There's IPA... and there's IPA

Time for another rapid run through what's new and hoppy in Irish beer.

We begin at Rascals, and a Session IPA they've made for Aldi, taking the brave step of brewing under the 4% ABV mark, where Irish IPAs fear to tread, usually. It's a sunny and clear yellow in the glass, with a fine white froth on top. The aroma is citrus, but on the confectionery side, with lemon drops and drizzle cake evoked. It's not quite so interesting to taste, the lemon element fading to a rub of pith and some highly dilute cordial. It's not watery, though: there's plenty of substance, given the strength. It's just that the hops -- unspecified beyond being "diverse" and "fruity" -- don't really deliver the goods. I got a little stonefruit as it warmed, but nothing distinctive. That may be deliberate. As a beer of which one may drink several in sequence, it works. There won't be any building unpleasant bitterness or cloying tropical-fruit sugar. There's a snap of lemon peel, a squirt of apricot, and then you're done until the next mouthful. Low-strength summer party beers like this are frankly too rare in this country. I would look for them more if people invited me to their parties.

Rascals has also had some guests in from New York: Finback, KCBC and Return all collaborating on a beer called Empire Haze. I'd have gone with "Knickerbockers in a Twist", but what do I know? As the name suggests, it's an IPA of the cloudy sort, and is in fact extremely murky, a dense opaque orange shade. It looks like mixed tropical juice and smells a bit like it too, suggesting mango, canteloupe and lychee. The first thing I got from the flavour was spice: paprika and sweet pepper. It looks like the kind of beer which would follow that with a fruit explosion, but it doesn't. The mouthfeel is as chewy as it appears, and I can't help feeling that should deliver a raft of tropical joy. Instead, the 6% ABV gives it a heat, beneath which there's not much more than dry crackers and a thin spread of marmalade. I expected much better from this; much more, certainly. I wonder what the New Yorkers made of the finished product.

Moving on, for a few summers now, The White Hag has had a bar on the Irish Ferries ships bringing holidaymakers to France. Now they've doubled down on their status as the official brewery of summer hols with En Vacances, a collaboration with French brewery AERoFAB. It's a light affair, only 4.2% ABV, and a rather dull and greyish hazy orange. The hopping is a fascinating spicy, incense or aftershave, effect. A sweeter note of strawberry or glacé cherry follows. It's done with Meridian, as a single hop. The flavour doesn't build over time, and there's a crisply clean finish, offset by a little fluff in the mouthfeel, thanks to the haze. I wasn't expecting much from this one but got myself a little bit of hop education and a nice pint. Fair play.

They've also made a beer for Street 66 in Dublin, not the first time this bar has commissioned such, though I think it's the first time they've canned it, saving me the bother of going in for a pint. It's called In the Name of Love and is proudly pink, although nothing on the ingredients list indicates why this is. Who's growing the pink barley? It smells quite plain and grainy, despite claiming to be a hazy pale ale. It's not even very hazy. The flavour has a vague hop tang -- an indistinct citric effect, masked further by overactive carbonation, not the "pillowy body" described on the can. The label also says it should taste of strawberry and gooseberry, and I'm aware of how much the colour of a drink can affect the perception of its taste, but I wasn't fooled: no fruit was forthcoming. Apart from the fab-u-luss appearance, it's a bit of a drab affair. Lots of fizz but no sparkle.

Spot the difference with En Vacances above: Downtime's Knockboy is another distressingly grey job. Downtime is a Cork-based client brewer, though their beer is brewed up here in the Real Capital, by Third Barrel. Knockboy tastes better than it looks, nicely full-bodied for 5.1% ABV, and with a fun mix of weighty dank resins and lighter zesty citrus, giving me mandarin and meringue pie. They've badged it as a "mountain IPA" implying that it's somewhere between east-coast and west-coast, and it really does draw on the positive aspects of both: properly bitter but with a dollop of juice and vanila on the side. The balance between tangy and sweet is exquisite. This beer shows up sporadically but is deserving of permanent status.

Kiwi hops are having a major moment among Irish brewers. Rye River have taken advantage to create Koru, a pale ale of 5% ABV. It's palely hazy and surprisingly light textured, even a little watery. There's no hop impact, the aroma being vaguely tropical while the foretaste is floral and perfumey. I found a slight peppery spice but not much else of interest. Everything tails off into generic fizz after that. For a special edition, and a collaboration with Vocation no less, it doesn't really do anything worthwhile.

