In the Navy

Sierra Nevada's Torpedo IPA took its name from the cylindrical piece of apparatus used to dry hop it. Since it graduated from being a beer to being a whole range of beers (capitalism: yay!), someone in the branding department has decided to militarise it, hence the sonar-style graphics on this latest pair of cans.

First up is Rye Torpedo, a whole percentage point weaker than the original, at 6.2% ABV. It's a lovely rich orange colour with a little haze, without being actually hazy. Rye is good for head retention and you really get your money's worth here: a massive mushroom dome of foam forming. I caught it within three months of canning and it still smelled very freshly hopped, of grapefruit zest and lemon jelly. Rye's peppery quality makes a brief appearance in the flavour, but for the most part it's classic west coast IPA -- just what we come to Sierra Nevada for -- mixing the bright citrus with an equal dose of slick pine oil and backed by a marmalade sweet side. There's nothing extreme here, no hop fireworks nor residual slickness, and I'm not even sure it's a better beer than the original. It's damn tasty, however, and still well worth your while, whether or not you were a fan of Torpedo to begin with. Just don't expect too much rye character.

"Dual Torpedo" is how Admiral Grossman has chosen to signal that the next one is Torpedo as a double IPA. It's 8.2% ABV and double dry hopped. I know that "double dry hopped" generally doesn't mean anything, but at the same time I can't help wonder which version of Torpedo it's the doubled version of. Original? Atomic? We will never know. No rye means it's paler: still slightly murked, but golden, not amber. The aroma is rather more muted too, lacking the zest and emphasising the dank and resin instead. The branding wants us to think hops but the flavour, to me, is malt first. It's a large chap, with a chewy body and acres of bready, cakey, toffee and treacle. Trust Sierra Nevada to continue bringing us double IPA in its earliest known form. Not that this isn't hoppy: that high-gravity base is a launchpad for a panoply of hop fun, including peppery spice, piney resin, citric zest and oily peel: all the classic hits of the American golden age. If you like your retro served fresh, here's the double IPA you need. That said, unlike many of the first wave American double IPAs I drank, this one is clean and finessed, low in heat given the strength, and in the dangerously drinkable category. More than anything, it's happy, and very much a reminder of when big-hop American beer was fun, before all the joyless nerds started over-analysing it. Ahem. 

These are definitely different from Torpedo, and I wish the brewery had the confidence to simply call them something else. But they're both bloody decent beers, highly enjoyable, and worth anyone's time, especially anyone sick of haze and tropical and everything else we must accept that American IPA has become.

Summer in the Garden

My reaction to beer with weird stuff in it has evolved from "Wow! This is exciting" to "Ugh! This is stupid" to "Wow! Somebody is still doing this". Today's set is from Zagreb's Garden Brewing, and I drank them in an attempt to recreate the youthful sensation of finding off-kilter beer interesting.

I didn't notice until after I bought them that the brewery has put them in sequence, and first of four is Imperial Strawberry & Vanilla Milkshake IPA. It's so long since I've had a milkshake IPA that I was expecting it to pour pink, but it's actually a more orthodox golden shade, and only slightly hazed. It's a brave move to name Magnum, Citra and Mosaic as the hops, yet it does really smell like an IPA, with lots of citrus zest, next to low-key strawberry blancmange pudding. "Super creamy" they say, but the first sensation I got on sipping was clean fizz and quite a light body for 7.4% ABV. The hops have very much taken a back seat, and it tastes like a lurid-pink pre-packaged single-serving of strawberry cheesecake: the strawberry at a remove from the real thing, blended with a gummy dairy sweetness and set on a crunchy biscuit base. As a child of the 1970s, I never lost my taste for highly processed industrial desserts, so I quite enjoyed this beer. It's not offensively sweet, neither sticky nor hot, and generally quite clean and drinkable. I guess if you're going to make a beer taste of strawberry and vanilla, this is the way to do it: not subtle, but far from a hot mess. It's still fun that milkshake IPA is so often the butt of the joke in beer discourse -- it's inarguably a ridiculous concept -- but faced with Garden making quite a nice one, I'm a bit lost for words. The "IPA" part of the equation is not pulling its weight, but otherwise, this is at worst harmless and possibly, sneakily, rather enjoyable.

It's arguable whether or not the beer numbered two in the sequence is more or less ridiculous. Imperial Banana Bread Stout has as much to do with Courage and Barclay Perkins as the previous beer has to do with Hodgson and Bass. It's a sober 8.4% ABV and a flawless obsidian black, though the head is short-lived. The fruit steers clear of the aroma, which is an enticing coffee and vanilla with a dusting of cocoa, like tiramisu. And... it doesn't taste of banana. At all. That's probably a good thing, but the sort of weirdo who buys this sort of beer at face value is likely to be disappointed by how unweird it is. Whoever wrote "packed with real bananas" on the label has clearly never been packed with real bananas. Coffee is the centre of the taste, oily and liqueur-sweet at first, then dry and dark-roasted. An assortment of other flavours I associate with strong and sweet stout follows: treacle, cookies, vanilla and chocolate, but no banana. It's good stuff, the modest ABV keeping any boozy vapours off the table while still allowing it to be satisfyingly chewy for dessert. It's not much of a complaint that they haven't ruined it with ridiculous novelty, but that's the worst thing I can say about it. Would definitely drink again, though not immediately after the first one.

Number three is a normal beer, and I nearly didn't bother until the lacuna began gnawing at me (naughty lacuna!) and I bought it solely to complete the set. American IPA: Prysma Showcase is its official name; I suspect that they could equally have called it "Let's Find Out If This Stuff Works". Prysma is a hop extract, used here in Citra, Mosaic and Cascade flavours, though each hop is also listed in its normal solid form as well, which seems like a bit of a compromise of the experiment. The beer is 7.2% ABV and nicely west-coast clear; a classy golden amber colour. Grapefruit on the aroma leads to similar in the flavour, doing an excellent job of balancing zesty spritz with slicker resin. There's no missing the hops, but I'm not sure they're bringing "a sharper aroma [and] deeper flavour" than a well-made, non-Prysma, American-style IPA. This one's old-school credentials are copper-fastened by a generous dollop of slightly caramelised malt, making it weighty and chewy, in a way that complements the hopping nicely. They've sold it as the next generation of bleeding edge high-tech IPA. It's not. But it's damn tasty and I'm glad I found space for it in this post.

Last in the sequence is the lightest of the bunch, the 5.5% ABV Gin & Tonic Sour Beer. I've tasted this sort of thing done well before, although this one came with a warning from the lad in the off licence. It looks plain and lager-like, with rather more head than most gin and tonics. It smells lagerish too, all crisp and grainy. We're promised juniper and lemon on the label and neither manifests in the taste to any significant degree. Sour is plentiful, however: it's teeth-squeakingly sharp, a grimace with every sip. Not much is on offer beyond this, with the husky grain making a return, plus a waxy bitterness and maybe a very faint peppery spice in the background, which I suspect is juniper-related. It's not problematic, but not very impressive either. More citrus and more botanicals are needed for this to live up to the promise of its spec. Perhaps one is supposed to be more forgiving when drinking it in order, after three other strong beers.

That's where the series ends. Just one last beer as dessert. Tama says it's an imperial salted caramel and chocolate biscuit stout. "Indulgent", but not over the top at only 8.1% ABV. The aroma is very dairy, with the sweet/sour mix of yoghurt or milk on the turn. Its relatively low gravity (again) means that while it's smooth, it's not thick or heavy, and is a beer for drinking, not merely sipping. Promise of chocolate, biscuit and salted caramel doesn't materialise in any big way, with instead only a buttery cookie and vanilla cream flavour, finishing quickly. "Rich" is another word on the label, overstating the case again. It's not a bad beer by any means, being simple and classy, where it could easily have been a hot sticky mess. I was expecting more of everything, however, and it's a little disappointing not to get it. As a relatively straightforward milk stout, however, it's pretty good.

