New, but improved?

Another Radical Drinks promotional event for one of their American breweries took place in Urban Brewing last month. This time it was New Belgium's turn, with Export Manager Casey Kjolhede in attendance. Of course all is sweetness and light regarding the Colorado brewing icon's move from being ultra-ethical employee-owned to another brand in Kirin's "Lion Little World" portfolio, where it sits next to Little Creatures, Magic Rock and FourPure.

There were two new beers to try, beginning with Fat Tire White. I'm not a fan of the famous amber ale so approached this brand extension with scepticism. That seems justified at first: this is pale and sickly-looking even by witbier standards. The haze is half-hearted and the texture thin: surprisingly so at a generous 5.2% ABV. It therefore took me a while to get what this beer is about, but there's goodness within. The flavour is subtly complex, with lots of spice and a refreshing citrus spritz: they've used orange peel but the effect is more lemony. There's a base of crisp wheat and then some aftereffects of sweet wildflowers and a very Belgian estery funk. That sounds busy, but it's mellow, integrated and easy-going. I'd still opt for Hoegaarden, on texture grounds alone, but I deem this a valid alternative.

The muscle for the evening was provided by New Belgium Honey Orange Tripel. No half measures here: we're looking at a full-fat 10% ABV, and a serious, brooding, dark gold colour. Of course it has honey and orange flavours but they taste just like the ones found in regular tripel, not tacked-on as novelty for its own sake. Further cementing its credentials, it's warm without being hot; smooth, soft and very satisfying to drink: just like any good tripel, Belgian or otherwise. The Belgian esters just about perceptible in the wit are absent for this, and purists may miss them. I was happy with the overall cleanness I got in exchange.

It's only two beers, but so far it doesn't look like multinational ownership has ruined New Belgium.

Naturally I took the opportunity to explore some new Urban Brewing beers, beginning with a Yarrow Gruit. This wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped, the sweet meadowy herbal effect relegated to a very faint trace in the finish. From my limited experience of making hopless gruit beers, you really need to pile in the replacement ingredients and, as with hops, you get a better effect from using them in combination. The dominant feature here was a soft and sweet banana flavour, the result of La Chouffe yeast but making it taste like a weissbier. Rampant Belgian esters will drown out a lot of things, and the poor yarrow wouldn't have stood a chance. This was an inoffensive offering, but still disappointing.

The one that really impressed me on the night was Urban's Hoppy Red. This 4%-er looked awful -- a murky, muddy orange shade -- but the Mosaic and Amarillo absolutely sang. The aroma is a mix of fresh citrus zing and heavier oily dank, then the flavour follows that with classic grapefruit and mandarin characteristics. The malt keeps a respectful distance from these firecrackers, offering the merest of a suggestion of toffee, but you have to look for it. There's a simple elegance to this and if I hadn't been sampling my way through I could have consumed a lot of it. It's odd how rare this bright American hop thing is in Irish beers; it ought to be permanently in fashion.

A big thanks to the folks at Urban and Radical for the invite, and I'm glad to see the trickle of New Belgium into Ireland is bringing us new stuff. There must be something from the foeders due any day now.

Radical move

The distribution arm of Carlow Brewing Company, Radical Drinks, has added a couple of high-profile American breweries to its line-up, including Firestone Walker. Back in October they held an event at Urban Brewing to celebrate the visit of head brewer Matt Brynildson and it was a chance to taste a few of the FW beers I'd never had before.

That began with Luponic Distortion, specifically number 13 in this ever-evolving series of IPAs. Unlucky for me? No! They don't disclose what combination of hops go into each version but I'm guessing Sorachi Ace or something very similar plays a big part in this because here comes the coconut! When that fades there's a softer melon buzz, set on a body that's smooth and quite weighty for just 5.9% ABV: chicken feed as Californian IPAs go. There's even a little malt stickiness to balance the punchy hops. It's not a world-beater but it is a very decent, no-messing, American IPA.

