Broad brush strokes

It's a Canvas bonanza today. The beers come in fits and starts and can be difficult to find, so when a bunch appeared on the shelves of Redmond's and Blackrock Cellar, I grabbed one of everything. The styles and recipes are idiosyncratic in that particular Canvas way.

The first one, for example, is broadly a Lichtenhainer, though the brewery doesn't call it that, preferring to label Ramoke as "smoked sour" with added rhubarb, ginger and strawberries. It's 3% ABV and a pale Champagne-gold. The aroma is a strange but alluring savoury funk, reminding me of blue cheese, plus a jammy sweet note suggesting they haven't skimped on the strawberry. The Champagne effect isn't limited to the appearance. From the first sip it's crisp and toasty with lots of tingly sparkle. The ginger follows next, a candied effect with lots of flavour but little heat. A mildly tart tang comes next, but strangely no smoke. It's quite amazing how it smells intensely smoky but doesn't really taste of it. The finish is relatively quick and we're ready to start a new adventure in the next mouthful. The flavours don't in any way meld or complement each other, but the base is light enough for this not to be a problem. The end result is weird but fun, which is exactly what I pay my Canvas subscription for.

Last year I enjoyed the barrel-aged amber IPA called Pixel. Well, there's more where that came from. They've switched around the barrels, added Brettanomyces, and dry hopped it with a different selection of hops each time.

Pixel Barrel 2 wasn't the first I drank but I feel obliged to take them in numerical order. Like the others it's 6% ABV and here the hops are Amarillo, Ekuanot and Citra. It looks like a Flanders red in the glass: a clear shade of burnt sienna rust. There's a floral kick to the aroma -- lavender and violet -- as the hops start their dance with the wild yeast. A certain citrus side emerges on tasting, mostly bergamot with its herbal edging, but turning to Citra's signature lime later on. The carbonation is barely-there but I don't see that as a problem because of the weighty texture and a clean tannic dryness, like a nice cup of black tea. "IPA" does this beer a disservice. There are positive elements of barley wine, English bitter and American amber in here. Delicious in any language.

Moving along the line, Pixel Barrel 6 is darker and murkier. Citra sticks around and joins Mosaic in this particular buddy movie. The aroma is similarly floral like the previous, but more intense and perfumey. Here the flavour is spicier: pink peppercorns and a touch of sandalwood, turning to frankincense thanks to the greasy texture. It feels a little rougher and rawer than no. 2, with a slight touch of dreggyness. If you have one, I recommend a month or two of fridging to clean it up. Nevertheless, it's a damn fine beer, showing off Brett and American hops in matching proportions. You still get tannins and flowers like barrel 2, but a little less of the clean complexity, overall. 

There's a shocking dip in ABV to 5.8% with Pixel Barrel 7. This one is single-dry-hopped on Galaxy. It's an all-round plainer affair. More murk, and a fainter hit of medicine-cabinet herbs and flowers on a much lighter and thinner base. It's still a tasty, fruity, Bretty, blend. Galaxy usually says mandarin and the like to me, but here I get cherry and raspberry, with a little oily sage and rosemary resin on the end. It only fails to impress when compared to its brethren; on its own I would be lauding it more than I am now. There's a dreggy sharpness at the base here, suggesting again that a bit of dropping-bright in the can would be worth doing. That's not to say it's all potential: there's plenty to enjoy in the beer as it is now.

Finally we come to Pixel Barrel 9. It's a muddy Orval brown and smells a bit like that beer as well: big on floral spices, with a thick layer of horse-sweat on top. Like the above, it's 5.8% ABV so the texture is a little thinner than I'd like. Without the body to carry it, the funk seems a bit overdone: rough and unsubtle. Nuance is at least provided by those floral hops,  Amarillo, Ekuanot and Citra (again) bringing breezy violet and lavender topnotes. Scampering in last is the caramel malt, adding a cola sweetness to the finish. This is one for the hardcore Brett fans. The feral yeast absolutely dominates it, and not in a friendly gummy fruity way, but fully fetid and mulchy. If that's not your bag, move along.

I will definitely be trying to fill the gaps in the Pixel series, and chasing it as far as it goes. It's a very wothwhile experience.

