Whippy Twixtmas!

What an adventure in Whiplash beer we have today! This veritable avalanche of beer arrived in quick succession over the past month or so, behoving me to start getting cans open and notes written soon as. Here we go then.

To begin, a pale ale which quietly and subversively describes itself on the can as "breakfast beer". 'Tis the season and all that. Open Water is a pale ale of 4.2% ABV, brewed with the unlikely collaboration of Japanese metal band Crystal Lake. Unusually for Whiplash, the can doesn't tell us what varieties of hops and malts were used. I am, however, wondering if it's the second runnings of something, as it's the wan opaque yellow of a table beer and has a very thin mouthfeel. Still, it's been given the full hop treatment, and smells of raw hop pellets, greasy with vegetal lupulin. The flavour is rather mellower, with the intense citrus fading to more palatable lemonade, with a large dollop of vanilla: all very sweet at the beginning and right through the centre, delivering no more than a playful pinch of lime zest at the end. It's as easy-going as they say; unchallenging, but still characterful. My only real criticism is that, for a can of light and uncomplicated beer, €5 is a lot.

Lager time next, and I make Midnight Mischief Whiplash's second Märzen, after 2021's The Mash & the Fury. The colour is a gorgeous dark amber, although the head crackled away to nothing in a way no German brewer would stand for. It looks weighty and wholesome, and the aroma adds to this, suggesting woody maple syrup and the crispy bits of roasted meat: real primal winter stuff. The flavour has a bit more polish to it, though the poor heading is perhaps explained by a too-light carbonation. Concentrated malt with a smaller side of roasted crispness form the centre of the flavour, seasoned with a thin layer of greenly noble hops, adding a hint of wilted spinach or finely chopped cabbage to the overall performance. There's a slight echo of the horrible American-style Oktoberfest beers, but it's much better balanced than any of them I've tried. Yes it's sweet and quite heavy, as expected at 5.9% ABV, but it's pristinely clean as well, leaving no nasty residues of hops, malt or alcohol. Just a bit more fizz and it could be a mid-Atlantic-style classic.

The festive holly leaf on the can of Nice Mover suggests this is a Christmas release, though that isn't indicated anywhere else on it. This is a very pale and densely yellow IPA, looking like a lightweight but is a full 6.8% ABV. El Dorado, Azacca and Motueka are the hops, and the latter's herbal bitterness is the central feature of the beer's aroma. It's very soft textured, and despite the mucky appearance is clean-flavoured too. There isn't much bitterness, and instead it's the fruit-candy effect from both of the other two hops which predominates. After the initial Starburst, there's a slightly more serious coconut and a dash of vanilla. It slips back easily, finishing with no aftertaste to speak of, and no alcohol burn. That silky mouthfeel is probably its best feature. The flavour, while perfectly pleasant, is understated, and it risks an accusation of blandness. That still makes it among the better of the hazy IPAs around at the moment.

Shortly after that was released, something very similar arrived. In Circles is also 6.8% ABV and also brewed with Azacca, though here joined by Citra and Strata. It's a similarly opaque yellowish orange, with an aroma that really benefits from the Citra: zesty lemons building to oily lime rind. The other two hops are fruity ones, and they take over in the flavour, adding colourful summer berries and non-specific stonefruit, relegating the bitterness to a supporting role. That's enjoyable, although there are some of the more common features of hazy IPA here, the ones that were missing in Nice Mover. Boozy heat infuses the whole thing, and there's an unnecessary sweet vanilla note which curdles next to the Citra acidity. If the previous beer can be dinged for blandness, this one gets dinged for being samey. There's not really anything wrong with it, but I don't see the point of releasing such similar spec'd beers so close together. It's because they sell, isn't it? 

You've gotta have a hazy double IPA in any Whiplash selection, and that spot is filled today by no fewer than three of them. Soon Never Comes, first, is a bit stronger than they usually do these, at 8.5% ABV. It's an all-American hop combination of Cascade, Mosaic and Idaho 7 and it's a little more orange than yellow, but still full-on opaque and murky. The aroma is stereotypically vanilla-laden, with a worrying buzz of savoury garlic alongside. The flavour is calmer, and I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's reasonable to expect something in this style, at this strength, from this brewery, to have bags of character, but they've gone weirdly smooth and easy-going with this. There's a slight grittiness up front and then a gently tropical mango and pineapple sweet side. The thickness and heat are about the only typical features. This is by no means problematic, just (again) a little bit boring. We put up with a lot of retrograde features in our IPAs here in the age of haze. In exchange, they should at least engage our full attention.

