So it's come to this

It has been an exceptionally quiet January for new release beers. The general sluggishness of the Irish market at this time of year has combined with this week's radical change to the rules around canned drinks -- introducing a deposit scheme -- to make local brewers less willing to put new beers out. It'll pick up again, for sure, but it's felt like a bit of a desert over the past few weeks. Browsing the beer shops for potential content, I picked today's three from Welsh brewer Tiny Rebel, having eschewed their wares since they became newly available in Ireland last year. They just don't seem like my sort of beers. That's worth putting to the test now and again, however.

When I selected Electric Boogaloo I didn't read any further than "passion fruit" and blithely assumed it was a fruited sour ale. Unfortunately it's worse than that, being a fruited New England-style IPA, at a session strength of 4.5% ABV. It's pale yellow and murky, so that fits the spec, and the aroma is massively tropical. Yes, there's passionfruit in there, but heavily concentrated and smelling like there are other things. It reminds me of some horrific sticky cordial from the 1980s which I don't remember the name of, but it evidently traumatised me. No surprises in the flavour, then: it's a heavily concentrated tropical fruit syrup, with the metallic twang which inevitably comes with that. The hopping does its best to clash with the sweetness but is thoroughly drowned out by it. While it tastes like it should be thick, it actually suits its strength and might even be sessionable were it not for the flavour's unpleasant intensity. This may as well have been one of those sour-in-name-only jobs. Tiny Rebel's supplier of passionfruit syrup has a key account in this brewery. Had I known it was going to be so sweet I probably wouldn't have picked what comes next.

"[I] doubt I'll be rushing to try any of the variants" I wrote when I reviewed Stay Puft marshmallow porter on here, back in 2020. To be honest, a bit over three years is sooner than I expected. Here's just two of them, on a Christmas theme.

Where to start? I figured that Sleigh Puft: The Chocolate One would be the less sweet of the pair. My wariness wasn't in the least offset by the appearance: muddy brown with abysmal head retention: far from proper porter. The aroma is sickly as the marshmallow ingredient makes its presence felt early and loudly. To taste, it is massively sweet, although not sickly. Fortunately, the texture is surprisingly light, without a trace of stickiness, which is impressive at 5.3% ABV. Chocolate is present but doesn't taste real, having the salt-and-plastic twang of very pale milk chocolate, or even a mass-produced white variety. The artificial pink marshmallow note arrives late in the finish. I'm stating the bleeding obvious here, but this is all novelty and no class. Yes I should have known that from the get-go. At least they're up front about it. I can't recommend this, though I can't fault it for delivering on the promise.

Why did I buy another one? Anyway, here's Sleigh Puft: The Caramel One. The ABV is identical and so is the ingredients list, so I guess malt is where the difference lies. There is definitely a difference, though, because it's darker -- nearly but not quite black, and with a much more generous head. There's a lovely burnt character to the aroma, suggesting a very caramelised sort of caramel, not just sugary gloop. Maybe the previous one calibrated my palate in advance, but I didn't find it as sweet. The burnt caramel has a mildly smoky taste, and there's a surprisingly grown-up hint of raw carrot and black pepper. It's weird, and that's a compliment, not following the well-trodden novelty path which the previous one did. I haven't tasted this particular combination before, and I quite like it, especially the unexpected spice. The pink marshmallow makes no appearance, so fans of that might want to dodge it. Everyone else, jump in.

The last beer here is why I keep at this. You can't judge a beer until you've drank it. Maybe there'll be more Stay/Sleigh Pufts featured on these pages in due course.