In general, I think Garden has got the novelty factor correct here. They never lose sight of the need for an underlying good recipe in order for the beer to be enjoyable, no matter the ingredients. These strike me as the work of a brewery that paid its dues making IPAs and sweet stouts properly, before trying anything silly with them.

Odds on

The little bit of Barcelona that is forever Ballyfermot makes a comeback today, with three new beers from Oddity, a Catalonian beer brand which has its production done at Whiplash.

First up is Go On Fool, described as a "Zested WC-IPA" which doesn't make a lot of sense, beyond invoking Grapefruit Sculpin, a popular fruit-flavoured Californian IPA from the long-ago craft beer era. That was 7% ABV while this is a mere 5.5%, though it does list grapefruit zest on the ingredients, along with Saphir and Motueka hops. It's a foggy orange-yellow colour with a decently thick head and plenty of piquant citrus juice in the aroma. The texture is creamy, in a modern New-England way, lacking the sharp edge of Sculpin's California character. So I don't know what they're doing, calling it "WC" IPA: this is very much in the east coast vernacular. For all that, it's not bad, showing some dank resins alongside the sunnier citrus, and keeping everything fresh, clean and unfussily drinkable. The grapefruit element doesn't dominate the flavour, and there's a definite herbal quality from the Motueka perceptible alongside it. As the starter of a three-beer session it works well, and I wouldn't be sad to be offered a second pint of it after the first.

Wildfires is merely a pale ale, but it's stronger, at 6.2% ABV. Simcoe, Strata and Mosaic are the hops and it's unashamedly murky, though pale and translucent rather than resembling eggy batter. The aroma is mildly zesty, humbly suggesting lemon and lime peel, while the flavour is lightly garlicked with peripheral hints of marmalade, lemonade and custard. None of it is terribly loud, and the texture is surprisingly light for the strength. This beer's name is all drama but the liquid itself is rather damp and lacklustre. It's not unpleasant, but doesn't really use the significant gravity and doubtlessly expensive hop charge to make a big impression. This is unfortunately typical of Whiplash's recent offerings: promising full-colour 3D hop zing but not really delivering on it. "A big glass of meh" is a harsh verdict on Wildfires, but unfortunately that's what it is. Hazy pale can be done better than this, and certainly by this brewery.

The one I was looking forward to most was Things We've Done, which is in that most under-represented of styles, double black IPA. It's a whole 8% ABV and is properly dense and weighty with it, the body heavy and slick, despite lots of carbonation and a tall nicotine-stained head of foam. Its aroma is quite roasty and stout-like, with the hops contributing a serious grass and liquorice bitterness to this. The bittering hits hard in the foretaste, mixing super sharp grapefruit rind with an almost plasticky herbal concentration. Sabro, says the can: I might have known. There's Cashmere and Centennial too, but it's extremely on-brand for Sabro to hog the limelight, as it definitely does here. After a second there's a warmer and richer cocoa element, some slightly burnt and sticky treacle and then a colourful zesty citric spritz for the finish. I would never have guessed the strength: the flavour is thoroughly hop dominated with little alcoholic heat. That pithy Sabro does make it a little one-note and not very complex, but if you enjoy what it does, it's an exciting and very boldly-flavoured beer, which is exactly what I'm looking for in a double black IPA.

The slight decline in hop impact of Whiplash's recent beers is somewhat in evidence here, except for the black IPA's total Sabro bug-out. The other two are grand if unspectacular. Oddity shows no sign of brewing for themselves or moving to a different contractor. I'm happy to have them as a slightly exotic contributor to the brewing scene in my home city.

All right Jack

It's a new brewery for me today. McGill's has been plying its trade down in Waterville for some years now, but I didn't know that it bottled its beer, nor that it was ever shipped outside of Co. Kerry. I found this bottle of Jack Murphy Kerry Lager on the shelves of The Wine Centre in Kilkenny recently, less than two months beyond the hand-written best-before date on the label.

They've brewed it to 4.3% ABV and in a rustic fashion, the beer pouring murkily and a greyish amber colour. I made sure to leave at least some of the dregs in the bottom of the bottle. It smells quite sweet, and a little fruity, suggesting lemon sponge and ripe apricot, with a slight herbal hop bitterness to the rear. The flavour is very much built around the malt, tasting heavy and, well, malty, like Ovaltine or Horlicks. There are some warm-fermentation pear esters and a rough grain-husk dry side, all of which gives it a bit of a homebrew vibe. There's no polish to this; no sense of a brewer honing their lager with precision.

It's not at all bad, though. Any number of things could have gone wrong, but didn't, so while it's a little off-kilter, it's still tasty, in a wholesome and amateurish way. Pale lager is a tough style for very small breweries, and I'm not sure McGill's has what it needs to do it brilliantly. Accept the slightly over-sweetened nature of this one, however, and it's enjoyable. I would imagine warm fermentation is more the brewery's forte, however.

Who asked for this?

They've gone all creative at Open Gate for the summer, Lord save us. Classic styles can wait; everything is getting an off kilter ingredient or two. But we shouldn't be too cynical before starting to drink them.

Exhibit A is Cola Radler. It looks like stout: a dark reddish brown with a fine white head. I suspect stout is the beer base and it tastes immediately roasty, plus I think I detect some Guinness tang in the aroma. Cola sits in the middle of the flavour, tasting a little concentrated, conjuring long-dormant sensory memories of the Soda Stream machine in my childhood kitchen. The cola syrup had a particular smell and taste which is echoed here. And that's it. As we saw on Friday, radler is supposed to be quenching and refreshing, and although this is only 3.5% ABV, the lack of citrus means it doesn't work. The cola is overly sticky and clashes unpleasantly with the stout's bitterness and roast. I noticed towards the end a nearby menu board saying that there is lime in the mix here, but there's not nearly enough. You may wince at the very notion of mixing Guinness and Coke, and I'm here to tell you, first hand, that that's an entirely appropriate reaction.

Open Gate becomes the third local brewery, after Rascals and Third Circle, to brew a beer called Dubliner Weisse. Theirs is with hibiscus, blood orange and pomegranate. It's a fun pink colour and 3.8% ABV. I was on the lookout for sourness first and was not very surprised to find it isn't really, hitting dry and crisp but not proceeding beyond that into tartness. The fruit mix is pleasant, though, suggesting cherry, pineapple, raspberry and apricot: all very bright and summery. A twang of yoghurt is the only nod to microflora complexity, but that's OK. It may not be even close to proper Berliner weisse, but this does what it's designed to do. Party on.

Yet another in the recent series of flavoured stouts follows that. With a Coconut Rum Stout it was always going to be tough not to mention Bounty bars, and I'm completely failing at that, because this very much tastes Bounteous: dark chocolate and gooey coconut paste. But wait, there's more. The official description doesn't mention real rum, only "rum spices", suggesting the involvement of Uncle Arthur's housemate, Captain Morgan. That's a big part of the aroma but mild in the flavour, adding hints of vanilla, cinnamon, walnut and smoke without interrupting the headline features. Most pleasingly, the beer is dry not sweet, with a proper bite of roast and a non-sticky texture, even at 5.6% ABV. Excellent work. Yes, it's pure gimmick, but designed and executed in an expert way, paying due care and attention to balance and complexity, while also doing the wacky novelty thing. I'm fully on board for that sort of brewing.

