Tea time

Talk about working slowly through a beer range. I enjoyed Digital IPA, brewed at BrewDog for New Zealand's Yeastie Boys, in the first half of 2016. Now I've finally got around to taking a second one for a spin: Gunnamatta, another IPA, this time with added Earl Grey tea. This one is a murky pale orange colour with little more than a desultory effort at a head. It smells like a straightforward American-style pale ale, if perhaps a little old-fashioned, all orange candy on a caramelised malt base. The flavour continues in this fashion: plain drinking, lightly citric, though it does introduce the tea right at the beginning. I had been expecting this to be a bathtime blast of bergamot, but it's much more subtle. The tannins come through pleasingly, adding a classic tea-ness to the whole thing, the bergamot oil arriving right at the end, brushing past the back of the palate on its way out.

Whereas Digital was all about the hop fireworks, this is much more refined: delicate and refreshing like, well, a good cup of Earl Grey. We have to gloss over the unreasonably high ABV of 6.5%. It's good to see a brewer use an extra ingredient to enhance the base product without letting the novelty take over. Another quality effort from Yeastie Boys; give me 18 months more and I'll try the third one.

The one and the zero

Digital IPA is the first Yeastie Boys beer I've ever had. It has been popping up in lots of places around Dublin lately and I caught up with it at Alfie Byrne's.

5.7% ABV and a perfectly clear gold colour, this stuff is New Zealand in a glass. It has all of that spicy, peppery hop blast that switches over into ripe mango mid-sip and continues in this binary fashion -- spicy and juicy -- all the way along. The firm body helps the hop flavours do their thing, but it's so clean it could still pass for being a much lower-strength beer. I got a tiny touch of butane or diesel in the finish, those crazy kiwi hops again.

More than anything this is an entertaining beer. I'm guessing from the supreme freshness it was actually brewed somewhat closer to home than Wellington -- I understand some of that work happens in the UK these days (at BrewDog, say my always-reliable commenters below). But it certainly does a great job as an ambassador for its purported country. I'd love it if a beer could taste so unmistakeably of Ireland as this does of New Zealand.