Fruiting the breeze

"Coconut Breeze" is an ominous name for a beer, sounding like a euphemism dreamt up by the marketing department of a chemical company for their latest additive or scent. Lough Gill is inviting us to don our Hawaiian shirts, cast our cares aside and join them in summer time. This is, in their words, a "coconut and pineapple fruited pastry sour". Let's unpack that, shall we?

The brewery has extensive form with this sort of thing, and is better at it than most. They've tended to have a light touch on the lactose, and enough sourness to actually qualify as sour. And so it goes here. It's a translucent yellow, like freshly-crushed pineapple juice, and has the unmistakably sweet-yet-vegetal aroma of real pineapple: the husk and stalk as much as the flesh. A significant acidic tartness singes the nostrils, even at this early stage. In the flavour it's the coconut that hits first, and lasts all the way to the finish. It seems to be buoyed up on the lactose, which gives it a mouth-coating creamy quality. And yet, it's not gloopy or cloying; the sourness is there to spritz away the residual sugar so it never becomes a problem. That means it's not one of the smoothie-like fruit "sours" that are par for the course, and that's the Lough Gill advantage. Pineapple's role in the flavour is very much secondary, and perhaps that's for the best, as a third sort of sweetness might not have been welcome.

6.8% is a sizeable ABV for a summer party beer, better suited to something more serious, and serious this is not. There's a considerable heat to contend with, and combined with the sourness, that gets a bit curdling and difficult before the end. I strongly recommend starting into this one when it's properly cold. It might even be refreshing that way. 

Above all, this is a strange beer, and I found myself teetering between liking it and not liking it, all the way down. I think you need to have a significant tolerance for weirdness in beers to enjoy it, and fortunately I do. Should you need a second and more forthright opinion, my house fruit flies adored it. Summer vibes all round.