Rockies II

For the second week in a row I'm starting with a selection of beers from a brewery in Colorado. Odell is rather more familiar than last week's Bootstrap, and its beers are generally top-notch, bordering on iconic in places. I see a couple of potential challenges to that reputation among today's lot.

The "Sippin'" series of sour fruit beers hasn't been Odell's best work, in my opinion. Today we have Sippin' Blackberry: no surprise what the fruit is, but they've also added that pink Himalayan salt, for gosey notions. It's a dirty, murky pink emulsion, with something of a greyish tint. As usual with this sort of beer, the head is gone in moments. The aroma doesn't say much, only a mere suggestion of tart berry. The flavour, too, is understated, and maybe that's for the best. It might have been a sticky cordial, but it's not. The clean flavour includes a definite salinity, so they got some value out of that bonus ingredient. It's only 4.5% ABV and light-textured, with a busy fizz pummelling the palate. I'm guessing the blackberry has mostly fermented out, because there's no more than a trace of it, largely confined to the finish, and not really specifically blackberry; just a generalised hedgerow purple. It's fine. I could happily drink more than this 12oz serve. It's a bit plain to have been shipped from so far away, however.

The next beer is the one which made me particularly apprehensive. I have never understood the appeal of Mexican-style lager to the sort of fussy drinkers who buy beer from the likes of Odell. That it's a degenerate style is evidenced by the front-and-centre role of sweetcorn in the recipe, which gives this one its name: Kernel. It looks like an industrial lager: a bright clear yellow, and we're two-for-two on rubbish head retention. Unlike the last beer, the aroma isn't just minimal, it's non-existent. No surprise there. It has a certain amount of substance, 4.7% ABV providing an acceptable amount of body, so it's not one of those watery ersatz-Mexican affairs that you might find round here in a longneck bottle. That doesn't mean it's good, however. Flavour is hard come by. A little malt-syrup sweetness; maybe a hint of dry grain husk, but not enough of either to give the beer anything I would call character. I was genuinely tempted to squeeze a wedge of lime into it, just so it would have something going on. You would want to be a superfan of Odell, this style, or both, to make it any way worth your while. For me, like the last one, there's just not enough taste action.

That meant all expectation was on the final beer, a double IPA. They couldn't possibly not deliver here. Wire Walker is 8% ABV and specifies that it's in the west coast style. And they mean it too: it's very nearly as clear and golden as the lager. Finally, a worthwhile aroma: it's a classic citrus bite, blending oil and zest. That heralds a very old-school flavour, in quite a delightful way. Before anything else there is malt. While not the full-on toffee sweetness of crystal, there's a honey or golden syrup character, adding weight and texture but not so much heat. The hop bitterness is next, and it's perfectly balanced: punchy without turning harsh. The initial hit softens rapidly, grapefruit and pine fading to sherbet lemons and Seville orange marmalade. For such a strong beer it's incredibly drinkable, and I reckon it's the balance that does it. In particular, making the malt a major part of the offer is one of those ideas, along with cleanness and clarity, that lead commentators like me to opine that IPA has lost its way somewhat, here in the haze age. This beer is how it used to be done, and it was good. I guess it isn't madly dissimilar to Odell's magnificent flagship IPA, but I haven't had that in a while, so a reminder about it is always welcome.

I was right to be suspicious. Fruity sour ale and Mexican-style lager are not things that even a brewery of Odell's calibre is likely to excel at. Double IPA, however, is right in their wheelhouse. Here it's delivered crisp and tangy, in what's now essentially a heritage manner. Far be it from me to suggest any brewery stick to what it knows best, but if IPAs made you famous, maybe do more of that.

The Blues are calling

It's been a few weeks since any American beer has featured on these pages, so here's a selection from Oskar Blues that has been sitting in the drafts folder, patiently awaiting its turn.

We'll start at the start with One-y, a sort of diet IPA, promising an even 100 calories. It looks like a slimmers' beer too, pouring a watery yellow with a sickly looking haze and the thinnest of heads. You need to take a big huff to get any aroma from it -- there's just a faint dankness echoing from the deep. Unimpressive so far, but the foretaste is nice: a fresh combination of classic American hop flavours like grapefruit, lemon, pine and weed. Unfortuntely there's no malt substance to carry these forward and it all fades out quickly, leaving just a sad wateriness behind. It's very unsatisfying to drink, and frustrating because the constituent parts would work very well together in a bigger beer. The brewery may proffer the excuse that it's only 4% ABV, which is nothing in American terms, but I know plenty of British brewers who can make American hops absolutely sing at that sort of strength. No excuses.

