Unnecessary extensions

Did Sierra Nevada need to add a Peachy Little Thing to its already extensive range of hazy IPAs? No it did not. But, as always, I am obliged to drink and tell you about it. To give it a properly fair shake, I opened it on a warm afternoon, on the assumption that this is a more frivolous and summery kind of beer, although the 7% ABV means it comes with some serious heft. It's mostly opaque and the bright orange of a diluted squash. The peach... substance... is very apparent from the aroma, adding a strong and artificial sweet-smelling perfume. Who remembers Magic Hat No. 9? I didn't, until I took a sniff of this. The mouthfeel is beautifully soft, making good use of that high gravity to give it a deliciously chewy texture. And though they claim it's an IPA, there is precious little sign of any hops. Instead, that concentrated peach essence rides roughshod over everything else, unsubtle and overly sweet. I guess it works in a complementary way with the pillowy texture, but it doesn't create a pleasant beer; this barely tastes like a beer at all. I will credit that it could have ended up a syrupy mess, and instead it's simply syrupy in a straightforward, one-flavour, fashion. I don't see the point.

My local SuperValu occasionally gets shipments of expiring stock from local distributor Grand Cru, so you'll need to ignore the "fresh" aspect of this Cryo Fresh Torpedo, the bottle being a bit over a year old by the time I got to it. One again, it's a 7% ABV IPA, though this one is an altogether warmer-looking amber shade, and mostly clear with it. The aroma has survived well, and still has the classic Torpedo pine sharpness. Surprisingly, the bitterness doesn't dominate the flavour. It still tastes plenty fresh, though, with zesty orange juice and thick-shred marmalade. Only in the finish is there a drier and bitterer lime rind effect. It's all quite subtle too, lacking any punchy extremes, with neither harshness nor heat. Despite all the technical hop wizardry, this is a decent, accessible and enjoyable IPA, very much in the West Coast fashion, but not overdoing it. My only quibble is that overdoing it is basic Torpedo's main feature, and I'm a fan of its resinous severity, none of which is on display here. For €2.60, I got a very good bottle of beer, though I still think I would trade up to a fresh bottle of OG Torpedo.

Torpedo and Hazy Little Thing are very good beers in their own right, and I'm a fan of both. These attempts at using established customer good will are, I think, misguided. Not everyone will come in on the ground floor, and I hate to think that anyone would eschew the originals having tried and disliked these cash-in variants.

Bandwagons west

Did we really need another extension to Sierra Nevada's "Little Thing" series? Especially since this one is called Juicy Little Thing: wasn't juiciness the whole point of the original, and still best, Hazy Little Thing? As we all know by now, yeast technology has moved on, hop optimisation is the name of the biochemical game these days, and Sierra Nevada has no intention of being left behind.

The beer is 6.5% ABV, so only subtly different from the original's strength. It positively glows in the glass, a radiant tropical-sunset orange. For all the haze and purported juice there's not much of an aroma, and what's there is on the savoury side. The flavour is very dull. It had been in the can for a little over two months, which shouldn't be enough to kill hop subtlety altogether so I can only conclude there wasn't much to start with. In place of juice I found a sickly orange cordial, dried onion and a sort of stale plasticky twang, like you might find in a cheap and nasty German lager. It's very disappointing but is at least in keeping with most of the other secondary Little Things by being not worth drinking. One can rarely fault Sierra Nevada's consistency.

Another unfathomably fashionable IPA sub-style is cold IPA, and the brewery has given their fabulous Torpedo the lager yeast treatment to create Cold Torpedo. "Ultra-crisp and clean for peak drinkability" goes the blurb. Drinkability is not what I come to resin-bomb Torpedo for, so I was wary. Is this another ill-advised and unnecessary brand extension? I'm going to say "no". It is undoubtedly lighter than real Torpedo, and paler too, but the high-octane hop explosion is retained, and a certain amount of crispness suits it. It's still bitter and resinous, but without the weighty malt backing you get more of the fruity side: pith and zest, not just the oils. Lime and grapefruit gives way to apricot and cantaloupe. It's still a powerhouse, but on a more advanced and complex level. It makes for an interesting companion piece to Torpedo, which is what brand extensions ought to be.

Still, if Sierra Nevada are going to insist on chasing passé IPA trends, how about throwing us a black one now and again?

The epic of Gill

Blimey. Lough Gill is no friend to the slow-paced beer reviewer. While my attention has been elsewhere, their new releases have flourished, eventually claiming a whole wing of my beer fridge to themselves. Nevertheless I knuckled down and have, heroically and at great personal cost, written a review of them all. Here we go then.

