Dark deeds

Why do I take so long picking beers when I'm standing in front of the fridges in Redmond's? It's because I'm trying to piece together the theme for a blog post. Something about Thornbridge and dark beers, maybe?

Baize is presumably a reference to the brewery's nearest big city, Sheffield, being perennially associated with snooker. The green (three points) and the black (seven points) are respectively represented by mint in a 5.5% ABV stout. Lactose is the only other non-standard ingredient, standing for the cue ball, I guess. The aroma's mint is faint, no more than a waft from a freshly opened bag of mint imperials: processed and sugar-laden, not fresh. Although it's a milk stout really, the dairy sweet side is quite understated, and there's a proper balancing coffee and toast roast. They haven't gone overboard with the mint flavour, which is a pastey smear, like the inside mush of Fry's Peppermint Cream (ask your grandparents) rather than raw herb leaf. I prefer the raw herb leaf approach to mint in beer, so this didn't really suit me. It's fine, and no doubt successfully built for the mass market, or whatever mass market exists for mint chocolate stout these days. There's a pleasant creamy richness, placing it exactly on point for good, satisfying, stout. Its novelty side is best ignored, and I think it would be a better beer without it. The black is worth more than the green, as they say in brewing.

A porter is next: Panela, brewed with coffee and dried sugar cane (or "sugar" as it's also known), at 7% ABV. The head on this pure black beer is almost nitro-like: slow to form and luxuriously thick when it does. The coffee comes through in the aroma, though not in a gimmicky way, with not much to differentiate the added ingredient from the common effect of dark porter malts. It's subtle in the flavour too, and I think may contribute more to the texture than the taste, adding a pleasant oiliness to what I might otherwise consider a disappointingly thin body. The oil builds gradually on the palate so that by the end of the glass there's a noticeable coffee aftertaste. The main flavour is dry and roasty, with notes of charcoal and burnt breadcrust; the hops a metallic minerality. Overall, this is a solidly-made strong porter given just a slight novelty twist, which is frankly the best kind of novelty twist. Thornbridge's sober reliability wins out.

Finally, there's no deed darker than turning a perfectly innocent American-inspired IPA hazy for no good reason. I've always thought of Thornbridge as an upstanding and ethical brewery, so I've tended to just pretend Hazy Jaipur doesn't exist. Another boy did it and ran away, sort of thing. Facing up to reality, this is the same strength as real Jaipur at 5.9% ABV and is a very pale yellow shade with a light touch on the haze: I guess they couldn't bring themselves to fog it up completely. It doesn't smell hoppy, as such, with a bath-bomb combination of flowers and spices which is, I'm sure, largely hop-derived, but doesn't have the bright and citric quality that makes Jaipur what it is. Bitterness is what makes Jaipur what it is, and that has been dialled way back here. Hazy IPA should instead substitute fresh tropical fruit or an alternative juicy quality, but this doesn't. Instead, I got slightly sticky malt, which is the wrong sort of sweetness. That's the point where I checked the base of the can, and although it's within the brewery's stated best-before date, it was canned around ten months before I drank it. I suspect it was best well before opening. On the one hand, this disappointing and thoroughly un-Jaipurish experience is partly my fault for not reading the numbers, but on the other, the brewery has made it this way and doesn't seem to regard a problematic lack of hop freshness as a deal-breaker. Regardless of the details, the Jaipur brand is not well served with this extension. Other than the ABV, it has no features I associate with that classic of English IPAs.

I'm not sure which conclusion to draw from this. Either Thornbridge does its best work in classic beer styles and shouldn't go chasing craft-era gimmickry, or I'm becoming ever-more curmudgeonly and less tolerant of whippersnapper brewers trying to be creative. Could be both. I'll need a few more beers to settle this.

Unionise!

Thornbridge acquired the Burton union system that Marston's were throwing out. You don't need me to tell you this: it was all over the beer news. Likewise, you don't need me to tell you what a Burton union is and does, which I easily could because I understand it completely. Two union-derived beers have arrived in Ireland in bottled form, and here they are.

The Union is the grandly titled flagship, an IPA with a grand ABV of 7%. Bottle conditioning has left the pale amber liquid a little hazy, which I'm sure a classically constructed English beer like this isn't meant to be. And by "classically constructed", I mean Maris Otter, Goldings, Northdown and invert sugar number 2. The aroma is very English, with an almost gastric sharp acidity. It's nicely light bodied, wearing its strength gently, much like the brewery's flagship IPA, Jaipur, does. And like Jaipur, the flavour opens with a pithy kick. There's citrus, but in the more easy-going jaffa orange manner of English hops, rather than any American grapefruit, and this sits next to a slightly metallic tang and a peppery spice. It became heavier as it warmed, and a single half litre serving was plenty. If there's something specifically union-y about the taste, I missed it: this is pretty much what I would expect an English-hopped 7% ABV IPA to taste like, similar perhaps to the one Meantime used to have as its claim to past glories. It's maybe a little strong to celebrate too loudly, but I enjoyed it regardless.

