Pale in the sun

Time for a summer round-up of new Irish pale ales and IPAs. Here's what I've been drinking when the hop mood takes me.

First, a brand new brand: Sesh Beers, the brainchild of Brian of Craic Beer Community and brewed at Hope. Release one is Sesh IPA in its highly distinctive lifeboat-orange can. It's a predictably modern pale and hazy yellow colour, and lives up to its billing at just 3.8% ABV. And yet it doesn't taste compromised, being without any noticeable thinness. The flavour is typical for the style, offering sweet vanilla and a crisply refreshing hint of tropical honeydew melon. A token pinch of citric bitterness finishes it off. I detected a tiny bit of grittiness but otherwise it's largely free of off flavours. This is decent and unfussy fare, and if that's what Sesh is meant to be then mission accomplished.

Lineman next, and Ponder sees them jumping on the cold IPA badwagon with an example that's 6% ABV. The haze was the first unusual thing about it: these are generally fairly clear, but this one is properly opaque. It's also full-bodied, which is odd. Whatever way a brewery has chosen to do the "cold" bit, the result tends to be quite dry and crisp, where this is almost chewy, much like a typical hazy IPA. Still, the flavour can't be faulted, offering a fun mix of sweet and bitter, like peach skin and lemonade. One point where they have hit the cold IPA attributes dead on is with the small tang of white onion in the finish. Still, it doesn't spoil the rest, and the overall result is very tasty, if not exactly what I suspect drinkers of cold IPA want.

They've also put out Electric Avenue #5, the latest in Lineman's occasional IPA series. This one is 6% ABV and hopped with Nelson Sauvin, Mosaic and new-comer Nectaron. I expected fruity, and fruity I got: the aroma veritably spilling out mandarin, canteloupe, apricot and guava. The flavour isn't as sweet as I expected, though it's heavily textured again, with a bit of New England fluffiness. The most distinctive feature is the Nelson, bringing a mix of diesel fumes and grappa. The tropical and stonefruit elements found in the aroma line up behind this, contributing their own richness to a beer that's no warm-day sessioner but one which needs time taken with. The combination works really well, regardless: the low bitterness of typical hazy IPA yet without the vanilla sweetness which can make them overwrought. Another triumph of balance from Lineman.

I followed it with something lighter and more appropriate to that particular afternoon: Pocket Dial, a session IPA that's the latest in the Wicklow Wolf Endangered Species series of one-offs. Despite being only 4.2% ABV, it's a bit dense and serious in the glass. The body is mostly quite light but the haze fuzzes it up a little, adding some extra weight to the mouthfeel. They describe it as juicy but it's more of an orange cordial vibe to me, verging on sickly. Citra, Centennial and Idaho 7 are the hops though they're a little low-key, bringing no bitterness of note and only a modest amount of citric and tropical flavour. Overall it's fine but unspectacular. The balance tilts a little too far into sweetness for my liking. They've aimed for juice but I don't think they've quite hit it.

The crazy diamonds at Wide Street have a new New England IPA called Any Colour You Like. It's adapted from a local homebrewer's recipe which impressed the executive board enough for them to appropriate it, with credit on the label, of course. Haze and juice are the intention and there's certainly plenty of the former: it's very opaque pale yellow. The aroma is full-on tropical: it says pineapple on the can and the syrupy tinned version is exactly how it smells. Alas that doesn't quite follow through into the flavour. For one thing it's let down a little by a thin and watery texture, which was a surprise given the dense-looking murk and non-insubstantial 5.1% ABV. The foretaste is quite savoury, presenting green cabbage, damp grass and heady, almost smoky, sulphurous kick. There should be soft fruit here and I tried in vain to find any. It could be that I over-poured the can and ended up with too much of the dregs in the glass, though I also think that that's a flaw in the beer if so. I finished up with a definite sense that the beer I drank is not the beer the brewery is describing on the label, nor what the recipe designer intended. By all means give this a go, but pour it carefully, and do it soon: a beer like this which was canned in April won't be at its best for much longer. This is a problem you don't have with wild-fermented sour beers, though I can understand that a supply of willing paying customers is more of an issue there.

Colourforms is the new pale ale from Outer Place, brewing at Lineman. It's 5.2% ABV and a very pale yellow. Mosaic and Cryo Pop should be enough to make it a potential fruitbomb, and the aroma certainly bears that out, smelling concentrated and sweet, like Skittles. The first flavour hit I get is of Mosaic but in a more savoury mood, tasting of poppyseed and white onion. A much more pleasant honeydew melon note follows and leads us to a clean and unfussy finish. It's a tasty if unspectacular beer; good, but not quite worth the premium €4.65 being charged for it.

Kinnegar tries its hand at Cold IPA with Brewers At Play 32, one that's fermented with a lager yeast. It's 5.3% ABV and a very clear pale gold, looking more like a cider than a beer. The aroma is citrus in both bitter and sweet modes; zesty like a lemon meringue pie. Although the body is full, there's still a perfect lager crispness, bringing a dry aspect which makes it very drinkable. It makes sense that a cold-fermented IPA at Helles gravity would have a bit of Helles's chewy-yet-easygoing character about it. The hops have more than a hint of the west coast going on, offering tart grapefruit and slick pine sap. And joyously there's none of the savoury onion that tends to plague this style. Kinnegar have done a great job here of combining the positive attributes of lager and IPA.