Fashion caught up with us immediately afterwards, in the form of Mind Haze, the hazy IPA that has to be in everyone's portfolio. They've nailed the texture here: it's beautifully soft and fluffy. The flavour is quite muted, however. I got gentle wafts of peach, orange sorbet, and mild vanilla. The fruit builds a little as it goes, though forms nothing more intense than a mandarin orange by the end. Comparisons with Sierra Nevada's all-conquering Hazy Little Thing are inevitable, and I definitely don't consider Mind Haze to have the beatings of it. Maybe Luponic's aggressive hops spoiled me for it in advance.

The evening's wow factor was brought by a beer that I don't think is part of the import portfolio: Firestone Walker XXII. This is the annual release of brown ale devised by the winemakers whose farms surround the brewery. My history with it goes back a decade, to the bottle of XII that Chris brought to the 2009 Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival. This year it's 12.7% ABV. The caramel and coffee of the brown ale are still there, providing a baseline richness. It's then overlaid with an oaky Shiraz spice, floral Oloroso and herbal hippocras. A smooth alcohol heat turns the whole concoction into a glass of winter warmth. The barrel-ageing expertise is very apparent here.

While I was there, of course I tried what was new from Urban Brewing itself. These are long gone from the taps by now, but for the record:

Urban Grapefruit IPA is 6.2% ABV and arrived a clear golden colour. The aroma was a little off-putting, with a harsh sweaty character pervading. It tasted much better, thankfully. High carbonation and lots of real fruit give it an orangeade feel -- the traditional sort made from actual oranges. A sharp tang of pure grapefruit brings this to a crescendo in the finish. But before that there are hops too: nothing distinctive, but bringing a different kind of bitterness to the picture. I'm not normally a fan of these, but this was decent.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Urban Kveik IPA, not because of the farmhouse yeast, but because this was a mere 3.1% ABV. It's another clear one, and this time the aroma left me thinking of appleade. The texture of this was beautifully soft and silky while the flavour, though not massively complex, showed deliciously juicy nectarine and apricot. For the strength, it was a superbly satisfying beer and unlike anything else I've encountered. More beer of this density at this strength would be very welcome.

By way of postscript, brand new to the Radical Drinks range is a selection from New Belgium. These arrived shortly before news of the Colorado brewery's prospective takeover broke. It's just a handful out of the core range, and I was a bit excited as it's the biggest American craft brewer who had hitherto not been distributed in Ireland. The only packaged one new to me was Citradelic. This is a pale ale of 6% ABV, brewed with tangerine, orange and orange peel. It's a perfectly clear orange-amber colour in the glass. The carbonation is high but the flavour disappointingly muted. The two may be related. A dry crispbread effect is the first thing I taste, then there's a perfume waft -- not so much citrus as a concentrated floral quality. It tastes quite artificial. Fortunately it fades quickly and the best feature arrives: an aftertaste showing a buzz of real juicy tangerine, with an angry kick of bitter hops on the side. As with my first Fat Tire a few years back, I thought this would be better.

On draught we also get Voodoo Ranger Juicy Haze IPA. I thought I'd missed this on the initial release so was pleased when it showed up on the bar at The TapHouse. I was less pleased to find there's no juice, though it is at least hazy. Its taste is all savoury seeds -- sesame, poppy, caraway -- with a mild touch of vanilla. The texture is thick and cloying but not sweet, with lots of boozy heat from 7.5% ABV. This can't have been in the country more than a few months but it tastes stale. I'm blaming the recipe. Regardless, I got no brightness or freshness from my glassful, and this is absolutely not what one would expect from a beer calling itself juicy and shipped from Colorado. Dull, blunt and deeply disappointing.

Thanks to the folks at Carlow Brewing and subsidiaries, and Firestone Walker, for the hospitality. Among other things, I hope the production of more interesting beers at New Belgium lasts long enough for some to be exported in this direction.

Curiosity and the skunk

I went to the USA with a small mental list of well-known American beers that tend not to get described in the general beer discourse. They're frequently mentioned as background references, as though everyone already knows what they taste like, so other beers can be said to be like them, or indeed unlike them. I needed to try them for myself.