Now, that one was marked "a pure union brew" on the label; the West Coast IPA simply says "from the union". Is something different going on with the production here? I'm confused and a little suspicious. Anyway, this one is 6.5% ABV and collaborated on by Burning Sky. It's slightly hazier than the previous, and a paler shade of spun gold. The aroma's fresh grapefruit brings us straight to the west coast of the USA, and the mix of spritzy zest and oily dank in the flavour keeps us there. There's a certain softness in amongst the sharp hops, which is delightful and adds a welcome subtlety to what would otherwise be quite a brash beer. Is that the union's doing? Regardless, this is just the sort of high-end quality one expects from Thornbridge; bold and full-flavoured, but with a charming old fashioned classiness. Yes, it's a true-to-style American IPA, but there's a beautifully softer English vibe happening as well.

I am none the wiser as to what I, the beer drinker, am expected to expect from the use of a Burton union. These beers are both lovely, but very much in the way Thornbridge already operates. With luck, one of England's many fine beer writers will be able to explain what difference the equipment actually makes to the product, beyond the press releases and collaborations.

And not a bitter in sight

After a one-year hiatus by the festival, and ten years by me, I was back at The Great British Beer Festival last week, for the Tuesday afternoon trade session. The big change is that the venue is now Birmingham rather than London, spread across two halls of the gargantuan National Exhibition Centre. I detected a certain change in ethos too. Once upon a time, there was a corner reserved for high-end international beers, American in particular, and that's where what passes for cool kids in our pastime could be found. But while there was a token set of casks from the east coast USA, the Brewers Association no longer organises a bottle bar, and the American, German and Dutch/Belgian bars were somewhat sidelined, in a corner away from the main action. That, of course, meant that the main action was all lovely British cask beer, which should be the whole point. With a mere hop from Birmingham airport, I was in early and ready to get ticking.

The nearest bar to the entrance was full of awards nominees, with judging for Champion Beer of Britain happening nearby. Here I found my primary target for the day: Oregon Trail IPA from Elusive Brewing. It's become quite the cult beer in Britain recently and I had never seen it in the wild. In proper west coast style it's bright and golden, and is shockingly bitter at first, going beyond mere grapefruit into raw lime peel and concentrated pine resin. A rapidly-arriving finish adds an unwelcome savoury note of caraway seed to the picture. It's very dry and sharp, and needs its full 5.8% ABV to give it substance. As a result, while it's far from balanced, it's not harsh either. Still, my half pint was tough going and I think this may be an acquired taste. It has several points in common with Thornbridge's mighty Jaipur, but lacks that one's subtlety and (dangerous) drinkability. Maybe I'll have a better time when next I encounter it, but first impressions were that, in hop terms, this is too rich for my blood.

Before moving on, I thought I'd better have a go of the one mild that was in awards contention: Penzance Mild from Penzance Brewing. As it happened, this was later crowned Champion Beer of Britain, and while I'm sure the competition was intense, I think it was a very deserving winner. Right from the outset of the aroma, this ruby-russet beer is the last word in 3.6% ABV luxury. Heady roasted grain vapours mix with fine milk chocolate, creating an effect like bourbon cream biscuits. The texture is full and silky, making it feel wholesome and nutritious, like a throwback to when beers were treated as medicinal and, obviously, tasted better than nowadays. There aren't any surprises in the flavour from all this: it continues with darker chocolate, warm cookies and plump currants, given a tiny pinch of cut-grass bitterness in the finish. This is absolutely majestic stuff, fully deserving to carry the flag for mild, and for British cask beer generally. Do not miss it if you see it on the inevitable victory tour.

Liberation's Herm Gold had also found its way onto this bar, though I don't think it was in the running for any gongs. A shame, really, because it's a very decent golden ale. It has a touch of the beeswax bitterness of the best golden English bitters -- looking at you, Timothy Taylor Landlord -- plus an altogether more modern (whisper it: American) burst of lemon and lime. But not too much, of anything. I found it a perfect refresher at around my half way point, and would very happily lean into a session on it, in different circumstances. Golden ale is a highly unfashionable style, but when it's on point like this, it can be amazing. A new campaign, now that mild has been saved?

My token visit to the American cask bar landed me McGowan's Cream Ale from Brightpath Brewing in Pennsylvania. I'm sure I've said before that I've never really seen the point of this beer style. Like American Light Lager, it was created by the 20th century's giant industrial breweries to cut every corner available and make something that still counts as beer as cheaply and profitably as possible. That the craft movement has attached some retro credibility to it is bemusing. Anyway, this one was lovely. What they've done, right, is hop the hell out of it, so you get a 4.5% ABV blonde beer with a delightfully spritzy citric aroma and flavour. It's palate-cleansing, easy-drinking, and plenty characterful to boot. While it has lots in common with America's pale ales, I got a sense of witbier about it too, albeit rather more intense. I'm glad I gave it a go.

And from the continentals, there was the opportunity to try the three-brewery Trappist collaboration, produced at La Trappe, with input from Zundert and Tynt Meadow. The Three Rules of Authentic Trappist (lest you be in any doubt that there are such) is a dubbel of 7.4% ABV. It was served on keg and I found it a little cold and thin for that. I think the flavour suffered too, and it didn't seem as characterful as any of the classic Trappist dubbels. Still, it managed to hit the necessary style points, with a raisin fruit side melding with chocolate cake. It's slightly tannic, making it dry where I would have preferred more dark malt sweetness, and the alcohol expresses itself as a portwine heat in the finish. It's not bad, but I was prepared to be much more impressed by it than I actually was. I don't know how much of a rarity this is, but you aren't missing a lot if it doesn't come your way.