As usual, there's a new summer IPA from Hope. This year, topless deckchair guy is presiding over a Juicy IPA. The surprise here is that this one is golden and almost completely clear. Don't they know there's a haze craze on? There's a fun spritz of lime in the aroma, which doesn't say modern and juicy to me, but I'll take a west-coast switcheroo any time of the year. The body is nicely full, suggesting more than its 5.5% ABV, and it's chewy rather than fluffy, again in quite a west-coast way. On the other hand it is indeed sweet, and the promised pineapple makes an appearance, with guava and cantaloupe, though subtle and muted, not loud. A bit of citrus kick on the end would have been the perfect finisher, but it's absent, and instead the understated tropical taste simply fades off the palate, a little faster than I'd like. If the intention was an easy-going sunny refresher then I think they've safely nailed that: it's enjoyable to drink and, since it doesn't hang around, it would be perfectly possible to open another straight after. The brewery's advice is to enjoy outdoors with friends, and I can see why. Hunched over a laptop writing tasting notes about it is completely the wrong approach.

WhiteField is one of those rural Irish breweries we don't see much of in the Big Smoke, though I have it on good authority that we'll be able to go to them soon enough, when their taproom in Templemore opens next year. They did a bit of a rebrand on their beers when they rebranded the brewery but I think Eastwood pale ale is completely new, or at least is a significant variation on something from the old days. It's a dense, dark, red-amber colour, topped with lots of off-white froth. I'm guessing juiciness is not part of the proposition here. It smells like it looks, of caramel and forest spices. The body is big and smooth, reflecting all of its 5.8% ABV. There's a very English tannic buzz and then unusual strawberry and plum flavours, more like you'd find in a red ale. It's a pale ale in the way they aren't really made in the modern era, though would likely have been a perfect fit for the style a century or so ago. Style aside, it's nicely satisfying to drink, though perhaps better suited to colder days.

All or Nothing was the first summer release from Crafty Bear, an IPA setting out to showcase Citra in cryo form and Styrian Wolf. And it does it without being too hazy: my pints (I had two) were both minimally murked, and while it could maybe have done a better job with the head retention, it tasted crisp and clean the way IPA used to. I'm not so sure about what Styrian Wolf brought to the party but the Citra is instantly recognisable, all grapefruit and lime zest; an assertive and uncompromised bitterness. The malt serves the principal purpose of letting the hops sing, and while it's a strong lad at 6.3% ABV it's dangerously easy to get through one pint and order another straight after.

That was followed a few weeks later with something altogether more hazy called Cosmic Wonder. This is one of those beers that absolutely gets the whole point of haze, being softly textured, brightly flavoured and most importantly, clean tasting, with none of the dreggy grit or hot garlic which makes too many of these taste like concentrated fermenter scrapings. There is vanilla, though, but it's not oppressive, joining with a pleasantly sweet lemon zest and tropical fruit character. Four hops have gone into it: the usually-bitter Chinook and Centennial take a back seat while the more colourful and fruity El Dorado and Hüll Melon do the driving. The result is lots of delicious complexity at only 5% ABV, equal parts something to sip and study, and also a very accessible, unfussy, drinker's beer. Nicely done.

We finish in triple time with Irish Wolfhound by Western Herd, a 10.5% ABV animal with an international mix of eight different high-alpha hops. Triple IPAs tend to be quite pale so I was surprised by the murky amber colour of this one. The aroma is warm and resiny, with strong hints of toffee and banana. The flavour is sweet at first, intensely so, mixing marmalade, gingerbread, chocolate and candied orange peel, finishing on a dry piney sap. It's not unpleasantly hot, but the alcohol lets you know it's there. This is a beer to sip through, to chew through, and it's enjoyable to do it. No rush.

That's all for now, but I have many more pale ales on the way, in upcoming posts about Whiplash, O Brother, Third Barrel and more. It's a genre that's going nowhere.

Jersey, sure

Craft Central offers regular flurries of brightly coloured American tins at exceedingly high prices, largely made up of hazy IPAs in the way that beer these days generally is. I have little interest and usually scroll on past, but... maybe I should be checking in now and again to see if there's value to be had. These, presumably, are the beers that everyone else around the world is copying, right? OK, I've convinced me. Here's two IPAs from the less obscenely priced end of the spectrum, both from New Jersey, a lonely state, lacking a New Guernsey or New Sark to keep it company.

Brew Jersey: there's a dead clever pun. This is from Twin Elephant in Chatham. It's 7.4% ABV, hopped with Citra, Azacca, Nelson Sauvin and Mackinac -- the latter is new to me but the others are good 'uns. It presents pale yellow and opaque, something I generally take as a good sign. The can says it's "mindfully brewed" though not mindfully packaged as there's no brewing, canning or best-by date on it. Still, it smells and tastes fresh, mostly of tinned pineapple in both instances. There's a mildy leafy bitterness in the background of the taste which is presumably the Citra trying to make itself heard, but otherwise it's smooth and rather anodyne, presenting no challenges or off-flavours, but few points of interest too. It's a casual sort of conversation beer, something I'd normally be fine with, but I'd like a bit more of a firework display for €8 a can.

