Two two-tone tins

A couple of new beers from Ska Brewing arrived a few months back and have been languishing in my fridge ever since. I finally got around to pulling them out just before Christmas.

Southwest Coast is a 6.2% ABV IPA, and a strikingly clear golden, quite unlike the standard appearance for IPAs these days. Ska, of course, pre-dates the haze craze and seems quite ambivalent towards it. From the thick and lasting white foam comes an aroma of grapefruit and lemon, which shouldn't be very surprising. The flavour is a little more muted, though I'm guessing the protracted period of storage didn't help there. But what it has is good. The citric zest is toned down from the aroma, being more juicy, like a piquant satsuma or tangerine. There's a chewiness to the malt which turns the fruit into fruit candy, though that doesn't come with any alcohol heat. This is an ultra-clean, well-made and workmanlike American IPA, not pulling any spectacular shapes, but very decent drinking, and offers welcome respite from all the haze out there.

In the smaller can is the stronger beer, Checkered Future, another IPA, this time at 7% ABV. It's darker and *gasp* a bit hazy. I didn't get much aroma, while the flavour is also another... subtle... one. We're going oranges again, though this time they're bigger, bouncier jaffas, with an edge of marmalade bitterness. Running in parallel is a crisp fried onion effect, which dries the whole thing out and, frankly, makes it less enjoyable. I'm fine with the more serious aspects of hops, but I would have preferred a proper resinous bitterness -- your pine and your dank -- to the lacklustre veg on display here. This isn't a bad beer, but while the first one was underwhelming, this is doubly unimpressive.

Maybe I should have drank them sooner. Maybe shipping IPAs from Colorado to Dublin isn't a great idea in the first place. But I wasn't impressed by either of these.