When I went downstairs to the main floor, I was as surprised as you to find myself heading first to the Greene King bar, but I had reasons. The first of these is their own mild, XX, and while this doesn't seem to be a particularly rare beer, it has always eluded me. Could the fact that I'll generally avoid Greene King pubs when there's any other choice be connected to that? Maybe. Anyway, here it was in all its 3% ABV glory, and I got to scratch the itch. This one is properly black with stout-like garnet hints where the light shines through. The aroma says fudge to me, and the flavour continues that way, with a sweet mix of soft buttery toffee, some condensed milk and a light layer of chocolate or mocha. It's thin too, and I initially had that flagged as a flaw but, really, the sweet flavour profile needs this lightness of touch; any thicker and it would be hard work to drink. What's missing is the roasted grain and the dark fruit to give it an extra dimension or two. I can see how this would stand out amongst the other prosaic Greene King offerings, but it's far from a superstar. It won't be getting me through the doors of any of the brewery's pubs.

The bigger itch at Greene King was 5X. This is a genuine rarity, used as an ingredient in some of their blended beers, but you need to go to a special event to find it on sale, and I had missed it at GBBF before. At this point it was still a bit early for a third-pint of a 12% ABV beer but I didn't want to chance it running out. In the glass it's a very dark brown colour, and the hot solvent aroma is the first indication that it's not really meant for drinking. Bizarrely, it's very thin, which I was not expecting, and neither is it especially sweet. Instead, this is very fully attenuated and tastes quite vinous, with the cherry and redcurrant of a light Italian wine, leading quickly into a rough and stale old-cork finish, with acrid splinters of young and sappy wood. It does not taste matured, or rounded, or seasoned, or any of the other positive adjectives I had planned for it. While it has some features in common with English barley wine, there's a surprising lack of refinement. Sipping through it slowly, I was glad to get it finished, to deem it done.

Second place in the Champion Beer of Britain had gone to Sarah Hughes brewery, for their Snowflake winter ale, and that was next. This is 8% ABV and gives immediate cosy vibes from its chestnut colour and toffee aroma. On tasting, that unfolds into strawberry and raspberry, but without their tart, cleansing qualities. While that's fun to begin with, it wears off quickly. I found the sweet side grows rapidly and the beer turns sickly and cloying too soon, even with only a half pint to contend with. I see what they're trying to do, and it's not the first time I've found a beer in this style hard to drink. But I thought that a medal-winner would show rather more finesse. Sometimes a lack of subtlety is needed for the win, or at least for second prize. Maybe I'm the real snowflake here.

Time was running out and I needed to stop idling my way through the menus and grab the beers I knew I'd regret if I missed. Siren was next, and a variation on their magnificent Broken Dream stout, called Recurring Dream. This brings the ABV down to 4.6%, from the quaffable original's frankly dangerous 6.5%, and it was served here on keg. Trying the two side-by-side would have been interesting, had time allowed, but I did get the impression that this has a lot in common with it. The coffee is in full 3D Technicolour, beginning on an aroma of freshly roasted beans and proceeding to be enjoyably dry and free of gimmicks. The flavour's coffee is toasty, not sweet, and there's a balancing chocolate character to add a little fun while keeping things classically composed. With session-strength stouts seeing a bit of a boom in the UK these days, it's right and proper for Siren to be getting in on the act.

Having ticked off a Channel Islands beer early, Manx was next, represented by Kaneens brewery and their Dhoo "black beer". What type of black beer? Let's see. It's a light-bodied one, even at 4.6% ABV. When the internet tells me it's a Schwarzbier I don't disbelieve it. What I have noted as thinness therefore becomes lager-cleanness. There's a gentle hint of plum in the flavour, and a dash of chocolate too, so this probably could have passed as a mild if the brewery so chose. The finish goes a bit funky, unfortunately, adding a rough stale-sweat tang to the end. I had been enjoying the beer up until then but found it going a little off course here. On another day I might have welcomed it, but next to the general high calibre of the day's dark beers, it was disappointing.

Time for one more mild, and it's local brewery Green Duck with their Bostin' Mild, fully appropriating the regional beer style of the West Midlands. And it's a basic one. I liked its dark mahogany colour, and its ease of drinking, helped by a mere 3.4% ABV. The flavour is dry and uncomplicated with a burnt toast effect scrubbing the palate but not much else going on. If anything, this tasted more like a Schwarzbier than the one before. Clearly, it's designed to be sunk by the pint, so sipping a half at the tail end of a day's drinking means, I now realise, that I didn't really give it a fair shake. One to come back to, for sure.

And that's all I managed to... wait... Theakston's has made an Old Peculier tie-in IPA? What? I spotted this on my way out the door and inched towards the exit with it in hand. I don't think Peculier IPA really has anything in common with its part-namesake: it's a 5.1% ABV amber-coloured cask IPA, brewed with an unlikely combination of Simcoe, Cluster and Bullion hops, plus some of the brewery's home-growns. It absolutely works, however, being a little on the sweet side, but allowing the malt heft to soften the hops. There's plenty of modern, new-world, hop zing, but instead of a pithy, piney bite, there's creamy and dessertish lemon posset or curd. It's beautifully mellow and, not for the first time that day, I found myself wishing I could settle into a slow pint of it.