6.9% ABV and labelled "west coast style India Pale Ale", When The Haze Clears, by Icarus, cost me €8.85. It's not clear, looking a dirty, slightly muddy, orange in the glass. The blurb talks a good game on the hops: Columbus, Centennial, Motueka, Nelson Sauvin and Strata all feature. Nevertheless it smells sweet and artificially floral, like Skittles. So far not very west coastish. The flavour has a lot of that but there's also lots of oily weedy resins, with the pilsner grass of classic Kiwi hops butting upside the sweets. It's far from a classically clean west coast IPA, though nor is it juicy or garlicky haze. More than anything, this reminds me of drinking IPA in Poland or Spain, where they're not hung up on copying the Americans directly and introduce their own... idiosyncrasies... in their recipes, some of which work and some of which definitely don't. In the US, beer normally tastes exactly how you expect it to; this doesn't. Maybe it's an east coast satire on west coast; Jersey busting California's balls. Regardless, I appreciated that it's boldly flavoured but didn't really enjoy the rather messy overall picture.

Am I convinced of the value of high-end American cans? On this showing definitely not. But I'll check in again some time when the urge has built sufficiently.

In the Mayne

It apears to be Dublin beer's best kept secret, that Arthur Mayne's in Donnybrook is owned by Benny McCabe and is therefore affiliated to his Rising Sons brewery in Cork city. It certainly carries the goods: eight taps of Rising Sons core range and seasonals, beers which otherwise you'll rarely see outside of Benny's pubs in Cork. It's a charming Victorian-style interior too.

On my recent visit, there was one which I hadn't tried before, the Raspberry Sour. It's dark amber coloured and quite murky with it, including bits which I'm guessing are fruit-derived. A mere 4.3% ABV means it's quite light-bodied, though not thin. The other thing it's not, surprisingly, is sweet. The raspberry element arrives late, after a quite hard mineral tartness up front. I liked that, having feared it would be sickly and syrupy.

This isn’t quite the summer thirst-quencher I was seeking, but I do appreciate a fruit-flavoured sour beer that takes itself as seriously as this does.

Lithography

I surprised myself with the discovery that I had never had any beer from the Utenos range, despite having once been to Lithuania and regularly being in Dublin's east-European supermarkets. It's a sub-brand of Švyturys, itself the property of Carlsberg. I don't know where it sits on the premiumisation scale, but the can design is pretty basic-looking.

Your starter Utenos pale lager is 5% ABV and looks decent: clear and properly golden. The aroma is malt forward, though with a hint of banana in that bread. The ester effect is quite prominent in the flavour, and especially at the end. It starts innocently as pear and lychee but grows in intensity to full ripe banana and red apple before the end. I like the weight and chewiness but would still find it tricky to drink more than a couple in one sitting.

There was no immediate difference between that and Utenos Auksinis, the so-called "golden" one: still a 5% ABV lager. It's a tiny bit paler and had a very fine haze to it, little protein flakelets bobbing about in there. It seems a little cleaner in the aroma: still with an estery note but more sharp pear than banana. Although the ABV is the same, it's lighter and crisper on the palate, suggesting that the gravity is lower and it's more attenuated. I don't know that it's a better beer, though. Something seems a little off about the dry side of the equation; a stale tang, close to classic oxidation. Like the haze, that's not something one expects to find in an industrial European lager. This is no more sessionable than the previous one, though if they knocked the ABV down a bit, it might be.

The curveball in the set is Utenos Cherry. Let's see if tipping a drum of syrup into it improves the wonky lager any. It does reduce the strength and we're down to 4.6% ABV here. The colour is a lovely shade of dark maroon with a firm head. So I guess it was a lot of syrup, because this is very cherry indeed: think of it as session-strength cough medicine. The cherry flavour is delightfully real, though, with that hard bitter and tannic edge amongst all the sugar. There are loud echoes of candified Belgian lambic here, and I really enjoyed it on that basis, while fully recognising it's not going to be for everyone. Beyond the syrupy wallop there's a spicy nuance, like the cinnamon seasoning in a fruit pie filling. Above all it is tremendous fun in a delightfully silly way, which was just the tonic after the previous two po faces.

And while I'm scouring the shelves of Polonez on Mary Street for new ticks, here's Vienas Premium, another standard 5% ABV golden lager but from a smaller brewery down Kaunas way. Initial impressions are excellent, from the generous 568ml can to the handsome cap of fine white foam it wears when poured. The aroma is sweet but pleasant, mixing light spongecake with meadowy blossoms. The flavour isn't so sweet, being a little on the plain side but with a lovely refreshing crispness. I get a very faint fruitiness -- apple or banana -- which is probably a flaw but I'm happy to write it down as character. This is a very decent no-frills lager in a large can. Sometimes that's all I require. Though a bit of cherry would be nice.

A Volfas Engelman sneaks in at the end, via the lower shelves in SuperValu. This is simply called Pilsner and is 4.7% ABV. It looks lovely, all clear and golden with a handsomely Germanic head. To taste it's quite sweet, with lots of meadowy flowers, honey, and a more artificial fruit candy vibe. The latter is accentuated by a chewy texture. It's not unpleasant but it's not what I want from a pilsner: no sharp bittering and a severe dearth of crispness. It didn't cost more than a few euro so I can't complain too hard. I'm pretty sure Engelman does better lagers than this, however.

Sweetly does it, seems to be the watchword in Lithuania, and their lagers suffer as a result, if this lot are anything to go by. No hidden bargains this time.