And at the top of that list was New Belgium Fat Tire, a beer which sits alongside Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Samuel Adams Boston Lager as the most mainstream of craft beers. And yet... it's the one I've never seen on this side of the Atlantic, and also the only one of these three I actually saw on tap in America. So I ordered a pint. It's an amber-red colour, quite heavy of texture and very sweet. The aroma is verging on sickly while the flavour piles on toffee. Too much toffee, in fact. There's a vague green hop bitterness but not enough to balance something that would sit very comfortably among the sweet red ales of Ireland. I'm quite surprised this beer has any credibility at all. Takes all sorts.

Second on that list was Yuengling Lager, a beer which occupies that weird hinterland between craft and mainstream. The brewery claims to be America's oldest and survived both Prohibition and the predations of mid-20th century brewery consolidation. It's ended up big enough to be well distributed and popular in its home territory yet small enough to just duck into the Brewers Association's definition of craft, turning out about as much beer as Boston Beer Co. does these days. Not seeing it on tap anywhere, I picked up a six-pack in a grocery store in mid-town Manhattan and worked through that over a couple of evenings. It's a dark orange-brown colour, nicely full-bodied with soft carbonation and a cereal malt flavour topped with a light central-European-style grassiness. All of which would make it an accessible classically-styled pils, or even a hoppy Vienna lager, if it hadn't been absolutely outrageously skunked. The shop must have been keeping it on a tanning bed overnight. It was horrible, though just about tolerable when fully cold. Beware bottled Yuengling, is my takeaway lesson.

Last on this list was Texas classic Shiner Bock, another Prohibition veteran. It's a dark red colour and all about the malt, mixing in dry grain husk with a light caramel element. It's perhaps not that different from ol' Fat Tire up there, but I enjoyed it more, perhaps solely because my expectations were lower. It may lack distinctive flavours but it's a perfectly satisfying conversation beer, and pretty much on-style, for the dunkel side of the spec.

A few other bottled odd and sods before we go. I had expected to see lots of Southern Tier beer around the place but there was surprisingly very little. In one Williamsburg restaurant Southern Tier IPA was the most interesting choice. It's a heavy clear 7%-er, orange in both colour and taste, and I guess you could regard its hot sweet candy character as some way classical for American IPA. I just found it tough drinking and totally lacking in refreshment power.

At one point I ventured into the classy Manhattan food hall Eatily, just for a looksee, but ended up gravitating to the beer section, and ended up buying some bottles to take away. They had Dogfish Head! I wanted to see how that brewery was getting on since it ceased exports a few years ago.

Namaste is a witbier, employing lemongrass and peppercorns alongside the usual stuff, and brewed to a refreshing and approachable 4.8% ABV. It's a pale hazy yellow, as one would expect, with a solid jaffa orange flavour at the centre. The spices are just present on the edge of perception, adding an understated complexity, and there's a certain lemon-cookie citrus bitterness as well. But you don't need to deconstruct it: it works equally well as a down-the-hatch thirst-quencher, something well-made witbier is especially adept at.

Burton Baton is a very different proposition altogether. I honestly wavered a bit at the thought of buying an oak-aged IPA: it does sound like a recipe for disaster. But in Sam we trust and it was duly purchased, opened and consumed. The biography is that it's a blend of mild and aged IPA and that's very much in its favour as it means fresh hops are still part of the flavour profile. It's also 10% ABV and has a thick napalm heat and a sweetness that sometimes verges on cough mixture. By way of balance, as well as the hops, there's a strong jasmine spice, though thankfully no oaky vanilla. I thought the wood was going to ruin this but really it's just the sheer strength and density of it which make it difficult to drink. The concept is otherwise fine and I'd like to try a lower-gravity version of it.

And that was my last beer in New York, sipped and scribbled about as I packed up and got ready for the following day's journey west. The next landfall was in Chicago for a swift change of planes, but not so swift that I couldn't perch at O'Hare's Goose Island bar long enough to drink an overpriced pint of Green Line pale ale, a new addition to their core line-up. And there was me thinking the IPA already filled that pale ale niche. This is, understandably, a simple affair: yellow with a slight haze to it, tasting pleasantly and accessibly sweet, the hops offering a modest flash of cheeky peach before it all wraps up neatly and drily at the end. It's another perfectly decent conversation beer: you can decide for yourself whether that gets classified under "sessionable" or "boring". I was just glad to be able to put it away quickly before running for the next plane.

The adventure continues in Portland, Oregon, next week.