Cracked it

Following a smattering of collaborations, Craic Beer Community has made the leap to full-fledged beer brand, sourcing its brewing plans from the community itself. Here are the first two, both brewed in Dublin by Hope.

Shadows is an extra special bitter of 5.8% ABV. As it happened, I drank it a day after the Whiplash one I grumbled about a while ago, and while this had similarities it gave me no such cause.

It's softly carbonated and has a properly dry backbone, meaning that despite everything that happens next, and the strength, it remains thirst-quenching and very drinkable. The next is fruit, but it's calmer and better balanced than the Whiplash, without any of the hot and squashy banana. Instead it's a cosy autumnal blend of damson, blackberry and blackcurrant with a slight dusting of milk chocolate and caramel to add a balancing sweetness.

It took a bit of work to pick all of that out as it's seamlessly integrated into a single piece, just like the best English brewers of this kind of thing do it. That said, they manage to get it clear, and the visuals here are let down a little by the murk. But I didn't buy it to look at it: great job overall.

It's much harder to impress me with a red IPA. I'm sure I've written here extensively about how they don't really work for me. So we come to Fragments: 6.5% ABV, a dark and brackish browny-red.

And yes, let me count the ways it doesn't suit my palate. The aroma is harshly astringent, almost a beginner-homebrewer lesson in why not to squeeze your grains. A hard, metallic bitterness opens the flavour and immediately crashes into a raspberry or cherry sweetness which it rolls over the top of and keeps going into the finish. Once the bitterness fades, the aftertaste offers a heavy resinous hop flavour which isn't unpleasant but would work so much better in a cleaner, paler beer. So yes: I would like if red IPA were actually west coast IPA. That's just where we are now and I'm completely comfortable with it. In its favour, it's not cloyingly sweet to boot, which is a frequent problem with red IPAs, but that's small consolation.

I have no doubt that this is exactly as the recipe designer and brewer intended, and maybe I'm being a bit unfair because it's not a bad beer. But it's not for me. Perhaps it's best that the Community got it out of their system early and now we never have to deal with it again.

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