The Hag beckons

It's Hagstravaganza season again, with the fifth festival of the name taking place at the White Hag brewery this Saturday. To maximise my time drinking the guest beers, I made a point of going through all of the host's own new releases that I could get my paws on in advance.

"Blackcurrant-flavoured beers always taste like Ribena" was my thought going into Púca Blackcurrant, the latest in a long series of fruited mixed-fermentation sour beers from The White Hag. This one doesn't look like Ribena, however, being a pale hazy pink colour in the glass. They've included ginger with the berries, and that turns out to be the most distinctive part of the taste, complemented nicely by a serious and sharp tartness which is rare enough in "sour" fruit beers these days, so both literally and figuratively refreshing. Is there any fruit, though? A hint of berry, but it does get a bit lost with the overall tartness. Certainly there's no Ribena or anything else sugary. For me, this doesn't quite have the beatings of original lemon Púca, but it's not far off either. 

On to something rather hoppier next, with Dagda, a 4.8% ABV pale ale. It's pretty hazy, though not advertised as such; an eggy yellow colour with a fetching tall head of loose foam. I get a very modern, tropical-esque, aroma of pineapple, mango, nectarine and the like, achieved with a busy blend of Idaho 7, Citra, Cashmere and Motueka. The texture is New-England fuzzy, though light and cool, on foot of the low gravity. The flavour is softly spoken and stays on the fruit side, perhaps bittering-up the tropicals a little, to the level of peach skin, mandarin peel and candied lemon. There isn't a huge amount of either, really, and it's easy drinking. The massive demographic of Irish people who drink nothing but hazy IPAs will welcome this one which meets all their required points but in a schoolnight-compatible package.

The Answerer is apparently third in a series of fruited IPAs but I have no memory of what the previous ones were. Anyway, it's 5.8% ABV, a mostly-clear pale amber and infused with grapefruit. Well, grapefruit syrup, I suspect, because it smells very sweet and sticky, like sticky sweets. There is at least a solid poke of bitterness at the front of the flavour, one which hangs around drily on the palate, which is nice. The hopping -- Cascade, Simcoe, Mosaic and Idaho 7 -- emphasises the first two of those, adding a different kind of bitterness, all herbal and resinous, rather than anything tropical, finishing on a bite of alkaline minerals. The mouthfeel is full which helps those hop resins stay in the picture. Overall, it works rather well. The added ingredient adds something positive to the taste without lessening the extent to which it's still a proper, if slightly old-fashioned, American-style IPA. Even if it smells like a bag of Skittles.

And then came number four: Aonbarr, with pineapple. While it's the same strength, it's a pale translucent yellow and very quickly loses its head, ending up looking more like a fruited sour ale than any kind of IPA. Initially it smells dry; crisp, bordering on papery. After that, again, there's a fruity side which could easily be either the hops -- just Idaho 7, El Dorado and Azacca this time -- or the tropical syrup. More Skittles, basically. There's a disturbing amount of fizz, which makes finding the flavour a bit tricky, but sure enough, there's the pineapple. Syrup being syrup, it's more like an ice pop or soluble vitamin than actual pineapple. There's a sticky, concentrated candy, element in the finish which adds nothing positive. As with the above, however, there's a decent IPA bitterness too, bringing an altogether more grown-up vibe.  It's not my kind of thing, though, and I'm not sure pineapple works as a complementary IPA flavour in the same way that grapefruit can, for obvious reasons.

Marking brews 1000 and 1001 at the nearly-nine-years-old brewery is a pair of light (7.5% ABV) double IPAs called Centennial Millennial. East Coast certainly looks and smells the part, exuding fresh mandarin juice from what appears to be a glass of orange juice. There's a fun and spicy nutmeg edge to this as well. Though the ABV is minimal for the style, it's densely bodied, and where I was expecting something as easy-drinking as orange juice, it requires a bit of pulling from the glass. Perhaps due to that density, it doesn't taste as bright as it smells. The juice turns to cordial; full of oranges but slightly claggy with it. A sweet stickiness begins proceedings, followed by a more savoury onion and garlic effect, about which there's a slightly dreggy, mucky vibe: not uncommon in beers like this, but most unwelcome. It's not awful: the aroma is great fun, and its happy fruitiness returns as the aftertaste. The middle needs cleaned up, however.

Centennial Millennial West Coast, then. It's clear and amber-coloured, so that's good, though lacking in aroma in general. I guessed this would be the sharper-hopped of the two but it was hard to get any flavour from it at all at first. Given a little time to warm, it becomes a kind of fruity-candy IPA: Skittles and Starburst, not grapefruit and pine. The bitterness level grows too, but never quite reaches what I would consider a proper west-coast grade. On the one hand it's clean and inoffensive; on the other it's a little insipid, and unworthy of being a celebration beer for a brewery milestone. A couple of years ago, any IPA in the west-coast style would have been regarded as a treat. With a steady revival in place, however, the standard is higher than this. Full nerd points for the use of the einstein "hat" tile on the labels of this pair, though.

And to finish, the traditional house beer of the festival: Hopstravaganza. The brewery seems to have invented a new style this time around, "Extra Pale IPA". What does that mean? Not much, I suspect. It's not particularly pale, being medium amber, and just a little bit hazed. 6.5% is a fairly middle-of-the-road ABV. There's a bit of promotional bumf on the can for Crosby Hops's CGX lupulin pellets, the Amarillo and Cashmere versions being used here. I can't say I can smell or taste any major difference they contribute. Still, the beer is very decent for all that, softly textured with a peachy/melony effect that I'm well used to from The White Hag, with a bonus poke of hard pithy bitterness. Not for the first time I'm comparing a new release to a beefed-up or toned-down version of Little Fawn, in this case the former. There's a fair whack of boozy heat lurking in the finish after the fruit, but the festival is for considered sipping of quality beers, so this will fit in perfectly.

Right so. See you in Ballymote. The usual drill.