Spring when you're winning

The Wicklow Wolf project seems to be bombing along nicely. Its big fancy brewery, opened in 2019, is now producing a very decent core range, widely available in mainstream shops and pubs, while the various seasonals and special editions arrive like clockwork. It's everything you would want from a large-ish microbrewery. Today it's two from their collaborative series and the new spring special.

Dutch brewer Jopen provided input to this peach, apricot and mango "pastry sour" called Papa Don't Peach. It's 5.2% ABV and an innocent bright yellow in the glass. The fruit aroma is powerful: a sticky, syrupy mix of concentrated tropical notes, heavily processed and melded together so that, yes, it smells like the idea of all three fruits, but at the same time like nothing which exists in nature. And then the flavour doesn't taste like any of that. It opens spicy -- cinnamon, mint and peppercorns -- and then proceeds directly to a different sort of sweetness, more like cordial or even real peach nectar, onto which is grafted a dry mineral sourness. It is very strange. "Pastry sour" suggests something thick and milky to me but there's no sign of the lactose listed in the ingredients and the mouthfeel is very thin. I should award this marks just for its sheer oddness, but it's too weird. The various loud flavours and aromas don't integrate well and it ends up as a cacophony, difficult to drink and impossible to enjoy. I expect it's a divisive one, though, so your mileage may prove better than mine.

Do matters improve when we move along to double New England-style IPA? Exhibit B is Another Brique in the Wall, 8% ABV and created in collaboration with Lille brewery Brique House. The visuals are great: it's a lovely warm amber colour, intimating the strength, though also properly fuzzily hazed. The aroma is tropical, though in a much calmer way than the previous beer, and again the strength is indicated, here with a little heat. And that's pretty much how the flavour does things, with pineapple and cantaloupe up front (Talus and Idaho 7) and then a smooth, wholesome, wholemeal, warmth. Beers like this trade on their freshness but this is the first I've known where fresh fruit is matched to fresh baked bread and it works wonderfully. The alcohol is unhidden and delicious, giving it fun Belgian vibes. Malt-forward double NEIPA is an idea whose time has come.

Last up is a solo performance: Locavore Spring 2023: Honey Hefeweizen. This seasonal series uses all-local ingredients, including honey from Wicklow bees and wheat from a field behind the brewery. It's pale yellow, looking a little wan and not like its sizeable 6% ABV. The aroma is more spice than fruit: it smells lovely, but much more like a Belgian witbier than Bavarian weisse. It is extremely thick and low on carbonation, making it a bit tricky to drink. The herbal effect in the aroma unfolds to become the floral, medicinal honey in the flavour, a presence that brings both bitter and sweet. More traditional notes of green banana and celery arrive late on. I like my weissbier to be lighter and fizzier than this, so it didn't really work for me. The honey didn't add anything I liked, backing up my general assertion that German beer styles like this work better when they're done absolutely straight. This isn't offensive, but it misses the mark, both as a weissbier and as a member of the Locavore series.

OK, so your excellent large-ish microbrewery doesn't have to produce all winners in its temporary ranges. As is often the case, I respect the hustle with these three a little more than I enjoyed the beers. I'll take more of that double IPA, though.