Post-gluten

It's another Post Card post, concerning beers brewed in Kildare but named after places in Dublin. Both of today's are gluten free, a new move for the brand.

First it's a lager, called Samuel Beckett Bridge. It's in the Helles style and is a little dark on it, shading towards amber with a bit of a haze. It makes sense that this gives it a certain richness, particularly on the nose: an aroma of biscuits and bread. In the flavour that's how it begins, before adding a grassy green bitterness in the finish. The two aspects don't really balance each other out, keeping apart from each other, but that's OK. It's a clean-drinking job with just enough distinctive character to be interesting, in an unfussy way.

And speaking of unfussy, it's an Irish red next: Dublin Castle. It may be a mainstream style but "intriguing hop additions" are promised on the label. It pours very murky, and is paler than red -- more an orange shade. What they mean by the hop comment is immediately apparent on tasting: there's a bright and very new-world fruit foretaste, suggesting satsuma and mango. That's fun, and almost distracted me from the fact that none of red ale's more orthodox features appear: no caramel, no roast, nothing malt-forward. As a pale ale, it's not bad, but I can't imagine any red ale purists will be happy with it.

Not exactly stellar work by Post Card here, but gluten-free beer has come a long way. These didn't taste in any way compromised.

Don't tell me what to do

I have Mr Thomas Carroll to thank for this can of Helles, the first and, so far, only beer under the Tilt & Pour brand out of Belfast. It was brewed at Heaney in Bellaghy and is 5.2% ABV. Any thoughts of pristine classic Bavarian lager are banished quickly by the murky amber body under a space where a head appears briefly then vanishes. "Our take on the infamous [sic] German lager" says the label. Very much so, says I.

The aroma is sweet and candy-like, suggesting clove rock and fruity Skittles. Not very Teutonic, but there's a little buzz of celery or spinach too, so all is not lost. I'm glad the flavour isn't sickly, and instead it has a drier brown bread or rye cracker effect at the centre. That said, it can't shake the higher alcohols, and it tastes a bit warm-fermented, of ethyls and esters -- something that's tolerable for a sip or two but becomes a chore by half way.

I'm no style purist. I'm not upset that this isn't a burnished gold lager, fluffy of texture and exquisitely balanced between spongecake malt and herbal hops. But it's not a good lager at all, leaning too far in to the rustic farmhouse thing, except without the charm. Were it a home brew I'd be suggesting its maker do something about fermentation temperature before attempting anything else similar. Since it's not I'll just say thanks but no thanks.

The seven eleven

DOT Brew celebrated seven years in the brewing business in May with a tap takeover at Against the Grain. Seven beers were on offer, of course, of which five were new to me. Flights of four seemed to be the preferred dispense method, so that's how I started.

This is one of those brewers who makes beers, not styles, so exactly what the 3.2% ABV Plausible Session was meant to resemble I am not sure. My best guess is a table beer: the strength matches, as does the yellowy murk and dry, slightly gritty, character. That said, the hops do play a central role, making it quite lemony, with a creamy lemon curd foretaste and some bitterer hazy lemonade after. The name works: this is an unfussy and very drinkable beer, mostly clean flavoured and light without being thin.

Not long after the event, DOT had a very similarly-specc'd beer out in cans: Simple Session. This is also 3.2% ABV and yellowly murky. At least with a can label, I know that Hüll Melon, Idaho 7 and Centennial are the hops. It smells exotic and perfumey, of white peach and jasmine. That rounds out on tasting, giving the full grape effect I associate with Hüll Melon, and more than a hint of melon as well. That's pleasant as it goes, but the beer does suffer from the same interfering grittiness as the one above. Still, that's better than thinness or harshness: they've avoided that well.

Back to the flight and the next one needs a big asterisk on my review. I had already drank it when DOT's head honcho Shane stormed into the pub, declared it unfit for consumption and insisted on buying everyone who had tasted it a replacement drink (really!). For my part I thought it, Oak Pale, was OK. Yes, it looked green, sickly and murky, like a sample of sludge from the bottom of the tank (which, apparently, is pretty much what it was) but then lots of beers these days look like that, and some of them cost €8 a can. Anyway, it didn't taste like an oaked pale ale, but like a crisp and grassy pilsner. I was fine with that and moved on, but I will give this a proper review if I see it again.

The last time I was drinking draught DOT it was a verjus-infused sour beer, which came with a promise of a new and improved version on the way. And here it was: Verjus Take II, 4.6% ABV and a clear copper colour. I assume that raspberries were included again but this didn't taste at all of raspberry. Instead it's thick and sweet, tasting first of stewed apple and white grapes with a peach and lychee tang on the finish. It's subtle and not very sour but very tasty and definitely an improvement on the original.



I don't recall DOT having a sixth birthday, but the fourth and fifth came with a Barrel Aged Birthday Cake imperial chocolate milk stout. The gravity dropped a little between them and here plummets to just 9.6% ABV. The beer doesn't suffer from this, however, being extremely cake-like, with an almost crumbly, floury texture. It tastes somewhere in the midst of chocolate cake and coffee cake, full and creamy but not hot, and with a dash of honeyish Irish whiskey as a bonus. Stop the product development here: this one has been perfected.