The next step up the strength ladder is Rosé for Daze, 6% ABV and promising slight tartness with hibiscus and prickly pear. It really does look like a rosé wine: not pink pink, but the rich red of polished copper. The aroma gives little away, smelling crisp and plain, like a rye cracker. Its flavour is milder than anticipated but everything is there: the tartness front and centre, melding with the sour cherry and raspberry effect I usually get; and then the silly pink-tasting prickly pear arrives late and is uncharacteristically polite, not interrupting the others. I think that a bit more flower and fruit would be welcome over the acidity, and you get poor value for your 6% ABV given it's another thin one. Still, if you don't mind your pink fruit beers being a little on the severe side there's fun to be had here.

To follow, an oddity: Death by King Cake. I was hitherto unaware of a dessert called "King Cake", let alone that it can be fatal. The given style is nothing more specific than "ale", to which has been added vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cacao, orange peel and pecans. You'd wonder if there was room for malt and hops after all that. It's 6.5% ABV. For some reason I thought it would be dark so was surprised by the medium amber colour. Again the aroma has little to say, but the spices are definitely conspiring in there. The texture is thick and syrupy, with no immediate flavour, giving a first impression of a super-strength tramps' lager. The orange peel is probably the most prominent of the novelty flavours, then the cinnamon and chocolate. None of it is very loud, though. This tastes of alcohol more than cake; the spices an afterthought. It's inoffensive, and maybe the light touch on silliness is a point in its favour. Consider it as a slightly milder alternative to your after-dinner snifter of barley wine.

We approach top-out with Can-O-Bliss "Tropical India Pale Ale" at 7.2% ABV. It's a bright and hazy orange colour, smelling sweet and a bit sticky, like Fanta or orange travel sweet. That sweet jaffa theme continues on tasting. It's a very typical, even old-school, American IPA, bringing to mind echoes of Odell IPA and Bell's Two Hearted. Any stoners looking for something in their line will be disappointed. OK, if you take a big enough mouthful there's maybe a certain bud-like resin at the back of the palate, but you'd have to be looking for it. This one, finally, is full textured and full flavoured, tasting like the beer One-y could have been. With no gimmicks, and barely a nod to modern vanilla-and-garlic IPAs, it's unspectacular and nicely done. Well worth adding into your 4-for-€10 mix where you see it.

My last is a longtime fixture in the Oskar Blues line-up, but one I'd never tasted before, an archetype of the Americo-Belgian style Skaatch Ale: Old Chub. It's 8% ABV and a mahogany brown colour, topped with a handsome ivory-coloured head. It pours dense and it smells dense, all toffee and liquorice. They swap order in the flavour, with the bittering herbal aniseed to the fore, then burnt caramel rolling in behind. That's pretty much your lot, the contrasting elements combining into a nutty fade-out. While it's big and chewy on the palate and warming in the belly, there's no booze heat in the flavour, which is quite a deft move. The end result is smooth, mellow and easy going; verging on boring. It's the sort of strong and gentle beer you can relax into after tasting a selection of brash and loud ones, offering thick Belgian-style fun minus the fruity esters.

Quite a mix here, but the classically-constructed IPA wins the day for me.

Coming on strong

The Irish Craft Beer Village is still going on at Dublin's IFSC. I was down a few evenings late last week, mainly to see what's new and interesting in the line-up. It's probably not the best environment to get to grips with an unfamiliar beer, what with the persistent chilliness of the liquid, not helped at all by the flimsy plastic receptacles. But howanever: the headliners were two strong beers, both ideal for counteracting the mid-March chill.

First up, Kindred Spirit, a 7% ABV whiskey-aged stout by Eight Degrees. Yes, I know, another whiskey-aged beer. I'm always a bit apprehensive approaching these as it seems to be a very easy style to make a mess of. The lads in Mitchelstown have done a great job, however, combining the best elements of whiskey and stout without any of the unpleasant side effects.

So you get a layer of rich milk chocolate to begin with and this is complemented by a subtle honey flavour, a taste which is the main reason I enjoy Irish whiskey but is so rarely present in beers that are whiskey-aged. There's some lovely vanilla oak as well, but again: just enough to add an extra dimension to the taste. The strength is well hidden with no hot alcohol flavours coming out. All-in-all a welcome addition to the range of stouts produced by Irish brewers.

