Steady on, Kevin

A plethora of limited edition beers arrived into Aldi for the Christmas run-up this year. The German supermarket seems to have gone around the houses, recruiting Irish breweries to make unique beers just for it. Here are all the ones I got my hands on.

I liked the retro branding on Cascade Ridge, by Lough Gill, calling to mind the American pale ales of the 1980s and 1990s which went on to change the world of beer. This one looks retro in the glass too: a deep coppery amber; clear in a way that has long since gone out of fashion. It smells quite piney, with a edge of toffee, so very much doing what the packaging suggests it will. Although it's all of 5% ABV, it's quite light bodied, and the flavour comes across a little hollow as a result. There's a woody fustiness to it, then a pinch of caramel before it all finishes up impertinently quickly. I guess they're going for something resembling Sierra Nevada pale ale, but they've missed the mark substantially, even for the second-rate draught and canned version. The aftertaste is a savoury, almost sweaty, tang: Cascade hops at their earthiest and most Fuggle-like. It's not a good beer, tasting cheap and compromised, in a way that Lough Gill's work seldom does.

There is a possibility for redemption, however, with the altogether contemporary Simcoe Smash from the same brewery. Aldi tends not to do strong beer, and this is only 4.7% ABV, where I might have expected a point or two more. In the glass it's a beautiful clear gold with a fine white head, and the aroma makes it very clear it's a Simcoe beer: resinous and dank. Again, though, it all turns a bit basic when it goes to tasting, and again the low density is a major problem. It tastes thin, and there's no way around that. Hosted in the watery body is a very simple pine bitterness and no more than a brush of caramel malt. The Simcoe is not smashing it here. Corners have been cut. The end result does little other than hint at the beer it could have been with more hops and, above all, more body. Even as a light and fizzy budget thirst-quencher it leaves me wanting. 

There's another amber-coloured one in the Rascals's American IPA, bringing us back up to 5% in the ABV stakes. The can promises us classic pine and citrus but, like the Cascade Ridge, it doesn't meet the mark. While this doesn't have the sad staleness of that one, there's not much life about it. The aroma is more English IPA than American: jaffa peel and earthy minerals -- again I'm blaming Cascade's Fuggle origins for this. The flavour is very metallic, scouring the palate with a rough bitterness which is all about the flinty rasp and devoid of pine oils or citrus. There's a muddy, earthen funkiness in the middle, and then a raw acidic bitterness at the end. I found it devoid of charm, challenging and serious, but not bold enough to be entertainingly nasty. More than anything, it reminds me of the sort of hoppy American beers we used to get here, baked into dullness by a long and warm journey across the indifferent Atlantic. It's a little odd that two Irish breweries have produced such similar and unpleasantly retro beers at the same time. I hope Aldi aren't trying to make it A Thing. The right to fresh and zingy hops was a hard-won battle in this country, and hard-won by breweries such as Lough Gill and Rascals. Let's not go back to less enlightened times. Who's next?

DOT! It's one of those light, pale, yet oak-influenced beers of the sort they often make for the Teeling distillery giftshop but less so by themselves. Looks like Aldi is the latest recipient of their exclusivity largesse. Spin Off Series Oak Pale Ale is 4.8% ABV and a translucent gold, looking bright and settled but not quite. There's not much aroma, only a faint hint of white grape. The flavour is similarly... clean, coming across first with a dry and refreshing lager crispness. We get a hint of hop fruit after this, gently tropical, like the scent of ripe mango and pineapple in the next room. Everything finishes there and there's no sign of the oak at all. The carefully phrased label copy makes it obvious that this was done with oak chips in the tank rather than barrel ageing, and as such they needn't have bothered. It's a nice beer, and works well in the thirst-quenching session pale ale category, an oft-fogotten must at this time of year. But if you thought oak meant something oaky, this is not your DOT beer.

O Brother followed up the session IPA they made for Aldi with a stout. It's quite rare for an Irish brewery to introduce an ordinary session-strength stout, especially for a supermarket, but I'm delighted to see it. There's no reason to cede ownership of this space to the big brands. Eachtra is a little peaky looking: deep red-brown, like cola, rather than properly black. Not a thing wrong with the aroma, which has lots of spicy and roasty bonfire notes, smelling of late autumn rather than mid-winter. Soft carbonation gives it a little of the nitro vibes, but the effect is short lived. Perhaps the reason that microbreweries tend to make stronger stouts is that, within the low 4% zone and no nitrogen, it's going to feel watery, and this does. The base flavour is good, though, offering lots of milk chocolate, floral perfume and a dry-toast crispness. The finish is quite abrupt, however, though the chocolate does hang back in the aftertaste. I don't think this quite manages to be a plausible alternative to big-brand stout. Yes, it has a much greater depth of flavour, but the profile belongs in a bigger, fuller beer. To me, this tastes of craft stout done on the cheap, which I am sure is not the intention. Maybe going more on the roast would have worked better. The sweet and rich side this attempts to present really needs a stronger foundation.

That was shortly followed by another session IPA from O Brother: Clann. This one comes in a small can, and is slightly lighter than the previous one, at 3.8% ABV. It's a mostly-clear orange shade, and smells of orange too: zesty marmalade, with a candy coating on the shred. As one might expect, it's light and crisp, but not watery, having enough body to carry the flavour well. The flavour is those hoppy oranges again, here fizzed up into orangeade, of the classy French sort. There's an extra sweetness in the background, adding an element of ice lolly, while the bitterness builds as it goes, creating a buzz of green onion and pine needles by the end. I liked this. It's an excellent party-season beer: easy-going and refreshing, but tasty with it too.

The name Mo Chara is trademarked by The Old Carrick Mill distillery in Co. Monaghan. That's why the lager produced by the Mo Chara pub in Dundalk has been recently renamed as "Mo's Lager". The distillery has finally made use of its intellectual property, launching this porter as part of Aldi's winter range. I don't know where Mo Chara Irish Porter is brewed, but they know their porter. It's a little short in the head stakes, but looks well below that: densely black with barely a tint of red around the edges. The aroma is decently standard, bringing plain but acceptable notes of coffee and chocolate. This unfolds beautifully on tasting, hitting a perfect balance between toasted and herbal bitterness against smooth and nutty chocolate and caramel. There's a mineral tang on the finish -- flinty stone or sparky zinc -- then it fades respectfully off the palate, with the 5% ABV coming across lighter and less intrusive. This is very jolly stuff, and hits the good porter mark squarely in the centre. We don't get many beers like this, and I hope this one sells enough for a re-brew.

So there you have it. I get a general sense that Aldi's drive for cheapness has resulted in several of these beers being somewhat compromised, and far from the best work of the excellent breweries who produced them. Don't miss that porter, though.