We start very normally with Breakers, a pale ale of 4.2% ABV and gluten free. Interestingly, for something that presumably uses a clearing agent to strip out gluten, it's somewhat hazy. Mosaic is among the hops and it's very apparent in the aroma with its bright tropical melon and passionfruit. Strata and Chinook are the others, and I think the juicy mandarin foretaste is a result of the former. From Chinook I normally expect bitterness but there's precious little of that on show here, only a tiny piquancy in the finish. I don't mind, however. Fresh and juicy is how it wants to play things, and it's very successful at it. This doesn't taste in any way compromised and I would quite happily drink a few in a row.

"Keep it pale and slightly hazy but load it with gluten" said someone, presumably. That resulted in Sligo Bay, slightly stronger at 4.6% ABV but looking identical. We're not told the hops, only that they're American. The aroma is similar to the above, though a little more citrus than tropical, and tangerine or satsuma in particular. Very good, though. So it was a surprise to find a flavour that goes nowhere. There's a vague tang of orange peel, fading quickly to leave a mildly unpleasant rubbery residue. It's not badly flawed, but it's not quite right and overall very basic. Hop it like Breakers, please.

Sour ales with fruit in are inevitable. We just have to accept that, and especially with Lough Gill. First up is a mere 4%-er called Pain & Perfection, brewed with mango, passionfruit and guava, alongside lactose. Not too much lactose, mind: for a "pastry sour" this is nicely tart and sharply refreshing. The billed fruits are all discernible, though pushy passionfruit is loudest, as always. There is a smooth pulpy thickness to the texture, but more like you'd get from pure smushed fruit than a milkshake, which is good. Above all, though, that cleansing lightly sour tang absolutely makes this beer. If the aim was to be bright and sunny, complex yet low-strength, then it has achieved it perfectly.

"Gose IPA" is a new designation on me, but that's what Gose Again is: 5% ABV and containing coriander, salt and lemon zest. It does, in fairness, smell like an IPA with a blast of piney American hops -- El Dorado and Idaho 7 says the can, helpfully. The texture is slick and saline, more like a gose, and the salty tang rides right up front in the foretaste. So it's strange that everything is muted thereafter: no coriander and little by way of hopping. There's only a faint sourness too. Instead, it's dry and crisp, like a water biscuit, but similarly lacking in character. All told, this didn't really give me what I want from an IPA or a gose.

The sour ones finish with a hardcore 7.3% ABV offer called Speaks For Itself. I wasn't expecting much actual sourness, given that it includes raspberry, coconut and marshmallow. Marshmallow! Still, it doesn't look thick and gloopy, being pale orange and quickly headless. It smells like a Mikado biscuit, a mix of  jam and and coconut, so the special ingredients are pulling their weight. That's how the flavour goes too: raspberry jam, pink marshmallow and a brush of coconut oil to finish. No sourness, but a clean and neutral base on which the daftness dances without impediment, boosted by a high gravity that makes it extra syrupy as it warms. Props, then, for it being every bit the novelty beer that the description suggests. I found the jangling sweetness quite tough going, however.

On to the IPA section, beginning with a Wrong Turn. The label specifies that it's a "decoction west coast IPA", which is interesting on a very nerdy level. What difference would decoction mashing make to a presumably hop-forward beer? In the glass it's pretty hazy, which is frankly unacceptable when the "west coast" designation is trotted out. The aroma goes very big on west coast pine, with touches of lighter lemon candy around the edges. Simcoe is one of the four hops named, and I suspect it's the busiest of them. The body is surprisingly light for 6.5% ABV, though the hops aren't unbalanced as a result. More citrus and pine is on offer, the lemon turning to grapefruit and the pine to Amsterdam alleyway. But there's a sweet side too, which I'm guessing is the decoction at work, intensifying the malt lending the beer extra balance. It works rather well. Big hops on big malt was the defining feature of the original American IPAs, whose profile now gets called "west coast" so perhaps I'll forgive the haziness this one time.

They were at it again with the subjunctive-dodging If I Was In LA, described as "California IPA" but  distinctly clouded. It smells juicy and tropical too, with a delicious but inappropriate waft of tinned pineapple. On tasting there's a bit more of a resinous bitterness, but not much, and the peachy-mangoey tropical side is still in charge. Citra and Mosaic are the hops, and I get a slight buzz of onion as it warms, for which I blame the latter. Otherwise it's all enjoyable in its own way, even if it's a long long way from Sculpin or Torpedo. It is a little on the thin side, despite the murk, and definitely doesn't taste the full 6.8% ABV.  