While stouts may be ten a penny (plus excise and VAT) round these parts, double IPAs are somewhat rarer. The hophead lobby at Beoir has been getting quite vocal on the subject, so Carlow Brewing have stepped in to try and shut them up with O'Hara's Double IPA. For this type of beer, 7.5% ABV seems rather modest and the style Blueshirts at the festival had some forthright opinions on how justified the D-word is here. But none of that bothers me: if Carlow want to call it a Double IPA then that's what it is.

Of much greater importance than the badge is the beer itself. It presents as an enticing dark amber, not at all surprisingly, given the full body and smooth texture. I didn't get much of an aroma from it, less perfume than the brewery's 5.2% ABV pale ale. I don't know if this has been dry-hopped like the pale ale but I wouldn't be surprised if it hadn't. The real action kicks in on tasting. While not extremely bitter and citric like many a DIPA from the US, it makes up for any lack of unsubtle wallop with complexity. There's a sizable amount of orange pith in the mix, as well as some lighter peach and satsuma. The malt element lends a toffee base which harmonises beautifully with the hop fruit and makes for a smooth, dangerously drinkable experience. I don't give out "This Tastes Like Odell IPA" plaudits lightly, but this tastes like Odell IPA.

Before we leave, just a quick note about Bo Bristle IPA. This was launched at the Irish Craft Beer Festival last September and received a fairly unenthusiastic reception. Heavy, brownish and muted it had nothing wrong with it, but was hard to like. It's a reformulated version on sale at the festival now and it's much improved: crisp, golden and with a striking bitter grapefruit punch to it. A beer that's well worth taking another look at, and at 5% ABV a handy one to trade down to after the big-hitters.

The Irish Craft Beer Village is open today from noon and closes at 10pm this evening for another year.

Doug takes charge

Pond Hopper describes itself as a "Double Extra Pale Ale" on the label, which is a bit of an oddity in itself. It's a collaboration between the Odell brewery in Colorado and Thornbridge which, according to the label, is situated somewhere near Cherbourg.

Brewing took place at the former, and more than any other American brewery I know, Odell has a very distinctive hop profile across all its beers: a sweet and tangy fresh orange flavour. It's very very apparent in Pond Hopper: not so much in the aroma where I got little beyond carbonic dryness and a worrying funky hit of Brett, but the flavour is all big and punchy tangerines; tangerine skin, even. There's an oiliness and a heat which speaks of a beer much stronger than the mere 8.9% ABV we have here. It finishes on a satisfyingly dank note: a long-lasting herbal and vegetal funkiness providing a pleasant counterpoint to the more innocent tangerines.

I can sort-of see where the style designation came from. The pale and hazy gold colour are the sort one would associate much more with a pale ale, and perhaps influenced their decision to shy away from the more commonplace "IPA" label. What I can't see, however, are the fingerprints of Thornbridge anywhere -- though admittedly with Thornbridge's hugely diverse range of beers it's hard to know which fingers to be looking out for. The label copy says Thornbridge provided the English malt, but there's very little sign of that under Odell's all-conquering orange flavoured hops.

A beer to rank alongside Odell IPA and Myrcenary as among the best of their range. It doesn't need to be special, limited or rare to be enjoyable.

Looking for redemption

Here it is folks, the last roll of the die for Odell. We're down to the wire, backs to the wall, pulling out all stops and full steam ahead for a land flowing with strained metaphors. Can the Colorado brewery give me a beer that has the beatings of their IPA? I've been quite unimpressed with all the others I've tried and I'm running really short of new ones to try. Three more today: will one of them redeem this much-lauded brewery?

As it happens, redemption is the theme for this month's Session. John tells us of the long period in the wilderness on which he sent Smuttynose brewery following some bad experiences with their beer. While I'd never go so far as to describe anything I've had so far from Odell as bad, I feel they're not living up to their reputation. Redemption or damnation: three beers to decide it.

First up, 5 Barrel Pale Ale, a tribute, apparently, to the brewery's pilot operation. Like all of these, the bottle conditioning leaves it slightly hazy on pouring: a pale amber with a thick and lasting pillow of foam on top. There's no sign of that suspended yeast in the flavour, however. It's clean and tangy offering a sugary kiss of lightly caramelised malt overlaid with some lovely juicy mandarin hops, rising to a definite bitterness at the end. The body is big and on the whole it's a very satisfying beer to drink. It's not a stand-out, though, being in the same league for me as the likes of Goose Island IPA. Still, it looks like redemption may indeed be on the cards.

