Bull in a candy shop

A new selection of Bullhouse beers arrived in Dublin in the last few weeks. I don't buy everything of theirs I see, but I do like to check in now and again. Let's see what we have here.

The first I opened, on a dismal February afternoon, was Saisons in the Sun, a collaboration with fellow Belfast northern brewery Beer Hut. It is sunny looking: a bright shade of orange, looking like a glass of orangeade. It smells pretty juicy too, with just a very mild funky farmyard quality to remind you it's a saison, not an IPA. The balance is redressed on tasting, with the earthy, spicy side to the fore, bringing straw, white pepper and dry cream cracker. Then there's a more contemporary haze-like fruit side, offering sweet satsuma and sweeter cordial. It's a balancing act that works well: at once thirst-quenching and summery, but with enough serious Belgian farmhouse character to please fans of that whole genre. I held off checking the ABV, and was a little surprised to find it's as strong as 5.5% ABV. That's not excessive, though. There's end-to-end enjoyment on offer here.

Now, I'm first in the queue when it comes to bemoaning the infantilising of beer that's come with the hazy IPA era. If you want juice, drink juice, and leave beer to the adults. But I was still amused to see Bullhouse leaning into it with 10p Mixup, a hazy IPA named after a confectionery product of my youth, one which is presumably long extinct. It's another murky orange job, looking rather greyer than the previous. It doesn't smell like sweeties; it smells rough and dreggy, with quite a lot of heat from the 6.3% ABV. It's quite thick, unpleasantly so, and while there's a certain artificial fruit candy and sticky pink marshmallow taste, there's as much savoury sesame seed and rye bread too; clashing, not balancing. An intensely syrupy sugariness finishes it off, in a way that's truer to the title, but isn't actually very enjoyable. I see what they've done here, and if you squint, it does have the flavour profile of a bag of ersatz-fruit candy. But that's not a good way to make a beer. 

Things don't get any more traditional with the finisher: a grapefruited double IPA called There's No Time. Again it's a darkly clouded affair, sticking to the luminous orange palette the brewery seems to favour. There's nothing unusual in the aroma, which offers a lightly zesty orangeade zing. When mixed with a heavy, creamy texture, the orangeade effect becomes more like a milkshake or an icepop. While it's thick and sweet, it's manageable too. Here they've kept the boozy heat on the down-low, helped I'm sure by the modest 7.5% ABV. That does wonders for the beer's drinkability, as does a deftly balancing burst of citric bitterness towards the finish. I was really not expecting to like this, but it works very well. The novelty side is both restrained and fully complementary to the well-made base beer. There's something here for both the haze-addled kiddies and the old-school double IPA purists. Beer brings people together once again.

Bullhouse is a brewery that delivers on its promises. Nothing here was any different to how it was described on the outside of the can, and not every brewery does that. I may not have liked all of it, but I can't say I wasn't warned.