Styling it out

For no good reason I hadn't been to Urban Brewing in an age, so nipped in during a quiet August afternoon to see what was on offer.

First there was a Mandarin Lager, a style that had a bit of a moment a few years back but has been rarely seen in these parts since. This is a good example of it, benefitting from no actual added fruit. There's nothing strange or daring, just a pure and clean basic lager base -- clear gold and with enough crisp hop bite to call itself a pilsner. And then a subtle quantity of orangey flavour has been added in via Mandarina Bavaria hops, giving it a happy summer cocktail vibe à la Aperol Spritz, yet without covering the beery aspect. The noble hops stay with you after the orange has faded, a leafy salad after your aperitif. This is a nice piece of unfussy, zesty fun.

I decided to stay on the lager kick with a Rye Lager next. The brewery says it's "Keller-style" and I was expecting murky from that but it's actually just dark amber and perfectly clear. There's a weight to it that suggests warm fermentation to me, even though I'm sure it's not. 5% ABV gives it a chewy body, in which the carbonation is light and effervescent. How I know it's definitely a lager is that the flavour is clean to the point of barely existing. There's a little caramel, some roasty grain crunch, and then a faint hint of rye's white pepper spice. The aroma gives pepper of a different kind: bell, green, and nicely fresh. Rye can be a pain to brew with but this justifies any hassle it put the brewers to. Like the above, it's a basic and accessible lager at heart, but given the sort of non-mainstream twist one should expect from a high-turnover brewpub.

Likewise Irish Honey Grisette, though I  was sceptical as to whether the honey would be tasteable: it usually isn't. A flavour descriptor of "wet earth" is how you know it was written by a brewer, not the marketing folk. I approve. It's pale and hazy, and it does smell earthy, though no more than saison-type beers usually do. From the taste I wouldn't have got honey but there's definitely an unexpected sweetness where I thought it would be farmhouse-dry. That softens it, knocking off the edges. It possibly removes some of the fun too. As well as wet earth, the blurb promises spices, nuts and flowers and I don't get much of that. As it warms, the honey side does become more pronounced, though it's an unsubtle candy thing -- Crunchie honeycomb, not actual honey. This is an OK beer, and an interesting experiment, but I think I prefer grisette in its basic form. And isn't 4.6% ABV a bit too strong for the style? That's just a saison with notions, I reckon.

The Crystal Weiss had me wondering what the threshold for crystal-ness is. This guy is bright but has a clarity level which I would not describe as "crystal". The aroma is crisp, with only a faint trace of weissbier fruitiness. It's only 4.6% ABV and that equates to a lack of substance, or possibly a light summer drinkability, depending on your viewpoint. Four beers in, I was ready for more oomph than this provided. It's fine though. Once again it's a beer in need of warming up to develop character, but when it does there's marzipan, apricot jam, grain husk and a very gentle, barely-yellow banana quality, far more subtle than your typical weissbier banana honk. Clove doesn't feature, so I think weissbier purists may be disappointed that it's not miles different from a lager, but I liked the bonus cleanness.

To finish: Earl Grey IPA. Not my first one of these, and not even my first from Urban. It's 5% ABV and copper coloured, smelling resinous in a west coast way, where there may indeed be added citrus, but what citrus I could smell was very much of the hop surrogate sort. In fact, the tea seems to have been thoroughly buried by the beer, so while there's tannin it's again not different from what you get in, say, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Like that classic, this deftly walks the line between easy-going drinkability and bold fresh hop flavour. The brewed-on-site effect is played to considerable advantage, making me wonder if this is what it's like drinking SNPA at source. It's banging fresh, a little dank and funky and classic west coast all the way through with no hint of novelty. Or Earl Grey tea. Does that make it a failure? Not to me. This was the winner of the evening for me, expressing American hop character in a magnificent way and I don't even mind that they had to add actual bergamot oil to do it.

Not a bad set, all told. Urban Brewing has its good batches and not-so-good batches, but appears very much on the upswing at the moment. If you haven't been lately, it's worth dropping in for a taster or two.