nevertheless it's very tasty, offering lager cleanness with a fun multifaceted new-world hop complexity.

Wylam is a regular partner-in-crime for Whiplash, and their latest joint is an IPA called Word With Yourself. It's very hazy, of course, and 6.3% ABV. So far nothing out of the ordinary. Something odd happens in the flavour, however. I figured they used an unusual combination of hops giving it a strange mix of sweet and savoury -- clove rock and nutmeg pastry spicing meeting a raw red onion intensity. Now, they may have used unusual hops but it turns out that the gimmick is an absence of barley. Without any further details I decided they must have used sorghum, and even detected a similarity with the Nigerian version of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, also sorghum based. But it's not that: the grist is just plain old wheat and oats. Regardless, it's an interesting effect, noticeably different from normal IPA and, being honest, not in a good way.

Moving on to recent solo efforts, the latest in the Fruit Salad Days series is Passion Fruit. As usual it's 3.8% ABV and in the Berliner weisse style. It's hazy and orange, and smells strongly of passionfruit, unsurprisingly. That one-note tropical thing continues in the flavour but I think it has an edge on most other passionfruit sour beers. Here, it's concentrated, into almost a butane heat. It's the very essence of passionfruit, not merely a flavour. The sourness is low key and provides no more than a clean base for the tropical fruit. The end result is bright and extremely sunny, taking the grainy base of Berliner weisse and building Carmen Miranda's hat on top of it. Fair play. 

A new export-strength stout is always a cause for celebration so I broke out the party streamers for the arrival of The Wake. This is 7% ABV and a dense black colour with a tan head, so full style marks for appearance. Cocoa is the main act in both the flavour and aroma: dry and powdery, crying out for a balancing milky sweetness but you're not getting that. I love the bitterness, and I'm not sure if it comes from the grains or hops, but it's exactly the sort you get in high-quality dark chocolate. There's a lightness of touch in the texture, making this a perfect stouty antidote to all the facile sticky kiddie pastry desserts which pass for strong stout these days. The balance and poise which are Whiplash hallmarks are stamped firmly on this. 

We finish with another collaboration, this time it's Cerebral from Denver and a double IPA. This is called At Dusk and is a little stronger than the standard Whiplash DIPA at 8.3% ABV. It smells as tropical as the Fruit Salad Days with oodles of passionfruit and mango, all derived from the hops. The flavour is not overly hot, but it is another dense one, with a feel of fruit-flavoured custard about the unctuous texture and vanilla taste. Beside this sits a strange grassy bitterness, adding an unwelcome savoury element to what is otherwise a dessert beer. It's OK, but I didn't think it up to Whiplash's standards when they make beers like this on their own.

And as of this month, Fidelity's legacy goes beyond a few collaboration beers. It's the name Whiplash and The Big Romance have chosen for their new joint venture, a pub on Queen Street in Dublin. Expect the same level of attention to detail that The Big Romance brought to their original venue and which can be found in every Whiplash beer.