Whippy Twixtmas!

What an adventure in Whiplash beer we have today! This veritable avalanche of beer arrived in quick succession over the past month or so, behoving me to start getting cans open and notes written soon as. Here we go then.

To begin, a pale ale which quietly and subversively describes itself on the can as "breakfast beer". 'Tis the season and all that. Open Water is a pale ale of 4.2% ABV, brewed with the unlikely collaboration of Japanese metal band Crystal Lake. Unusually for Whiplash, the can doesn't tell us what varieties of hops and malts were used. I am, however, wondering if it's the second runnings of something, as it's the wan opaque yellow of a table beer and has a very thin mouthfeel. Still, it's been given the full hop treatment, and smells of raw hop pellets, greasy with vegetal lupulin. The flavour is rather mellower, with the intense citrus fading to more palatable lemonade, with a large dollop of vanilla: all very sweet at the beginning and right through the centre, delivering no more than a playful pinch of lime zest at the end. It's as easy-going as they say; unchallenging, but still characterful. My only real criticism is that, for a can of light and uncomplicated beer, €5 is a lot.

Lager time next, and I make Midnight Mischief Whiplash's second Märzen, after 2021's The Mash & the Fury. The colour is a gorgeous dark amber, although the head crackled away to nothing in a way no German brewer would stand for. It looks weighty and wholesome, and the aroma adds to this, suggesting woody maple syrup and the crispy bits of roasted meat: real primal winter stuff. The flavour has a bit more polish to it, though the poor heading is perhaps explained by a too-light carbonation. Concentrated malt with a smaller side of roasted crispness form the centre of the flavour, seasoned with a thin layer of greenly noble hops, adding a hint of wilted spinach or finely chopped cabbage to the overall performance. There's a slight echo of the horrible American-style Oktoberfest beers, but it's much better balanced than any of them I've tried. Yes it's sweet and quite heavy, as expected at 5.9% ABV, but it's pristinely clean as well, leaving no nasty residues of hops, malt or alcohol. Just a bit more fizz and it could be a mid-Atlantic-style classic.

The festive holly leaf on the can of Nice Mover suggests this is a Christmas release, though that isn't indicated anywhere else on it. This is a very pale and densely yellow IPA, looking like a lightweight but is a full 6.8% ABV. El Dorado, Azacca and Motueka are the hops, and the latter's herbal bitterness is the central feature of the beer's aroma. It's very soft textured, and despite the mucky appearance is clean-flavoured too. There isn't much bitterness, and instead it's the fruit-candy effect from both of the other two hops which predominates. After the initial Starburst, there's a slightly more serious coconut and a dash of vanilla. It slips back easily, finishing with no aftertaste to speak of, and no alcohol burn. That silky mouthfeel is probably its best feature. The flavour, while perfectly pleasant, is understated, and it risks an accusation of blandness. That still makes it among the better of the hazy IPAs around at the moment.

Shortly after that was released, something very similar arrived. In Circles is also 6.8% ABV and also brewed with Azacca, though here joined by Citra and Strata. It's a similarly opaque yellowish orange, with an aroma that really benefits from the Citra: zesty lemons building to oily lime rind. The other two hops are fruity ones, and they take over in the flavour, adding colourful summer berries and non-specific stonefruit, relegating the bitterness to a supporting role. That's enjoyable, although there are some of the more common features of hazy IPA here, the ones that were missing in Nice Mover. Boozy heat infuses the whole thing, and there's an unnecessary sweet vanilla note which curdles next to the Citra acidity. If the previous beer can be dinged for blandness, this one gets dinged for being samey. There's not really anything wrong with it, but I don't see the point of releasing such similar spec'd beers so close together. It's because they sell, isn't it? 

You've gotta have a hazy double IPA in any Whiplash selection, and that spot is filled today by no fewer than three of them. Soon Never Comes, first, is a bit stronger than they usually do these, at 8.5% ABV. It's an all-American hop combination of Cascade, Mosaic and Idaho 7 and it's a little more orange than yellow, but still full-on opaque and murky. The aroma is stereotypically vanilla-laden, with a worrying buzz of savoury garlic alongside. The flavour is calmer, and I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's reasonable to expect something in this style, at this strength, from this brewery, to have bags of character, but they've gone weirdly smooth and easy-going with this. There's a slight grittiness up front and then a gently tropical mango and pineapple sweet side. The thickness and heat are about the only typical features. This is by no means problematic, just (again) a little bit boring. We put up with a lot of retrograde features in our IPAs here in the age of haze. In exchange, they should at least engage our full attention.

