Capri-Sun, le déluge

Let's get this over with.

Anyone paying attention to the speciality beer market in Ireland lately will have noticed that we've picked up a fruit lager habit from the UK. The shelves are awash with them, all 4% ABV and in ranges that seem mostly centred on peach and blood orange. I tried a couple of them during the summer and, unsurprisingly, wasn't very impressed. With so many more to get through, I've decided to do it one post, ripping off the band-aid, so to speak.

I started at the O'Hara's end, and the remaining two from their Bohem line. Bohem Lager Cut With Peach is their head-on take on the archetype, Jubel, although I've never had that and it isn't sold here, so I'm not in a position to compare. This looks as one would expect, pale and mostly clear. The peach additive is very obvious from the aroma, and resembles a cosmetic more than real fruit. That could have made the beer sticky, but instead it's quite thin. The lager is present as fizz but very little else: there's no malt or hop character here, and I suspect that may be something of a theme going forward. There's the peach syrup, however, as advertised and subtle as a brick. It's not horrible, but I didn't find it enjoyable. The one-dimensional taste might be forgivable if there was more beer substance to the product. As is, there's very little to like here.

The blood orange one was covered in the post linked to above, and the Bohem trilogy is completed by Bohem Lager Cut With Lemon. Same visuals as the above, though the aroma is rather more subtle, hinting at sweet lemon flavouring, rather than honking it out. It's still a watery lager base, of course, and this time the additive doesn't do much to offset the blandness. It's the effect you get from a slice of lemon floating in your mineral water, and if that's what you want from your beer then you're in luck. I think I preferred the low-key approach here to the strong perfume of the peach, but that doesn't mean this one is good. It strikes me that anyone who actually wanted a lemon-flavoured lager would want it more lemony than this. If you're not going all-in with the syrup, what's the point?

The other series I started in the previous post was Wicklow Wolf's Cúpla Beers, with the peach one. Now I'm staring down the barrel of two more. Cúpla Beers: Lemon is as you might expect. It looks like a cloudy lemonade and smells similar, with a little bit of zest and a heap of sugar. The flavour opens with that, including an almost saccharine metallic tang, but it doesn't double down on the syrup. I found the peach version retained a trace of proper lager in the background and this does too, though you have to look for it. That's not at all to say it tastes like proper beer. I found the fruit flavour builds quite quickly, eventually gumming up the palate, and I was glad it's only a 330ml can. With all the low-calorie, low-sugar guff on the label, I suspect they intend customers to drink more than one of these at a time. I wouldn't.

Instead, and probably not advisedly, I moved right along to Cúpla Beers: Tropical. What does that mean? The label helpfully tells us that's passionfruit, pineapple and mango, presumably delivered in separate tubs rather than one big drum. I liked the look of this one: it's clearer and darker than the lemon, so at least looks more like beer. The aroma is very artificial, however, and likewise the flavour doesn't taste like any of the advertised fruit. Instead it's pure candyshop. I'm getting Jelly Babies, with overtones of Fruit Pastilles and the saccharine tang again, here calling to mind some weird off-brand chew sweets from the more disreputable sort of convenience store. Ghastly business. It's honkingly sweet, messily flavoured and utterly artificial. I defy anyone but the most hardened Kopparberg drinker to get through more than one of these. Ack. I've honestly tried to give all of these a fair assessment, and point out their positive sides. This has none. I take back any suggestion that going "all in with the syrup" is a good idea.

Rye River, to its credit, puts its name and logo on the cans of its series, albeit in a missable pale grey on white. They've called it 225° and it's "the angle of change", apparently. The change from proper beer, perhaps. Anyhoo, we'll start with 225° Peach. It's the pretty standard medium gold colour, with perhaps a slight greyish cast. The peach aroma is fantastically colourful, and enjoyably perfumish, missing any artificial twang. It's heavy textured and a bit syrupy, but the peach taste, like the aroma, is remarkably real. There's a fleshy sumptuousness up front, like ripe and juicy stonefruit. It finishes quickly, however, and where the competition sometimes put a bit of crisp lager character, here there's nothing. The peach is great, but that's all there is. A dash of Archers schnapps and a splash of soda water would give you a similar effect. Probably. Don't actually try that. Drink this if you like things -- but not necessarily beers -- that are peach flavoured.