With my flight landed, it was time for a proper glass of the final remaining beer, a cold IPA called Brrr... There still isn't much consensus about what this sub-style should actually be, but one thing I've noticed is that few of them are terribly exciting. Yes, the intense cleanness gives the hops plenty of elbow room, and here that's expressed as lemon and lime candy with a sharp edge of raw onion, but it's a bit one-dimensional with it. There's a reason modern IPA brewers have tended to give them quite beefy malt chassis, and this 5.6%-er would have benefited from one of those. Let's see how many more birthdays cold IPA is still around for.

I saved a few food miles with the next one. Having won the raffle on the night, I dropped around to the brewery a few days later to collect a t-shirt. Shane was kind enough to throw in a couple of beers, including House Helles, brewed for Sweeney's in Fairview, saving me the trouble of trekking across the city in search of it. It's a deep red-gold colour, very much on the dark side for Helles. There's a heavy grain crunch in the aroma, with a bite of pils-like cut grass. The flavour too is wholesome and chewy, blending golden syrup, oat cookies, rye bread and zinc. It's not quite the light thirst-quencher I was expecting, but I like the serious gravitas on display here instead.

In addition to the Farmhouse Ale produced for Aldi, there was another release in the Spin Off Series, a Cold IPA. This is a light 5.2% ABV and pale yellow with a faint haze. Served fridge-cold, the aroma manages to be both crisp and sweetly peachy, which is inviting. Crispness is absolutely the watchword on tasting, and the mouthfeel is superbly light and clean, just like a smooth and finely-honed lager. Onto this is grafted the fresh IPA hops, the peachy stonefruit landing first, then overtaken by a sharp citrus -- lime rind in particular -- and once again, like many cold IPAs I've encountered, there's a twang of raw white onion in the finish. That is at least brief; overall it's very tasty and offers great complexity and overall high quality for only €2.50 a can. And, like the Farmhouse Ale, it's an excellent to-style education piece for the mass market.

It would have been good to end the post there and get it published some time in early June, but the cans kept coming. Next I have something called Sea Sour, a sour ale brewed with raspberries and sea buckthorn, given some ageing time in white wine barrels and finishing up at 4.6% ABV. It's a pale pink in the glass and smells juicy in a summer fruit salad sort of way, suggesting strawberries and grapes as much as raspberry. The texture is light and quenching with soft carbonation and aided by a mild tartness which ensures it's clean but doesn't go so far as to make it challenging. The fruit is still there, and the sour side tarts up the raspberries to taste more like cranberries. In the background I could just about detect traces of oak-laced white wine, something which doesn't dovetail with the rest of the picture but doesn't interfere either. For all that the recipe is complicated, and I don't doubt that every process and ingredient makes a contribution, this is a supremely easy-drinking summer refresher, to the point where I suggest serving it on the veranda in a big jug with ice and maybe a sprig of rosemary.

Two of DOT's regular Teeling collaborations to bring us out. The first is Gr8 Tasting Pale Ale, released recently to mark eight years of whiskey production at the Dublin distillery. It's a pale yellow job, hazy with a pile of fine white foam on top. The aroma is quite grainy, smelling wholesomely of unmalted barley and oats. The taste was plain at first but has a growing sweetness, the porridge becoming a cream-filled spongecake with pineapple icing. It's missing any real hop character, either as bitterness or "juice", and that's a little disappointing. Equally the whiskey barrel side is subtle to the point of invisible. Given what it is, and the name, I expected something more impressive. Yes it's only 4.3% ABV, but was also €5.50 for a small can. I felt a bit gypped.

For Christmas last year, the brewery released Teeling Festive, which I never got around to picking up. It looks like they overlooked a case or two as it was also available in the distillery giftshop when I went in for the above. This is a blend of an amber ale and a porter, utilising single malt barrels as well as ones previously used for Teeling's peaty Blackpitts. I expected that would have a big effect, and sure enough it smells strongly of disinfectant, with a sweet brown sugar backing. And it doesn't do anything more interesting than that on tasting. A smooth mouthfeel is the base for lots of chemical-laden peaty smoke plus sticky toffee and a faint coating of chocolate. It's shocking at first, but I was into it by the end. It would certainly have worked better in the depths of winter than the height of summer. One for serious smoke aficionados only, I think, or those interested in just how much impact a whiskey barrel can have on a beer.

Cheers to the DOT team, the AtG team, and all the usual camp followers for a fun evening out.

White-collar beers

Oooh, don't these look posh, in their slim cans, their understated artwork and *gasp* gold-coloured pull tabs. Brewski is out to impress. I'm honour-bound to say it's what's inside the can that counts, but the kerb appeal here is significant.

Taking them in order of strength, we begin at 4% ABV and American Pie. They've described this as a Berliner weisse with blackcurrant, raspberry and vanilla, placing it close to "pastry sour" in style, and presumably aiming for that fanbase with the name. In the glass it's an opaque shade of maroon, losing its head in no time. Of all the ingredients it's the vanilla which dominates the aroma, turning it a bit sickly from the get-go. By contrast, the flavour opens with a tang of sourness: the plain kind that's a hallmark of mass-produced Berliner weisse, not the good stuff. I thought I'd got off lightly but the sweetness had other ideas, coming out of the shadows after a few seconds and spreading a dessertish mix of jelly, cream and pastry. The aftertaste lasts for ages and gives the impression of a luridly-coloured children's breakfast cereal that's likely outlawed in most European countries. This offers only a brief promise of quality but is otherwise completely daft and nothing like as classy as the packaging implies. Shame.