For the Christmas season they released another one: Thick Stew, the name being a bit on the nose for a murky double IPA. It's all good-natured self-deprecation, however, as this isn't stew-like, nor even particularly thick. They've kept the ABV down to 8% and it feels lighter even than that. Eclipse and Amarillo feature on the hop bill, though I think it's the El Dorado which has the upper hand. That gives it a sweet orange cordial aroma and plenty of juice in the flavour. And while that's bright, fresh and clean, it's also a bit one-dimensional: no other complexities emerge, even when the beer is left to warm up. A pinch of bitterness would really help this guy out, but still I was content with what I'd been given. It's decent, unfancy stuff: sweet, but not overly so, and doing an amazing job of hiding the still-substantial amount of alcohol. I wondered what made it Christmassy, other than the tree on the label, and I guess it's the mandarin orange it gifts you with, even though you didn't ask for one.

The third DIPA is called Simple Maths, with an ABV of 8.2%, and we have Simcoe, Strata and Idaho 7 providing the entertainment. Even by the standard of the beers in this post it's murky: a sort of earwax beige and completely opaque. The aroma is earthy and gritty, with a dreggy hop-leaf acidity, which is not a good start. The earthy side is present to an extent in the flavour, but I'm glad to say it doesn't dominate. More prominently there's a fresh zestiness and some lighter honeydew melon or lychee. That's not to say it's easy going: this tastes and feels every inch of that ABV, and 44cl took me a while to chomp through, my belly's interior getting warmer with each swallow. Overall I enjoyed it, but I think it would benefit from being cleaned up, losing a chunk of the murk and grit to let the hops through: a tale as old as hazy IPA itself.

We finish on three imperial stouts that Whiplash has designated its "festive dog series". Dog one is Dingus, 11.4% ABV and brewed with maple syrup and cinnamon, sounding not dissimilar to Let.It.End, the French toast stout they did back in 2020. It's similarly thick and sweet, the powerful chocolate sauce effect also calling to mind annual classic Fatal Deviation. Drawing a mouthful is an effort, and the wash of flavours which rushes in includes pink marshmallow, raspberry ice cream sauce, burnt caramel, filter coffee, Nutella and just maybe a woody hint of maple. There's no cinnamon, though, and I suspect a subtle, or not-so-subtle, spicing has been buried under the sheer weight of residual sugar. This almost tastes more like an ingredient than a finished beer: it's so dense and concentrated I was wondering what it's meant to be diluted with. Milk, perhaps, or Baileys. Is it nice, though? I'm going to say yes, but it's hard work. Anyone with an aversion to ultrasweet beer should probably give it a swerve. And thus was the tone set for the remaining pooches.

Lightest of the trio is Dongus, and maybe it's because it's only 10.5% ABV, or maybe it's the lack of maple syrup, but it poured a lot less viscous than the previous one, forming a proper tan-coloured stout head, too. There is coffee in it, and that's immediately present in the aroma as a warm waft of steamy coffee shop on a cold day, with a sniff of hazelnut syrup on the side. The nut element is very pronounced in the flavour, its immediate foretaste giving me peanut shell, marzipan and walnut oil. There's a syrupy roast beyond this, but nothing that specifically says coffee: it's the sort of coffee taste that can be achieved with dark malts, hops and fermentation alone. Anyone looking to Dongus for a comedy novelty beer will be left unamused. I think I would have been happier with a bolder, more literal, coffee flavour, but this is still an excellent imperial stout: packing a punch but wearing its strength lightly.

Last of the set is Chongus, brewed with no added ingredients, so just a straight-up imperial stout of 10.8% ABV. It does seem almost as thick as Dingus, glooping sloppily into the glass, dense and tarry. It smells tarry and syrupy too, not of candied novelty, but very grown-up coffee and prunes. The flavour is sweet, in a similar way to Dingus but nowhere near as extreme. You get chocolate sauce, raisin bran, strong espresso and a sweeter note of raspberry jam or red liquorice. It's enjoyable as an after-dinner sipper, and very much free of novelty silliness. I preferred the strong coffee of the previous one, but this is still pretty good, delivering all the things you could want from a heavy imperial stout.

I'd love to say that Whiplash is a brewery with something for everyone, but this showing, which is quite representative of its output, indicates that you need to be into particular things to get your money's worth out of it. While I'm glad it's here, turning out international-grade beers, I'm also glad that it's part of a varied Irish beer ecosystem, where not everyone makes the same kind of things again and again. It only seems that way sometimes.