That set was followed swiftly by two further additions, still keeping things weird. I suspect that the Chilli-Mango DIPA didn't hit its intended gravity as it's only 6.9% ABV. It presents a foggy orange colour and smells properly pulpy and tropical, the 45kg of mango in the 10hL batch paying their way. That does mean there's something of a yoghurt kick about the flavour: not sour but creamy with a light layer of vanilla. There wasn't anything I would describe as hop character,  but perhaps drinkers of this type of heavy and hazy IPA don't care about the hops. It's not readily obvious that chilli is involved (three types): I didn't get any spice piquancy, which is unfortunate. Instead, I think all the pepper action is in the finish, where it's dry and a little plasticky, not contributing anything positive to the picture. Hey, Open Gate is a self-described experimental brewery, and this strikes me as a very experimental beer; one that doesn't quite do what it's supposed to. They've got the mango right; the other details need tweaking, however.

Next to it is Port Ellen Part II. I assume that Part I was the one released last summer under the name The 200, a collaboration with Diageo's distillery in the Islay town of the same name. My notes on that one said it was served too cold, hence letting this one sit for a bit. A freshly fried bacon aroma starts us off on the right foot, and the flavour continues in that vein, the sweet smoke suggesting Bamberg more than Islay to me. An enquiry about whether smoked malt was used, rather than simply depending on the whisky barrels, revealed that yes, it's peated malt, though the beer is possibly not barrel-aged. That scans. Though 7.1% ABV, it's not hot or spirit-laden. This sort of brightly smoky stout is right up my street: savoury as the day is long but still clean, drinkable and positively refreshing. I carry a torch for the one Messrs Maguire brewed, once, back in 2007, and this brought me right back there. Smokeheads assemble.

Just one (and a half) missteps with these, and it's not a surprise. Mostly, this is ideal fare for the al fresco drinking season, however short and sporadic it may prove to be this year.

Rad bod

Today, you join me not-live on the patio, on the first properly warm day of the year. Our topic is radler (shandy the German way) and the conditions are excellent for some side-by-side evaluation.

We start traditionally, with a thick-walled half-litre bottle of Hofbräuhaus Traunstein Radler, from Bavaria. It's 50% "bier" (lager, presumably), and the other half cloudy lemonade, coming out at 2.4% ABV. With these, I think the choice of lemonade is crucial, and they've picked a good one. It has quite a natural flavour of real lemons, pulped and sweetened, and that's in spite of an ingredients list that shows it's anything but natural, including both lemon extract and citrus-hop-extract as well. The result is big bodied and satisfying; verging on sticky but still perfectly thirst-quenching. And while the lemonade is far and away the main character, there's a slight hint of biscuit lager malt and salad-leaf noble hops, hovering in the background. The contents of my glass did not last long, and I reckon I could have followed it with another straight away. I'd say the sweet side would have caught up with me before I finished that, however. This is no watery lemon fizz bomb, but a radler of substance. I enjoyed its bigness.

Staying German but switching fruit, next is König Pilsener Radler Grapefruit, brewed by Bitburger and packaged in half-litre cans. The ABV drops to 1.9% as a result of it being only 40% beer, so I'm expecting this to be another brief affair. The archetypal grapefruit radler is that made by Stiegl, so this has some work to do to impress. It's a hazy carrot-orange colour, with lots of foam on pouring but none by the time I came to take a drink. It's certainly lighter and less sweet than the previous one, which also means it has less flavour in general. I had hoped for a bit of grapefruit's sharp piquancy, as in the Stiegl one, but it doesn't have that, instead staying simplistic and sugary, the sweetness kept in check by the thin body and overactive carbonation. It's drinkable and refreshing for sure, and meets the basic requirements of the genre, but no more than basic. This is low-effort radler; lacking beer character and may as well be a soft drink: unfortunate, but not unusual for the style. 

We turn to the craft beer segment for the final one, and pretty much double the price paid. To Øl Lemon Radler is 2.5% ABV but doesn't tell us anything about how it's constituted. It's certainly less sugary than the previous two, tasting more like a lemon-flavoured beer than a mix of beer and fizzy pop. It's still no masterpiece of complexity, however. The lemon is nicely tangy with a proper bitter edge, and it lasts a long time, finishing on an almost metallic mineral rasp. While not overly sweet, it's not very fizzy either, and that reduces the refreshment factor somewhat. While I may feel like I'm drinking a real beer, more than with the others, it's less impressive as a sunny-day throw-it-down-cold job. I'd be less inclined to drink another, even if it hadn't cost me the guts of €4 for the experience. The Germans' cheap and simple approach works better in general, I reckon. 

I'm not really a fan of radler. I probably should have mentioned that at the outset. For the day that's in it, I would really have preferred a few properly cold proper beers than these citrus mixes. There's no harm in doing the occasional experiment, however, on the rare occasions when the weather is up to it.

If the Chouffe hits

Obviously I don't do "guilty pleasure" beers, but I do have a fondness for Cherry Chouffe while also recognising it's no great feat of Belgian brewing artistry. So I was perhaps inappropriately delighted to find the fruited gnome series has a second addition: Chouffe Framboise. Raspberry, like cherry, is an established and acceptable Belgian beer fruit. When we start getting Chouffe Mango and Chouffe Banana, I'll worry that they've gone full Floris.

This can't be exactly the same beer as Cherry Chouffe with only a different syrup, because it's 7% ABV rather than 8. Maybe that just means they've added more gunk. Anyone who sees the word "Framboise" and thinks immediately of acid tartness, may look elsewhere. This is heavy and dense, a clear claret-red colour in the glass, and is extremely sweet. For those who consider a cone of soft-serve ice cream incomplete without a streak of tachycardia-inducing pink sauce: this is your beer.

I am, generally speaking, tolerant of fruity sweet flavours in Belgian beer, and this stops just short of being horrible. It is not a beer to convince anyone that flavoured syrup in beer is quite good actually. Do not expect subtlety. I assume the heavily buried base beer is the standard La Chouffe blond ale, because there is a trace of it in the background of the taste: dry grain husk and Belgian yeast spicing. But it is not a beer which gives that up readily, preferring instead to shout loudly about raspberry jam over the top of everything else.

Any excuse, but I decided to drink it back to back with Cherry Chouffe, and found that to be far and away its superior. That's likely simply because I prefer artificially cherry-flavoured things to artificially raspberry-flavoured ones. There's a more grown-up boozy phenol thing going on in the cherry one that I think has more to do with the chemical properties of cherries than it does with the beer simply being stronger. Anyway, I might recommend Chouffe Framboise to drinkers who want nothing more than a strong and sweet fruit-based drink, but if that's you, you're much better served outside of the beer sphere these days.

Shady happenings

It was a mix of sunshine and showers on the mid-May weekend in Kilkenny, so it's just as well the motorised awnings over the beer garden of Sullivan's Taproom were in good working order. The annual beer festival brought a selection of breweries from around Ireland. I was last here two years ago, and since then a new brewery has sprung up next to the drinking space, though I suspect this is more an expansion of the pilot kit, rather than a full production site for contract-brewed flagships like Maltings red and Black Marble stout -- both fine beers, of course.

More Sullivan's small-batch beer is to be welcomed, and the indoor bar had three of them. California Common is one of those styles which made it from a million homebrew kits to a thousand microbreweries as the brewers went professional in the '00s, but which hasn't had much of a permanent impact on the beer scene. It's always nice to see one in the wild, even if they're rarely spectacular. This one certainly wasn't, but gets the job done. It's 4.5% ABV and an attractive rose-gold colour with a crisp, biscuit-like aroma. That's what the flavour opens with, followed by a brief green and leafy bite of old-world hops. It's refreshing, and almost clean, with only a slightly inappropriate warm-fermentation banana note towards the finish. The slightly rough-and-rustic character is part of its charm, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's deliberate.