After the peach, there must be blood orange, though the boffins of Celbridge have decided that can't carry a beer by itself, hence 225° Blood Orange & Yuzu. They've lost the grey element, and this is a bright and sunny yellow shade. So far all of these have tasted at least somewhat like a soft drink, but this is the most Fanta of the lot. And I don't mean that woke, hazy yellow Fanta that it was forced to become in the 1990s; I mean the lurid neon-orange sticky stuff that was little more than sugar, water and tartrazine, which made a man of me before the EEC banned it. Probably. Anyway, fake orange is how this smells, and that is heavily the flavour. It's real sugar to begin with but turns unpleasantly to saccharine by the end. The word "yuzu" makes me think of calm, peaceful and above all ordered, Japanese arboriculture. This beer has none of that. At best it's a retro soda; at worst a cloying sticky mess of clagging, clashing sugary citrus goop. The callback to childhood soft drinks was pleasant, though, even if I doubt it's pitched at ageing GenXers. Sorry if that's not helpful, but you probably already know whether or not you'll be buying this. And I can guess which.

From there to 225° Pineapple & Grapefruit. Maybe the citrus will give us some bitterness, I hoped. Nope. There's precious little by way of grapefruit in this. They might have used plenty of it, but the pineapple sweetness drowns it out. That leaves it tasting pretty much like pineappleade, though I will confess that the last time I drank a glass of that, it was delivered by the mineral man and came in a thick returnable glass bottle, so we're in retro soda territory again. Like a fizzy soft drink, it's mostly watery and, well, fizzy. There's virtually no beer character in this, and nothing resembling complexity, despite two different headline additives. I will grant that its tropical styling makes it refreshing, and maybe even a bit fun, but there are more interesting colourful fruity booze drinks in this space. That a proper brewery is reaching for some of that action is a bit cringe, as the alcopop drinkers like to say.

The range finishes with a curveball. Maybe they've been deliberately aiming to reference the kids' drinks of the 1980s, because the last of the set is 225° Blue Raspberry, a flavour known only in these parts from Slush Puppies. Sadly, the beer isn't blue, though I will note on the visual side that this had the best head retention of any of the ones covered. The first sip reminded me of the other context for blue raspberry: bubblegum. It tastes exactly like one of those purple gum spheres with the candy shell coating. I'm now convinced Rye River is after the ageing GenXers. There's no other reason for this to exist. I mean, the intense cloying nature of it means it doesn't work as a refreshing beer, and it goes without saying that it doesn't taste of beer at all, least of all lager. We're leaning fully in to the late 20th century's candy and I have nothing else to say about it: either you're entertained by that, or you'll hate this beer. I guess with the phrase "Blue Raspberry" we shouldn't have expected anything else, but I'm still shocked by the brazenness of it.

"Brazen" is probably the best overall descriptor for the 225° set. They go hard with the flavouring and give no quarter to the beer side. That's an approach, though I don't know if it's within the spirit of this whole genre, where there's usually at least a token nod in the direction of actual beer.

Rí-Rá has just one contribution to the form, peach flavoured and with a horror of an AI-generated label. That's not how leaves work, you stupid clanker. Juicy Peach is more subtle than the other peach ones. The fruit doesn't quite shout, though it is unmistakably there, particularly in the aroma. On the flavour, it's muted; everything is muted, in fact. There's a very basic macrolager crispness: that's fizzy, with all the character of mineral water. There's no more than a dash of peach flavouring, which jumps quickly in then out of the taste, leaving it plain and dry at the end. Maybe I should be thankful that this isn't horribly sugared up, but I don't see the point of it. I suddenly have a new appreciation for Rye River's lash-in-the-syrup approach. At least that made me feel something.

The fruit lager phenomenon must be making enough of an impact in Ireland that Aldi (for whom the UK and Ireland are the same operation) decided we needed their take on Jubel as well. Confusingly, it says "Anti Establishment" on the side of the can, a reminder that their non-mainstream beer knock-offs were originally intended to copy BrewDog, of blessed memory.

Joiva Lager is the non-infringing name they've come up with, and we'll begin, of course, with the Peach Session. It smells very perfumey, though not specifically of peach, more a general fruity cosmetic or lip-balm vibe. One major point of difference is the texture: it's soft, at almost nitrogenated level, which really helps its drinkability. What doesn't help is the intense sweetness. As with the aroma, it's at a distant remove from real peach, while stopping short of saccharine chemical concentrate. This is more like a ready-made dessert or preserve; something that did involve real peaches somewhere early in the process. While it's a big sweet hit up front, it finishes decently quick and doesn't cloy as it goes along. It doesn't taste like proper lager, but if you are going to add the syrup to one, this has hit a fairly innocuous level of concentration.

