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.

Order on the chaos

Zichovec Pivovar is one of those European breweries with a vast array of beers on sale in my neck of the woods, so I get to pick what looks interesting from their range. Here are three that caught my eye.

For starters, Sea Buckthorn and Ginger Gose. I'm not generally convinced by sea buckthorn as a beer ingredient; I don't think it does much. Ginger, though? And salt and juniper? Irresistible. I had no idea what it would look like, so was surprised to see it pouring opaque and orange from the half-litre can, like a glass of breakfast juice. There's a herbal bath-bomb spice to the aroma, as well as a suggestion of sourness. Only 4.6% ABV means it's light, and my word it's refreshing. What was meant to be a first sip cleared the top third of the glassful. Neither spice nor salt are domineering, but they're both present, and perfectly balanced. There's a gentle sparkle and a light kettle-sour tang on the end. Imagine Tangfastics or similar sour candy, but without the sugary gumminess, just all the zing. I still don't get what the sea buckthorn is contributing, but the salt and ginger are obvious without being overly loud, and I think I can taste the herbal bitterness of the juniper too. It's the combined effect that takes this beyond gimmick into a genuinely worthwhile recipe for a light summer beer which bears copying. Serve cold and quaff heartily.

Of course I had to include an IPA, and of course it was going to be the west-coast New Zealand-hopped one: Sauvin Attack. This was a day past its best-before when I drank it, but since that's only six months after packaging, I'm not too concerned. There's a little too much haze in this pale gold job, making me question its coastal credentials from the outset. The aroma is intact, though I will admit it may have been better when fresh. There's still plenty of flinty white wine and a softer layer of honeydew and kiwi fruit. 6.5% ABV should mean it's a good bit heavier than the last beer, and it does have extra density, but like the gose, it's maddeningly moreish, begging to be thrown back in one or two gulps. Again it's the balance of flavours that does it, tasting firmly and distinctly of tropical fruit, cool cut grass and a twist of citrus peel, but dovetailed together with a precision which means nothing is too dominant or lost in the mix. The carbonation is exactly enough to bring the flavours to life while avoiding making the beer gassy or sharply carbonic. I might question the style claim a bit. As well as the haze, it's softer and fruitier than west coast IPA should be by rights; the bitterness is dialled back and you can forget any caramel malt. Taxonomic quibbles aside, though, it's utterly delicious and shows off Nelson Sauvin brightly and cleanly, despite being less than completely fresh.

My working theory is that the brewery comes from a lager culture and probably employs mostly lager-trained brewers, so precision and top-end drinkability come as standard. So the next beer would be a challenge. Though our ABV remains at 6.5%, the gravity leaps from 14° to 18° for 13 Years of Innovation, so I was already expecting it to be sweet before I noticed there's vanilla in it. That's with coconut, black cherry and raspberry, so no surprise that it's purple. That summer fruit combination is front and centre in the aroma, all candy rather than real tart berries. Unsurprisingly, the texture is creaminess, and although it claims to be "double sour" it's barely sour at all. The vanilla isn't quite at ice cream levels, but it's not far off, and serves merely to accentuate the fruit sweetness rather than make the beer taste of actual vanilla. The raspberry presents as pink sauce, of course. You do get cherry, and there's coconut too. And yet... I've drank a fair few beers like this, from the central and eastern part of out fair continent, and this is one of the cleaner, crisper examples. It's sweet, but not sticky with it, and while it doesn't have the amazing drinkability of the other two, it could have been much, much worse, given the spec. That's a win.

They're all wins. I've come out of this sampling session with a new respect for the Zichovec hussle. I will be buying more of their wares before long; fresh ones too, following the recent branding update. It was remiss of me to not include a lager in this lot. That will be corrected next time, if I remember.

Together alone

I'm all in favour of small breweries diverging from the ubiquitous craft styles, but a Rotbier, Rascals? I'm not, generally, a fan of Nuremberg's totemic red lager. This example at the Rascals taproom, Pilot #155, is 5.2% ABV and immediately departs from the Franconian standard by being a gorgeous clear shade of copper. Clean look, clean taste: primarily crisp with a hint of near-Schwarzbier toasted grain. Only then does the caramel and red liquorice creep in, and while that taste profile does not make me jump for joy, it's subtle enough here to be non-problematic. Hooray for non-problematic. This has just the right balance of unusual features versus standard well-made lager. I had a couple of pints on the terrace on a sunny Friday afternoon and I can tell you it is exceptionally well suited to that use case. Down at the Altstadt they could pick up a few tips from this.

York brewery Brew York had not crossed my path before, though they've been in business for ten years. As part of the birthday celebrations it collaborated with Rascals on a New England IPA called Kindred Flame. It's a middle-of-the-road 5.7% ABV and only wanly hazy, going for witbier translucency over beaten-egg emulsion. Both aroma and flavour, to my mind, lean more to the west coast. Azacca, El Dorado, Krush and Mosaic are tropical-candy hops one and all, yet there's a sharp Citra-like bite at the front of the flavour here, all lime peel and lemon zest. It's slightly softer behind this, but soft like lemon meringue pie, rather than juicy mango or pineapple. It's not a bad beer, by any means, but doesn't taste like a high-end hazy IPA for the joyless grumps who idolise Trillium and The Alchemist. You know the sort. I'd like to say it's a best-of-both-worlds situation, but I would prefer if it went one way or the other. This middle space, vanilla-but-citric, is a little lacking in positive attributes. It's fine, but a guest-assisted birthday beer ought to be more impressive.

It seems Rascals is at its creative best when left to noodle on its own pilot kit. Maybe if Brew York came over, they might learn about making interesting beer.