The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 2: The White Hag

Day two of #TTBoC23 brings us to The White Hag.

Hanging around like a remnant of the Halloween decorations in December is Undead Inside, released in early October and languishing in my beer fridge since shortly afterwards. I didn't think there was any rush: it's a "forest fruit ale" so presumably not reliant on any hop freshness. It pours bright red and a little hazy, smelling strongly of brambly autumnal jam. The flavour, I'm happy to report, doesn't load in the sugar, giving plenty of space for a tangy berry edge and warm pie filling. It probably helps that 4.8% ABV is a higher gravity than most of these tend to be. Still, the base beer is almost lager-clean with no malt stickiness or cloying esters. Moving past the blackberry and raspberry, there's a hint of meadowy flowers and a tang of hop bitterness: Cascade, the can tells us. For something that's obviously contrived as a silly novelty, it's all very well integrated and enjoyable to drink, avoiding any accusations of syrupyiness. The carbonation is a little high, but really that's the harshest criticism I can levy at this. Fair play like.

The next one has been around even longer: Luna was released in September and is another fruit beer, this time an IPA with Valencia orange. The can is orange and the beer is orange. While opaque it's not a New England job, pushing an assertively sharp hop bitterness. The added orange runs in parallel with this, tasting artificial but easily ignored, though I should point out that the brewery says it's done with real peel, not syrup. Regardless, it's pretty simplistic, all told, which is a little surprising for the substantial ABV of 5.8%. If you want a pale ale with bitty orangeade overtones, here's is your guy. The better ones are lighter and show a zesty spice complexity; this is heavier and plainer, lacking spritz. I'm not sure it adds anything positive to the canon of Irish IPA.

I almost missed Blue + Yellow = Green: it had been around for months before it showed up in Molloy's literally yesterday. It's brewed in collaboration with Lviv's Pravda brewery and celebrates Irish-Ukrainian solidarity. They've gone and described it as a "west coast hazy IPA" and I'm sad enough to think that the phrase makes some sort of sense. Haze is definitely a feature, it being a pale opaque custard colour. And bitterness is sort-of also a feature: there's a kind of pithy grapefruit bitterness at the front of the flavour. But it's fully surrounded by specifically east-coast problems: onions, vanilla candy, gritty dregs and too much heat for 5.5% ABV. I think perhaps the west-coast-hazy is a circle that cannot, and should not, be squared. The sentiment is welcome but the sediment is not: this is more of the same murk and far from the brewery's best work.

Our final beer for today is at least seasonally appropriate. They describe Beara as a winter IPA, which they've interpreted as meaning red. So, Sierra Nevada Celebration then? I'm down with that. It's considerably lighter at 5.2% ABV, and a paler shade of cherry red. The label promises a veritable cocktail of Pacific hops: Amarillo, Cashmere, El Dorado and Nelson Sauvin. For all that, it doesn't smell like much, just vaguely tannic. The flavour is quite muted as well. It does have the malt-driven warmth that I'm sure was intended, pushing hints of toffee and treacle. The hops sit on this grumpily, bringing a sharp bitterness but none of the nuance I would expect from any of the varieties listed. There's a pleasant oily dank in the finish, but that's as assertive as the hops get. Like the Luna, it's a bit boring, all-told. The White Hag can do better than this.

For proper seasonal cheer, look out for the re-releases of their Yule ale, and the powerhouse Maccan barrel-aged strong ale. The White Hag does know how to Christmas properly.