For the Christmas season they released another one: Thick Stew, the name being a bit on the nose for a murky double IPA. It's all good-natured self-deprecation, however, as this isn't stew-like, nor even particularly thick. They've kept the ABV down to 8% and it feels lighter even than that. Eclipse and Amarillo feature on the hop bill, though I think it's the El Dorado which has the upper hand. That gives it a sweet orange cordial aroma and plenty of juice in the flavour. And while that's bright, fresh and clean, it's also a bit one-dimensional: no other complexities emerge, even when the beer is left to warm up. A pinch of bitterness would really help this guy out, but still I was content with what I'd been given. It's decent, unfancy stuff: sweet, but not overly so, and doing an amazing job of hiding the still-substantial amount of alcohol. I wondered what made it Christmassy, other than the tree on the label, and I guess it's the mandarin orange it gifts you with, even though you didn't ask for one.

The third DIPA is called Simple Maths, with an ABV of 8.2%, and we have Simcoe, Strata and Idaho 7 providing the entertainment. Even by the standard of the beers in this post it's murky: a sort of earwax beige and completely opaque. The aroma is earthy and gritty, with a dreggy hop-leaf acidity, which is not a good start. The earthy side is present to an extent in the flavour, but I'm glad to say it doesn't dominate. More prominently there's a fresh zestiness and some lighter honeydew melon or lychee. That's not to say it's easy going: this tastes and feels every inch of that ABV, and 44cl took me a while to chomp through, my belly's interior getting warmer with each swallow. Overall I enjoyed it, but I think it would benefit from being cleaned up, losing a chunk of the murk and grit to let the hops through: a tale as old as hazy IPA itself.

We finish on three imperial stouts that Whiplash has designated its "festive dog series". Dog one is Dingus, 11.4% ABV and brewed with maple syrup and cinnamon, sounding not dissimilar to Let.It.End, the French toast stout they did back in 2020. It's similarly thick and sweet, the powerful chocolate sauce effect also calling to mind annual classic Fatal Deviation. Drawing a mouthful is an effort, and the wash of flavours which rushes in includes pink marshmallow, raspberry ice cream sauce, burnt caramel, filter coffee, Nutella and just maybe a woody hint of maple. There's no cinnamon, though, and I suspect a subtle, or not-so-subtle, spicing has been buried under the sheer weight of residual sugar. This almost tastes more like an ingredient than a finished beer: it's so dense and concentrated I was wondering what it's meant to be diluted with. Milk, perhaps, or Baileys. Is it nice, though? I'm going to say yes, but it's hard work. Anyone with an aversion to ultrasweet beer should probably give it a swerve. And thus was the tone set for the remaining pooches.

Lightest of the trio is Dongus, and maybe it's because it's only 10.5% ABV, or maybe it's the lack of maple syrup, but it poured a lot less viscous than the previous one, forming a proper tan-coloured stout head, too. There is coffee in it, and that's immediately present in the aroma as a warm waft of steamy coffee shop on a cold day, with a sniff of hazelnut syrup on the side. The nut element is very pronounced in the flavour, its immediate foretaste giving me peanut shell, marzipan and walnut oil. There's a syrupy roast beyond this, but nothing that specifically says coffee: it's the sort of coffee taste that can be achieved with dark malts, hops and fermentation alone. Anyone looking to Dongus for a comedy novelty beer will be left unamused. I think I would have been happier with a bolder, more literal, coffee flavour, but this is still an excellent imperial stout: packing a punch but wearing its strength lightly.

Last of the set is Chongus, brewed with no added ingredients, so just a straight-up imperial stout of 10.8% ABV. It does seem almost as thick as Dingus, glooping sloppily into the glass, dense and tarry. It smells tarry and syrupy too, not of candied novelty, but very grown-up coffee and prunes. The flavour is sweet, in a similar way to Dingus but nowhere near as extreme. You get chocolate sauce, raisin bran, strong espresso and a sweeter note of raspberry jam or red liquorice. It's enjoyable as an after-dinner sipper, and very much free of novelty silliness. I preferred the strong coffee of the previous one, but this is still pretty good, delivering all the things you could want from a heavy imperial stout.