Franciscan Well was sort-of in the news recently, with word of its parent multinational pulling out of Ireland and handing its portfolio over to fellow Corkonians, Heineken. It seems Molson Coors will retain ownership of the brewery on Marina Quay, whence came this limited edition beer: Docklands Series Red IPA. Something was immediately up from the aroma, which was oddly and disturbingly vinegar-like. There's a tartness in the flavour too, suggesting balsamic vinegar, infused with raspberry and strawberry. It has been over-bittered, with a harsh resinous acidity, but even that's not the most distressing part. The tannins. My god, the tannins. It is horrifically astringent; tooth-scrapingly, palate-scorchingly so. The combination of these factors make for tough and slow drinking. I'm not a fan of red IPA at the best of times, usually, but Franciscan Well has plumbed new depths of unbalance and unpleasantness with this example.

I feared that the cask pale ale from Hopkins & Hopkins at The Porterhouse would be a temporary arrangement, but it was there consistently until it got replaced by a new beer. This is Dublin Bay IPA, 5.3% ABV and amber coloured. There's kind of a mid-Atlantic vibe here. I suspect the hops are American -- there's a certain amount of tangy grapefruit and lime -- but they've been treated in a very English way, the bulk of the flavour being earthily bitter and very dry. It might even be fair to describe it as somewhat twiggy. The ABV gives it decent heft and it's a pint to take time over as a result. The understated smoothness and gentle complexity put the worthwhile features of cask dispense on display, and while I think I preferred its more hop-forward predecessor, Sitric, this is very decent stuff. If you're doing requests, Rob, how about a porter next?

There was a rare find from Belfast brewery Hercules in Aldi recently: their Rivets IPA. It looks a bit rough and home-brewy, a murky marmalade shade with poor head retention. No tasting notes are provided on the label, but I was expecting something quite English and malt-driven, so it was a very pleasant surprise to find it's nothing of the sort. While there's a certain amount of crisp biscuit in the base, it's mostly about lively and zesty hops; either New World ones, or the new European varieties bred to mimic them. That makes for refreshing, mouthwatering drinking, with notes of lemon sherbet and posh lemonade. Despite the poor head, there's plenty of sparkle. And it has poke too: a full 5.6% ABV. While it doesn't feel especially heavy, it's not at all thin either. All in all it's a rather jolly fellow, clean tasting and with bags of hoppy character.

I'm told that Dead Centre, like everyone bleedin' else these days, is making use of the brewing facilities at Third Barrel, which is why we're seeing more of their beers in these parts, per May's pale ale round-up. In my glass most recently, at UnderDog, was Plot Twist, a 5.8% ABV New England-style pale ale. This is pale orange and opaque but not a total emulsion. The aroma is sherbet-like, with lots of orange and lemon spritz. From there it goes on to become even more candy-like, tasting first like Skittles or Starburst. A slightly sulphurous spice arrives late. So, we're in sparky and lively territory, not the smooth and juicy end of NEIPA. That means there's also no vanilla, no garlic and no booze heat despite the substantial 5.8% ABV. That's all to the good. Only a very slight wet-cardboard oxidised tang spoiled it a little. This might upset the haze purists, not that anyone should care, and overall it's rather decent. Fair play to all involved.

The latest in Third Barrel's hopefully limited Excruciatingly Bad AI Artwork series is Hu$h Money, an IPA, claiming to be both citrus and tropical, and with a bevvy of high-tech hop products called into service. It's 5.9% ABV, a dense-looking orange colour and does indeed smell tropical, of mango and passionfruit in particular, with just a misting of grapefruit zest too. Enticing. The body is big and smooth, carrying sweet and jammy stonefruit, plus a harder lemon and lime bite. They weren't kidding in that description: tropical and citrus, all at once. The bigly mouthfeel is the only thing that lets it down a little; it has the flavour profile of a beautifully refreshing quaffing beer, but the alcohol heat means it's not quite as bright and fresh-tasting as I'd like. That's a very minor quibble however. This is a quality IPA making excellent use of the high tech ingredients.

