Sierra all the way

I honestly thought they had just changed the can design. It's an indictment of slow-moving beer in Irish shops that I didn't bat an eyelid when both designs sat side by side for month after month. A conversation with the eminent Bodge about the place of lime in brewing led me to the revelation that there were, in fact, two forms of Sierra Nevada Otra Vez gose, the new one with Lime and Agave. In my defence, the writing is very small.

What Bodge was saying was that lime tends to completely take over the flavour of anything it's in, and that's definitely the case here: there's a sweet hit of lime ice lollies (or sorbet if you're posh) right from the outset and nothing much else gets past it. Maybe some of the sweetness is agave syrup, but that doesn't save it from being quite one-dimensional. Like way too many beers with the word "gose" on the label there's only the faintest, and missable, hint of salt and absolutely no coriander.

This is pleasant in an unbeery, fizzy lime cordial sort of way. I can imagine it quenching many a desert thirst in Albuquerque or Santa Fe. A dismal autumnal evening in Dublin didn't really give it any contextual advantage, however.

My Otra Vez explorations continued a while later at a Sierra Nevada extravaganza hosted by The TapHouse in Ranelagh. Among the line-up here was a third iteration: Tequila Barrel Otra Vez, a natural progression, of course. This was far from one-dimensional. A honeycomb aroma introduces it and the flavour is sweet and dessertish with a sticky texture to match, while also being sharp and tangy thanks to the irrepressible lime. Mead came to mind, as did Tokaji: it's that sort of effortlessly classy complexity. I'd never have thought that a novelty beer like Otra Vez could be poshed up like this, but it seems all you need is a tequila cask.

Among the bottles on the go was Sierra Nevada Vienna and I was startled to learn I had never tasted it. It's a Vienna lager, of course, though looked a little pale in the dim light, golden rather than the copper shade I would expect. This is a beer of understated balance, with a smooth biscuity sweetness and a tang from noble hops which doesn't turn acridly grassy as they sometimes do. I miss the dark malt richness, the melanoidins, but that doesn't seem to be the direction the brewery has taken this one. While unexciting, it's very well-constructed and doubtless exactly what it was intended to be.

And there was another quartet of little green cans, following on from the Fresh Hop set last autumn and the Southern Hemisphere ones several months ago. This time each uses a single iconic variety of American hops.

Citra IPL is 5.5% ABV with a decently clean grain base. Onto this is grafted a mild lime bitterness, very noticeably citric but not overdone. There's a surprise peppery complexity in the finish as well. India Pale Lagers rarely wow me, and this one doesn't, but it's fun and refreshing which is all that's required of it.

We go up to 6.7% ABV with the Amarillo IPA and I got a shock in the aroma here: caraway! That's not something I've ever associated with this hop breed. There's a surprising, and disappointing, lack of fruit in the flavour. Instead it's all seed husks, fried onions and alcohol, very far from orangey Amarillo and therefore a poor showcase for it.

Matters got even worse when it came to the Mosaic DIPA. This is harshly savoury, as can happen with Mosaic, and there's none of the juicy tropicality it imparts when used well. Somehow it also comes across dry and plasticky, the 8% ABV giving it a cloying claggy quality. No fun at all.

I missed out on the fourth one in the set on the night, El Dorado Session IPA, but picked it up in an off licence a few days later. It's clear and golden, with a muted aroma, though one which does show the signature tropical chew-sweets of the hop. Phew! It tastes lightly lemony, dusted with a citrus perfume and has a smooth and easy-going texture, filling out its 4.6% ABV fully without being any way thin. It's not quite as fruity as I was expecting, the hops bringing a bitterness I don't associate with the breed but which helps balance it well. I could definitely imagine a session on this.

Not for the first time the lighter ones in the set are the most enjoyable.

We finish on a different lighter note: I was surprised and intrigued when I first saw Sierra Nevada's California IPA on tap in 57 The Headline. It's a rather inauspicious name. Turns out this is their 3 Weight session IPA rebadged for the European market. It's a very sessionable 4.2% ABV and an innocent pale yellow colour. There's a beautiful, luscious soft fruit flavour, all fresh peach and honeydew melon. This contrasts with a more serious oily-dank aroma. A certain dirty yeast grit creeps in as it warms but that's very mild and does nothing to dull the zingy fruit. Dare I throw in a Little Fawn parallel? Go on then: it's very nearly that good. This is the beer to choose on dark evenings when you need a reminder of what summer tastes like.

Thanks to all at The TapHouse and Grand Cru Beers for providing most of this lot. I'm never stuck for something to write about with Sierra Nevada.