Last year the brewery brought out a quartet of imperial oatmeal stouts, of which I could only track down three. I was delighted to see them back for 2022, meaning I could finally get my hands on Shield, the one I missed. It's a whopping 12% ABV and brewed with coffee, so I was expecting an Irish coffee effect but doesn't really have that. The texture is quite light, not creamy, and the spirit/barrel side is understated, arriving as a late waft of vapour but without any real contribution to the taste. That does leave plenty of coffee, so maybe an espresso martini is a better cocktail analogy. Whether it's the grains or the coffee that's providing the roast dryness I can't say -- perhaps it's both -- but there's plenty of it. This is nice; easy going; nothing to scare the horses. Let it be noted without comment that it was 14% ABV last year. Regardless, I'm hoping for something louder from the next ones.

There are three new Celtic-themed barrel-aged stouts in the series for 2022, and I immediately detect further signs of cold feet around ABV as two are a trifling 10% ABV. We'll begin with one such: Ogham, a bourbon barrel milk stout with cocoa nibs. The barrel absolutely plays the advantage here, piling sticky vanilla into the flavour, leveraging the milky chocolate to produce something sickly sweet beyond the bounds of decency. The stout loses out in this, with no roast and negative quantities of bitterness. A cola dryness is the only faint saving grace, but I could still feel it curdling in my stomach. This is too big and too sweet. Perhaps a point or three more on the ABV might have rescued it.

As they say at Lough Gill: Onward! The other 10%-er is Life, again a bourbon barrel milk stout and again with cocoa nibs. But here they've added actual vanilla as well. After the last one I am apprehensive to say the least. It doesn't smell horrifically sweet, so that's a plus, the chocolate coming across as quite dark. It's milkier to taste, for sure, but nowhere near as sickly as the previous. The flavour is all rather well balanced and integrated, and I think the key is in the bourbon -- it's much less loud and pervasive here, allowing the stout to stay a stout despite the add-ons. There's maybe a little too much milkshake for serious stout drinkers, but they should lighten up anyway. Life is fun.

My third of the new ones, perhaps appropriately, is Trinity. I didn't even look at what it's made with before taking the first sip. I couldn't detect any novelty here, just the basic good imperial stout formula of fresh black coffee, dark chocolate and a shot of plain whiskey. In fact there's no addition, it's a straight oatmeal stout at 12% ABV aged in bourbon barrels. They're well-behaved bourbon barrels again too, giving up their warmth but not the yucky cloying vanillins. There's even a faint fruit complexity, in the finish -- damson or raisin. Overall, it's a classy sipper and tough to fault.

Unless there's been a late add, and I wouldn't put it past them, that's all from Lough Gill from this year. There's some impressive stuff in the above, showing a brewery that's good at what it does in several different ways at once.

Defcon FUN

I missed this one the first time it arrived on these shores, but it's back, in an even larger pint-can format. The strapline on Sierra Nevada's Atomic Torpedo is "Juicy West Coast DIPA", a phrase designed to mess with the head of anyone just getting into the myriad variations of contemporary IPA. Ah well.

It's 8.2% ABV and looks much like standard Torpedo -- a medium amber colour. It has a very similar resinous aroma as well. The flavour is where it changes. Where Torpedo transforms that resinous smell into a tongue-scorching resinous bitterness, this one is sweet and floral. I guess this is what they mean by "juicy" but it's not juicy, it's sweet. The resin is still there, but the bitterness is very muted, hiding behind meadowy violet and honeysuckle, with a side order of red onion relish.

What's most impressive is how well hidden the alcohol is: it does not taste like the strength. But at the same time it's not an improvement on regular Torpedo; perhaps they shouldn't have used the name. Torpedo is heavy and bitter, which is what makes it worthwhile and it's not a formula I'd recommend messing with.

For something considerably more easy-going, here's another in the endless ... Little Thing sequence of brand extensions. Sunny Little Thing is a wheat ale, doubtless designed to be thirst-quenching and accessible, though it is the full 5% ABV. Citrus flavourings are mentioned but not in detail; so is this one of those American takes on witbier that doesn't like using the word?

On tasting: not really. Those fruit flavourings aren't an afterthought or a garnish, they're the main act. From the first sip this tastes like fizzy orange squash, with an attendant weighty sweetness. The wheat should soften the texture and perhaps also dry it out, but dryness is not a feature. There is still a vestige of hops in the background, meaning it just about still tastes like a beer, but for the most part I wasn't impressed. The taste here has a good deal in common with the German and Austrian radlers for which I have a lot of time, but because it's stronger and denser it lacks their ability to casually refresh.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that beers as excellent as Torpedo and Hazy Little Thing are used as bait by the brewery, to get fans to buy new beers with similar names. It's just a shame they seem nearly impossible to improve upon.

On the skids

Sierra Nevada beers usually arrive here in sets, but it's a solitary can of IPA today. Ski-themed Powder Day might be a bit of an experiment: the use of lupulin powder gives it its name and I don't think that's a regular Sierra Nevada feature.