Up a notch at 6% ABV, a new hazy IPA from Galway Bay Brewery called Afterglow. Its arrival was enough to tempt me into Bar Rua, a perfectly cromulent part of the chain I rarely take time to visit. The beer turned out to be a rather sickly yellow shade and to have an unfortunate dry and savoury tang, one which is familiar from highly-hopped haze, but which I've hitherto been spared recently. There's more to it than that, happily, though I wouldn't call it either "juicy" nor "tropical" per the tap badge. The sweetness is more syrupy, with fruit salad notes of apple chunk and pear slice. The effect is accentuated by a slick and gummy texture which makes for slow drinking. Overall it's a bit dull and serious where I expected bright, sunny and carefree. Them's the breaks with haze. There's a nice afterburp of pineapple. They should put that on the tap badge instead.

Hitting the haze spec bang in the middle is Secret Handshake 2.0, a re-up of a beer Hopfully made for the  Craft Central off licence last autumn. They've kept the slightly unfashionable orange colour, while the ABV has been raised from 6% to 6.6% and the hops switched to Pacific Sunrise and Strata CGX. It's incredibly juicy, dispensing with any semblance of bitterness. Tangy tangerine and mandarin are the grand centrepiece, with a lacing of lightly sweet vanilla. It fades quite quickly, however, perhaps indecently so for a beer that's some distance from session strength. Similarly, don't expect much by way of aroma. Overall, it's very accessible and easy drinking, which meant I was still desperately searching for more flavour to write about as my glass drained away to empty. If you like the normal way that Hopfully goes about its hazy business then give this one a go. It's not one to convert the sceptics, however.

Rising Wind follows, a terrible name for a beer, but the product is quite decent. This is a hazy IPA by Lough Gill: 6.2% ABV, and hopped with a variety of alphabet soup hop derivatives. The result is rather good, full of aniseed bitterness next to sharp assertive citrus. And while the haze is fully in evidence in the appearance, it leans heavily into the bitterness, which is pleasing. Don't expect any vanilla or candyfloss, just lime, pine and the other elements which tend to belong on the west coast. If hazing it up is what's necessary to sell the west coast flavour profile, and there are no unpleasant side effects, then have at it, I say.

Double IPAs have been a bit thin on the ground for this round-up, but Eight Degrees has provided one: The Crux, their second new beer since the brewery's revival at the beginning of the year. Although the label says "tropical" and "Pacific" it looks resolutely old-school, being crystal clear and amber coloured, with lots of persistent foam. The ABV is a little light by contemporary standards, at 7.7%. It smells like a double IPA from days of yore: caramel first, with grapefruit riding shotgun. That one-two is how the flavour goes as well, ramped up to brittle toffee and waxed lime peel. It's not that long ago that this was the cutting edge of radical beer brewing. Now it's a quaint and gentle old-timer with charming mannerisms which the young folk probably wouldn't appreciate. There isn't really any deeper complexity, but that's absolutely fine: the clean and dry stylings are reward enough. And it does pack all the punch of a big beer, despite that slightly dialled-back ABV. If interesting beer is something you discovered after 2016, here's a lovely example of what used to get us excited in the decade or so before that.

If only one double IPA is a cause for sadness, having one new triple IPA is a cause for celebration. Irish breweries really don't bother much with the more extreme end of the IPA spectrum, and honestly that's probably for the best. But there's no telling that to the originator of Irish DIPA, Galway Bay Brewery. The new triple IPA -- their first -- is called Young Cardinals. Riwaka, Pacific Sunrise and Citra Lupomax is the hop line-up, which sounds like a workout, regardless of the 10% ABV. Oats and spelt are in the grain bill and it gloops slowly into the glass, forming a thick puck of white foam over a sheer pale orange emulsion. The aroma gives little away, but I think the Riwaka is putting a bit of effort in, creating a sharp, but faint, herbal buzz. The oats are not shy in the texture, and there's an almost porridgey thickness. Not much heat, though, which is surprising: for a high-octane hazeboi it's remarkably clean. That should leave room for lots of lovely hop complexity but I'm sorry to report it's really just the Riwaka again, sending eucalyptus and damp grass. There's a certain amount of lighter stonefruit, though only as an afterthought, and I would never have guessed there's Citra in here. Summing up, it's a big and soupy affair, not a palate burner but also lacking proper hop zing. I think the heavy haze might have been a mistake. A clean and neutral yeast could have given us more on the hop front.

16 beers is probably enough for one session. It's safe to say that, while I was slightly concerned about Irish breweries being slow off the mark with new beers at the beginning of 2024, at just past the half-way point they're clearly at full tilt.