But that's where I called it a day. Commentary on the good points and shortcomings of the festival and its new venue had started before I was even home, and I'll leave that to others. I had a jolly day out and feel I managed a happy cross section of the sort of British beer I like, with a couple of interesting foreigners to add colour. That's all I was after.

Supplemental

As promised on Monday, an assortment of cask ales which I found in and around the recent JD Wetherspoon beer festival, but which weren't actually part of it.

Acorn's Old Moor is where we start. This is a porter, blackest of the black, with a head of agéd ivory. It is a creature of exquisite balance, being mostly quite dry and roasty but not thin, with added coffee oils rounding it out, including the slightly fruity cherry and raisin effect that some coffees give. There's some silky dark chocolate towards the end, a streak of buttery diacetyl, and then an assertively dry finish. I can't think what more any sane adult would demand from a 4.4% ABV porter. Yorkshire has a reputation for being no-nonsense, and they could sustain that on this beer alone. Proper.

I'm very surprised I haven't had the next one before. Wainwright used to be Thwaite's, now Marstons, next: who knows? It's all gone weird in the Carlsberg-Marstons empire these days. It's a golden ale of 4.1% ABV and, as usual in any Dublin Wetherspoon, looks perfect. I was expecting plain but there's quite a bit of character here. I'm guessing it got quite a warm fermentation because there is soft fruit aplenty, the flavour brimming with apricot, lychee and particularly banana. That follows a more subtle bubblegum aroma. Bitterness is not on offer, and only a faint trace of grain-husk dryness provides any balance. While this isn't bland, it isn't very impressive either, doing the cask blonde basics but no more than that. It's not on the list of beers that Carlsberg gave the chop to last year, but I wouldn't miss it if it were...

Staying in t'North, but moving to Yorkshire, Ilkley Brewery's Lotus is next, an American style IPA of 5.9% ABV. It was sharing a bar with Thornbridge Jaipur which seemed, in the words of Sir Humphrey, courageous. Quite a dark fellow, it smelled pleasingly citric, and the initial taste had the correct kick of grapefruit and lime. It takes a rapid left turn from there, delivering crazy fruit candy and banana esters -- an extreme sort of sweetness that's quite out of keeping with the style. The finish returns it to style somewhat, with a dryly acidic rasp, but that fruity weirdness remains the defining characteristic. I liked the brash boldness of it but also found it a bit too weird to fully approve of. If you've never had it, give it a go. I'd say it's a divisive one.

Finally, Gadd's No 3 had been assigned a festival badge at The Silver Penny, though it wasn't one of the 30-beer line-up. This is a pale ale, golden and clear, brewed with Fuggles, Goldings, and "some others I don't talk about". An admission that this Kent brewery doesn't use all-Kent hops? At 5% ABV it's a bit of a strong one. That strength is well used, giving the beer a full and chewy body. Whatever about the interlopers, its English hops give it a very beery flavour: a coppery mineral bitterness, infused with fresh and crunchy green vegetables, set on a slightly sticky base of golden syrup and oatmeal cookies. It might look like a lager but it's definitely a bitter: not quite as sharp as the similarly-golden northern archetypes (Landlord, Marble), but similarly clean, despite the extra malt. This is tasty, unfussy, and very well made. There's nothing novel or innovative about the flavours; only how precisely they've all been balanced against each other. This is the sort of beer I would love to have as a local regular; I couldn't imagine ever getting bored of it.

That's your lot for now, casketeers. We return to our normal force-carbonated content later in the week.

A Thorny question

I'm taking a punt, and a liberty, with this month's Session topic. Boak & Bailey are hosting and have asked about "the best beer you can drink at home right now". Though an inveterate ticker, I do have a canon of house beers; the ones I buy on a near weekly basis and often have in stock for inattentive drinking. Kinnegar's Black Bucket is one, Schlenkerla Märzen another, Little Fawn, Duvel, Leann Folláin and Nocturne: desert island beers all, in regular production and a lot less pricey than the one-offs I tend to drink more of, on account of this terrible masochistic hobby I developed twenty years ago.

And because of that, I'm taking a gamble and not writing about any of the above-mentioned. In the golden age of beer blogging, from the UK at least, the beer that got mentioned most for its quality and accessibility was Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA. I'm very fond of a pint myself, when it shows up in my local Wetherspoons. There have been various brand extensions over the years, and last week an unfamiliar one arrived in my eyeline in Redmond's off licence in Ranelagh: Jaipur Noir. I like Jaipur, but I love a black IPA. By rights, and before opening the can, this should be the best beer I can drink at home.

On the can they assure us that this isn't just Jaipur dyed black, even though it's the same 5.9% ABV. An "array of dark malts" has been employed. An array, no less. It's pretty black in the glass, revealed as a clear deep ruby when held to the light. The aroma is all bright and fresh citrus, with nothing dark hinted at here. It's lightly carbonated, so only a little fizzier than cask Jaipur, and the first impression is the same grapefruit and lemon sherbet you get in the original. After this, there's a faint stout-like dryness, including a most unAmerican bitterness, being green and vegetal, but pleasant. That finishes on a similarly subtle toasty roast. The whole thing is quite subtle, in fact: classy and understated. I enjoyed it, but the beatings of Black Bucket? Not to my taste. It still meets the requirement of the topic, however, because every ticker knows that the best beer you can drink at home is one you've never had before.