Comparison with Torpedo is inevitable as it's a similar strength at 7.7% ABV, and also looks to be very much on a west coast trip: clear and amber coloured. The aroma is on the fruity side, however: a soft and mellow waft of cantaloupe and chew sweets. The flavour continues in that vein, adding in a weighty malt sweetness that's entirely in keeping with the strength. What's missing here and not in Torpedo is a proper bitterness. There's a mild bite, no more than a nibble, in the finish, but it really feels to me that something is missing there.

Despite the hefty feel and tropical topnotes, this is no fluffy New Englander, and I'm sure the brewery didn't mean it to be. But neither is it a punchy west-coast IPA of the sort Sierra Nevada is famous for. What you get instead is something strong, dangerously easy-drinking, but ultimately rather bland. Time to go back to real hops, lads.

What's indie box?

Indie Beer Week was back! After a one-year hiatus for obvious reasons, the independent brewers' annual profile raising celebration returned in May, centred around a series of online meet-the-brewer events hosted by the boundlessly energetic Brian of Craic Beer Community. To give his liver some respite, I co-hosted one of the evenings, which got me the accompanying tasting pack, including a few that were new to me.

Pre-event, I popped open Hope's Summer Seasonal 2021: Hazy Session IPA. This is a teeny 3.6% ABV, and I think the lack of substance may have affected the head retention, as there's none really. It's wanly, waterishly hazy under the level top and seems rather lifeless by appearance. The aroma is good, though: brightly tropical lychee and passionfruit. While yes it's a bit thin and a bit flat, it has plenty of flavour too. There's less of the real fruit in the taste but it's replaced by a jolly Skittles-and-Starburst candy vibe up front, with an oilier dank bitterness arriving late and providing a finish that's far from watery and even gives a little burn in the back of the throat. I don't want to overstate things, and it is a long time since I last had any cask beer, but this has a bit of a cask ale vibe, with that level of complexity on a low-strength base. Hyperbole aside, easy-drinking summer quaffer? Yes, job very much done.

My other sneaky preliminary came from the opposite end of the scale. Golden Ticket is a purported 90 IBU double IPA from Black's of Kinsale, 8.2% ABV and claiming pineapple flavours but doing it with hops rather than fruit. It's quite a deep orange colour in the glass, with an aroma that says pineapple candy or syrup to me rather than the real thing. It's reasonably thick without turning cloying and the heat is minimal considering the strength. Hopping dominates the flavour, as one might expect, although it's bitterness first: a tongue-numbing aniseed or fennel effect. The sweeter pineapple arrives late and is respectful of what went before. This double IPA is no silly Wonka confection but serious and well put-together: one to sip and appreciate.

At the event itself there was the first Dead Centre beer I'd had in ages: Across the Pond. The brewery describes this as an "American wheat ale", something that used to mean something like a weissbier but with neutral-tasting American yeast but now signifies lots of hops in quantity and, in this case, a neutral-tasting American yeast as well. Citra, Amarillo and Mandarina Bavaria are the hops, bringing a classic grapefruit pithiness with a long finish of oily citronella. The wheatiness is minimal and I felt it could have benefitted from a fuller texture and better head retention. The pay-off is that it's only 4.5% ABV, placing it in the sunny-refresher category where it has an edge on many others, thanks to that generous hopload. A few pints of this on the Dead Centre taproom deck would be very decent.

The last new one for me came courtesy of Trouble Brewing. The house IPA they brew for P. Mac's, Vietnow, is a perennial favourite. It got a bigger brother called Bombtrack in 2017 but it wasn't around long and I didn't get to try it. Now they've brought it back in a slightly more modest form, reducing the ABV from 8.7% to 6.9%. It still packs a punch, however, being a dark amber colour and quite heavy-set. A red strawberry sweetness combines with drier tannins to form the base, assisted by a sprinkling of peppery rye. The hops add a different sort of dryness: earthy and a little vegetal, in that old-fashioned west-coast way. Sierra Nevada's Torpedo and Kinnegar's Rustbucket both came to mind as I drank it, and I'm sure the brewers won't be offended by such comparisons.

A big thanks to Elisabeth from the ICBI, and Brian, for including me in this year's Indie Beer Week festivities, and not least to Liam and the BeerCloud.ie team who shipped me the beers. Until next year then!

A culture clash

Two American IPAs today, from different sides of the admittedly broad genre. I thought it would be fun to try them side-by-side, since they were there.

