Names are hard

I had two problems with this beer before I even took it out of the fridge:
1. Don't mess with pilsner. Your kooky craft-beer twists are not welcome in this space.
2. The name. Honey, I Shrunk The Pils sounds like a working title which never got fixed and ended up printed on the can. Woeful.

I was happier when I saw it poured. It's a flawless golden colour, topped by a classically continental pillow of pure white foam. There's no honey in the aroma either, which is floral and summery. Maybe that was Wicklow Wolf's plan all along: adding their own honey to impart a meadow-like quality which suits pilsner but doesn't at all resemble how other breweries "do" honey-flavoured beer. If so, the flavour gives the game away, but only a little. There is a basic honey-crunch sugary element lurking in the taste, but it's not the main feature. That's proper lager, though maybe a little heavier and lacking bitterness for a pils, so more of a light Helles, to my mind, at 4.8% ABV. Stylistic hair-splitting apart, this is good, plain, drinking lager: easy-going enough to be refreshing, but with enough substance to be properly süffig. If it wasn't for that mild pinch of honey in the middle, it would pass muster in any German beer garden. I still think that a pilsner was an odd choice when the brewery went looking for a beer to put their homegrown honey into, but I fully accept that it hasn't ruined it as I feared. There must have been a better use for it, however.

I won't even try to guess if "Suddenly Acai" is meant to be a pun or a reference to something. If you have to explain it, it's not good, Chief. This is a sour ale of 5% ABV, brewed with blueberries, strawberries and açaí berries, obviously enough. That all makes it purple and hazy, pouring to a short-lived head and smelling loudly of strawberries: real, but sweet and concentrated, like the canned variety. That the recipe includes lactose is immediately apparent on tasting. First it's the creamy, smoothie-like texture, and then it's the fruit yoghurt effect. The blueberries hold their own with the strawberries, and I don't think I know what açaí berries taste like, so they may or may not be there too. It's a gentle, happy sort of beer, not too sweet and not at all sticky. While not sour as such, there's enough of a lactic tang to keep things clean and interesting. If you must make these milky berry jobs, then this is the way to do it.

Two surprises for me, then. Wicklow Wolf is a brewery of many talents, but making beers which look like I'll hate them, and doing them really well, is a new one. I would finish by saying my prejudices need examining, but I'm far too old for that sort of thing.