How do you like your murk?

I missed the most recent beer launch event by O Brother at UnderDog, but fortunately the taps were still extensively taken over when I called in a few days later.

Infinite Jest, a pale ale, was not brand new but I hadn't drank it before, so that's where I started. It's a hazy one, very much in O Brother's style. The aroma is brightly zesty but the texture is quite thin for 5.6% ABV -- it doesn't even have the puffy fluff common to the hazy genre. That leaves the flavour rather hollow, though it does hit the important points, albeit softly. You get your vanilla, satsuma, some garlic and a slightly earthy bitterness. Maybe it's for the best that the flavour didn't come on very strong. After that initial fun aroma, it's all down hill. It's not the first beer I found too dreggy to be enjoyable, and unfortunately I doubt it will be the last.

Something more creative, if not entirely original, follows next: Maybe I Like The Misery, a bitter with Earl Grey tea. It certainly looked lovely, a pin-bright copper colour. And although it's a keg bitter, the texture is soft, not spiked with unwelcome carbon dioxide. At its core it's just a rather decent English-style ale with little by way of gimmick. The flavour centres on a crisp and slightly toasted cereal character with lots of tannin, which I guess you have to be into, but it is how I like my bitter. The Earl Grey isn't a complete dead loss, adding a subtle hint of citrus and some herbal notes which tasted like fennel or basil to me. It's easy to complain about gimmicky recipes, but equally lovely to find one where an unorthodox ingredient has been added in a way that helps the core beer rather than smothering it.

O Brother is prolific with its double IPAs, and this set included Moments Yet To Come, which is very much in their usual vernacular. That is to say it's hella murky and thick: a dense orange shade in the glass. It's sickly-sweet to begin, and this is despite Citra being the headline hop, and proceeds from there to hot 'n' harsh onion before a burnt rubber finish. Needless to say this one didn't suit me. Props for the lack of earthy grit, but everything else the brewery has put together to present as the flavour profile of this beer is disastrous. You might like it, though.

Another O Brother double IPA popped up in Aldi recently. Deis, like the above, is exactly 8% ABV and is a similar dense opaque yellow colour. We're not told what the hops are but it seems altogether more restrained, which is a good thing. The aroma is strangely spicy, almost sulphurous, but the flavour gets right down to fruity business. There's a banquet of pineapple, passionfruit, mango and peach on offer, all tasting bright and fresh like they haven't just spent the last few weeks on Aldi's warm shelves. Beware the yeast slop at the bottom of the can, though: when I accidentally poured that into my glass it didn't improve matters any. Overall, it's simplistic fun, lacking any deeper complexities or any kind of long finish: simply collect your fruit and go. I enjoyed it for all that, and found it happy easy drinking, despite the significant amount of alcohol. I had heard this one was in short supply at Aldi and I can see why.

Maybe I just don't have a taste for the fancier sort of haze, but it seems telling that the one made for a discount supermarket tasted better, to me, than the premium examples sold in the pub.