You'll need to do your own historical research on the next one. Sullivan's claims that Viess is an old German style, ancestor of both Kölsch and Weissbier. News to me, and Ron's got nothing on it. I can tell you that Home Rule, as they've called it, is a clear golden beer of 4.7% ABV, though tastes light for that. The flavour doesn't resemble either of those top-fermenting styles, being brightly fruity, with pear and lychee notes to the fore. It's a wheat beer, but has a clean lager crispness, and is very refreshing and sinkable, while also showing an interesting complexity. So while I don't know what it is, I really enjoyed it, and that's enough.

Last of the house beers is East Coast IPA. I do know what this is meant to be, and it's not one. The problem isn't even the tiddling 4.9% ABV: perfectly decent New England-style IPA is possible at this strength. For one thing -- and despite my backlit photo of it -- it's a worrying deep orange colour, suggesting inappropriate caramelised malt, or worse: oxidation. It's also mostly clear, and the lack of fuzz also gives it an unpleasant thinness. Moving on to attack the flavour, it has a dull sweetness, like orange jellies, and then a plasticky twang on the finish. There is none of the full-on hop freshness which is the whole purpose of hazy IPA, so it's more like the early examples, where it seemed brewers were following the instructions without ever having experienced what the end result is supposed to be. Quality-wise, this was a marked contrast to the other two, and I hope it's not indicative of what the new Sullivan's kit is providing to the good people of Kilkenny.

Moving out to the guest bars, there were two new ones for me from Bullhouse of Belfast. Keep Rolling is described as a hoppy lager and is 4.8% ABV. It looks rather wan and sickly, a hazed up pale yellow. I was expecting it to feel watery so was very pleasantly surprised by its soft and creamy texture. No crispness, but I didn't miss it. It is fizzy, however, and that pushes out a classically American citrus aroma. So it goes with the flavour too, the lemon and grapefruit notes complicated by a touch of Kellerbier's husky grain. To me, it tasted like a hybrid of well-made American-style pale ale and an unfiltered German lager. That's a nice space to be in.

The rolling continues with the more informally-named Easy Rollin'. This is the actual pale ale in the series; 4.2% ABV and as light as one might expect from that. It's still fully hazed, however, and has a solid measure of vanilla sweetness in with its zesty lemon. That gives it a sort of spongecake flavour, although a background buzz of garlic detracts from that. I guess it does what it's supposed to: channelling the haze characteristics in a modest and easy-going package. Whoever brewed the East Coast for Sullivan's could learn a few things from it, and I hope they tasted it on the day.

Joining the California Common in beer-styles-we-don't-see-much-of was Vore, a Vienna lager from Galway Bay Brewery. After the murk this was a treat to look at: a crystal clear shade of garnet. It was heavier than expected at 5.2% ABV, managing to have a dense and filling texture but without the rich biscuity malt that should come with it. Instead it's dry, with a simplistic grassy bitterness from some perfunctory hopping -- the brewery's claim that it's dry hopped could not be tasted, at least by me. I wanted to like it but it just didn't deliver what I needed. Too heavy to be a thirst-quencher, but too dull to be worth sipping slowly, puts it in an unfortunate spot. Thoughts of settling into a few pints of it once I'd tried all the new beers were regretfully put aside.

The end was indeed in sight, with Peninsula, a new double IPA from Whiplash, in collaboration with Breton brewery Sparkle. More haze is it? If we must. This is a pretty good example, and something of a return to form for Whiplash after a few recent disappointing efforts. This one mixes smooth and sweet vanilla with spiky, spicy (presumably) New Zealand hops. Soft apricot meets tart gooseberry on a bed of rocket, seasoned with peppercorns. What more could you want from this sort of beer? Though all of 8.4% ABV, it's smooth and cool, with no dreggy off flavours. This is a much-needed reminder that it is possible to make delicious hazy double IPA. I wish more brewers would learn that.

My favourite beer of the day was actually the one I started on: The People's Elder, a sour ale from Brehon Brewhouse, made with elderberry. It's very pale, and light-bodied for 5.2% ABV, but it's no slouch in the flavour department. It zings with a refreshing tartness, at once both spicy and crisp, with grapefruit zest overtones. The elder doesn't contribute much that I could identify, but I was happy not to have it interfering with the sunny spritz effect. I would happily have had another straight after and would love to see this beer out and about more.

That was all the new beer I had to try. I was back at Brehon for my finisher: their excellent bourbon-barrel barley wine Red Right Hand, which is a treat in any weather. Cheers to Sullivan's for running a festival which is enjoyably casual, well-stocked and, crucially, waterproof.

Sour season

It seems like only last week I was looking at Ireland's winter beers, but apparently the planet has done that tilting thing again, the weather has turned warmer, and the brewers have had to react appropriately. Refreshing and fruit-laden seems to be how they're achieving it. It's only early summer, though, so just two examples today.

Brewers At Play 50: Gose with Lemon Zest, Pink Peppercorns & Thyme is the latest in Kinnegar's limited edition series. The name steals my thunder as regards telling you what it is. I'll add that it's 3.7% ABV and a pale, Golden-Delicious, yellow. The lemon zest hits hard in the aroma, enhanced by a fun mineral tartness. That leaves the flavour for the pepper and herb but I couldn't really taste them. Up front it's lemon again, though less zesty, with a touch of sticky cordial about it. It is at least balanced by a sherbet effervesence, and a degree of salinity, both of which ensure it stays refreshing: arguably the most important aspect. That it's not watery at the low strength is a further point in its favour. So, while the convoluted name suggests a very involved complexity, it's actually a lovely warm-weather quaffer. I approve. 

We get a bit of wordplay from Wicklow Wolf's one, Póg, referencing both the Irish word for kiss and the Hawaiian bottle-top game, named for passionfruit, orange and grapefruit. It's a large fellow for the spec, at 5.2% ABV, and very much thicker than the other one; almost creamy, in fact. That smoothie impression doesn't sit well with the citric tang of the flavour, creating a sort of orange-juice-meets-toothpaste effect. Then at the end there's a weird kind of chemical, chlorine, thing, which presumably is what happens when you design a recipe around conceptual punning rather than whether the ingredients will work well together. It's not particularly sour, so while it's not one of those gooey fake-sour fruit beers, it has no properly sharp edges, which is disappointing. This isn't a refreshing beer-garden beer; it's chewy, reflecting the strength, and almost jammy in how the fruit manifests. I can give props to its bright tropicality, but not to its sourness, drinkability or refreshment power. On balance, I wasn't a fan.

One beer was what I wanted; the other not so much. So it goes. Doubtless we'll have more like this before it's time to hunker down for the darker days again.

Red letter day

When I was an undergraduate, my university offered the option to sit second year exams in March, a term early. A decent grade came with an exemption from the summer exams, and so it was that my housemate Tim and I spent a lot of April and May 1997 in The Porterhouse, drinking their Red ale. I have a very particular memory of the beer, which was smooth and fruity; predominantly sweet, but not excessively so; balanced, and modestly strong, so well suited for an afternoon's drinking before a long evening of Mario Kart duels. In the early 2000s, I got out of the habit of drinking in The Porterhouse, and when I came back a decade later, the Red seemed to me to have changed, with a harsher bitterness and a more stark caramel sweet side. No harm: there were always plenty of enjoyable alternatives. But my experience with the Red of old came back to me recently when I called in to try the beer they've released to mark 30 years of the beer brand and its Temple Bar headquarters*.

