The culture war

There were a couple of new beers from Galway Bay Brewery. I dropped into The Black Sheep one afternoon to see what the story was.

Celestial Floods (or "Fioods", as the badge has it) is a double IPA of 7.9% ABV. Bullhouse of Belfast collaborated, and the hops are Galaxy, Riwaka and Mosaic. "Hazy" doesn't quite cover the proposition: it's downright beige in the glass, though smells attractive. I get pineapple, guava and something tropical but greener; avocado, perhaps. This is where I would like to be saying it tastes as clean as the aroma but it really doesn't. A hard, yeasty grit suffuses the flavour in a most unpleasant and unwelcome way. Chalk and boiled vegetables hit first: dry and earthy with a strong and rough bitterness. Some softer peach and banana flashes briefly before the sharp dregs take over once more, seeing us out into a mercifully short finish. Maybe I got the tail end of the keg but it can be hard to tell what the brewer intended when it comes to superhopped murk. Regardless, it's a poor example of this kind of double IPA, gathering together all the features I dislike and then releasing them simultaneously. Pandora's box without the hope.

I hoped for better from Tharapita, named for a nordic thunder god. That's because it's a collaboration with Estonians Pühaste and is a Baltic porter, a big one at 11.3% ABV. It pours thick and black as one would expect. The default 25cl pour was probably wise for a lunchtime on Capel Street, but that's not how they roll on the Baltic. The aroma is roasty with lots of coffee, more like an imperial stout than a Baltic porter. Its mouthfeel is super thick which makes me wonder if it's properly cold-fermented, though the texture is beautiful so I didn't wonder too hard. On tasting, the style snaps properly back into place: dried herb bitterness and sticky treacle with an edging of cola nut and the crust of central European rye bread. You get a jolt of espresso in the aftertaste as a digestif. The bitterness is less than the best examples, so maybe some more early-boil hops would have been good, but as a complete package it's unassailably delicious. My single complaint is that they didn't release it in November when it could have kept us warm all winter.

Ugh. This all sounds like I'm the ancient geezer who likes olden-days European beer but isn't hip to what the kids in America are into. Is Baltic porter always better than hazy IPA? No it isn't. Mostly it is though.