Fully hopped

A quick catch-up with Waterford brewery Hopfully. When last seen they were wowing the RDS with cask porter, Helles and Bock. Today, they're back on much more familiar ground.

Swimsuit (the label: can we not?) is described as an easy pale ale, and by easy they mean hazy: it's a very murky pale yellow. The ABV is a modest 4.5% and it has been hopped with Vic Secret, Mosaic and Strata, which sounds like a promising combination. They give it an intense fruit salad aroma, all pineapple segments and peaches in syrup. The texture is a little thin, though helped by the New-Englandish fluffy quality. There's an initial rush of very sweet flavours, led by vanilla cream, with fruity chew sweets after. That fades quickly, and here I would have liked some of Vic Secret's trademark aniseed bitterness, but instead there's no real aftertaste, presumably because of the thin body. A vague lemon-candy bite is as punchy as it gets. This is OK, but unexciting. I think Hopfully is well capable of making more interesting beers at this medium strength point.

By Hopfully's standards, Fingers IPA is a low strength one: only 5.6% ABV. It's hopped with Citra, Mosaic and Comet, and is again hazy, this time an even brighter, sunnier, shade of brilliant yellow. The aroma is similar to the pale ale, though less intense, offering the soft fleshy fruit but not the encoating syrup. The flavour isn't as assertive either. We're spared that excessive vanilla sweetness, and instead there's a gentle tropical juiciness, hinting at mango, passionfruit and mandarin orange, without saying them out loud. It took me a moment to adjust to its subtlety, but when I did, I found myself enjoying it. This is no powerhouse of flavour, and at this strength it doesn't need to be. Instead, you get a mellow thirst-quencher, full of summer fruit and summer days; cleanly unchallenging, but still delicious. It's the sort of thing you might expect a brewery to put in its core range rather than the roster of one-offs. It would be good to see it again when and if the weather turns warmer.

The next round of releases brought Hangout, a pale ale of 5% ABV, described as "triple dry hopped". It looks like very typical Hopfully fare: densely opaque with a coarse and short-lived froth. Expecting a standard juicy aroma, I found that the tagline does seem to mean something: this smells intensely fruity, with generous portions of both sharp citrus and soft tropicals. The flavour doesn't quite deliver on that. For one thing, a very low level of carbonation mutes the hops somewhat. There's the heavy vanilla base of many a hazy pale ale, and while both the spiky bitter and juicy exotic notes are present, neither really sparkles. That's a little disappointing, and so to is the savoury, gritty finish, adding a rough and dreggy coda to an otherwise cheerful experience. The recipe, involving Nectaron, Mosaic and Citra hops, is worth another go, but there are a few wrinkles needing ironing out, not least the carbonation.

Penultimately, a new collaboration with Dublin's online off licence Craft Central. Superposed is an IPA -- hazy, natch -- with a down-under mix of Nelson Sauvin, Motueka and Galaxy hops. It's the usual opaque orange-yellow, and the head, while still loose, does hang together better here than in the previous. The carbonation is still very low, and the aroma quite savoury, blending the diesel notes of Nelson with the menthol and eucalyptus of Motueka. I wasn't expecting any tropicality in the taste, and didn't get it. The flavour is quite herbal, suggesting that Motueka is in charge, and I get warm clove, nutmeg and powdered cinnamon at first, with an orange-cordial sweet fruit track running in parallel. It's good, but it's quite unexciting, lacking the big hop fireworks. Fans of Nelson Sauvin in particular be warned that this does not offer the best Nelson experience going.

And finally a world exclusive. By coincidence, I visited the Hopfully brewery last Saturday, where they were getting on with their 2025 brew schedule and pushing the last of this year's lot out the door. I was too polite a guest to tear open the neatly piled boxes of bourbon-aged sour cherry ale, but did take special care of an unattended can of Closet: the new double IPA. This seemed a little on the weak side at only 7.6% ABV but it punches well above that, with a dense and almost syrupy texture allied with a powerfully sweet flavour. There's an even mix of tinned pineapple and fruit chews meeting a vanilla-custard base. It's interesting how it does quite similar things to Swimsuit, though the hops here are Galaxy, Amarillo and Citra. I guess it's the effect of the hazeogenic yeast, overriding the hops' subtle difference. Anyway, if the lack of oomph in the beers above is a concern, here's oomph aplenty.

Our national appetite for hazy and hoppy shows no sign of waning. Until it does, it seems Hopfully will be right there, serving the need. Citra, Mosaic and Comet is a combination that works well in this space, and would be worth trying again, in my opinion.