In a marked contrast to previous birthdays when there's been a new stout, this time they've launched Celebration Amber Ale, commissioned from regular supplier Hopkins & Hopkins. It was available on cask and keg. I went cask, with a shot of keg on the side, for science.

It's a dark copper colour and smells, as good Irish red ale does, of ripe summer fruit, and strawberries in particular. The flavour brings the opposite side of that rare but happy equation: a dry bite of tannins. That gives it the refreshment factor of its near-relation English bitter. Some hop character might have been nice, and I thought the American nomenclature of "amber ale" perhaps signified that, but it's never been a Porterhouse strong point. I don't know if Peter Moseley, head brewer for all the years that The Porterhouse was a brewery, was involved in the recipe design, but if not, Hopkins & Hopkins has done a great job of channelling his kind of beer, which is fitting for the occasion.

The keg version's extra fizz is a boon, reducing the fruit sweetness further, to make it drier and even more refreshing, but I preferred the cask one, which is rounder, softer and altogether more cuddly. It's nice to have the opportunity for a a side-by-side draught format comparison.

Maybe it was simply the surroundings, largely unchanged for the last 30 years, but I got quite the Proustian rush from drinking this. It's a very decent beer in its own right, if the low-hopped red/amber genre works for you. New examples of it are quite thin on the ground. Maybe I still would have preferred another birthday stout, or even the return of lost Porterhouse classics like TSB and Wrasslers. But nostalgia is not The Porterhouse's business. Here's to the next 30 years and beyond.

*The Porterhouse brand in general pre-dates the brewery, having been applied originally to the founders' Bray pub (since sold and now trading as The Palm) in 1989. The first Porterhouse brewery was located at the pub in Temple Bar between 1996 and 2000, and although the company still owns a production facility in Dublin, it's leased out and hasn't produced Porterhouse beer since 2023.

Kildare's wins

It's a busy brewing county, Kildare. I guess it benefits from being in the Dublin hinterland but without the constraints of Dublin commercial rents. Today I'm looking at four recent beers from four different Kildare breweries.

I'll begin with a lager from Farringtons, though not in the brewery's usual livery. Hells Yeah is a collaboration with Martin's Off Licence and is branded for the shop, having been created for their Advent box last winter. It's a hefty fellow at 5.4% ABV, and the brewer's German vocabulary may need a refresh as it's not very hell at all: a medium-amber colour. It follows that the aroma is more like that of a bock, mixing rich golden syrup malt with a strongly vegetal hop seasoning. The body is unsurprisingly full, and there's a lack of carbonation, detracting from its abilities as a thirst-quencher, which is what I wanted it for. The flavour is full too, however, and enjoyably deep and rounded. There's gooey treacle tart and a surprising blackberry-jam fruity side, all hitting up against the green bite of spinach, asparagus and nettles. I detected a tiny bleachy twang on the end, but couldn't say if that's a minor brewing flaw, or just what happens when weighty pale malt meets noble hops in quantity. On paper I shouldn't have liked this, but while it wasn't what I signed on for, I appreciated its boldness and cuddly demeanour. Some regular-lager drinkers may have got a surprise when it came out of the box back in December.

Until a few weeks ago, when our Great Uncle Diageo started getting the red and yellow stuff (black is pending) running out of the new plant at Littleconnell, Kildare's biggest brewery was Rye River. Their summer special is a sour ale with raspberry and pineapple called Flamingo Acid Test: an elaborate name with a simple ABV of just 4%. It is at least pink, rendered pale by a significant degree of murk. "Centrifuged" says the boilerplate text on the can. Must have been just a quick spin. The haze makes it look like one of those milkshaky pseudo-sour beers, but it isn't. That said, it's still not very sour. The pineapple in particular adds a strong sweetness that the raspberries' tartness fails to balance and which steamrolls equally over the effect of the three-acid blend with which they've kettle-soured it. Don't expect complexity, then, but otherwise it's fine: a bit of simple summer fun. Basic, but nowhere near as basic as your Aperol-drinking friends. 

Kildare's oldest brewery is Trouble, best known around Dublin for its Ambush pale ale, but producing the occasional other beer too. Fresh Start pale ale is a rare new addition to their line-up, and I don't know if the name is meant to signify something. The online commentariat have noted that, although it first appeared on shelves in late April, it bears a canning date in January. Still, I don't think the Citra and Amarillo hops have been harmed unduly by that: it still smells bright and zesty, and the flavour blends Amarillo's fruit candy with a sharper bite of Citra pith. All that is as you'd expect, really. Although... it feels very light and is an exceptionally pale yellow colour, neither of which tallies with its full 5% ABV. There's not much malt flavour, and while the hops are definitely present, the flavour is a little understated. It's a grand sunny pinter, but the strength seems somewhat excessive for what you get.

Not far from Trouble is the Dewdrop Brewhouse at the Dewdrop pub in Kill. Morning Dew is badged as a limited edition can and is a saison, with a beefy 6.2% ABV. It looks the part, all pale and hazy, with plenty of foam on top. "Fruity Dry Peppery" are the three descriptors the brewery has stuck on the label, and the aroma is all about the first of those: big banana and pear, which isn't how I like my saison, by and large. Pepper (white) does follow in the flavour, and the body is pleasingly light and crisp; saisons of this strength can turn out unpleasantly flabby, but this one keeps things taut. The fruit is still there, however: the pear in particular, but that's simply a different kind of crispness. And it finishes dry to complete the set. Overall, this is pretty much on the money, and especially impressive as the work of a country brewpub. I know that saison is a hard sell in the craft beer space generally, but wouldn't it be nice to have a local one in regular production? This would be a good candidate.

There's nothing especially noteworthy in this lot, though also no stunt recipes or similar show-off silliness. Steady and stolid is the Kildare way.

Two out of Eight ain't bad

Eight Degrees was one of the first Irish brewers to adopt the high-turnover mode of brewing, supplementing a safe core range with a regular train of specials, crossing all the beer style boundaries and involving all manner of ingredients and collaborators. That ended when the brewery was sold to a multinational, and never came back in this changed era, even now that the original founders are in charge once more. So I'm pleased today to be covering two new Eight Degrees beers.

They describe Dolcita as a "tropical IPA", and I've voiced my concerns before about the t-word being rarely indicative of actual tropical fruit flavours. So it goes with this one, but that's not a problem. In lieu of mangoes and pineapples, this 5.7% ABV hazy IPA has a bright pithy bitterness, pushing mandarin zest and lime rind. There's an almost earthy tang on the finish, where the bittering compounds concentrate together on the palate. Despite the haze and the claim of tropicality, this tastes like an IPA from the classic era of Eight Degrees: big flavoured and technically proficient. I've missed that.

The brewery has had something of a fractious relationship with stout over the years. Its original Knockmealdown Porter got rebranded as a stout, then faded from sight and wasn't revived when the company was. Instead, the new bottled core range includes Bojanter. I really like how they've gone all-in with bottles, which is of course the correct serving format for Irish stout. Tracking it down was tough but it showed up recently, like Dolcita, at The Porterhouse.

I was curious as to what glass they'd serve it with -- a half-pint pilsner flute is traditional -- and it was a bit of a surprise to get a snifter. That's a perfectly fine glass, so no harm. The beer is properly black though doesn't hold its head well. An aroma of mild roast and sticky treacle starts us off. The carbonation is light, giving it a smoothness which I'm sure is intended but isn't quite typical for bottled Irish stout, especially at a mere 4.3% ABV. The brewer has opted for sweetness as the main feature, the aroma's treacle built out into a flavour of dark caramel, similar to that of a Czech dark lager, I thought. Dryness is in short supply but there is a mineral tang, slightly vegetal, demonstrating that some appropriate old-world hops are involved. I liked this, as much for the daring choice of format as the taste. I might have dialled up the alcohol and reduced the caramel, but that's a personal preference thing. Bojanter deserves a place in the canon of proper Irish stout, where it's not trying to be anything other than itself.