I'd love to say that Whiplash is a brewery with something for everyone, but this showing, which is quite representative of its output, indicates that you need to be into particular things to get your money's worth out of it. While I'm glad it's here, turning out international-grade beers, I'm also glad that it's part of a varied Irish beer ecosystem, where not everyone makes the same kind of things again and again. It only seems that way sometimes.

Dash away all

I didn't really set out to do a full week of Irish beer reviews, but it looks to be turning out that way. Strap in. I'm trying to clear my backlog of 2017 releases ahead of my final decisions for this year's Golden Pints Awards, published here tomorrow. Today's post concerns the beers I found on the last dash around Dublin, getting Christmas sorted before I left the country for the holiday.

To begin, a not-so-seasonal raspberry blonde ale. Fruitopia Rising is from Kelly's Mountain brewery, created in collaboration with the Hellfire Brew Club, a group who proved themselves champions of fruit beer in Ireland with their kiwi and lime pale ale at Sullivan's earlier in the year. It crackled out of the glass, not gushing per se, but creating an inconvenient quantity of stiff white foam over the hazy orange-pink body. The aroma is superbly real: fresh and ripe raspberries, all of the juice with none of the tartness. It unravels rather on tasting. The raspberry is present, but I got a major smoky twang, suggesting an infection. That would also explain the fizz. It's a shame because it's obvious that there's a well-designed recipe behind this: using a simple 4.8% ABV blonde as a launchpad for luscious fruit. That flashes on the palate briefly before the acrid ashen off-flavour takes over. Maybe I just got unlucky with the bottle that Hellfire Will gave me; it would still be worth taking a chance on if you see it.

And on the theme of what-you-could-have-won, Will also gave me a bottle of a raspberry saison, a prototype of the recipe that they decided not to scale up. I can see why they went with the blonde. The drier saison sucks more of the juice out of the raspberries while the additional hot esters add a conflicting flavour. It's still pretty good, and I wouldn't swerve off raspberry saisons based on it, but blonde ale was the right choice.

Also being brave with fruit this winter was James Brown Brews, launching an Orange & Juniper IPA, in collaboration with host brewery Reel Deel. This is a whopping 6.5% ABV, though quite insubstantial for all that: thin of body with little malt character. Orange is what the flavour is all about, starting on a note of candied orange peel before turning bitterer with a kind of rock shandy effect, though dosed with aspirin. It's clean and refreshing for sure, but ultimately not terribly interesting, lacking any IPA features for one thing, and juniper for another. It could do with beefing up on all fronts, except maybe the strength.

Back to the raspberries, then, and a Raspberry Hibiscus Saison launched in a very limited edition by Rascals, with most of the batch destined for wine barrel ageing. This one is sweet and jammy, with the hibiscus adding a cherry note to the already-strong raspberry. There's a slightly dry and funky farmyard base but it doesn't play a major part, at least not yet. The addition of Brettanomyces and some Sangiovese oak exposure is bound to make it seriously interesting.

This was at UnderDog, where I also got the scrapings of the mini oak cask of Bourbon Milkshake Stout that was set up on the bar, which is what's in the other glass there. This still has all the sweet milk chocolate flavour of the original (reviewed last month here) but there's loads of sour and woody bourbon too. It's interesting, but I don't know if it's necessarily better. A more mature canned version will be out in January.

For more immediate maturity, presenting Harmonic Convergence, new out from Galway Bay (in association with Boundary) but having spent the last year in bourbon barrels. It's a barley wine and was an acceptable, if unattractive, murky brown-red when I met it on draught at The Black Sheep. Even ice cold I got a proper gobful of the rich oaky Rioja effect the barrel has given it. It tastes every point of its 12% ABV yet is so supremely smooth there's no boozy harshness. When it warmed up enough for an aroma to form it smelled like a bourbon and Coke: that mix of sugar, herbs and real whisky. The flavour, meanwhile, developed subtle liquorice, raisin and old wood in dark cellars. I'm sorry that you've missed your chance to get a bottle of this in for Christmas Day (and well done if you did), but I honestly think it's worth drinking young. I find it hard to believe that further maturation will improve it. Perhaps I'm wrong. Buy a few and find out.

