The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 4: Outer Place

A quick one-two from the haze merchants of Outer Place Brewing, a client of Lineman.

First it's Sacred Cycles, very much in their wheelhouse as a hazy IPA of 6.6% ABV. It's hopped with El Dorado, Strata and Zappa. It's very pale but not very hazy, looking a bit like a kellerbier or any number of broadly hazy pale ales. It certainly doesn't look as strong as it does, but the aroma is fully punchy, delivering herbal aniseed and a softer stonefruit peach kick. It's smoothly textured, thanks to the oats in the grain bill, with no difficult booziness. The fruit element from the aroma doesn't make it into the taste, where it's a slightly odd mix of savoury and spicy, giving me dry-roasted peanuts, rosemary and basil, with a resinous bitter finish. It's certainly no lightweight, nor a fruitbomb in the contemporary fashion. I liked the level of dry and herbal seriousness it brings: a reminder that haze doesn't have to mean nursery flavours.

And now a fanfare for the big reveal: Outer Place's first dark beer, Deepspace Transmission. They describe it as an Export India Porter, a phrase which doesn't actually belong to The Kernel but may as well. It's within the ABV range of the Londoner, at a steady 6.2%. A loose head forms as it pours, tightening to a beige foam before quickly disappearing. The texture is quite light, gently carbonated and devoid of stickiness. You can tell it's a porter from an IPA specialist because hops feature prominently. The aroma is a non-specific mix of herbs and flowers in a medicine-cabinet way, with a bit of black IPA's hot tar, which is no hardship. That snaps into focus into the flavour, where I get rosewater and coffee first, then a quieter caramel and dark chocolate. Yes there's a significant hop quotient, but it's definitely a porter, all the way through. The only thing I could wish for is a little more body to help carry the malt side; its thinness adds an unwelcome severity. Still: very few Irish breweries are making beer like this so I will stand and applaud Outer Place for switching things up and getting us all out of our comfort zones.