The pace may have slowed, but Eight Degrees is still turning out quality new beers. I await the next ones eagerly.

Creamy how?

When I saw that Galway Bay had named a beer Irish Cream Stout, I assumed that "cream" here was one of those redundant marketing words, like I'd be more likely to buy a "cream stout" than simply a "stout". But no, it's "Irish cream" as in Baileys. This beer is meant to taste like both cream liqueur and stout. I was apprehensive... but intrigued.

The head is Baileys-coloured, so that's a good start. Its dark brown body looks a bit muddy, though. The aroma suggests a fairly ordinary sweet stout, showing more toffee than one might expect from the unlikely-sounding added ingredient of "Irish cream natural extract". I'm guessing that's lactose, chocolate, vanilla and hen parties. There's oatmeal too, and that really pays its way in the texture. Though only 5% ABV, it feels like a big and luxurious imperial stout: silk, velvet, and similar cliché textile descriptors.

It doesn't taste at all like Baileys. As with the aroma, there's a slightly sticky sweet quality -- caramel and milk chocolate bars -- but that's well balanced by a solid dose of serious roast, drying it out in the finish and improving the drinkability. Which is just as well.

I'm not sure this experiment worked. The beer wasn't ruined by dumping a tub of powdered Baileys into it, but there's a very decent classic oatmeal stout underneath, which I would have preferred to drink instead. One could consider this a minor variant on standard milk stout but it doesn't have the complexity to be anything more involved. You may need a bottle of cream liqueur on hand, to top up its "character".

Dark deeds

Why do I take so long picking beers when I'm standing in front of the fridges in Redmond's? It's because I'm trying to piece together the theme for a blog post. Something about Thornbridge and dark beers, maybe?

Baize is presumably a reference to the brewery's nearest big city, Sheffield, being perennially associated with snooker. The green (three points) and the black (seven points) are respectively represented by mint in a 5.5% ABV stout. Lactose is the only other non-standard ingredient, standing for the cue ball, I guess. The aroma's mint is faint, no more than a waft from a freshly opened bag of mint imperials: processed and sugar-laden, not fresh. Although it's a milk stout really, the dairy sweet side is quite understated, and there's a proper balancing coffee and toast roast. They haven't gone overboard with the mint flavour, which is a pastey smear, like the inside mush of Fry's Peppermint Cream (ask your grandparents) rather than raw herb leaf. I prefer the raw herb leaf approach to mint in beer, so this didn't really suit me. It's fine, and no doubt successfully built for the mass market, or whatever mass market exists for mint chocolate stout these days. There's a pleasant creamy richness, placing it exactly on point for good, satisfying, stout. Its novelty side is best ignored, and I think it would be a better beer without it. The black is worth more than the green, as they say in brewing.

A porter is next: Panela, brewed with coffee and dried sugar cane (or "sugar" as it's also known), at 7% ABV. The head on this pure black beer is almost nitro-like: slow to form and luxuriously thick when it does. The coffee comes through in the aroma, though not in a gimmicky way, with not much to differentiate the added ingredient from the common effect of dark porter malts. It's subtle in the flavour too, and I think may contribute more to the texture than the taste, adding a pleasant oiliness to what I might otherwise consider a disappointingly thin body. The oil builds gradually on the palate so that by the end of the glass there's a noticeable coffee aftertaste. The main flavour is dry and roasty, with notes of charcoal and burnt breadcrust; the hops a metallic minerality. Overall, this is a solidly-made strong porter given just a slight novelty twist, which is frankly the best kind of novelty twist. Thornbridge's sober reliability wins out.

Finally, there's no deed darker than turning a perfectly innocent American-inspired IPA hazy for no good reason. I've always thought of Thornbridge as an upstanding and ethical brewery, so I've tended to just pretend Hazy Jaipur doesn't exist. Another boy did it and ran away, sort of thing. Facing up to reality, this is the same strength as real Jaipur at 5.9% ABV and is a very pale yellow shade with a light touch on the haze: I guess they couldn't bring themselves to fog it up completely. It doesn't smell hoppy, as such, with a bath-bomb combination of flowers and spices which is, I'm sure, largely hop-derived, but doesn't have the bright and citric quality that makes Jaipur what it is. Bitterness is what makes Jaipur what it is, and that has been dialled way back here. Hazy IPA should instead substitute fresh tropical fruit or an alternative juicy quality, but this doesn't. Instead, I got slightly sticky malt, which is the wrong sort of sweetness. That's the point where I checked the base of the can, and although it's within the brewery's stated best-before date, it was canned around ten months before I drank it. I suspect it was best well before opening. On the one hand, this disappointing and thoroughly un-Jaipurish experience is partly my fault for not reading the numbers, but on the other, the brewery has made it this way and doesn't seem to regard a problematic lack of hop freshness as a deal-breaker. Regardless of the details, the Jaipur brand is not well served with this extension. Other than the ABV, it has no features I associate with that classic of English IPAs.

I'm not sure which conclusion to draw from this. Either Thornbridge does its best work in classic beer styles and shouldn't go chasing craft-era gimmickry, or I'm becoming ever-more curmudgeonly and less tolerant of whippersnapper brewers trying to be creative. Could be both. I'll need a few more beers to settle this.

Too far down with the kids

Creative and unexpected moves has always been the stock-in-trade at Rascals Brewery -- the clue is in the name -- but I really wasn't expecting their latest gambit. I'm taking it as an indicator of the ongoing decline of "craft beer" as it was once known. For one thing, the brewery logo is as small as they can make it on the packaging, suggesting not quite disavowal, but certainly a different angle from usual. And secondly, Chido is purportedly a Mexican-style pale lager with added lime zest, sold by the six-pack of 33cl clear glass bottles. For those unfamiliar with how beer is sold in Ireland, the bottled multipack format belongs exclusively to imports, at least since Eight Degrees tried and abandoned it almost two decades ago. But I'm quite prepared to believe that it's something that might work now, as beer transitions away from involved and fancy towards simple and familiar.

I began by testing it within its intended context. It was a sunny day and I was thirsty. I drank it cold from the bottle and it was fine: no more or less offensive than any of the beers it's designed to emulate. I was afraid it might have Desperados-levels of fruit-syrup sweetness, but it doesn't. Maize is listed on the ingredients, and that helps keep it crisp and bland. 4% ABV is lighter than the competition, and overall it was perfectly refreshing. Poured out, head retention is naturally not part of the spec, and it doesn't look anything like as attractive, taking on a greenish hue. The lime makes it smell rather sticky, but again, it isn't meant to be smelled. Slow and considered tasting led to increasing annoyance at the maize's corn-husk twang. The beer still isn't sticky, but it has the wrong kind of dryness, tasting cheap and overly processed, then watery in the finish. The lime is unobtrusive, but doesn't add fresh zing, more a sort of dull sourness. Cold from the bottle is very much the way to go here, take it or leave it.

One final point to add is that it isn't cheap. I paid €15 for the six-pack, which places it at a premium compared to the imports it's copying. We're not doing craft beer here, so why are customers still expected to pay the craft tax? I'm no expert on Gen Z, but if they do want this kind of thing, might they prefer it in standard cans for less money? While market analysis is really not my area, I can't see this being a success.

