A whip round

Today I have a selection of beers from Whiplash. I've been making good use of their Dublin bar, Fidelity, which has made finding some of their more esoteric output easier to find than hunting in shops.

Allta Dark Sour is first, created as a house beer for Dublin restaurant Allta but available elsewhere too, like Fidelity where I found it. It's dark: at the brownish end of garnet; and it's properly sour: the classy balsamic vinegar tang of Flanders red ale. Any more? I thought I detected some sweet bourbon vanilla in the aroma but it turns out it's cognac barrel aged, so that's the oak component. I can't say it tasted like brandy, though. From the dark malt there's a little caramel and a crisp roasted edge, then we're back to the sourness and the typically Flemish cherry and raspberry tartness with sweeter date and tamarind. It's an odd choice for a restauranty foody beer, but maybe they're pitching it as an aperitif. Regardless, it's rather nice, especially when allowed warm up and round out.

Staying in Fidelity, a new lager called They Reminisce Over You, in the still-sort-of-fashionable "Italian" style. The board shys away from calling it a pilsner and I'm not sure why that is: it's properly crisp and even a little creamy in the central European way. The hop profile is not what it could be, however, and I didn't get a whole lot of that character. In both flavour and aroma there's a mild summer fruitiness, of honeydew melon and white grape, but almost imperceptible. For the most part this is dry: clear and clean but avoids feeling thin or overfizzed. On a sunny summer evening it worked well as a refresher: 4.5% ABV and served at 3°C, numbers fans. I could have let it warm up to see if more flavour emerged but I doubt that's the brewer's intention.

My mantra of don't muck about with classic German styles has been observed with Don't Call Me Uncle, as straight a dunkel bock as you like. It's crystal clear and a gorgeous shade of cherrywood red. The aroma is a perfectly balanced mix of caramel malt and herbal noble hops, and there are no surprises from that in the flavour. It's 6.5% ABV and full bodied, which means the malt is foremost in the taste: bourbon biscuit, hard toffee and a little burnt breadcrust dryness. The hops take a back seat and, as someone who has occasional difficulties with pungent German hops, I'm glad of that. Here, they're limited to providing only a minor tang of acidity, preventing the sweet profile from getting cloying. It works, in that effortlessly refined German way, which I'm sure is not easy to do. Usually, bock fails to push my buttons but this example is spot on.

The brewery's can labels have become rather less engaging since they changed designer. The new one doesn't even have their name on it. Anyway, this is Desire Lines, a 6.8% ABV IPA, opaque as you like and hopped with Azacca, Galaxy and Motueka. There's a lovely fresh tropicality about the aroma with maybe just a hint of naughty dank in the background. The texture is nicely creamy, with low carbonation for enhanced suppability. I was a little let down by the flavour after that. There's rye in the grain bill, and the main thing I get from the flavour is a savoury, almost smoky, bitterness, which tastes very like rye to me. The fruit side of the hops, suggested by the aroma, doesn't really come through. It's certainly not juicy, though does have a stimulating hard bitterness in the finish. Ultimately I think it's a bit bland. With all the named varieties of ingredient I think I have a right to expect more complexity than was delivered.

Its ABV twin is Embracing Facts, another hazy IPA, this time with Hüll Melon and El Dorado. There's an annoyingly generous head and the standard Whiplash beaten-egg body. The aroma is sweet, fruity and crisp, like Skittles, and again we get that creamy meringue mouthfeel. But also again the flavour disappoints. Here it's standard haze problems: a rough and savoury grittiness, too much heat and a garlic or spring onion effect which drowns out the mix of grape melon and stonefruit which I can just about detect hovering in the background. The fun side of the off-flavours is a spicy nutmeg character, but I wanted fruit, dammit, and it didn't deliver. Whiplash used to be the one reliable brewery when it came to hazy IPA but they seem increasingly to be making ones that aren't to my taste. That's not on.

