Hungary for company

They're a gregarious lot at Budapest's Mad Scientist. Today's three beers are all collaborations with various other parties.

Mad in Black is that unusual creature, a black pilsner, and has been brewed for the Fekete Zaj music festival. Traditional dark lager styles exist, but the brewery has chosen not to apply them here. In the glass, it's not really black, more of a chocolate brown. It looks a bit muddy and unsavoury with that. The aroma is mostly plainly crisp, like an ordinary pilsner, but with a little of the flowers and fruit I associate with the better sorts of black IPA. The flavour goes that way too. Here, the dark elements take the lead, mixing an almost acrid burnt grain quality with a herbal and floral hop side which is part pot pourri and part tarragon marinade. It's 5% ABV but feels heavier, which erodes the best part of any clean lager elements. Altogether, I don't think it quite works. The burnt side is too harsh and the hopping is gimmicky. It doesn't resemble a pilsner, nor any more typical types of dark lager. I don't know what it is, but it didn't suit me.

A bar and restaurant (and spa) called Zuzmó! collaborated with Mad Scientist on Burger IPA. It's one of those mostly-clear ones, presumably not aiming for full-on murk, but not succeeding at total clarity either. My can had a best-before of August 2027, so freshness should not have been a problem, but it tasted instantly off, like the zing had died and been replaced by a gloopy fruit-cordial sweetness. That's accentuated by a dry and savoury sesame-seed husk quality. It's clean, but dull, finishing indecently quickly and lacking the substance of the previous beer, even though it's the same strength. Maybe it's designed to pair with burgers and therefore isn't meant to taste of much, though the brewery's touting of its Nelson SubZero hopping suggests otherwise. I found this mostly inoffensive but very forgettable. Its overwrought label suggests a lot more is going on than there turned out to be. 

By some bizarre circumstance of licensing, Mad Scientist brews a large range of tie-in beers with Warner Bros and its subsidiary, New Line Cinema. So there's the Matrix beers, the Lord of the Rings beers, the House of the Dragon beers, and this, referencing New Line's OG IP: Freddy Krueger Bloodlust. In keeping with Freddy's status as one of the girls, it's pink. My guess was beetroot, but black carrot juice is how this horror special effect was actually done, and there's blood orange in it too. The brewery has the neck to describe it as a "west coast" IPA. It smells like white lemonade: sugar-sweet and broadly citrus adjacent. The orange additive is its whole deal, making it taste primarily like Orangina. Shake the bottle, wake the dead serial killer. Again, it's much lighter than the stunt ABV of 6.66% suggests it should be, but here that's less of a problem. This is all bright and fruity refreshment, and is about as scary as, well, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

I associate Mad Scientist more with the candified, non-sour, sour beers, of which it turns out a great deal. This set indicates that they don't really get hops, doing that side of recipe design weirdly, poorly, or not at all, respectively. However, they still have friends, though perhaps it's telling that none of those are other breweries.

Not such a broad church

Third Barrel's Dublin pub, The Christchurch, is continuing to do its most important job of bringing us new Third Barrel beers as and when they happen. And they've been happening a bit, recently.

The official description for Nothing To See Here is pineapple, but the combination of Galaxy and Idaho 7 tasted more like mango and lychee to me. Still, you get where we're coming from: think tropical. Although a hazy IPA, it's only tokenistically hazy. It shows its 6% ABV in both the texture -- full-on NEIPA fluff -- and the taste, which includes an assertive stonefruit-skin bitterness along with the plentiful soft and ripe fruit. I liked this bitter bite in what's otherwise a cuddly bear of an IPA, fading into tropicality after the initial smack. Third Barrel excels at this kind of thing, so rather than try to reach an insightful conclusion I'll just say that if you like how they go about their business in general then this is them doing what they do. As you were.