A year before I first met Pixel, I first met Liminal, then an amber ale, and I wasn't a fan. Liminal Barrel 4 is badged as a Flanders red and quite strong at 6.3% ABV. This is a tough style to do well and this one is not done well. Like the original Liminal it is much too vinegary to be enjoyable. The aroma gets it off on the wrong foot with a rough and stale corn waft. Then it's thin vinegar on the palate with a side order of marker-pen phenols and inappropriate earthy mushroom. Flanders red needs a balancing fruit site, the best ones carrying notes of cherry, raspberry and red grape. This offers none of that. Maybe a higher strength or longer ageing would help, but it definitely needs remedial work.

Last up is version 1.2 of Canvas Milk Stout and this time I have no previous to compare it with. It's a happily accessible 4.3% ABV and looks well: obsidian black with a head of old ivory. The roasty aroma was the first surprise and the toasty flavour the second. One normally expects a good deal of creamy sweetness from milk stouts but that's not on offer here. Instead it's quite bitter, in that old-fashioned stout sort of way. There's a marjoram and dill herbal vibe, set on dry burnt toast. Lactose is of course listed in the ingredients but for the life of me I couldn't figure out where it comes into the picture here. Maybe it's the texture: it's a mite fuller than dry stouts of this strength usually are, but not excessively so. Chocolate? Latte? Vanilla? A big nope on all of those. Luckily this is just the sort of stout I like so I have no complaints about it missing the style profile.

And that kind of sums of Canvas: there are some really glorious beers, but not a whole lot of point in trying to systematise them. Yes there's the odd clunker too, but maybe that's the cost of creativity when working at their scale.

Chancing it

A trilogy of beers today from Ireland's most eccentric brewery, Canvas of Tipperary.

@Manicallyrun is a case in point, and not just from the name. "Not a lager" says the label, above its description as a "juicy tart Vienna lager". No point asking questions, just get stuck in. It looks as I would expect a Vienna lager to: that attractive medium amber, though I feel I should have stopped pouring while it was still running clear. I didn't, and got a dun-coloured glassful instead. Tartness definitely stands out in the aroma, and if they hadn't flagged it, I might rudely suggest that this wasn't meant to be sour: it smells like many a homebrew-batch-gone-wrong. Any trace of Vienna is absent from the flavour: there's none of that rich biscuit or sweetly toasted melanoidins. The label also says it's dry-hopped with Vic Secret, but I don't get that either: neither its liquorice-chew bitterness nor colourful tropical juice. What's left is just that tang, on a thin base that's highly attenuated though finished at just 4.1% ABV. It's OK, but underwhelming, lacking most of the elements promised on the label and not putting enough complexity into the tartness. A few months in a barrel and it might be a decent Flemish red, but it's not really anything now.

Moving on swiftly, the next bottle is Pixel, an amber IPA. Well that's a style that other breweries make (though I can't think of any examples) so this should be more orthodox. It's quite a dark brownish-red and there's a pleasant malt sweetness in the aroma, with a wisp of pipe smoke too. Here's that richness I was looking for in the previous one. Not much hop though, but there's a delicious white-pepper piquancy that stands in and provides balance to the sweetness. Looking closer at the label it turns out that this has been aged in red wine barrels, so I guess that's an oak spice I'm tasting. The whole thing is just 5.1% ABV and exceedingly mellow, with none of the flavours extreme, jarring or overdone. This is unexciting in an age of bright jangling IPAs and booze-soaked barrel flavours, but I really appreciated its calm and balanced complexity.

Bringing us home is the strongest  of the set -- up to 5.3% ABV -- and the only one in a 500ml bottle. Not that I got half a litre of Biodynamic Pale Ale: it was so dynamic it gushed out of the bottle and over the table. Most unprofessional. When it settled it was a hazy pale golden colour in the glass, smelling of lemons and sunshine. The flavour is weird. There's a kind of honey note, concentrated and waxy, like you get from strong mead. The finish is a rubbery bitterness. A thin texture means this doesn't get any more complex: honey and rubber, rubber and honey is most of your lot the whole way through. There's maybe some worty Ovaltine malt as well -- it is intended as a malt showcase -- but like the Vienna lager there's no substance to carry the malt taste properly. This isn't enjoyable and a commercial brewery putting gushers onto the market is a poor show.

Canvas's eccentricities really do mean their beers are a game of roulette. When they get it right they nail it in a way a shiny brewery in an industrial unit never could, but unfortunately that's not always what happens. Be lucky.