The modernist wing is represented by Ska's Tropical The Hazy. If the name sounds wrong, it might help to know this is a tropical variant on their The Hazy IPA, one I reviewed, and didn't particularly like, last summer. We're not told on the rough-and-ready labelled can what it is that makes it tropical, though I note going in how different it looks compared to the original, being a friendlier, warmer orange rather than stark yellow. There's a clear fruit aroma: mandarin and apricot, so not really tropical, but suggesting lots of mouth-watering juice. The flavour is less subtle. No suggestions here, but a big and sticky cordial sweetness; perfume and Fruit Salad chews. While very artificial tasting, it's not unpleasant. That could be because it's quite atypical for a hazy IPA, being clean, for one thing, and lacking grit, garlic and caraway. There's even a little hop bitterness; a green pinch at the finish. Rather than a serious take on New England IPA, this is more a novelty fruit beer, and as such it's fine. It doesn't go overboard on the syrup and is easy but satisfying to drink. It's an IPA with a delightfully cheery disposition.

But enough of that. The counterpoint is Sierra Nevada's Dankful, a "resinous West Coast IPA" brewed with Columbus, Chinook, Mosaic, Ekuanot, Nelson Sauvin, Zappa, Idaho 7 and whatever you're having yourself. It's 7.4% ABV, a mostly-clear amber colour and does indeed smell very pine-like, if not especially dank. So it goes with the flavour: a big ol' smack of floor cleaner and wood sap, without the more aromatic grassy feel that I count as "dank". It is pretty good, though, and does offer a fun contrast to the beer I drank just before it. No soft fruit here but plenty of hard and punchy bitterness, with enough oiliness to make it linger for ages on the tongue. There's a very retro feel, harking back to the days when brewers compared their willy sizes using IBU numbers. If you miss those days, Sierra Nevada has you covered. I'm actually reminded a little of Sierra's old old IPA, discontinued around 2007 and replaced by Torpedo. It's certainly not what's understood as West Coast IPA these days and offers more retro action than I bargained for. And sure why not?

I went into this expecting typical examples of the beers' sub-styles and came out pleased by how off-kilter they both were. We may be saturated in IPA these days but those three letters still have the power to surprise.

A question of latitude

Yet another IPA by Sierra Nevada today, this one a spring seasonal from their Beer Camp project. It seems very on-trend, named as it is Tropical IPA and promising mango and papaya fruit flavours. Sierra Nevada built its empire on hoppy bitterness so I was a little sceptical about this newcomer's ability to take on the tropical-and-juicy sub-genre.

The beer certainly smells the part: strong and concentrated cantaloupe and kiwi fruit, almost verging on sickly and definitely showing its big 6.7% ABV. The flavour is less convincing. I mean, it's nice, but the dominant characteristic is a spiky pine bitterness and only after that has made itself at home on your palate are the assorted fruits allowed sidle in after it, quietly. The papaya is probably the most pronounced of them, adding a green bitterness of its own rather than mouthwatering juices.

Fans of the Sierra Nevada way of doing things will find lots to like here: it's only a small sideways twist on the sort of experience you get from beers like Hop Hunter and Torpedo. If anything, the fruit effort is a bit of a gimmicky distraction from a straight-up quality US IPA. No pleasing some people.

On the rebound

It has been a while since a new Sierra Nevada beer has impressed me. I suppose that's not something the brewers of Torpedo need worry about: I'll continue to be impressed by Torpedo for a long as they make it.

Auditioning today is Boomerang, an IPA brewed using -- yes, you're ahead of me -- Australian hops. It's a very pale chap, the perfectly clear light gold of many a nondescript eurolager. The aroma is quite lagery too, giving off a strong green nettle effect reminiscent of German hop culture, though there's a bittersweet cloudy lemonade character lurking cheekily under the surface.

There's nothing merely cheeky about the flavour though. In fact, it's downright impertinent. A blast of waxy bitterness leads the charge, and keeps running, lasting on the lips long after everything else has happened. "Everything else" is a combination of lime flesh, grapefruit pith, and a thin spread of sweeter mango and passionfruit. There's not much room for the malt to say anything in all that, but it does contribute to the body: a lovely smooth texture that makes what could be a very harsh beer surprisingly easy drinking.

Am I impressed by it? Yes, I think so. It's certainly not the sort of American IPA you meet every day. But I just have a minor niggle over the length of that bitterness. A little more of the tropical fruit and I'd have been singing its praises more.

In it for the money

Odell again. This time another of their dark malt-driven beers: 90 Shilling. It's a darkish amber colour and shows little by way of aroma. The signature fruity Odell hops are there in the flavour, but they're muted under lots of milk chocolate and a heavy dose of caramel.

While warming, it's not especially thick or heavy and the fizz keeps it from being properly mellow. Like lots of the beer from this brewery, and the dark ones in particular, it just misses the mark. Some fine tuning and it could be fantastic. As it is there's nothing wrong with it, per se, but it's less than the sum of its parts.