I've started to read "west coast IPA" as more of an untested claim than a description when I see it. The brewing industry has driven me to this. So when I ordered Westbound & Down my first, sad, task was to assess it for style fidelity on your behalf. This one stacks up, I'm happy to say. It's pretty damn clear and a nicely deep shade of gold. It wears the bitterness up front, with pine intensity reaching almost zinc-like minerality in the foretaste. That's invigorating and mouthwatering, just as big bittering hops ought to be. The beer is impressive at only 5.9% ABV: it could pass for a notch or two stronger. There's further complexity on offer after a couple of minutes, the pine turning to a softer herbaceous dank and a contrasting note of mango and pineapple. I found surprisingly little citrus going on, but it's not really missed. West coast test passed, with room for error. Lovely stuff.

New under the Hopsicle label is Juicebox Hero. We're back on the haze here, and this time there are no compromises. The flavour is packed with huge notes of vanilla, mixed with clanging garlic. There's a stated goal of being sessionable, and it's only 4.3% ABV, but it's thick and gloopy, and unpleasantly hot, so while the numbers are on point, the taste is not. To be fair to it, there was a faint echo of fresh and juicy mandarin, hiding at the back of the flavour, but not enough to redeem the beer overall. This is pure New England napalm, which I'm sure has its fans but I'm not one of them. Marks off, then, for missing the mark on the sort of beer it's supposed to be, and for general unpleasant murk qualities. I hope the Cork bars who commissioned it were happy with what they got.

Still, a two-out-of-three hit rate isn't bad, as these things go, and the one miss was more my personal taste than any flaw in the brewing. It might have been nice to have something other than IPA, however.

Kind of blue

Before moving on to more pressing matters, a nod of approval for the label design of the two latest beers from Lineman. The calming blues and purple invoke placid oceans and mellow night skies. They make it clear from the outset that you're dealing with a class act.

But it's the liquid that counts, of course. The first liquid is a pale ale called Cirrus. Strata and Citra is the no-messing hop combination, and there's no messing in the aroma. Citra's zingy grapefruit is to the fore, but Strata's pineapple and mango isn't far behind. It's a smell that promises a good time. And it doesn't renege on that: my three-week-canned example tasted bangingly fresh, again leading on the bitterness but leaving room for the softer tropicality behind. It is hazy, though, so you need to be prepared for a little vanilla sweetness which I didn't exactly welcome, but which didn't ruin the mood, at the same time. Both kinds of fruit last long into the finish, buoyed up on a full and soft body, thanks to the generous 5.1% ABV, and there's a pinch of savoury herbal bitterness right on the end, just to fill in the final blank on what hops taste like. This is pure understated brilliance, and a reminder of how hazy pale ale ought to taste, all the time.

From pale ale we accelerate all the way up to double IPA, and Lilac Chaser: 8.5% ABV, a collaboration with American brewery Barclay, and hopped with Mosaic, Krush and Maui Nelson. This, too, is hazy, though a shade darker than the previous. For all the busyness of the hop bill, its aroma doesn't exactly sing, but mumbles vaguely about candied peel and marmalade. Sadly, those hops are similarly muted in the flavour. I expected a colourful celebration but instead it's a somewhat soupy mélange of undiluted orange squash, lime jelly and hot Skittles. Like the beer above, it does feature both sharp citrus and sweet tropicals, but neither of them zings. While the boozy heat isn't oppressive, I think it does drown the hops out, whereas it should be accentuating them. I've had much worse double IPAs, and this one isn't at all technically flawed, but it's not especially joyful and ended up being a bit of a chore to chew through. The principle is sound, but the execution needs work.

The matchy labels made me think I had two of a kind on my hands here, but it was not to be. With no middle-ground IPA in the set, I'm actually a little surprised that the pale ale suited me better than the double IPA. Maybe it's a lesson in using solidly GenX-compatible hops instead of whatever "Maui Nelson" is supposed to signify. Tch. Kids these days.

City latest

To Urban Brewing, where strictly speaking there were more beers than I had time for. I had to deploy the seldom-used flight protocol: just wee glasses, thanks.