On more familiar ground, in late March I was summonsed to Rascals to assist with the finals of the National Homebrew Club's annual competition. Over lunch, I tried out two new offerings at the brewery bar. Pilot #148 is described as a Tropical Pale Ale, and I took it that this was a reference to the hops it used. That seemed to be the case with the big and sweet pineapple foretaste, and there was an oily element too, which I took to be coconut -- they're tropical -- but seems to have actually been lime. I often mix those two up, and assume they're chemically similar. A glance at the menu told me that this is brewed with real pineapple, and lime, and apricot too, though I couldn't taste any of the latter. It's a loud and simplistic beer, and a little heavy for only 4.9% ABV, but the citrus gives it a refreshing bite. If you don't mind a little syrup in your pale ale, it's an acceptable one. I wouldn't be surprised to see it graduate past pilot and into full production for the summer.

That the Rascals pilot scheme is actually in the business of trying out recipes, and not simply making small runs for the taproom, was indicated by the next beer. Pilot #149 is a Non-Alcoholic Pale Ale, and I doubt anyone tried making one of these just for fun. I'm guessing Rascals is gearing up to put one in regular production. Well, this is a candidate. It's not perfect, and is as watery as it looks: the wan hazy yellow colour matching a thin body and a flavour which tails off quickly. But before that, the hops make themselves known, with a fun and spritzy lemon flavour, akin to barley water or soluble vitamins. All it needs to be convincing, I reckon, is a bit more body. I'm sure there's a spare bag of lactose somewhere on the Rascals premises.

Together, a party lager and an alcohol-free beer suggest that a change of ethos may be afoot at Rascals. Or, perhaps more accurately, they're sticking close to the target market of young drinkers that they've always had, but the demands of that segment have changed. I hope there's still room for old-person craft beer in their brewing schedule.

Passing for normal

Hungarian brewery Mad Scientist makes one of its sporadic returns to these pages today, with the two most normal-looking things from the most recent tranche of releases. The question before us is: how do they fare at making beer-flavoured beer?

What better test than a central European lager, though that should be the easy setting for a central European brewery. To assist, Mad Scientist has availed of the help of Radim Zvánovec, Budvar's global brand ambassador, who should know his way around the style at this stage. The result, worryingly, is called Bohemian Madness. It's properly golden and with a fine white head, although it's also quite hazy: definitely at the unfiltered end of this style. The aroma is sweet and a little syrupy, where I would have liked a fresh grassy bite also. I had noticed the can was a little squashy, and sure enough, the carbonation is very low here, with a cask-like fine sparkle rather than cleansing lager fizz. The flavour isn't too cleansing either, loading up on malt sweetness to almost toffee-like levels and utterly insufficiently balanced by any hops. Only a slightly harsh rasp at the back of the throat, delivered after the sugar has subsided, is the only clue that hops have been used at all. This is a very poor effort and it does no credit to Budvar to be associated with it, even if their name doesn't actually appear on the can.

Beer two isn't exactly a normal beer. It's a milk stout, and we all recognise what that is, but in the usual spirit of misadventure, Mad Scientist has added spruce tips and honey to Yvler the Creator, a beer that pours a beautiful shiny black with a handsome continental head of old-ivory foam. The spruce is surprisingly present in the aroma, adding a floor-cleaner grade of eye-watering pine and lemon zest, and a spritz of dry ginger-ale spice. I'm confident that the beer can hold that all in check, however, as it's a full 8% ABV. The texture is indeed thick, and there's a strong chocolate and vanilla dimension, as befits the style. I think I can pick out the honeycomb-candy of the honey too, but above all of this, there's the same sap and spice that dominates the aroma. It's disconcerting at first, but I enjoyed it. The bittering effect of the spruce helps balance the caramelly sweetness, or at least distracts from it. Although the beer coats the palate, the finish is as much Caribbean ginger fizz as it is smooth chocolate. The two sides don't meld, but the contrast is so stark as to make the beer shockingly enjoyable. This recipe was a gamble, but it paid off for me.

The point, then, is that Mad Scientist should stick to adding weird stuff to beers (and meads) because their heart isn't in it for anything straightforward. Lesson learnt.

Where's your hops at?

Back when new Irish pale ales cascaded onto the market on a near daily basis, I started a programme of reviewing them in big batches, for efficiency. Today, new ones still get collected this way, but it seems to be taking longer and longer to gather enough for a new substantial post. I began drinking today's baker's dozen in early March.

First up, it's a brand new brewery for me. Great Eastern Brewing has been running a taproom bar in Wicklow Town for a couple of years now, but this is the first time I've seen their beer canned. It's called simply Citra Pale Ale and is 4.3% ABV. They've gone haze, and quite a deep amber colour with it. The aroma is bright and fresh, all zested oranges with a hint of vanilla. Although it has the proper roundedness of hazy hoppy beer, it stays light, and the flavour is beautifully clean. It's a simple one: just mildly bitter citrus again, and a degree of oily herbal resin. It shows that this was created for a brewpub as it's very sessionable and quite undemanding, but at the same time is a well-made example of what it is, with no brewing flaws or poor recipe decisions, something that isn't the case for every fledgling Irish brewery. Great Eastern appears to know what it's doing and I wish it well.

I've had various versions of the TwoSides summer pale ale on here over the years. Two Yards: New Zealand Pale is, by my count, the ninth they've done, brewed as usual at Third Barrel. The ABV is a non-changing 4.3%, and it's pale and hazy: another core feature. We're on the frivolous side of the Kiwi hop harvest here (Motueka and Nectaron), with the brightly tropical aroma. The flavour follows up with an almost intense pineapple candy sweetness, alongside guava, cantaloupe and passionfruit for good measure. Low strength means a quick finish, but it's clean, with no grit or dregs. The best versions of Two Yards are sunny sessioners, made for al fresco pints at Brickyard. This edition is absolutely one of those.  

Wicklow Wolf has done another of its collaborations with companies that aren't natural collaborees, this time it's Outwest, a clothing firm, and the beer is a "west coast trail ale" which seems like it might fit. It, too, is called Outwest, and is 4.5% ABV. The clarity is top notch, pouring a bright and sunny golden. Floral perfume and sweet ripe summer fruit form the aroma, and there's lots of concentrated flower action in the flavour. That gives it quite an intense taste, and not in the citrus and pine manner I was expecting. Although the beer is light, I found it a little tough to drink, the perfume gumming up my palate while the pale malt doesn't provide the cleansing crispness I think this beer needs. It will have its fans but it's not for me. More fun to brew than to drink, perhaps.

Galway Bay, in collaboration with American brewery NoFo, has created a self-proclaimed tribute to New Zealand's hops, with a pale ale called Southern Weather. It's a pale and hazy affair, in the modern fashion, and a full 5% ABV. The aroma is fabulously tropical, with promises of passionfruit and pineapple fully delivered on by the combination of four Kiwi hop varieties. That's where the flavour opens, too, on a bright cheery chord of harmonious fruit salad. A slightly more serious herbal bitterness follows that up, where I think the NZ Cascade and Nelson Sauvin take over from Motueka and Pacific Sunrise. None of the effect lasts very long, however, and it all tails off into watery fizz a little too quickly for my liking, especially given the fluffy haze credentials. It's very enjoyable while it's there, however, so I'm not really complaining. As a hop showcase it performs the task it has been given very well. 

Is there any phrase more stirring to the human soul than "retail collaboration"? DOT's latest is with Martin's Off Licence in Fairview and is a New England-style IPA called Fully Charged: 5% ABV again. Pale and hazy? Check. It looks like thinly-spread lemon curd and smells like a beachside cocktail bar, a mélange of diced tropical fruit turning ripe in the sun. It's a psyche-out that the flavour opens with citrus: a sharp ping of lemon zest. The New England side takes a moment to catch up with that, eventually adding the mango and mandarin from the aroma, and the vanilla custard from the style spec. Bitterness reasserts itself in the finish, where the chewy pith and pine resin send us on a short trip to the West Coast. Because I liked this, I immediately went hunting for flaws, but all I could come up with is a very mild rasp of chalk or grit, and I really had to look for it. This is a hazy IPA for the sceptics: full of the bitter charms of "proper" IPA with a distinctly New England tropical seam and minimal brewing flaws. If you normally eschew this style but are willing to give it an occasional chance, and if you're in the Dublin 3 area, give this one a shot.