Let's regroup for a pale ale, one at 5% ABV called Slide. It's hazy, of course, and hopped using Strata and Galaxy. They give the aroma a pleasing mandarin juiciness, which is promising. There's a surprising amount of bitterness in the flavour; a hard resinous quality which isn't unpleasant but isn't what I was expecting either. The orangey fruit side sits behind this, though isn't strong enough to make the beer taste juicy or sweet. Once I had adjusted my expectations, I enjoyed it. They haven't skimped on the hops, and the bitterness builds, tasting almost like raw cones by the end. There's a very slight haze sharpness, but the hops prevent it from doing anything seriously problematic. It's not an easy drinker, but I like its sheer uncompromising wallop. Strap in.

At the same ABV but calling itself an IPA is Note To Self. It also says it's "West Coast" and it's the translucent gold of Sculpin and friends. I had been expecting grapefruit, though the aroma is sweet mandarin, which is lovely, but where's the bitterness? It's not really in the flavour either. There's a certain pithiness, but that's being charitable. Zest is as intense as things get, and there's certainly no resin, all of it finishing quickly with little to no aftertaste. We're in accessible-quencher territory here, rather than Whiplash hop fireworks. It's in a small can and sits comfortably beside the brewery's core offerings Rollover and Body Riddle -- built for the six-pack, or indeed pints at Fidelity. 

Finally, it looks like Chimes, the lovely lime-flavoured pale ale that Whiplash made for Dublin burger chain Bunsen, has been retired and replaced by the more plain-spoken Bunsen Pale Ale. This is 4.8% ABV and, as you might expect, fully hazy. There's a balance of sweet and bitterness, lemon juice meeting soft vanilla. I was served it very cold, in a chilled glass, and it's probably best consumed this way. There's a grittiness which begins to make its presence felt as the beer warms, accompanied by unwelcome oily garlic. But when cold it's clean and zesty, and does an excellent job of scrubbing burger grease off the palate. There's certainly no indication that they've skimped on hops, just because it's not pitched at hardened beer enthusiasts.

It seems Fidelity is definitely the place to go if you want Whiplash beer that isn't a hazy pale ale of some sort, although it does sell lots of them too.

The grain and the grape

Have you heard of fonio? If you haven't yet, you will, at least according to Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver who has become an advocate for this climate-resistant African grain. Its most important attribute is that you can make beer from it, which will be terribly useful once the Earth decides it can't do barley any more. Garrett had come to St James's Gate to make a fonio-based collaboration beer, although that won't be out until much later this year. He also brought over some beers of his own to share.

Showcasing fonio at Brooklyn is Fonio Rising, a pilsner, but a monstrously strong one, at 6.4% ABV. The aroma is fairly true to style, with lots of grass and only a little more of a grain quality than usual. The flavour does show that something odd is happening, however: fonio is not a neutral barley substitute, it has a character all its own. That manifested as a kind of spicy fruit, like fruitcake, where raisin and cherry mix with cinnamon and ginger. The pilsner crispness is maintained, but it's otherwise a very long way from the precise tenets of the style, even a strong one. Nevertheless, I liked it. And if it's saving the planet, then all the better.

The next one doesn't involve fonio and is a novelty beer with a lovely backstory. It's called MegaPurple after one of its ingredients: a grape concentrate which is heavily used at the cheaper end of the American wine industry, ensuring that the lowest grade of product does actually look and taste like wine. No producer would ever admit to using it, and its very existence is something of a trade secret. Brooklyn is trolling the substance's creator and its customers by making it a headline feature.

The beer certainly smells like a grape ale: slightly sharp, with rich notes of blackcurrant. There's a substantial wild component to it, involving a yeast culture supplied by Russian River and blending with a lambic-a-like before ageing in wine barrels. The result has big, tannic, red wine notes and a lot of funky farmyard Brettanomyces character. There's a fully-admitted trolling of the natural wine movement as well, in the extent to which it has borrowed their flavour profile. I thought it was excellent and very much in the style and quality of grape ale that the best of Italy make. I was never a big fan of Russian River's wild efforts, but it's been a few years, and maybe cutting them with syrupy grape gunk was what they needed all along.