So while I was perusing the Thornbridge section, I picked up a couple of other new ticks. In the middle is Simka, badged as a "plum sour", brewed with an allegedly renowned Japanese variety of plum which, presumably, the name references. It's not made clear. Neither is the beer: it's a hazy pinkish orange in the glass and doesn't smell at all fruity, exuding instead a dry cereal crunch. There's a little more sharpness in the taste -- properly sour, not one of those syrupy fruit concoctions. From the can text, it seems the brewery expects us to be able to taste dark fruit but I certainly couldn't, only a vague berry tartness, blending in with the souring culture. This is another subtle one, hitting the sour points well, and doing it lightly at only 4.2% ABV, but other than the colour, the plums are AWOL. Nobody likes an AWOL plum, and especially when it's a fancy Japanese variety.

We finish on Thornbridge 90 Shilling, created using the Burton union gadget that the brewery rescued last year from the dastardly grip of Carlsberg-Marston. How is proper 90/- supposed to taste? I have no idea. But what difference can we expect the union to make? Also, no idea. It's 6.3% ABV and badged as an amber ale, with Odell Brewing coming over from Colorado to have a gawk at the kit in action. It is indeed amber, and smells like a crisp and dry bitter: tannic with a little resin. On tasting, that resin blossoms into a full-on incense and black pepper spicing; dry, but balanced by a toffee element, which I guess is where the Scottish cosplay kicks in. Despite these strong and wildly contrasting flavours, it's all integrated, cohesive and balanced. This one isn't subtle: it's bold, and all the more delicious for it. The mineral spicing has me wondering if they've given it some extra Burtonisation, to make the union feel at home. Other than that spurious reasoning, I'm still none the wiser as to what the thing does to a finished beer. Regardless, this is a beaut.

Is it too late to change my best-beer-I-can-drink-at-home? I think I have a new candidate.

Ronbridge

Mr Ronald Pattinson of Amsterdam was in Dublin last month, as he has mentioned on his own blog. The hard taskmasters at the National Homebrew Club forced him to talk at length about brewing history in front of a crowd at UnderDog. The English visitor's presence was marked by the coincidental appearance of two new English beers on the taps, both single hop experiments from Thornbridge.

It felt like there was a bit of a deconstructed Jaipur thing going on, because the first on was Quiet Storm Ahtanum. Ahtanum is a fairly obscure American hop, and one I only really know from Jaipur and its subsequent clone, BrewDog Punk. The beers were that sort of strength too: 5.5% ABV. This one was a very pale yellow with a slight haze and lots of fizz, a carbonic bite disturbing the flavour somewhat. The flavour is very interesting and not at all what I was expecting from it, being a bowl of varied ripe fruits, including peach, apricot, white grape and red apple -- funky and foedtid, in a most pleasurable way. It's very sweet with it, and gets sweeter as it goes, having an element of strawberry too by the end. A tannic finish dries it out enough for the sweetness not to be a problem. I liked it. There's lots of complexity for a single hop beer, and it had a very modern profile: surprising for essentially a legacy hop. I didn't miss the lack of bittering.

When that ran out it was replaced by Quiet Storm Cascade, and I thought I would be on more familiar ground with this. Surprise! There was no earthy bitterness here, and no punchy grapefruit or resin. Instead, it's a rich and nutty dessert, suggesting nougat or almond paste. The fizz problem from the other one has been solved, as it was lovely and smooth. I searched hard for any familiar features, and only towards the end did I notice a very faint metallic rasp, like you get from Cascade's ancestor Fuggle. I'm guessing both of these were made using some class of fruit-enhancing IPA yeast, because I'm pretty sure Cascade wouldn't turn out like this from a neutral strain. Regardless, it was very tasty, if not quite as interesting as the Ahtanum one.

There are loads of Quiet Storms in this series and I'll be looking out for others. Single hop beers are usually about demonstrating the specific characteristics of an individual hop. These ones, conversely, appear to be putting a new twist on them.

Second chances and new beginnings

I've tried a few of the beers from Bristol brewery Lost & Grounded over the years and haven't particularly liked any of them. It has made me very aware of the near-unanimous high regard in which their core beers are held. I have form on this sort of thing: it took me a couple of goes to get the hang of other English classics such as Jaipur and Landlord and I was quite prepared to believe that Lost & Grounded was another example of that. So when they showed up locally, I took the opportunity to revisit. Today I'm giving two a second spin and trying one I've never tasted before.

First it's Keller Pils: perhaps England's best lager, or maybe just the one with most frequent favourable mentions on my Twitter timeline. My previous encounter was in the arcade bar on Bristol's King Street. My aversion to certain German hop varieties when used in quantity was strongly triggered by the beer, to the point where I found a pint difficult to finish. Let's see if it's any better by the can.