What Else Is New? is probably the question most frequently asked of Whiplash, and also the title of their first quadrupel, brewed in association with Sweden's Beerbliotek. They've included figs in the recipe, which seems strange as fig is a flavour I associate with quadrupel anyway. Why add more? Anyway, the beer is 9% ABV and a handsome clear mahogany colour. It seems a bit strange pouring an established continental style from a trendy 440ml can, but that's where we are now. The aroma is autumnal: all treacle and bonfires. You can add maple syrup and toffee apples when factoring the flavour in. For all that, it's not thick or sweet: there's a sharp cleansing greenness which I'm guessing is the rye at work, and the texture is remarkably light. I found myself yearning for something bigger, rounder and, well, hotter. This is an angular Scandi-chic version of the style; impeccably designed but not as comfortable as an original, I think. So what else is new?

Well, Scaldy Split is the newest Whiplash to come my way so far. It's badged as an "ice cream IPA", which gave me pause but I needn't have worried. While it's as murky as might be expected, the lactose and vanilla contribute next to nothing to the flavour, and I don't think the orange zest is pulling its weight either. This novelty IPA actually tastes like an IPA, dominated by bitter lime and savoury garlic. The hops do fade quite quickly, leaving the finish sweet, and maybe there's a hint of that missing zest, but this too disappears cleanly and neatly without gumming up the palate. Gimmick-chasers may be disappointed; I really enjoyed it for a mostly no-nonsense hopped-up American-style IPA.

Before that landed there was Fatal Deviation, an imperial stout which pays tribute to Ireland's best-known B-movie. It's a straightforward 10% ABV, single-hopped with Columbus and featuring my good friend brown malt alongside pilsner, aromatic and chocolate varieties. So, yes, it's sweet, but it's no sticky sugar-bomb. The hops give it an edgy jasmine and eucalyptus perfume, and that sits next to a decadent mix of espresso and gallic cigarettes. Beyond that there's not much happening, which felt disappointing for a second but maybe I've been too conditioned by the De Molen flavourbombs which make up most of my imperial stout drinking. There's not a damn thing wrong with this one: properly complex with no gimmicks or unbalancing noises. Bualadh bos.

That left me in a mood for further big and dark so I opened Lough Gill's Imperial Chocolate Cherry Porter next, no. 3 of its big and dark series. Neither chocolate nor cherries appear on the list of ingredients, which at first I took as a typographical oversight, but then neither made any real impact in the taste either. Instead there's a dirty, gritty savoury yeast twang that was immediately off-putting. The beer was almost at room temperature by the time I came back to it and now I could taste cherries, but in a harshly sour form. This is set against sweet and syrupy malt and the whole thing is jarring and awkward, not the sumptuous and silky delight that a 10% ABV porter ought to be. In fact this is downright rough. Lough Gill's Rebel Stout Series could do with backing up a little.

I regroup with a lager, Kinnegar's second: Noch Eins helles. It's always a crisis pouring Irish-craft-brewed pale lagers, trying to keep the sediment out of the glass. That doesn't tend to be an issue with the German ones. Anyway, I made a mess of it and got a murky glassful for my trouble, the foam crackling away to nothing quite quickly. Few marks for appearances, then. It smells proper, however, with the style's correct mix of biscuit malt spiced with thirst-inducing herb aromas. The herbs dominate the flavour, giving it an out-of-sorts medicinal edge, though finishing on a cleaner grassy note. It lacks the cakey malt character of good helles and is disappointingly thin. The medicine begins turning to full-on TCP as it goes and the whole thing started to bug me when I was two-thirds of the way down. Looking back, I had similar qualms about Kinnegar's first lager too. Stop bottle-conditioning them would be my recommendation, but what do I know?

A neglected bottle of White Gypsy Harvest Ale followed that. The brewery has got out of the hop farming business but has brewed this as a tribute to the growers who make beer possible, selecting malt and hops each from a single farm. The hops for this first edition (I assume there'll be others) are from Žalec in Slovenia and are a mix of Gold, Bobek, Fox and Cardinal. Bobek is the only variety I'd heard of. Anyway, another messy pour by me, I'm afraid, resulting in sludgy orangey-brown effort. The aroma is a strange mix of fruit and funk, like a greengrocer's on the turn. It's not unpleasant though. The flavour is strange to say the least: a complex mix of rye bread crusts, grapefruit segments, chalk, black tea and animal hide. Each element is distinct and clean. It's almost too weird to be enjoyable but I got a thrill out of it. Evidently these Slovenian hops provide flavours to which my delicate western palate is unaccustomed. I definitely want more, though. The plain rustic branding here hides a much more exciting beer behind it. Enter with an open mind.

The same goes for my 2017 Golden Pints awards, by the way, which will follow presently. Try not to get too excited.