Meanwhile, just 12 weeks from the brewery to my back garden comes Odell's double IPA Myrcenary. Keeping things fruity, I get masses of magic mandarins on pouring what proves to be quite a pale and hazy beer, showing very little gloop for a 9.3% ABV monster.

A proper sniff shows it's no hop-bomb either, giving off innocent sherbet notes. The texture is more full-on, however: heavy and a bit greasy in the mouth. The first taste brings a gorgeous hop burn, but not harsh at all, nor inappropriately alcoholic. Smooth, warming and flavourful are what it's all about. This is not an aggressive beer, but rather charming and fun to spend time with. I'd be interested to compare it with Sierra Nevada's Torpedo. It's more subtly flavoured but I couldn't say if that's a good thing or bad in double IPA.

That subtlety means Myrcenary is scarily drinkable. Remind yourself to sip it. It's an awful beer geek cliché to say the double IPA is the best beer in the brewery's range, but with Odell it really is.

Mummy!

They get a bit of grief, Sierra Nevada, for being something of a one-trick pony. Big and hoppy is their shtick, and their efforts away from that genre are somewhat patchy. So no pissing about with European styles for this one: a straight-up 10.4% ABV Double IPA that's more American than Steve McQueen driving a Mustang through a gun show. It's not merely hopped up, it's Hoptimum.

Even before the little green guys start their work this is an attractive beer, pouring the sort of mingled cream and amber that would have Poe scrambling for a clean piece of paper and a biro. Stick the nose in and you get lovely big mandarins at first. Inhale deeper (you'll want to) and there's a lingering threat of pine resins and sinister grapefruit. Strident, wall-to-wall west coast hops.

The taste is quite harsh at first: a green acid acrid bitterness with vegetable notes. Leeks to me, broccoli said the missus. The texture on which this is delivered is all slickness: greasy and heavy without any soft malt fullness or roundness. Add in the prodigious hopping and the overall feeling of oiliness is unavoidable.

I confess I had a moment of disappointment at this stage, rejecting the beer like the other Sierra Nevada hop-bombs in 710ml bottles (Southern Hemisphere and Wet Hop) which were just too unbalanced and difficult. But then I had a fit of the vapours. That amazing smell just does not quit. Even when your tongue is drowned in acid bitterness, the aroma just keeps on coming, filling the nasal cavity with those gorgeous juicy fruit flavours. However they've constructed the aroma here it works fantastically, balancing a beer that's basically all hop.

Hoptimum is a symphony to the hop, an aria in lupulin. Clearly the work of someone who knows quite a bit about which hops to put in, in what order and how much. I'd recommend this beer, though I wouldn't recommend following it with a bottle of Torpedo, which ended up tasting as malt-driven as Samuel Adams Boston Lager in the aftermath.

Slide one over

New from California's Sierra Nevada is Glissade, a golden bock which follows their Kellerweis in being an attempt at recreating a German style, only in smaller bottles. It's similarly successful too, in that it has all the elements you'd expect from the real thing, but doesn't quite do enough with them.

So, at 6.4% ABV it's the right strength for a German bock and has the same relatively heavy, sticky, nearly syrupy, body. The nose and foretaste have the slightly herby, nettle-like character of noble hops, and the finish is sugary malt. I'm not much of a fan of the style in general, but even I can tell that they haven't put the elements together in quite the right way. I found it inoffensive, as did my bock-loving wife.

Far be it from me to say breweries should stick to what they're good it, and making the styles appropriate to their region, but I will say that if I do want a pale German bock I'll be getting some Einbecker or the like; and when I recommend Sierra Nevada to people, it'll be for Torpedo, not this.

Snob factor 9

There's nothing we stuck-up euro beer geeks like more than cracking open a couple of lovely Sierra Nevada Torpedos and guffawing over how those clueless Americans keep getting our local styles wrong, the fools. Wheat beers tend to be Exhibit A: very few US craft breweries seem to have got the hang of the spicy Belgian variety or the full and fruitsome Bavarian iteration. And then there's tripel. I did rather enjoy the Alesmith-Mikkeller-Stone joint effort recently, but as a juicily-hopped American beer rather than a warmly piquant Belgian-style one.

Which brings me to Victory's Golden Monkey, a straight-up attempt at a tripel by the Pennsylvania brewer. This is a remarkably light and thin affair. It has that slow-building tripel warmth -- at 9.5% ABV it would want to -- but it just doesn't build high enough, dropping away into wateriness after the first few seconds. The spices are in place, but again not to enough of a degree. In fact, what with the coriander and orange peel vibe, and the lightness of touch, this could nearly pass for a very good Belgian witbier, except without the quaffability. It's a good beer, and enjoyable drinking, but I can't help feeling it needs to raise its game a bit more if it's to stand beside real Belgian tripels. That or, like the Alesmith-Mikkeller-Stone one, be its own unique thing and sod the damn Belgians.

