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.

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.

On the Neva Neva

I'm in England at the moment, pootling around Shropshire, doing most of my drinking in and around the main town of Shrewsbury, though what I've found in my beery excursions will have to wait for a future post. Mostly I've been on the local brews, but while passing Appleby's -- one of several posh offies in Shrewsbury -- I spotted something in the window from a little further afield that I had to go in immediately and buy.

Saint Petersburg is an imperial stout by Thornbridge, a Peak District brewery I've had several wonky experiences with but whose devoted following of beer cognoscenti means it must have something going for it. And sure how far wrong can you go with an imperial stout?

I won't answer that, but Saint Petersburg doesn't go very far wrong at all. There's a reddish-brown tint to the otherwise black beer and a lovely thick creamy head, at least at first. From the nose and the taste there's no doubt of the very generous hopping: green and bitter like crunchy veg, with an alpha acid vapour burn as it goes down. Under this there's lots of silky dark chocolate whose bitterness complements the vegetal hops beautifully. A beer of immense balance, this one, worth the excursion.

Today I'm venturing southwards to London, since the Great British Beer Festival kicks off tomorrow. If you're there, you'll see my eye-burning Trouble Brewing t-shirt before you see me.