Pale yellow, slightly hazy, soft textured and a fine white head: yes, it's keller-y all right. It's sweeter than I remembered, with an almost candy sugar foretaste and an inappropriate burst of tangerine or mandarin, building to less-inappropriate lemon zest. A second or two later the hops kick in fully. Not rotten wood this time, but a weedpatch herbal kick of dandelion and nettle, finishing sharply on grass, wax and plastic: those naughty nobles again. I like a pillowy soft Helles, and can appreciate the crisp edges on a north-German pils (hello Jever!), and while this offers a big slice of both, it ends up less than the sum of its parts. I'm not repulsed by it this time, which is progress, but neither do I "get" it fully. It's too much of a mish-mash of other beers I enjoy, the flavours clashing and not working well with the texture. The best I can describe the impression it leaves is as an uncanny valley take on German lager.

Running With Sceptres I only had a thimbleful of before, at a festival where it shared my palate with about forty other beers. That's no life for a lager, even if it is of the India pale persuasion. "Cloying" and "musky" said 2017 me. I can sort of see where he was coming from. This is very strongly flavoured, set on a dense body with lots of resinous dank and incense spicing. It's complex and impactful, bringing big flavours to the picture at only 5.2% ABV, but it's too busy for me, and too busy for a lager, I think. There's a certain clean crispness in the finish but it makes you go through a lot to reach it. I've blathered before about how "India pale" and "lager" rarely combine to make anything worthwhile, and this is a prime example of why I don't like them. That dank oily thickness needs a warm-fermented base; the light crisp base it got would suit a much more subtle hop presence. By the end of it I was starting to get fed up and thinking that "cloying" was apposite after all.

Time for a clean slate and a totally new beer. Helles is a recent addition to the Lost & Grounded range and has been getting good notices. That said, I don't recall reading any detailed reviews (hardly anybody writes those any more) so had no preconceived notions when I cracked the can on a sunny early-summer afternoon. It's unfiltered and hazy, which is not something I've seen done with anything called Helles in Bavaria. Does that make it a kellerbier? The ABV is only 4.4% which seems unreasonably low. Yes, none of these things are relevant to how good the beer is, but if you're co-opting German labels you can expect variances to be noticed.

From the first sip I decided that kellerbier was a fair descriptor: it has that gentle roughness of brewpub lager; a charming absence of polish. Here the noble hops are present but understated, bringing just the requisite amount of grass and herb. The soft candyfloss malt typical of Helles follows it, and seems untarnished by a lower-than-usual gravity. The fuzz means it doesn't quite get the clean lager finish it deserves but there's a pleasing dryness in how it signs off. It's obviously a conscientiously made lager, and if it were local to me I'd doubtless be enjoying it on the regular, but for this old geezer, the Bavarians do it better, and half a litre at a time too.

I came out of the experience with a more positive feeling about Lost & Grounded, and I will definitely keep trying their beers whenever I see them. Their wares do need to be judged as English takes on German brewing, however, because I don't think they stack up well when the real thing is an alternative import.

Hope for some of us

The Hope Limited Edition series dropped another brace of cans recently, the first being No. 19: American Pale Ale. The USP here is that it's a collaboration with BrewDog's Dublin brewery, which as far as I know never got round to releasing any beer of its own in the few short months it traded.

Blue can, 5.7% ABV, misty yellow pour. Is this Punk? The aroma is a mix of tropical fruit and dank -- this IS Punk --- but the flavour is drier and more mineral-like. There's no sign of that initial fruitiness, replaced by chalk and grass; bitter to the core. It's a little unbalanced that way, rough and enamel-stripping, with a hard, Germanic, herbal bite on the end. Chinook, Citra and Centennial says the label: no Cascade, but this shows an earthiness I associate with that hop. I'm still thinking of Punk, but more the 2007 6% ABV Jaipur clone than the current iteration. Aaanyway, comparisons aside, this is a hard and pointy IPA of the sort nobody makes any more. Maybe you hanker after this kind of thing; I found it quite tough going now as much as I did a decade ago.

Meanwhile, as a two-finger salute to the anal-retentives out there, 19 in the sequence is followed by No. 1516: Unfiltered Lager. It's a nod to the Reinheitsgebot, of course, and the second unfiltered lager in the series, following no. 2. While that one was a burst of summer sunshine, this is darker and more serious. It looks awful, a muddy orange with little head. The carbonation is low, as is the aroma; only a medium-sweet syrup smell. That all gels together better on tasting when the hops kick in. It's still a bit flat and there's a burnt sugar aftertaste, but before that a buzz of spicy noble hops, bringing white pepper and rocket special effects. It's a kellerbier, then. Fresh, and a little unrefined, but with a raw and rustic charm. I could imagine drinking this in a German basement brewpub and that's something I could really use about now.

Finally, Hope's seasonal beer guy is back for Summer 2020, staying socially distanced on the beach. "An old-school American pale ale" says the can, and also "4.9% ABV", which doesn't sound like any American IPA I remember. It's also hazy and yellow. Lads, if you mean "bitter", just say "bitter". Chinook, Citra and Centennial are your hosts once again, this time bringing you a surprising amount of dank resins, building in intensity to a full-on grass and wax finish. OK now I get the "old-school" bit: there's earthy pine in a very Sierra Nevada way, and an oily jaffa-skin bite too. That said, the modern haze brings a softer side, with tropical mango, smoothie vanilla and maybe even a brush of garlic. Far from a relaxing summer sessioner, it's a beer I ended up arguing with myself over. My conclusion is that it's a modern hazy pale ale with the bitterness ramped up and as such doesn't really work. It ends up jarring and awkward. Where American-style IPA is concerned you need to pick a side: clear, amber and grapefruity or the soft yellow tropical dessert. There is no in-between.