Moving on, I'm finding it harder to be snooty about Victory's Storm King imperial stout (though obviously I'll give it my best shot) because, while I've enjoyed many in this style from American brewers, and from European craft breweries who work in the American vernacular, I've very little reference to what what an "proper" old-fashioned British imperial stout should taste like. The 16-year-old Courage Imperial Stout I had a couple of years back (thanks Ron!) wouldn't exactly be typical, though the well-balanced Czar's Imperial from White Shield brewery, sampled at last year's Great British Beer Festival, would perhaps be closer to the mark. A mark that Storm King misses completely. Now, never let it be said that I have something against big west-coast hops in black beer: I don't, and I'll offer both Yeti and Gonzo as examples of how it can be done well, even in strong dark beers. But Victory have over-egged this one badly, in my opinion. I mean, the beer smells lovely, with succulent peaches overlaying sweet dark malt: not what one might expect from an imperial stout, but good beer is good beer and labels aren't important. Hope dies with the first sip. It's horribly, sharply, bitter, and this is accentuated by very high carbonation. No quarter is given to smoothness or warmth. The roasted flavours come in second, jarringly dry and rather acrid, and the finish is given back to the hops, being harshly metallic. It's certainly an interesting beer: there's lots and lots to keep your darling little tastebuds occupied, but more in a House of Horrors sort of way than a pleasant nature walk.

So, it's not that Storm King isn't a "proper" imperial stout: I wouldn't enjoy it regardless of the designation. And I do rather like Golden Monkey for all its untripelness, I just wouldn't swap it for the "real" thing (reminding me that I have a blind tasting of tripels to do here some time soon). I guess you just have to be happy there are people out there willing to take the risk, throw tradition to the wind and mess about with so-called perceived wisdom. The world of beer is better for them.

Snobby and patronising: I'm on a roll today.

Caning it

The festive season has been a busy one for me recently. There's been something on pretty much every evening since I got back from London. Between pub crawls, the work do, catching up with people I've not seen in ages, I'm just about partied out. Tragically, I didn't even have time to dig out some pics for Alan's photo competition this year (it'll be double the quality for 2010, Alan -- wait and see). Just two more events -- tonight and tomorrow -- and that's it, I'll be hanging up the humbugs and barricading myself into the house with just my beer stash to keep me company.

However, I'm immensely proud that at none of these engagements have I had to stoop to drinking bad beer. Beer I didn't especially like, perhaps, but nothing from the Big Two or otherwise undesirable has crossed my lips in quite a while. When one doesn't get to choose the venue for these things, that's quite an achievement in my book. Though socialising with beery people does tend to help with the steering clear.

Wednesday's pre-Budget search for low-cost quality in the Dublin on-trade finished up in the Bull & Castle, where they'd just taken a shipment of Sierra Nevada Celebration. This is a relatively powerful winter beer -- 6.8% ABV but warm and heavy enough to pass for even stronger. The intense hopping has made it extremely bitter, and to my taste it's all a bit too much: whatever's being Celebrated here, it's not a cause I support. And before I get called a hop-grinch, I'll note that the stronger and hoppier Torpedo IPA from Sierra Nevada is much more enjoyable than this is. So there.

As I photographed my beer like the weirdo I am, one of our merry band of pub-crawlers (hi Richard!) asked me if I'd be rating it based on that one single tasting. Of course I said that I would, in full recognition that it wouldn't necessarily give me a definitive opinion on the beer, and adding that more fragile brews, like cask ales for instance, are much harder to get a full impression of with just one glass. But nowhere does this blog claim to offer a full and fair evaluation of every beer mentioned. Really I'm just making this stuff up to fill space.

However, it just so happened that the following evening saw the last Deveney's Beer Club tasting session of the year. The theme, funnily enough, was winter beers and Ruth had Celebration in the line-up. So I got to try it again on a fresh palate, and I can categorically state that it's not for me. I hope you're happy with that, Richard.

Also on the roster on Thursday was the 2009 edition of Anchor's Our Special Ale. This was much better than the 2008 one I had back in the spring -- loaded with zingy seasonal spices set on a cosily warm dark malt base. Goose Island's Mild Winter is rather less of a full-on sort of a sensation. Yes, it's dark and has some lovely smooth and subtle caramel tones in it, but it keeps itself to itself, with no major exciting flavours jumping out. Mild indeed, and quite the converse of the Goose Island Christmas Ale. This is a big 7%-er in a 65cl bottle, and like the Anchor version it's made to a different recipe each year. Again, like San Franciscan, the spices run amok on the palate creating a whole sequence of piquant sensations. But right next to them there's a hefty wodge of those oh-so-typical sherbety Goose Island hops, the ones which should be familar to anyone who's had their IPA (which should be everyone). An adorable beer, and possibly my favourite of the many seasonals knocking around at the moment.