OK, clean sheet, fresh start. A porter is next. Feliz Cedro is 4.7% ABV and has been aged on cedar. It's a murky dark brown and smells very dry and woody. I was hoping for some rich and warming resins from the wood but it's dry all the way through. The flavour begins on dark chocolate and seems about to tail off there when the spicy cedar kicks in, flashing briefly with peppercorns and incense. Too briefly, unfortunately: I would have liked either the base beer or the add-on to be doing more, but they're both a bit simplistic and their impact is short-lived. I liked what it does but I wanted a lot more of it, and in particular a fuller, rounder and sweeter beer overall. This is a little thin, and the taste is sparse as a result.

Last of the set is Passionate Beet. Berliner weisse with beetroot and passionfruit sounds like an unlikely combination but I'm willing to give it a go. It is, unsurprisingly, a pale red colour, with no head to speak of. The passionfruit takes ownership of the aroma, accompanied by a mild ginger or nutmeg spicing, though neither of those features in the ingredients. It's quite thickly textured, even a little syrupy, which perhaps shouldn't be surprising for 6% ABV, but it's one way in which it departs from the Berliner weisse style. The flavour is another: it's not even slightly sour, piling in the tropical sugar instead. The poor beet doesn't get a look-in either, its unmistakable earthy characteristic imperceptible to this drinker. Like the first one, this doesn't deliver on the promise of the classy packaging.

So I don't think any of them lived up to the enticing design of the labels. They're not bad beers, and all three are the sort of thing I know Brewski can do well. These particular examples each lacked something, however.

Weighty matters

It was still May when I drink Hope's Maibock, just about: a lovely sunny evening at the end of the month. Good lager weather. This lager, the 29th beer in Hope's Limited Edition series, is a dense and dark amber colour, suggesting weight and richness fully in keeping with the 7.5% ABV. The aroma is what I would expect, even from a lighter beer in the same style. No sweetness, just dry grain and a rustic twang of hay. The gravity comes out much more on tasting, beginning with a very heavy malt-laden base, something like you'd get from a doppelbock or even weizenbock. That carries a shedload of flavour with it, the hay becoming wet grass or fermenting silage. The alcohol is very apparent, with a touch of headachey solvent or fusels enhancing the boozy effect. The coloured malt goes full biscuit, meanwhile, struggling to contain the bang of noble hops but just about managing it. This is no happy-go-lucky sunshine lager. It's an effort to sip through, and despite my usual distaste for noble hopping in quantity, I liked this: there's plenty of interest going on in it. Aiming for a gravity at the upper end of the scale paid off.

From one throwback beer style to another: Limited Edition 30 is a West Coast IPA. As a brewery of mature stature and sober outlook, Hope ought to be able to do this properly. "Cascade, Columbus, Centennial and Chinook...  citrus, pine and resin": the label certainly talks west coast. The beer is not fully clear, but it's the forgivable sort of murk, showing an unwillingness to go hard with the filter, rather than deliberate haze. Pure classic grapefruit is where the aroma starts, with the dark malt providing a sweeter countermelody. The malt is the centrepiece of the flavour, perhaps surprisingly. The familiar crystal malt toffee flavour was certainly a hallmark of old-school American IPA but seems a strange place to start now. Still, the brewery can't be faulted for retro accuracy. 75 IBUs, says the label, and yes there is a very punchy red cabbage and wax bitterness -- far beyond "citrus" -- but the sticky toffee is fully in control. This isn't a recreation of American IPA from 20 years ago; it's a satire of it. A change from the usual fruity murk is welcome but I don't think I'd enjoy all IPAs being like this again.

UpDog

It's not "UnderDog 3" or "New UnderDog" or anything else, it's just UnderDog, capital U, capital D, no space. Paddy is insistent. In late June, Dublin's only independent specialist beer bar took up residence on the corner of Capel Street and North King Street, a venue that in recent years has been host to O'Byrne's Beverage House, Beerhouse, and two food-led Galway Bay ventures, Paddle & Peel and Taco Libre. None of them managed to make much of a go of it, but fifth time's the charm.

There was certainly no shortage of patronage on opening night, and all tables in the long slim pub were full not long after 6. Although there was plentiful Irish beer, of course, I wetted the babby's head with some imports.

First of them was the Lapsang Souchong Lambic, the next in Oud Beersel's weird-for-the-sake-of-weird lambic series. As always, the first question is "Does it work?" and with this one I'm not sure. They certainly didn't skimp on the novelty ingredient; from the first taste it is powerfully, oppressively, smoky. As usual, though, the base lambic is assertive enough to shine through the add-on, still showing its earthy minerals and full-on sourness. A few sips in and one becomes accustomed to the smoke and it forms just another part of the beer's tangy complexity. I don't think it's an improvement, though: a little of what makes lambic enjoyable still gets covered up by the gimmick. Once again I find myself respecting the experiment but in no rush to drink the beer again.

We were spoilt with two beers from The Kernel and I went straight for the India Double Porter. I adore Kernel's dark beers and this 7.5%-er is an amplified version of the reasons for that. Dark chocolate meets heavy coffee roast with a strongly floral countermelody of lavender and rosewater. The dryness is almost ashen, but a thick body saves it, rendering it beautifully sumptuous. And that's it: no further notes. I can't imagine I would ever get bored of this beer.