The first was Czech Pale Lager. The description wasn't more forthcoming, but it's 5% ABV, so I guess it's a 12° ležák, in Czech terms. It's properly clear and golden, and well able to hold a head, even in the taster glass. It seems the brewer has studied how Pilsner Urquell is loaded up with diacetyl but gets away with it, and decided that they want a piece of that action. The bang of butter off yer wan, starting on an aroma that's pure Kerrygold and candyfloss, and quite off-putting with it. The flavour begins clean and plain, but after a second the sweet side comes roaring in and does not stop. Urquell offsets this with generous amounts of Saaz hops, and while I detect a certain grassiness here, it's nowhere near a counterbalance. Maybe with a proper measure I would have got used to the butter, but this sample would get some seriously constructive feedback on the lager basics if it showed up at a homebrew competition.

Next to it is the tautological Weissbier Hefeweizen. It's not very hefe, being only barely hazed. It's a decently strong 5.1% ABV but feels very light and is simply spoken. There's a mild smear of squashy banana and a pinch of clove spice, but all quite low-key. After the diacetyl onslaught of the previous beer it was something of a relief. You get a proper weissbier flavour profile and generous champagne-like fizz, but in a light and easy-going package. I missed out on the Urban Brewing terrace this summer, but this would have been the ideal beer to enjoy on it, from a proper half-litre vase, of course.

Urban's English IPA is 5.6% ABV, so White Shield, then? Not quite. It feels a bit like an American brewer's idea of English IPA: "they don't really put hops in them". This beautifully bright rose-gold chap is heavy and grainy, almost leaning to the syrupy Special Brew side of malt-forward. There's nothing I'd call hop flavour, exactly, but there's an effect, a dry metallic rasp with a tannic bitterness and a silage funk. Letting it sit on the palate, it suggests some marmalade and lime pith, but that's faint. Still, it's not bland, and the mineral tang lasts pleasingly long into the finish. It's wonderful that Urban has decided to make one of these: few would. However, I'm not going to be demanding it as a regular. There's a reason this kind of beer went out of fashion, once hops had got better.

The flight landed with Cherry Saison. I thought this was going to be pink but it's a much more grown-up dark copper colour, and 5.1% ABV. A slightly liqueurish sweet cherry aroma starts us off, contrasted by a surprise spice in the foretaste. This tastes like lambic! It has a gunpowder pop, followed by more traditional saison straw and burlap dryness. The lambic theme continues and concludes with a hard waxy bitter finish. Cherry? I'm guessing whatever ravenous savage of a yeast they used put paid to any actual cherry flavour. But this is a beauty nonetheless. Some "oooh, I'll have the cherry beer" punters will be getting a shock. Serious mixed-fermentation heads can nod solemnly, secure in the knowledge that Urban Brewing is still our space. Sometimes.

Four beers on a flight and five on the menu: I had to pick one at the start as my finishing pint, and I went with the German Pils. There's a little haze here, but that's OK, and the head is appropriately fine and frothy. I was three beers past the Czech lager, but the diacetyl fairy has visited again, and here it's much less excusable. A bit like in the English IPA, the hops are more dry and mineral-like than actually flavoursome, and they don't stand up well to the central butterscotch. I thought that 5.3% ABV would add richness but it's just stodge, taking further from any sense of crispness that ought to be the hallmark of German-style pilsner. This isn't a bad beer, but as a small-batch take on German pils, it's not a great effort.

Big props to any brewpub that doesn't have a hazy IPA on the roster in this benighted day and age. And that saison is exactly the sort of surprising playful fun I enjoy from this brewery, and high-turnover brewpubs generally (we'll miss them when they're gone; support your local), but maybe lager isn't Urban's milieu, and putting them out two at a time is not a good idea.

Two times six

6% ABV is a reasonable strength for an IPA. Today I've got two new releases from DOT Brew, both in that style at that strength.