Peach, as we have discovered, is the easy level. For today's finisher, at long last, it's Joiva Lager: Mango Session.  It's a pale chap, looking clear and innocent and yellow in the glass while smelling pleasantly cake-like, with essence from the baking aisle which could pass as tropical fruit, or a number of other sweet-treat-adjacent aromas. I will admit that it's been a long time since I've eaten a piece of actual mango, but I'm reasonably sure they don't taste like this. There's a strong element of girly cosmetics again, overly sweet and plainly beyond juice into processed concentrate. While it lacks any proper beer characteristics, it doesn't build unpleasantly, so ends up tasting like a drink-and-forget alcopop. That's a failure for a beer, but for a cheap supermarket ready-to-drink it's fine. File it with the Malibu cocktail knock-offs and everyone's happy.

I didn't think there would be eleven beers when I started this post. I sincerely hope I have, as the kids like to say, catched 'em all. However, I'm also painfully aware that brand extensions are very much a thing in this market, and of how easy it would be to make new versions of these using the same recipe but a different tub of gunk. Just give me the winter off, breweries. Please?

Up my Street

After a series of not-very-well-received (by me) "normal" beers, Wide Street makes a triumphant return to the sour game with Wildwood, a 5-year bourbon-aged affair, and a surprise find on the taps at The Porterhouse last month. It pours a gorgeous rose-gold shade and smells decadently of fine sherry: unmistakably oaked though without the honking vanilla of fresh bourbon.

The body is fuller than I would expect for a highly attenuated beer of just 5.5% ABV, and that gives it a pleasing slickness, helping accentuate the taste. The vinous theme continues, here more Burgundy than sherry, with notes of cherry, raspberry and redcurrant. And while it's plenty sharp, it's not harshly vinegary. The whole is mature, balanced and refined, reminding me somewhat of Rodenbach Classic. Excellent work, and a welcome return to form. I hope there's more like this waiting in the vessels at Ballymahon.

The brewery has, however, also produced another more mainstream offering, if you can call something badged as "west coast pils" that. Cheat Code is 5% ABV, hopped (generously, we hope) with Nectaron, and pours pale and quite hazy. The aroma immediately offers that fragrant, slightly floral, edge of stonefruit, where peach and apricot start to resemble lychee and white plum. Yum. Sometimes that indicates that this is really a pale ale in a thin disguise, but from the first sip this is clearly a proper pilsner.

A dry crisp bite precedes all flavour, and it's light bodied. Its fruity character comes entirely from the hops, and isn't a function of accidentally warm fermentation. That takes a moment or two to materialise, and isn't the juice-fest implied by the aroma. Instead, it's bitter, in quite a grassy, herbal, noble sort of way. I wasn't expecting that, but it's tasty. Although the buying guides for Nectaron all emphasise its tropical character, it is a descendent of Saaz, and I think that side of the family is manifesting in the flavour here. The grass tang coats the palate and gives the beer a surprisingly long finish, even with quite a thin body and little malt character. I had fun with this. It's first and foremost a well-crafted pilsner. Any modern hop colour on display is a bonus.

Two very different beers here, both excellent. Neither is an IPA, you say? Why, I hadn't noticed. I'm sure that's merely a coincidence.

Yes, today, Satan

Duvel's Tripel Hop IPA range is a fun bunch of beers, and I like that the brewery has resisted the urge to fire out new ones every couple of months. No need. The Citra and Cashmere regulars are plenty to enjoy. At the same time, I don't object to them being joined by Tripel Hop Krush, although I notice it is somewhat weaker than its 9.5% ABV siblings, and indeed regular Duvel, as it's only 8.4% ABV.

In the glass it's pale and hazy, as Duvel tends to be, and the dry-hopping doesn't leap out in the aroma, though there's a hint of tropical fruit in with the more typical Belgian fruit esters. The flavour mixes those two sides deftly. While it may be weaker in alcohol, it still tastes plenty strong, the warm fluffy malt mattress forming a firm base for all that follows. Krush's tropical candy effect lands on the palate simultaneously with a harder old-world hop bitterness and the white pepper and peachy apricot of an unmistakable Belgian fermentation. It's a contrast, but there's no clash, and it's neither a New England dessert IPA nor a sternly powerful Belgian thumper, but does show the good elements of both.  

I don't think it's quite as bright and bold as the other two in the series -- especially Cashmere -- but it belongs, bringing exactly the right mix of Belgian strong golden ale and American IPA. This used to be the future of beer, and now it's pleasingly retro. Either is fine with me, and I'm happy to wait for a few years with these three before a fourth version is created.

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.