So it was my dedication to you, dear reader, that moved me along to Kernel's Foeder Beer Nelson Sauvin. I wasn't at all sure what to expect from this one. What's a "foeder beer"? A yellow glassful arrived, smelling earthy and funky in the Belgian farmhouse way. So I guess it could be broadly classed as a saison. The base flavour certainly bears that out, with its straw-like dryness. On top of it, however, the hops are in full voice, piling in softly luscious white grape, lychee and peach nectar, plus a complementary peach-fuzz bitterness. It's interesting and fun, to the point where wondering what style it is seems churlish and unnecessary. There's lots going on here, and all at just 4.7% ABV, too.

And then there was Verdant. I finished night one on The First Note, a 5.2% ABV pale ale brewed in collaboration with The Tate Gallery. "A matrix of latitudinal and longitudinal lines, positions and flavours," they say. "Basic haze", say I. This yellow murk is low on fruit, heavy on vanilla and absolutely saturated in garlic flavours. There's nothing special, or different, or even particularly good. The hops aren't banging-fresh or any way juicy. "Join the dots, colour the gaps, dream the dreams...devour the world." My arse, Verdant.

And yet, two days later I was back in and drinking Verdant again. Did they do any better with the IPA called De-Bleaker? Not really. This is a very pale yellow, with little by way of aroma and quite a watery texture for 6.5% ABV. The flavours shows a little grapefruit, with the attendant pepper spice I get from grapefruit peel, before the fried onion and raw garlic storms onto the field of play, perhaps predictably. Another unimpressive showing, and a beer with very little complexity, from a country that can make beautifully complex beers at about half this strength.

One last try before Verdant and I go our separate ways. It's a double IPA called Light Through The Veins: 9% ABV and leaning towards €10 for a 33cl glass. Luckily, it's much better than the other two. While the aroma is quiet once again there's a tasty blend of coconut and pineapple in the foretaste. This flops back into vanilla and garlic eventually as it warms, but it's fun before that: tropical freshness and a comforting warmth. That said, it's nothing particularly different from hazy double IPAs I've had before, and I've had much better, not to mention cheaper. 

That brings my Verdant beer count to seven, and I should probably stop there as their way of doing things simply doesn't suit my palate. Now I just have to wait until the UnderDog menu screen offers me something else.

Beach ready

Sunny summer beers, all pale and sessionable, are today's subject. Who better than a brewery named after a beach to provide them?

We start at Low Tide. This, or a version of it, began life as Kinnegar's Brewers At Play 3 back in early 2020 before making its way into the regular line up under a new name. It's a pale ale at 1% ABV and one thing they haven't changed is the watery body: it's still unpleasantly thin on that first sip; a reminder that it's not really a proper beer. All is good after that, however. I noted a soapy twang in BAP3 but there's none of that here, only fresh and zingy citrus, growing in intensity to a proper west-coast bitter finish and backed with a slightly chalky mineral dryness. While not fully convincing as a beer, it is pleasant to drink, whether that's as a beach-bound driver or the barbecue attendee look for a non-intoxicating break. There are plenty of use cases and it's a good thing they've kept it in their line-up.

It's joined by a brand new core ranger, a 4% ABV session IPA called Wee Bunny, referencing the Big Bunny full hazy IPA. It's only a wee bit hazy, and mostly a bright white-gold colour. There's a decently tropical aroma, not heavily sweet but with distinct peach and pineapple. The flavour throws a spritz of coconut husk into that, drying it out more than I expected. It really doesn't fit into the hazy IPA spectrum, being much lighter of body too. I'm sure there are drinkers who will appreciate that, and if Big Bunny wasn't your thing, there's no reason to reject this on the grounds it'll be similar. Overall it's an OK take on session IPA, though doesn't do anything especially noteworthy, beyond quenching my thirst quickly, while also leaving room for another beer. That's probably enough.

We go up to 4.6% ABV for Brewers At Play 30: Unfiltered Hoppy Lager. I don't disbelieve the first part, but it doesn't look unfiltered, being a fairly unfuzzy golden shade, if not quite sterile sparkling. For "Hoppy" we don't get told any varieties but it smells like lemon sherbet and tastes very floral, a cottagecore blend of lilac and honeysuckle, given a mere hint of citrus zest in the finish. And would I have identified it as a lager unprompted? I'm not sure. The body has a certain greasy or estery side, lacking crispness, leaning more towards light pale ale rather than anything cold-fermented. It's more solid and unfussy fare; a characterful sessioner. I don't know that it's exactly to my taste, though. The way the flowers build on the palate, by half way I felt I was drinking a bath bomb. 

Strongest of today's lot is Brewers At Play 31: Apricot Rosemary Sour. I'm sure the 5% ABV recipe is quite different from the 5% ABV apricot rosemary sour which was Brewers At Play 5 in 2020. This one looks a bit paler than the original, though that could be down to my poor photography skills. Anyway, it's still opaque and orange, and smells very herbal, deliciously so because I really like rosemary. That gets crushed rather on tasting, and here it's the apricot's time to shine, tasting a little concentrated and jammy, though still like an approximation of actual apricot. Where we get gypped, as usual, is the sourness: there's only the faintest of mineral tangs. While I'm nit-picking, I don't think the gravity really suits it, and a lighter body would make it cooler and more refreshing. What I did like was the way the elements are arranged: rosemary in the aroma and apricot in the flavour, contributing not competing. For the second half of the can I popped a couple of ice cubes in, to improve the summer effect. Recommended.

