The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 2: Western Herd

Western Herd of County Clare provides today's beers. Both are IPAs, a style this hop-crazy brewery still seems very much in love with.

Islander has been part of their line-up since 2016 but has never come my way before. It's a session IPA of 4.2% ABV and looks to be taking a specifically New England approach. Under a tall stack of loose froth it's a fuzzy yellow colour. The aroma is quite citric, with lime intensifying to fried onions. The brewery is showing its usual generosity with the hops, then -- Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo in this case. The flavour is an interesting mish-mash. The bitterness is dialled back in a very New England way, and tropical pineapple is first in the queue. That gets interrupted by the yeast fluff, introducing an unwelcome savoury side. There's a pinch of lemon rind and a dark green kale or spinach acidity. All this is happening on a light but not thin mouthfeel, and the flavours don't linger. It's nearly very good, except for that savoury murk side which I think gets in the way of the fruity fun. Only a qualified success, then.

On to Magic Road, an IPA, though a modest one at 5.8% ABV. None of your headliner hops here: experimental English varieties CF160, CF184 and CF185 says the can. It pours a medium orange colour with some haze but definitely not full-on murk like the above. The aroma is quite reticent but gives me hints of resinous cedarwood spicing, cardamom and rosewater. I was immediately thinking "baklava", and that follows through to the flavour, bringing added honey and crisp pastry. This is fun, and very unusual. It's clean too, which makes it easier to explore everything going on. Beyond the exotic perfumed delicacies there's a sterner hard bitterness, a little metallic but entirely in keeping with English IPA. The texture is thick enough to carry the resins and provide a long finish, without turning difficult by the end. Part of the enjoyment was the novelty -- this is a very pleasant change from the norm -- but it's also a rock-solid, well-made, highly-flavoured and complex IPA.

Both of these were a surprise in different ways. However, I love when experimental hops bring something genuinely innovative to a beer. Hats off to Western Herd for taking the risk with Magic Road.

Where will we put the guests?

There was a bit of an odd arrangement with regard to the American beers at Borefts this year, where one brewer had a standalone stall as part of the main festival in the De Molen brewery yard while up at the windmill a selection of other US beers were pouring from the restaurant's own taps. It's presumably something to do with the windmill restaurant being leased out to a third party these days. Just one bar meant long queues, and Borefts isn't the sort of festival where you queue for things, so I only tried a tiny fraction of what was on offer, all from breweries I'd never heard of before.

Hair of the Dog in Portland, Oregon I had heard of (it's been around since the early 1990s), and it was the sole American representative at the main festival. The two beers I tried were both iterations of their bourbon-barrel-aged old ale Adam From The Wood, both around the 12% ABV mark. 1978 Adam From The Wood uses vintage Heaven Hill casks and pours headless, a dark brown colour with a rich chocolate aroma and very low carbonation. The barrels may be old but the oak flavour really comes through loudly, accompanied by a distinctly spirituous burn. After a moment it settles down a little and allows the smooth chocolate notes to take over, leaving a very well-integrated beer: not too hot, not too heavy and not too sweet, but balancing all of these into a luxurious sipping beer which offers an experience not dissimilar to sipping a whisky.

Adam From The Wood - White Peach is given the usual ageing treatment but with the odd addition of white peaches in the barrel. I bet they don't stay white for long. There's much less burn to this, with more of a vinous quality, the oaky vanillins of a big Spanish red. Real actual peach juice is just about discernable under the wood and helps soften the flavour further. It's still a big, warming beer but rather more delicate than the other version. I'm wishing I tried more than basically one beer from Hair of the Dog, but that's always the way.

Up at the windmill I managed to get two rounds in before tiring of the queuing. First up for me was Islander IPA by Coronado of San Diego, the only non-Portlander of the set. The classic clear gold of a west coast IPA, this has a little bit of candyfloss to it but is mostly a glorious riot of pithy, weedy, funky hop resins. And for herself, Diesel (left), an imperial stout by Cascade. Very much an after-dinner beer, this. It's very sweet, with a sugary coffee aroma and lots of caramel and crème brûlée. A teeny sip was plenty for me. Next round!

My ongoing quest to find out why some people like cream ale was exercised with The Fifth Ellament, by Burnside. It's mostly gold coloured, with a slight reddish tint and tastes of strawberry bubblegum and not much else. The distinguishing feature is a mouth-coating thickness that made it tough going to drink far sooner than it should have. Not my gateway cream ale, then. And lastly Upright Brewing's Blueberry Stout about which I can find little to say other than it's the perfect mix of blueberries with stout: a simple and tasty chocolate-forward base beer with a lovely fruity tang added in.

It's nearly time to leave Borefts for another year, which of course means a frantic round of panic sampling down at the main festival. Let's go!