Light verse

Three new beers from Heaney Brewery to round the week off.

Correct Me If I'm Wrong, with the brewery's sober logo playfully scrambled on the label, is a "farmhouse ale", which I'm taking to mean a saison. Reading that it's brewed with sichuan pepper made me do an involuntary approving lip-pucker. It pours hazy and golden, with a short-lived head. The aroma is all fruit and no spice, though still attractive, with cool fresh pear and lychee. It's surprisingly thin for 5.9% ABV, and I'm not sure it's conditioned the way it should be, feeling a bit lifeless, especially for a (maybe) saison. The flavour is different again: florally sweet rather than fruity, and the spice is no more than one would get from a light ginger beer. And nothing else happens: after an initial burst of flavour, it fades to nothing, and seems almost watery, which is all wrong for the style and strength. I had thought this would be much more interesting but it's a bit of a damp squib. The brewery may have been over-cautious, seeking to be creative without being weird. Never a good idea and I hope they don't do it again.

The other two are in more established styles. Whatever You Think Yourself is the most Northern Irish way of telling someone you think their idea is bad, so it's a bit of a worry for it to be the name of a hazy IPA. "tropical yearning, the ghost of a pineapple's ambition" as part of the description gives us the seriousness of tone intended by the beer. It's a pale orange colour and fully opaque, with an aroma which is strongly pithy, not tropical. It's another light one for the strength, this time up at 6% ABV. The pith is loud and proud in the flavour, very similar to the fibrous underskin of a big jaffa. I doubt Seamus would approve of such intense orangeism. Next to this is a rough gritty side; a regular stumbling block for hazy IPA. It doesn't mean the beer is unpleasant, but it does remove any possibility of it being soft, juicy or tropical. Drinking this is a bit of a workout, and I can recommend it only to those who want their hazy IPAs with a big whack of bitterness as the main feature. Personally, Heaney, I'd have given it a whirl in the centrifuge to clean it up, but wh...

Not a great opening pair, then. Surely redemption must come with the export stout? This is the sort of solidly traditional beer style with which Heaney has already proven its worth. I was immediately on guard when Lamp Light poured more of a dark garnet colour than proper black. Still, the aroma is decent, with the same rich fudgey quality as found in modern classics Leann Folláin and Nocturne. The flavour does not lack darkness, I'm happy to say, opening on quite an intense black-toast roastiness. This is balanced, quickly, by a softer milk chocolate character, which is then contrasted in turn by a leafy green hop bitterness, which is the often-forgotten piece of the Proper Stout puzzle. Again, though, it's weirdly thin-bodied for its 6% ABV, and I'm starting to think that may be a Heaney trait. This one, even more than the others, would have benefited from a greater heft; something to chew on. Here, however, that's a mere niggle. This is a damn decent stout, and I was right to think that the brewery would get the fundamentals right. Export stout is one of my favourite beer styles in general and I welcome this example of it. The process maybe needs some fine tuning, but no more than that.

Redemption indeed, then. I can't help thinking that Heaney really should put less work into trying to be a craft-era brewery and stick to playing the hits. Lamp Light would certainly be an excellent addition to its bottled range. Imagine a choice of three top-notch microbrewed Irish export stouts in glass. We wouldn't know ourselves.