At 5.2% ABV, Brewers At Play 32 just falls outside the remit of this post but I'll get to it soon. Kinnegar is working me hard this summer. I need a light refreshing beer...

Peripherals

Today it's a mopping-up exercise after Monday's pub crawl around St Albans: other beers I drank while spending the weekend in that corner of England.

I arrived, late-ish on the Saturday evening, in Watford. One might expect town to be busy, especially with an English team playing in the Champion's League final at the time. But Watford centre was exceedingly subdued. I stopped by Mad Squirrel, a roomy craft beer bar and part of a regional brewery-tied chain, which was showing the game on the big screen to no more than half a dozen punters.

I was paying more attention to the screen with the beer list on it, and there were a lot: 23 in total, and two ciders, all from the Mad Squirrel brewery itself. One was even on cask, a 4% ABV bitter called Mister Squirrel. Something this trad in a Craftonian environment was incongruous, and so was the TeKu glass they served it to me in. I could call it "brown" but it's a more attractive red/amber. Still there's not much by way of hop action here, only a basic tea-like tannin, a very mild forest-fruit background and no more than a pinch of bitterness in the finish. Vertically integrated pubs often have these workmanlike to-style beers for drinkers who would normally have a different brand, and this is one of those. If your demands go no further than just-a-bitter, here's a perfectly acceptable one to keep you quiet.

The black IPA was the one that caught my attention next, called Blackout. This is 5.8% ABV, properly black and with a strongly floral aroma, full of summery lavender and violet. You can almost hear the bees buzzing around it. In the flavour this turns into a bathbomb, the purple flowers joined by a sharper citrus -- bergamot in particular -- building in bitterness to weedy resin and finally full-on pine sap. There's a certain funky farmishness as well for added complexity. More roast might have been nice, but this unorthodox take on black IPA brings it to interesting places, and that's OK too.

A couple of beers from the supermarket, next. Both chosen for Reasons.

First it's Brooklyn Pilsner. I'm told that we'll be seeing a lot more of this in Ireland soon, as Diageo begins brewing and distributing it locally. This bottle was brewed in England's equivalent of trendy Williamsburg: Wolverhampton, at the Banks Brewery. It's a very dry pils with a significant bite of bitterness all through. Its German heritage is very apparent in a certain vegetal pepperiness in the hopping. It still does all the basics you would want from "a lager", being clean and drinkable, and only 4.6% ABV, but there's bags of character in here when you look for it, and I think serious lager aficionados would enjoy it too. Here's hoping the folk in St James's Gate do as good a job when the time comes.

Off Menu is a 5.8% ABV American-style IPA by Camden Town. The can says it's largely built around Simcoe hops but it's oddly sweet, its hazy orange body holding a raft of orange-flavoured hard candy with only a mild kick of bitterness. Maybe it's because I had been drinking it on a warm day, and perhaps the can hadn't been chilled down to the requisite temperature, but it all felt a bit soupy to me, being neither cleanly refreshing nor full and rounded. I wasn't impressed. And the reason I picked it is because I'd heard it scored very highly in a recent blind-tasted assessment. The opposition mustn't have been up to much.

And so to the airport. Thunderstorms across Europe were disrupting flight patterns, and London Luton was full of harried people with nowhere to go. The Big Smoke Brewery has a concession bar here, one which had run out of ice and several of the beers but was bravely muddling through with two very capable teenagers at the helm.

I started on a Citra pale ale called Cold Spark, only 3.6% ABV. It's a pale and sickly-looking hazy yellow but tastes wonderful, with a fruit-driven bitterness which suggests actual citrus peel. After a moment, the lemon rind sweetens out into lemon curd or posset, and this complementary mix of sweet and tart continues into a pleasingly long finish. I'm surprised this one hadn't run out as it's ideal stuck-in-the-airport session material.

The other running tap was Electric Eye pale ale. This 5%-er is another pale one, although it's heavily textured in spite of that. The chewy malt opens the flavour and is then pursued by lots of also-chewy lemon and grapefruit. It's very apparent that this one is no stranger to Citra too, and looking it up reveals Simcoe and Chinook are also included. While it might not be clear in the west-coast way, it's still an excellent expression of these American hops, given enough of a malt base to optimise their impact.

Fruju had run out on draught but there were still a handful of cans in the fridge. This is the hazy pale ale of the set, 4.9% ABV, and either travel frazzledness or too much departure lounge relaxation means I neglected to take a picture of it. It is, according to my notes, a lightly cloudy yellow and, typically for the style, features both garlic and vanilla in the flavour. There's also a hint of caraway in the background, doubtless provided by the Mosaic, here with Citra and Azacca. For all that, it's inoffensive, if a bit basic. New England by the numbers.

With a further delay on the board I wandered across to the other departures bar, The Smithfield. Of note here was Stella Artois Unfiltered. I miss the unfiltered Carlsberg that was briefly available in Ireland before the pandemic, and wanted to find out if the Stella version similarly polishes up a very plain macro lager by leaving it unpolished. And it does! You get exactly the same wholesome crunchy oat cookie and an extra little smack from the noble hops. This would work really well as a distress purchase when nothing better is on offer.

Eventually we made it into the sky and home to Dublin. I'll be back in England for more very soon, however. Stay tuned.