That blip aside, I'm pleased to see special editions with no silly twists or weird ingredients. Hope might present as quirky and playful but I'm very glad that there's reliable brewing talent at the tiller, steering a course away from daft recipes. For now.

Lightweights!

What happened to those palate-pounding Thornbridge beers like St Petersburg, and to making yourself Jaipoorly? The Derbyshire stalwart seems to be represented over here by much lighter fare of late, including these four examples.

First up is Bliss Point, strongest of the lot at a whopping 5% ABV.  The can claims it's a "hazy American pale ale" then backpedals on the details saying it's only a "slight haziness", and indeed it is -- a pale misty yellow. The texture is unforgivably thin for the strength, while the flavour is a mix of dry chalky minerals, herbal bathsalts and old-fashioned lemonade. While there's no malt character to speak of, the hops are muted too, lacking the platform they need to do their job. I kept thinking of diluted lemon barley water, where it needs topping up with a bit more concentrate from the bottle. This is inoffensive fare but verges a little too much on vapid and bland. Lift the finishing gravity, raise the IBUs, do something, please!

Next, on a dismal weekday evening, California Sun: a "west coast session IPA" of 4.5% ABV. It's the right amber-gold colour and has a lovely hard, almost metallic, bitterness, as a west-coaster should. This softens after a moment into fruit chews before finishing on harder resins: a concentrated bitterness, like biting a hop pellet. Though it is lightly textured, there's a proper base of oat cookie and light toffee to carry the flavour. It's nearly easy-drinking; only that rough resinous finish keeps me from chugging it down quickly. While there's plenty going on flavourwise -- it's definitely not bland -- I found it just a little too severe. Maybe all those fruity vanilla IPAs have ruined my palate after all.

So inevitably it's on to the funny ingredients. Satzuma is another session IPA at the same strength with, of course, satsuma peel. We're still in the clear, and this time the colour is a pale and bright golden. The peel is a big part of the flavour: a sudden jolt of real orange right at the front and building, exploding, outwards from there. For a change, there's actual beer perceptible underneath this. Any hop flavour is either drowned (Cascade, First Gold) or subsumed (Mandarina Bavaria) into the citrus foretaste. But there's a gentle snap of dry and lagery pale malt which brings an understated cleanness. Maybe I drank mine too warm, but I didn't get the spritzy refreshment I think the brewers were going for. It's still quite a heavy beer and again the flavours are too loud and intense for the session.

And so to the fruity vanilla IPA. Fresa also includes strawberry and lactose, with the ABV rocketing to 4.8%. Fourpure was the collaborator so it's probably all their fault. It's a pale yellow colour and shows some haze at last. The aroma is innocently fruity; somewhat tropical, perhaps because of actual hops. There are no hops in the flavour, though. There's the sticky ice cream or vanilla effect, sweet and gummy. And the strawberry is of the artificial sort: a a concentrated chemical syrup effect. And that's it. All the gimmicks and no underlying class. A novelty should at least go bananas with the silliness but this one is just bland.

While there are some good features in this set, these are not the sort of beers on which Thornbridge's reputation was built. The young'uns will be wondering why we ever made a fuss about it.

Thorny thorny thorny

Three beer beers from Derbyshire's Thornbridge today. The brewery is probably tired by now of being told that they said they'd never can their beer and then they canned their beer. My first experience of metal-clad Thornbridge came, unexpectedly, via Tesco in Portadown. Both of these are available in Dublin now too, however.

Florida Weisse attracted my attention with the words "bracingly tart" on the blurb. This is a raspberry Berliner weisse of 4.5% ABV and it's certainly bracingly pink, its rosé head quickly crackling away to nothing. It tastes... authentic, in that it tastes like the pre-raspberried Berliner Kindl Weisse: artificially sweet, like candy or ice cream sauce with a very simplistic yoghurt sourness in the background. I guess the name is meant to suggest frivolous summer fun, which this does offer, but I was hoping for something more punchy, more interesting.

From the same shelf came Thornbridge's "Vermont Session IPA", named with a certain literalness Green Mountain and a mere 4.3% ABV. It's appropriately hazy topped by a pile of white foam this time. The flavour is odd. There's orangey juice, an almost margarita-like lime bitterness and then a very strange twang in the finish which begins as fried onion but grows more intense, turning to burnt plastic and acrid smoke. This last part really takes the shine off what should be a jolly and easy-going pale ale. I don't know if it's all down to the intense hops or if something more nefarious has happened, or if it's just me. Anyway, I kept wanting this to be softer and fruitier and it let me down all the way through.