The first boasts of its specific hops, and is called Citra Strata Citra. It's bright yellow and a little on the hazy side, though I suspect isn't supposed to appear fully murked. Double the Citra is apparent from the aroma, which is predominantly zesty lemon, with only a little of Strata's softer tropicals. The first sip brought a surprise: this is thin. I was expecting a decent buzz of booze and a malt platform to propel the hops, but got neither. Instead, it's rather basic. The citric side of the hops is no stronger than a faint oily peel, while the fruit element is apple and white peach: plain and a little watery. It finishes quickly and is clean and refreshing, but that's not really what I'm after in a hop-fronted IPA of this gravity. The hops don't really get the showcase promised in the name, and while the beer itself is fine, I really expected more from it. Them's the breaks.

I don't know why that got the small can while the next beer, more of a novelty recipe, got the bigger one. This is Gone Soft. It's anyone's guess what the hops are, but the special name-defining ingredient is lactose. It looks quite different to the previous, being a darker orange with copious amounts of foam. The aroma is orangey, like a cordial, though less like an ice lolly than I was expecting. And again it's on the thin side. Neither the basic gravity nor the unfermentable milk sugar is beefing up this fellow. The orange theme continues in the flavour, and is subtly zesty. It's a fine line between subtle and bland, and I think this beer stays on the right side of it. I can taste what the lactose brings and am impressed by how understated it is. There's a faint hint of vanilla, but it pairs with the hop zing rather than fighting or suffocating it. Everything else about the beer is clean, and there's a little herbal or cola spice right at the end, lending it extra personality. While not a hugely different beer to the previous one, it goes about its business much more successfully, though I can't tell you exactly how that works.

Well that was an interesting experiment, and I'd love to know if these were both produced by the same contract brewery. They have much in common but I think Gone Soft uses its hops to better effect, or at least doesn't tout them as the beer's whole deal.

Ugh, puns...

Arriving late for summer, Witty Banter is a new limited edition witbier from Dew Drop Brewhouse in Kildare. It seems to be a very orthodox take, using orange peel and coriander, and one always has to ask: in a world that includes Hoegaarden, why bother?

440ml barely touched the sides of my enormous Hoegaarden glass. If the recipe is orthodox, they've immediately veered from the archetype with the clarity: it's barely hazy at all. The aroma offers lots of Belgian banana, though the fruit and herb additives are apparent as well, adding a citric/spicy bite.

Though a full 5% ABV it's a bit thin, and the carbonation is lacking. The flavour is clean, however, with the coriander taking the lead. The fruity esters are minimal, which is good, though the orange peel element is relegated to the finish, and it would be better if that were more prominent. It's a bit simple, overall, though I guess that's the nature of the style: had it been brimming with complexity, it wouldn't be a proper witbier.

This is a proper witbier, and if you are looking for an Irish-brewed Hoegaarden substitute, it's well suited. I don't think it's an improvement on the original, though.

Swede as

Sweden's Brewski is one of those breweries whose beer is imported en masse to Ireland. Their neat, slim, white-label cans are always in my eyeline when I'm browsing in Craft Central. Occasionally, I give in to the tempatation to bring some of them home.

I don't know what's behind the name Oaked Pavel. Is it a pun on "oaked panel"? It's an oaked pilsner, anyway, a style I only really know from DOT Brew's takes on it, which are generally enjoyable. This one is a pale golden colour and lightly hazed, smelling non-woody, of crisply clean lager malt and lightly grassy noble hops. Not a thing wrong with that. At 5.1% ABV it has a decent heft, and the mouthfeel takes full advantage: it's almost chewy. That means there's lots of room for flavour complexity but, alas, it doesn't make so much use of that. It does, in all fairness, stay true to its roots as a Czech-style lager, with the cleanness and malt-forward subtlety that good ones show. The oak, too, is subtle, but perhaps a little too subtle. Obviously, nobody wants a big explosion of splinters and diacetyl, but the wood here presents as a sort of dry sandpaper roughness which isn't enough to ruin the beer but adds nothing positive either. This would have been more enjoyable if delivered unadorned. They'd have needed a different name for it, though.