A big thanks to the Guinness folk for organising the event, and Garrett for bringing the beers. I look forward to seeing how they got on brewing with fonio in Dublin.

Cloisterphobia

They've been feeling social again at Weihenstephan. Last time, they made a collaborative weissbier with Sierra Nevada. Now it's a blonde ale with the help of St Bernardus: Braupakt Blonde.

Despite being brewed in Germany, and being the clear gold of a refined Helles, it's a very Belgian 6.5% ABV and has a very Belgian aroma of spices, fruit and cake. It's definitely a Belgian-style blonde to taste, with forenotes of honey, clove and a leafy tea bitterness. Flowers and bubblegum spread across the palate later. But there's a German streak too: a crisp-linen cleanness, tolerating warm fermentation but keeping it in check, within precisely defined parameters. That's the Weihenstephan way. 

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of it. I prefer the more floral and fruity sort of Belgian blonde ales, those with a softer texture and a luxurious feel. This seems a little tight and strict, like it was made in a lab rather than a brewery. Despite the happy clerics on the label, I get no feels from it: it's just an exercise. Points awarded for doing something a bit different, but both breweries generally make better beer than this by themselves.

Summer and all the beers are sour

The arrival of warmer and sunnier days, beginning in May, coincided with a steady stream of fruit beers from Irish breweries.

At the bottom end of the scale, the one I'm expecting most to be sour: Púca Tropical which, like all its many variants, is fermented with mixed yeast strains, for a more authentic bite. In the sunshine it's light and golden, but smells quite syrupy, of fruit punch and pineappleade. The flavour doesn't vary a lot from that, starting out on a hit of Lilt, which shouldn't really be surprising given that the fruits involved are pineapple, mango, guava and lime. The sugar is kept in check by a dry tartness that cuts the foretaste off abruptly and ensures a clean finish. No, it's not the most complex-tasting or grown-up of beers, and I don't think it's an improvement on the original lemon Púca, but it has a use case, like on the sunny afternoon I drank it. 3.5% ABV makes for a suitable session-starter.

I followed it with Loco, a collaboration between Dublin's Rascals and Budapest's Mad Scientist. It's a small step up from Púca, at 4.3% ABV. "A passion fruit, mango and sea buckthorn smash up!" declares the label, like it's 2009. In the glass it's murky and juice-like, the head quickly reducing to a thim skim. It smells of juice too, thankfully not of concentrate. I found it quite plain tasting after that: the fruit is present, but doesn't do much, like a meagre fruit salad. There's a savoury, possibly saline, side to it which I'm guessing is the sea buckthorn, and if so it's not a positive contribution. Even on a sunny afternoon on the patio, this didn't zing, however excited the label copy is about it.

From Hopsicle, a collaboration label for the Bierhaus and Fionnbarra pubs in Cork, in collaboration with Two Sides, the beer brand of Brickyard in Dublin, brewing at Third Barrel, comes (deep breath) Two Sided Twister, a sour ale with mango and raspberry. I thought it would be pink but it's an opaque juicy orange in the glass. The ABV is 4.5% and it's a bit thin with it, though there's plenty of fruit flavour, especially the mango, coming through ripe and sweet. There's a properly tart tang, so it performs well in its role as a sunny-day thirst-quencher. The raspberry is quite quiet, a barely perceptible pink flavour in the finish. It could stand to be sourer but I was very pleased it's not a sticky syrup job.