Advanced for his age

Dublin's DOT Brew celebrated its first birthday with a slew of new barrel-aged small-batch beers, brought out to meet the public in Idlewild (and later Abbot's Ale House in Cork) a few weeks ago. The Idlewild event was fun, with only three lines dedicated to the selection so turnover was quick. If only life could be like this more often.

First of the newcomers was Teeny Tiny Barrel Aged Pale Ale. As the name hints, this is a mere 3.5% ABV. The barrels in question are Chardonnay, where it spent 9 months and the resulting aroma is fantastic: a sumptuous juicy white grape ripeness. I was down to earth again with the first sip of the clear gold liquid: it opens with quite a harsh pine sawdust flavour, which I'm guessing is the oak at work. The Chardonnay fruit does come out increasingly as the beer warms, and delivers a refreshing tartness in the finish, but after a while the fruit and the wood become overpowering. There just isn't enough heft in the underlying beer to counterbalance them. It's a fun experiment, but one which could do with a little fine-tuning next time out.

The next beer also highlights its smallness, going by the name of Baby Bourbon Birthday Barrel, though there's not much babyish about its 6.2% ABV. It poured black and headless, giving off a husky woody aroma with a pinch of vanilla thrown in. That develops beyond a pinch in the flavour, with vanilla becoming the dominant feature. The wood calms down and it's all very gentle and chocolatey after that. Great dessert drinking.

Tequila Saison was next on the roster. This is light and clean, saison as it should be, founded on dry grain husk flavours with a burst of white pepper spice right in the middle. The tequila has definitely made its mark on it, and there's more than a hint of that sweet prickly pear fruit flavour that's particularly prominent in the likes of Sierra Nevada's Otra Vez. The novelty feature doesn't dominate, however, and allows the beer to maintain its classical saisonosity. There's a lightness of touch here that belies the frankly unreasonable 6.2% ABV.

From a 6.2% ABV beer that tastes light to a 6.5% ABV one that tastes much much stronger. Cherry Choco Bourbon Dark leaves little to the imagination, being a dark ale aged in bourbon barrels with added cocoa nibs and morello cherries. It gets great value out of all that, resulting in a veritable sweetshop of flavours, opening on Parma Violets and Highland Toffee bars and moving through Opal Fruits, Refreshers and even a Bounty. Though thick and quite oily it's light enough to not get cloying as the multifaceted flavour kicks in. This is a sensation and would really shine in bottle form.

The final beer is a big-hitter at 9.5% ABV, named Cab. Sauv. Malt Rye, based on a brown ale with three kinds of rye and double barrel ageing: the Cabernet Sauvignon followed by Irish whiskey. It tastes very strongly of chocolate, so much so I was wondering if it had got mixed up with the cherry chocolate one. There's a bit of cherry fruit character, but boozy, like cherries soaked in port. You end up with something along the lines of Mon Cheri chocolates, which is great 'cos I love them. The texture is light despite the high strength, and despite the roll call of serious ingredients it's an incredibly fun beer to drink.

I tend to be quite sceptical of advanced barrel-ageing with weird ingredients. For a lot of brewers it's just gimmickry, at best well-intentioned, though sometimes I suspect only done to make the name of the beer look awesome when written down. But this set from DOT has, for the most part, really got the best out of the barrels used. Hopefully we won't have to wait a year for the next set.

Unpainted desert

It's a pale one, is Sierra Nevada Otra Vez: a wan and weak looking straw yellow in need of a hot shower and a good meal. The can tells me this is a "Gose-style ale ... brewed with cactus and grapefruit." Does anyone remember when we used to call things like this "extreme beer"? It's like "kidult": we don't need the word any more, because it's everyone.

Otra Vez (roughly, "once again", because session, innit) doesn't have much of an aroma: just a cold water metal and a sweeter note that reminds me of a bright pink prickly pear liqueur I bought abroad once -- I guess that's the cactus. The flavour is...  fun on first impressions and needs a little unpacking. A thin texture sends an immediate signal that this is watery and dull, but it doubles back with that sweet cactus liqueur kick which adds a convincing illusion of thickness. And then, switching tracks again there's a lightly tangy and super-clean tartness, and just a trace of savoury coriander.

The cactus squats too firmly on the flavour for this to really deserve being badged as gose or gose-style. I'm increasingly of the opinion that gose shouldn't be considered a base on which to play about with unusual ingredients: it's a fine style just as it is. But at the same time there's absolutely nothing wrong with, in this case, throwing some pink cactus juice into a low-strength pale tart ale, and then throwing back the result. As an extreme session herbal fruit sour ale it's just perfect, though is probably best enjoyed without overthinking how it works.