Early hop shoots

As we head into the third month of 2024 we see a resurgence of new beers from Ireland's breweries. Today I'm looking at an assortment from the hoppy side of the house.

We'll start without the alcohol, or almost without, and Brewers At Play 37 from Kinnegar, a variant on its Low Tide super-low-alcohol session IPA. Like that one, it's just 1% ABV and hazy yellow in colour. The aroma is nicely hop forward, balanced well between peachy juice and a spark of citrus. It's definitely a beer, not an ersatz substitute, but is a tad watery: you would immediately know that the ABV isn't the full shilling, I think. There's also the grittiness and metallic twang often found in very low-alcohol beers. Other than that, the taste is good: zesty lemon chased by a cheeky resinous dank, and while the finish is indecently quick, there's a lingering aftertaste of lime rind. It does the job. I wouldn't swap it in for a stronger IPA if that's what I was in the mood for, but when that's not an option I would fairly happily drink this instead.

Even casual readers of this blog are probably familiar with the prolific DOT Brew by now. It's best known for its highly involved barrel-aged blends, about which more later this week, but they do straight-up hoppy things too. This one is called Let Loose, a pale ale. Although oats are listed on the ingredients it's only very slightly hazy, and is otherwise a medium golden-amber. I guess they're there to boost the texture since it's only 4.2% ABV, and it works! It's light, but with enough body to give the hop flavour a proper beginning, middle and end. We're not told what they are, but I'm guessing something classically new-world. There's a broad mélange of soft peach and mango with a bitter mineral edge suggesting dried lemon or grapefruit peel. None if it is especially loud, but it's an excellent undemanding thirst-quencher. I don't usually pay much attention to what breweries write about their beers, but the description here says "Simply, an easy drinking all round bright pale ale." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Trouble's contribution to this first round-up of 2024 is, perhaps appropriately, called New Me. It's a pale ale of 4.7% ABV and references New Zealand on the badge, so presumably utilises hops from down there. Presenting clear and golden, there's not much aroma, and the flavour too is reticent, requiring a few mouthfuls before the character emerges. That character is bitterness: the grassy sort which shows the noble German heritage of many a Kiwi hop variety. There are some mild tropical overtones, suggesting that Nelson Sauvin or something similar has been added to the mix. Still, everything is on the down-low and there isn't really a whole lot to explore. When the fizz has subsided a little, you're left with an unchallenging and quaffable refresher, much like the beer above.

Hopsicle is a new beer brand to me. It's an all-Cork collaboration project between Bierhaus and Fionnbarr's, although the beer is brewed in the Real Capital: Dublin. I missed the first iteration of the puntastic Haus of Fionn, but here's Haus of Fionn 2.0. It's still a Nelson Sauvin pale ale of 4.9% ABV but now there's extra oats. I have never dinged a beer for not enough oats. It's thick, it's sharp, it's tangy. There's just about a sufficient amount of Nelson's citrus-rind-in-a-petroleum-refinery, but it's not one of those beers to give Nelson fans that big hit they crave. As a middling pintable Irish pub beer, however, it's excellent: this is a noble example of pubs who care about their beer offer taking steps to ensure what they have is good. File this with the contemporary greats like Scraggy and Ambush. Put it on tap everywhere. Teach the masses.

It was a very pleasant surprise to see a new beer from Farringtons, the Kildare restaurant-brewery not being a place from which I expected to see a high turnover of cans. But here we are and the new one is called The Long Road. It's an IPA at 5.9% ABV and they've gone full American with Citra, Simcoe and Mosaic. The harsher side of all of those is what the flavour is about: Mosaic's softer melon and mango is quickly buried by Citra's grapefruit and lime. Couple that with a rasp of dry toast and you have the gist of it. Fans of the west coast revival will enjoy the clean bitterness and a boozy punch that's all California and no Kildare. Don't expect nuance beyond this, though. This is one of those commercial beers that's worthy of a homebrew competition medal: hitting the style right at the point where they also mean it's a good beer. IPA is not quite over yet.

Nothing will date things to the mid-2020s, in the most cringe-inducing way, than bad AI-generated artwork. Even an ephemeral trade like limited-edition beers would be better to avoid it, if only because it all gets documented here for the ages. And so I document Beam Me Up! from Third Barrel. The less said about the label the better. Don't look too closely. It's in the almost retro style of DDH IPA, 6.1% ABV and using brewery favourite Idaho 7. The haze isn't especially dense by the standards of these things, but it's attractive looking, a glowing sunset orange. The aroma is very distinctive, to the  point where I'd be telling you it's that rascal Nelson Sauvin at work if I didn't know what it was: an oily and slightly hot twang of kerosene and bay leaf. Uncompromising. The flavour which follows isn't as severe as I was expecting, nor is there a whole lot of heat. There's a slight raw hop-leaf bitterness and a much gentler zesty lemon and crunchy red cabbage. All tastes quite west-coast to me -- juice aficionados must needs look elsewhere. I liked the sheer boldness of it from the start, and when my palate had adjusted to it, I enjoyed the nuanced citrus and resin. Overall a very well put-together American-style IPA.

Hopfully continues the more serious strengths with 6.5% ABV Lazergun (pew! pew!), a single hop Azacca IPA. It's one of the hazy ones, showing an opaque hazy orange in the glass. Azacca should be giving me a firework display of tropical candy hops but it's a bit muted here, the aroma being broadly sweet without anything specific. This is followed by a flavour which presents little up front, and only later on adds some concentrated mango and pineapple syrup, with a bonus lemon and lime zest. The latter adds a cleanness to a flavour profile in desperate need of it. This isn't bright and sunny juice-powered beer, nor is it an astringent west-coaster. It doesn't quite fit into either, though there are elements of both. It's hop forward but the hops don't really lead us anywhere interesting. I suspect that the Azacca needs company, and if that's what the beer teaches us then that's good enough.

From one crowd of haze fanatics to another: here's Whiplash with Flat Beat, for all the 1990s glove puppet fanatics out there. This is another dense-looking orange one, the ABV at 6.8%. I expected fruit in spades from the hop combination of Hallertau Blanc, El Dorado and Amarillo, but the aroma is quite taciturn, offering only a minimalistic quantum of zest. The flavour is on the down-low as well, which is a surprise. I get a kind of herbal, savoury effect -- thyme and marjoram, perhaps -- and then a lightly pink bubblegum finish which I suppose counts as fruity, but not in any fresh or happy-hop way. That's set on a mostly fuzzy but also slightly gritty base, which ends up being the main feature in the absence of anything more prominent. Seriously: where are have the hops all gone? It's not unpleasant, and I could drink it, but it's very characterless, in a white-bread and steamed potato sort of way. Flat in name and flat in flavour, this is quite a distance below the usual Whiplash standard.

It's customary to finish on a double IPA from O Brother, and this time it's Humans Are People Too, launched last Thursday in UnderDog. It's a big one at 8.3% ABV and very dense: sandstorm-opaque and with a substantial heat. The haze can unfortunately be tasted, adding a dry, powdery grit which is far from enjoyable. The hops are the beer's good side, tasting exceedingly bright and fresh under the murk. A sharp, west-coastish, grapefruit tang arrives on the palate first, followed by a gentler and longer-finishing apricot sweetness. It's big enough and bold enough that the regrettable heat and grit don't spoil it. I think de-hazing would be an improvement, however.

And so 2024 in Irish Beer is well under way now.