You can tell I picked three from a huge range of Brewski beers, because we move from pilsner to a favourite adjacent lager style: Schwarzbier. Schwarzer Drachen is 5.3% ABV and properly black, with a generous head of off-white foam. The aroma gives little away, only a mild spice, like red lemonade or ginger ale. The flavour is more interesting, centring on a tarry burnt effect, all charred wood and flinty mineral. The best examples follow this up with the biting green bitterness of noble hops, and this one gets there eventually, but it's a bit slow and subtle; the clean carbonic dryness being the only other feature of the middle. The hops don't hang around long either, leading briskly to a simple dry-roasted finish. This is pretty good, and it's always great to see unfashionable Schwarzbier from a trendy craft brewery (or at least as trendy as they get these days), but it's no classic. They've nailed the dry and crisp lager side, but the fun complexities of hops and dark grain are somewhat absent.

I don't normally pick New England-style IPAs on rounds like this, but look at this label. What is going on there? Not only does Secular Haze have a joy of a graphic, but it's a collaboration with the shop where I bought it. Once poured, it doesn't look anything special, being an opaque middling yellow with a busy head which fades quickly to a thin skim. The flavour is a tropical delight, piling in a fruit salad of pineapple, mango, white grape, apple, pear, mandarin and more. Lychee? That too. It's a pure and innocent sing-song of a flavour, and while the beer is heavy at 6.3% ABV, there's no boozy heat, nor nasty savoury garlic nor overly sweet vanilla. There's enough of a fruit panoply to mean it's far from boring, but it only does one thing. Rhapzody and Riwaka hops are how it does it. I approve. Here's a beer I recommend to haze sceptics who might want to dip their toes back in the water; it's one of the good ones, and I'm as surprised as you are.

As it happened, while I was working through that lot, the brewery was in town for the Dublin Beer Festival and staged a tap takeover at The Christchurch.

There's a Brewski flagship called Mango Feber, a fruited double IPA and the first of their beers I ever drank, back in 2015. It now exists in multiple variants, and the pub had tapped up one of the Session IPA versions, the one at 4.2% ABV (I think; the tap badge differs). Maybe it's unfair of me to have ordered this without being up to speed with the original, but it wasn't a good advert for re-trying it. This hazy yellow affair is extremely watery and the main flavours are dregs and sadness. There is, to be clear, no mango and no hops, just a series of disharmonious twangs on a thin fizzy base. It's like someone sucked all the good bits from the keg, leaving me the unpleasant residue. Maybe this sort of thing flies with the haze-lovers, but if so, they are in serious need of recalibration, or a smack.

That does seem to have been an aberration, and we were back on more familiar territory with Triple Berry Pie. No surprises here: it's named after a dessert, looks like a dessert and tastes like a dessert. They have the temerity to call it "Berliner weisse" but it's as far from Berlin as Stockholm is. It's a deep purple colour and very sweet, loaded up with jammy fruit sugar, while a mild berry tartness is as close to sour as it gets. Where beers like this can tend to be quite gloopy, this goes the opposite way. It's only 4% ABV and quite thin on it: I would have tolerated extra sweetness if it meant more body too. All told, it's a bit of fun and possibly more entertaining to look at than to drink, but you know what you're getting before you order it.

Every tap takeover should have a stronger option as the finisher, and here it was Night Pusher, an imperial stout. No compromises in this 10% ABV job, with its only gimmick being plenty of American hops. The aroma is tarry, rich, and quite appropriately warming. The texture is calorific too, all creamy and soft. Big bitterness in an imperial stout always brings a smile to my face and this one goes all-in. The bitterness starts as dark chocolate, and there are even some mild rosewater topnotes, to give it balance and colour. That gets quickly subsumed by a growing herbal liquorice quality, giving Jägermeister and Fisherman's Friend, before a full-on hard wax finish. Textbook stuff: complex yet unfussy; extreme but balanced. Cans are readily available, and fans of grown-up stout should not be put off by the non-copyright-infringing cartoon raccoon engineer on the label.

Overall, this was something of a mixed bag, which I guess scans for a brewery which produces such a range of different things. They have the ability, but the choice to brew degenerate styles, or pull silly tricks with proper ones, is where they let themselves down. The hit rate is good enough for me to be back for more, at least.