Collaboration beers are ten-a-penny these days (not literally; they're often very expensive) but it's relatively unusual to see two breweries combine the recipes, and names, of their flagship beers. That's what we have here with Jai JAI from Cigar City and Thornbridge, their Jai Alai and Jaipur respectively. The ABV is exactly half way between the two at 6.7% and it's a clear golden colour, the first sign that Jaipur is the dominant partner. I get Jaipur's waxy green dryness in the aroma too. The flavour definitely has two sides: chalk and asparagus at the front, turning sharp and lime-like at the end; and also a sweet lemonade and Juicy Fruit gum sugariness running all the way through. Balance is preserved, and a smooth body ensures it's easy drinking. There's nothing special or different or outré about this collaboration, but no harm. It's a very tasty fruit-forward American-style IPA, refreshing, quenching and satisfying with no novelty factor at all. A real best-of-both-worlds job.

And then a lovely mixed box of Thornbridge bottles came my way as a Christmas gift. There were three new ticks in there, including Melba, a peach-infused IPA. It poured clear and headless, smelling powerfully of peachy syrup and tasting of it too. The texture is light to the point of thinness, which does at least mean it's easy drinking and doesn't get cloying. There's no real indication that it's an IPA, however. Pour peach cordial into vodka, prosecco, fizzy water, and you'll get the same effect. This is quite pleasant drinking but it doesn't particularly inspire or impress me. I'd file it along side those Lindeman's fruit concoctions, and Pêcheresse in particular.

I hoped for better crack from Crackendale, at the same strength and described on the label as a Citra pale ale. Turns out it's very pale indeed, and slightly hazy with it. It suffers a little from the same lack of substance as Melba, but again that serves to help the drinkability. There's a gently spritzy carbonation, propelling a light lime and pine flavour, with some bitter herbal notes tailing behind. I was hoping for a little more punch; maybe some sticky hop resins, but instead it goes for the lighter, more accessible aspect of American C-hops, and I can't fault it for that. I'm guessing this works better as a cask beer than bottled, but what I got was a very passable refresher.

Last up is Coco Cocoa, in the popular style of chocolate and coconut porter. Coconut is all the aroma has to offer, in a pleasingly bitter format. The flavour is mellower, presenting moist and chewy coconut flesh, a subtle dry roast and some sweet milk chocolate, but not too much. It's very well balanced overall, picking the best from its novelty elements without overusing them. This is another I could see working very well by the pint, especially with the ABV at just 5.5%.

So, on the balance of this lot, Thornbridge's best beers are still the bottled ones? Maybe this guy was right.

Bakewell start

On the eve of Alltech Brews & Food 2015, Grand Cru beers held a meet-the-brewer session with Thornbridge in Against the Grain, tasting the classic line-up of Chiron, Jaipur and St Petersberg and finishing on the 10th anniversary special Jaipur X. This monster is 10% ABV but really doesn't taste it, being the same innocent pale gold as Jaipur and exhibiting the same waxy, honey flavours as the basic edition, just  a small bit more of them. I've never been much of a Jaipur enthusiast, but I think the profile works better in a mellower, stronger beer, like this.

Two other special editions were on: Eroica (left) is a 4.3% ABV golden ale with little by way of hop character. Some might call it simple and sessionable; I'm afraid I'll have to file it under watery and boring. The complete opposite can be said of Jehanne, an amber-brown bière de garde of 7.4% ABV and laying on that alcohol in hot and heavy fashion. The dominant flavour is green apples (acetylaldehyde, if my beer chemistry is correct) which I found drowning out any subtleties on offer. Still, it's nicely smooth and warming from the keg and a full pint (cheers Wally!) sent me home glowing.

And so to the main event. Alongside the Irish breweries, Alltech attracted a wide international selection from brewers brought in by their local distributor and those present off their own bat. From the Thornbridge end of the Grand Cru section I snaffled a taste of AM:PM, a 4.3%-er in the must-brew style of the moment, "session IPA". This is rose-gold in colour and has a lovely rich golden syrup aroma, with a matching weighty English ale body. The hops offer little more than a pleasant buzz, with a faint metallic edge. It's not boring and certainly not unpleasant, but it had its work cut out sharing space with the genre-defining Founders All Day IPA and didn't quite match up to it, in my estimation at least.

And that's where it started. There's more to come from Alltech Dublin 2015 next week. A lot more.

The kids in the Hall

Thornbridge abounds! The Black Sheep had their Seaforth on tap a while back, a dark orange IPA named in honour of an early ale-bearing ship plying the East India trade. It's a powerful 5.9% ABV but was being served cold enough to hide that strength and actually make it seem a little watery. First impressions are of mild jaffa orange and a hint of spicy sandalwood. I was expecting more of the malt character to come out as it warms but in fact it's the complex bitter flavours which rise to the surface: some metallic notes and a layer of eucalyptus. Decent but, like with its shipmate Jaipur, I think I'd like a bit more complexity in a beer of this strength.

Meanwhile, off the other end of Capel Street, the Porterhouse had Reverend and the Makers on their gravity cask. This is a 4.8% ABV golden summer seasonal, packed with lots of lemony sunshine. Again, though, I can't help but think they could have achieved the same level of flavour at a lower ABV.

Finally, a bottle I have Steve and Reuben to thank for: Imperial Oatmeal Stout, from the Thornbridge Hall series of extra-expensive beers. It's 11% ABV and this time you can taste every little bit of that strength. It serves up a decent slice of roast, milk and dark chocolate and a strange, but not unpleasant, putty sensation which I assume is contributed by the oatmeal. Heavy and filling, it's one to finish the night, and this blog post, on.