May Bank Holiday saw Ballykilcavan farm hosting the Greenfields music festival, and the brewery created The Greenfields Festival IPA to mark the occasion. It's an amber fellow; lightly hazed and 5.5% ABV. Not much happens in the aroma, beyond a light citrus spritz, and the flavour is similarly understated, at first anyway. The gentle lemon notes fade quickly, but before I could decide it's a damp squib, there's a growing and persistent bitterness -- earthy and tangy, suggesting Cascade hops to me -- and then a dry tannic quality. I'm reminded a little bit of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, albeit with a little less punch. The decision to make it on the strong side for the style was a wise one: there's full-bodied smoothness here, without which it might run the risk of turning harsh. As is, it's a very decent and classically formulated American-style pale ale, one which doesn't need to be kept icy cold, and can be quaffed quickly or sat over, as the occasion demands. Ideal for an outdoor event, then, but pretty good in general. 

Citra, Mosaic and Sabro are the hops which Third Barrel has put into Shout!, which sounds very much in the brewery's wheelhouse, and likewise that it's a 6.8% ABV hazy IPA. "Juicy" says the label, and it smells intensely sweet, though more of vanilla and orange ice pops than pure juice. The flavour doesn't exactly pop with juice either, but does something more grown up instead. There's a wide seam of pithy citric bitterness, overlaid with oily coconut flesh and a fine dusting of ground black pepper, adding a heat that's part alcohol and part yeasty spice. The sweet vanilla arrives late, dampening the bitterness and softening the beer's whole effect. It works. This is hazy with balance, showcasing bright and fresh hops, but in the cuddly, fluffy context of modern murk. It would be hard work to find something to dislike here.

The latest in Kinnegar's limited edition series is Brewers At Play 49: Fresh Hop West Coast IPA. "West Coast" I can believe, because it was brewed in Donegal, but I suspect "Fresh Hop" is a reference to the very unfresh processed hop product that Yakima Chief is currently shilling. Words used to mean something. 5.9% ABV is blousey for an Irish IPA, though low for authentic west-coast. I liked the medium amber colour, however, and can forgive the slight mistiness: it's unfiltered rather than hazy. The aroma brings a beautiful combination of lightly toasted malt and an earthy, spicy Cascade effect, doing a great job of channelling the mighty American IPAs of yore. The flavour expands on that, with an almost gunpowder level of sparky spice: piney resin meeting smouldering incense. There's a fresh(ish) oily citrus quality, and a sweeter side that's not quite crystal malt's caramel, but a gentle layer of golden syrup or runny toffee. While I wouldn't say it's balanced, its tilt towards the hops is beautifully done. I remain sceptical about the "fresh" claims, but as a representative of the west coast revival trend, it's a flag-carrier. Get some of this if you miss those old resinous beauties.

Rye River's Miami J hazy IPA is a regular spring fixture, but this year they've given it a new hairstyle, using Prysma as product. It's a "liquid hop flavor platform", which doesn't sound very steady, but claims it can make the beer taste of all the hops with none of the bitterness. That seems like a good idea for hazy IPA. The problem, however, is that the beer isn't all juicy and tropical. It's gritty and savoury, which creates a different kind of bitterness, while the sweetness is all vanilla esters and no fruit. I looked hard for some hop brightness but none was forthcoming, and I found only a weird raw and leafy green vegetable twang. This isn't the first time Rye River has used Miami J as a laboratory for BarthHaas's processed hop products: they did it back in 2022 as well, with similarly underwhelming results. This is altogether too rough and earthy to be enjoyable as an IPA, let alone one with purported hop superpowers. Back to basics for 2027, please.

I drank that back-to-back with Whiplash's Acid Raindrops, a collaboration with Seattle brewery Feast Fashion: similarly 6.5% ABV and just as pale and hazy. Comparison was inevitable, and this has a similar level of vanilla sweetness, but lacks the dreggy grit which marred the previous one. Still, hop fruit isn't a big part of it. A little peach, maybe, but thoroughly drenched in cream. It's extremely smooth and glides off the palate, leaving behind only a faint peppery spice. €5.75 for the can isn't extremely expensive by the standards of these thing in these parts these days, but I would have liked more depth of flavour and more proper hop impact. This doesn't deliver on what I understand to be the principal thing which hazy IPA is supposed to do -- big fresh hops -- and falls down in a quite stereotypical way for the style. It's not offensively bad or anything, but does get filed with the other low-energy beers Whiplash has been turning out recently. And no, I don't think some proprietary hop extract product will help that.

Brewers from Nautile in Nantes were in Dublin recently and one port of call was Hope, where they contributed to the brewing of an IPA. Groac'h is named after the Breton sea-witch who, legend says, curses anyone who makes smeary AI images of her. The can doesn't tell us what kind of IPA it is, so it was a surprise to find it amber coloured and mostly clear. West coast? Damn straight. The pithy aroma is an early giveaway; sharply citric, with added crisp leafy vegetables. No fruit salad here. An authentically American 7% ABV gives it weight and depth, but the flavour is not about that malt. A hard, raw, invigorating bitterness is the main feature, including all the typical elements in parallel: zesty lime and grapefruit, oily pine and fresh spinach leaves. And while it may not have the pleasing crystalline clarity of the best West Coast IPA, the modest haze makes no encroachment on the flavour. You can take it from me that this is old-school IPA of the best kind. The anti-haze mob should be buying it in quantity -- who knows when we'll see this sort of beer again?

The latest hazy IPA from Lineman is an IPA called White Noise. It's a full 7% ABV and moderately murked, topped with a head of rocky white foam. The aroma is broadly tropical, but very similar to a million other beers of this type. Citra, Ekuanot and Maui Nelson are the hops, the latter of which is a new one for me. Turns out it's not a hop, but another of those fancy extract products. Its manufacturer says it delivers pineapple, and pineapple is very much delivered in the flavour here. It's not extremely sweet, which is good, but it's not exactly multi-dimensional either. Apricot and white plum, maybe? Otherwise it's quite a generic tropical character. Which isn't to say it's a bad beer. This is beautifully refreshing and dangerously session-coded. Once I gave up trying to pick the flavour apart, I was quite content to neck it, and enjoyed doing so. This is a super-clean IPA brewed to Lineman's usual high standards, and aptly named.

In the absence of any double IPAs for this round, I'm finishing on a black one, again from Lineman. I Might Be Wrong is 6.5% ABV and headlines Citra, Mosaic and Columbus hops. I thought dankness might result from that, but we seem to be on the New England side of black IPA, alas. There's no hard bitterness, and instead a softer peach and plum flavour with a seasoning of red summer berries is all that the hops do. Similarly, there's little by way of roast, only a mild toasty bite at the very end. Where you get your money's worth is the texture: it's beautifully smooth and very easy to drink. That's not what I, personally, want from a black IPA -- give me the bite -- but I accept it's a valid approach. Black IPAs are rare and to be treasured, not nit-picked. But maybe ramp up the dank next time, yeah? For me.

I'll draw a line under proceedings there, and hope there'll be enough for another round-up before too long. On a statistical note, this is quite a good showing for the west-coast style beers. The revival seems to be bubbling along steadily, which is a positive sign.