The Red next. Not a name to inspire visions of beer excellence, but really this is much more along the lines of an American Amber, though with rather more oomph at 6.5% ABV. Out of the bottle it's busy straight away with an aroma of sweet dark fruit: raisins and plums. On tasting you get a little bit of sherbet, some roast and a tiny hint of gunpowder spice. More of any of these elements would be great, but it's quite understated all-in. Like the 5 Barrel, it's solid, enjoyable, but there are plenty of other beers just like it out there. I couldn't go singing Odell's praises on the basis of this alone.

And so we come to Cutthroat Porter, where the yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle is clearly visible through the glass, light brown on black. It pours out promisingly gloopy, though the carbonation is quite busy, resulting in an another dense head that lasts all the way to the end. It's a beer of two halves, and I didn't like it at first, finding it too dry and too fizzy. Given a few minutes to warm up and flatten out, however, and it's a treat. Sweet roast on the nose, a mellow smooth texture and a flavour, while still nicely dry, with lots of other stuff going on too. Chocolate and marzipan is a big part of it, and some light peppery spices as well. My only problem is that it's all over too quickly. But, at 4.8% ABV, what I'm supposed to do is open the next bottle.

So yes: redemption, then, for Odell. There's still nothing with the wow-factor of the IPA, but Cutthroat is definitely up there with the best of American porters I've met. The others I'd be happy to drink if they were plentiful and cheap, but as I've said before, beer really ought to be doing something interesting and different to justify a journey of thousands of miles.

Bipolar

We are between the seasons at the moment: a bit cold, a bit sunny, you could be tricked into having a beer outdoors only to have to scurry in blue-handed after two sips. So I'm thumbing my nose to seasonal drinking for this post and having a winter beer and a summer beer in one sitting. I think there's a definite touch of SAD in the way the Odell brewery has named them.

There's not a whole lot of winter comfort in the moniker Isolation, for instance. And, frankly, there's not a whole lot in the beer either. It looks the part: a rich chestnut amber, and 6.1% ABV is plenty for any amount of cockle-warming, but bizarrely it's all hop. There's a little bit of caramel in there I'll grant you, and some lovely gunpowder spice, but the dominant flavour is soft and succulent fruit. Overall you get a pleasant, easy-drinking and tasty ale that's hard to criticise for anything other than a lack of the oomph suggested by its winter stylings. Definitely a cheerier beer than the label implies.

If Isolation is the moody one, there's a slightly psychotic touch of the giggles about Levity. I'm sure the character depicted on the label is supposed to be leaping upward, but the illustration suggests a gentle swaying motion to me. Anyway... the visuals are a bit poor here: a murky and uneven haze with little more than a skim of froth passing as head. It's billed as an "amber ale" yet lacks the reddish tones normally found in these. On tasting, a blast of rough bitterness kicks things off, skewed by a touch of stale oxidation. After a second the malt arrives on the scene to calm things down and the end result is a smooth and full-bodied beer with a long aftertaste. Once again, and I'm beginning to think of this as an Odell signature now, the hop flavours are peaches and nectarines, sweet and juicy with barely a hint of tartness.

All that written and I've just looked back on my review of Odell St Lupulin from last year. A lot of the observations I had there I'm finding again here: nicely sweet and fruity but ultimately a bit boring for beers of this strength. I'll persist with the range and hopefully there's something to match the excellent IPA in there.

Joy through strength

A couple of big American IPAs for you today. First up, Black Diamond Jagged Edge. It's quite innocently pale without a whole lot going on in the aroma department. All the action is in the flavour, with a big marmalade kick delivered up front and given extra momentum by a heavy 7.3% ABV body. It doesn't do much else though, and I might have got bored had I not been drinking it next to some spicy Singapore noodles, to which it stood up rather well. Still, I reckoned it didn't have enough to it to justify a standalone blog post, so I went looking for something else to fill out another paragraph.

The result was Odell IPA, one I'd heard good things about from bloggers and Twitterers near and far. It's similarly strong at 7% ABV and feels much lighter and better balanced. I'd be interested to compare it directly with Goose Island IPA as they both have the same sweet mandarin-and-biscuit aroma and foretaste, finishing gently but firmly bitter. I'd say this has a little more bite to it, the mandarins turning to jaffas just on the end, but it's still beautifully balanced.

I'd been a bit sceptical about the whole Odell thingy, having been unimpressed by St Lupulin. The rest of the range are now on my to-buy list.