Soon, I will find the time to give them a proper tasting. And adjust this post if I need to...

Chico and beyond

The internationalism of beer is one of the things I love about it. Local styles are all well and good, but my respect goes to breweries who break the mould a bit, rather than produce another 3.8% ABV bitter / dry session stout / pale fizzy lager / [insert national beer stereotype here]. It was great to see Californian mega-micro Sierra Nevada looking to Germany for a revamping of their previous lacklustre wheat beer. What they've given us instead is Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, and a promise of authenticity you can take to the bank.

Open fermentation tanks and Bavarian yeast were enough to convince Al of its credentials, pronouncing it "pretty spot on". I'd agree with that, in general: it's appropriately cloudy and appropriately orange. There's a nice bit of weissbier banana, but not too much. However, I'm finding it a little lacking at the finish, with no sign of the cloves or hops dusting I'd be after. The body is a bit thin, and it's light on alcohol at just 4.8% ABV. So, yes it would pass muster as a Bavarian wheat beer, but it's just not on the money when put next to my favourite real ones. And where it really fails the quality/authenticity test is the serving size. I had a crisis trying to find a suitable glass for it. Sessionable weissbier is just not enjoyable in this sort of portion.

Funnily enough, I have the same observation I made when I tried the old Sierra Nevada Wheat last year: "Who in their right minds would go for a small bottle of American wheat beer when there's half a litre of Schneider-Weisse on the shelf next to it, probably for less money". It's come to this: quoting myself. Sorry.

The reach of Sierra Nevada goes even beyond Germany, however. Not content with harvest ales made with hops from their own estate and the next state over, they managed to lash another one out in the Spring made with fresh hops from New Zealand. Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale, appropriately for such a mouthful, comes in a very respectable 700+ml bottle, so no qualms about serving size here.

It pours a perfect shade of amber and gives off that lovely spiced herbal toffee aroma I associate with the best American-style IPAs. Tastewise, yes, it's very fresh and hoppy, but I got a bit of an unpleasant harsh resinous dryness at the end, around where I'd like to have been basking in peaches and similar soft succulent fruits. The bitterness also covers up what's quite a hefty malty body, delivering 6.7% ABV. Yet of caramel or toffee there's barely a trace, lacking the balance of the brewery's supposed hop extravaganza, Torpedo. Or at least that's what I thought: both Mrs Beer Nut and Thom had a much more balanced experience than me.

It sounds like I'm a bit down on the Chico guys, but I'm not. These two beers really are quality stuff, and the criticisms are purely ones of fussy personal taste. The conscientious attention to detail is to be applauded, not just because it gives a human touch to the beer, but also because of the incontrovertibly interesting drinking experiences it produces.

Hop much?

The hopheads are taking over. Dublin's quality beer off licences are bursting with isohumulones these days, between the new-style hopped-up Belgians, some bitter delights from across the Irish Sea, and of course those crazy Americans and their IBU fixation.

Amid much rí rá agus ruaile buaile, Sierra Nevada Torpedo hit Dublin recently, and I secured one to bring home and dispose of safely. Everyone who'd already tried it warned me that it wasn't some hop-monster as the name might suggest; that this 7.2% ABV IPA is actually quite balanced. I'm not sure I'd agree with them. What's very true, however, is that it's gorgeous.

The aroma is zesty and clean -- none of your big boozy vapours here -- while the flavour is binary: it rocks between sweet marmalade and very slightly harsh, resinous piney hops, which just pitch over into lemon washing-up liquid right at the end. There's a solid, and actually quite sticky malt base to it. So why, in the name of sanity, is this hyperactive flavour orgy so damned easy to drink? It took herculean restraint to hold myself back from draining the glass before I could string any kind of verbal impression together. It's that tasty.

I'm not a hophead as such, nor am I attuned to the very finer points of hop appreciation, and that's why I will quite blithely announce that Torpedo is every bit as enjoyable as Pliny the Elder.

Next, I raised my hoppy game further by following up with Victory Hop Wallop, stronger at 8.5% ABV and paler -- just at the point where yellow becomes orange. And yet despite the higher strength it lacks the malt profile of Torpedo and is actually quite thin. But bitter? Oh my yes. Bitter as the day is long. Fell out of the bitter tree and hit every branch on the way down. Not harsh, or any way difficult, just very very charmlessly bitter. Of fruit, you get a chaste peck from a sugary mandarin orange at the start of each taste, before Dame Bitter comes round to claim her due. It's not that it's unpleasant, it's just not very enjoyable, in complete contrast to its tamer stablemate HopDevil.

Proceed with caution, is the message to those wielding the hopsack, I guess.