Next it's Hope, going positively bucolic with Fruit & Flower Sour, 4.5% ABV again, and brewed with passionfruit and hibiscus. They're two quite prominent flavours in their own right; how would they play together? It's a pale translucent pink in the glass and is very lightly textured; not quite watery but with absolutely no sticky, syrupy residual sugar. There's even a trace of proper sourness, expressed as a gentle mineral tang. Fittingly, however, the fruit and the flower are the centrepiece, and it's the hibiscus that comes out on top. Hibiscus always tastes like a summer punnet of strawberry and cherry to me, and this is no exception: sweet and fleshy, with a distinct acidity. The passionfruit is more apparent in the aroma, making the beer smell gooey and sweet, even though it isn't. I liked it. It's fun. And most importantly, it's pure summer in a glass. Wait for the hottest day, cool it well down, and maybe consider some ice: your session-strength rosé in a can.

After that: Brain Freeze. This is the new limited edition from Wicklow Wolf, starting us into the stronger stuff, at 5% ABV. We've got blueberries, raspberries, lime, vanilla and lactose to contend with in this one, which I thought would be a yoghurty emulsion but is actually a clear and bright scarlet. It smells perfumed and floral, like Parma Violets candy. The texture is thick, with a genuine ice-cream effect: think whipped cone with a generous drizzle of raspberry sauce. While it's not overly sugary, thanks to a citric bite from the lime, it's hardly sour either. This is very much a novelty beer, designed to taste like an ice cream and largely succeeding. Whether that makes it any good or not is up to the drinker. For me it was just a little too much on the sticky and artificial side, not that I wasn't warned.

While I'm very much a sceptic as regards the sour-fruity styles in general, I have mostly enjoyed the ones badged as "Catharina sour". I don't know the exact specs, but there always seems to be a brighter and fresher contribution from the fruit, whether that's the placebo effect or not. Galway Bay are (I think) the only Irish brewery with experience in the style, and 5.4% ABV Magnolia is their second, following last year's Lagoma. The fruit blend is an unusual one, of pink guava, dragonfruit and strawberry, and there's a definite pinkish tint to the orange murk. It smells like a smoothie: wholesome and healthy, like it was freshly picked and pulped. There's a proper sourness right in the centre of the flavour, with a pleasing edge of peppery spice. The fruit spreads languidly across this, offering slightly jammy berries and an oily citrus tang: I would confidently have guessed there's lime in this, which there isn't. It definitely confirms my prejudice that Catharina sours are just a better class. Give me a bad one, I dare you.

Trend-chaser Lough Gill has major form at this sort of thing. I have two from them today, beginning with Kiwi Pearadise. Kiwis and pears are not typical fruits for a sour fruity. The eye-watering 9.5% ABV is also far from average. It looks innocent in the glass, a typical juice-like opaque orange, and smells primarily like crisp pear, but with some of kiwifruit's tang as well. While it's not hot, it is thick, thanks to the inevitable lactose. I think that's mostly there for texture, however, as it's not especially sweet. The fruit is real tasting: tangy and acidic like in the aroma. And since the fruits are unorthodox, the overall effect is too. I genuinely don't know if I liked it or not. It's a bit of a drama queen; a bit "look at me: I'm kooky". But at the same time it's not noisy or any way unpleasant. These beers should be all about the fun factor, and I think there's enough of that here, despite an extremely serious ABV.

It gets more serious with our finisher, the 9.7% ABV Sunrise By Night. This has a more orthodox combination of raspberry and vanilla, and looks like a strawberry smoothie in the glass. The aroma is surprisingly subtle, not honking either ingredient up the nostrils. Again, there's no heat from the high alcohol factor, and it's smooth without being thick or difficult. I don't get any of the raspberry's tartness, making it taste more like strawberry or cherry, presumably thanks to the vanilla's sweetness. It's less busy than I was expecting, which is a good thing, but with both of these I don't get why they made them so strong. It doesn't really add to the sensory experience: fruit beers still taste like this when they're several points weaker; there's none of the complexity advantage from strength which you get with, say, stout. This is fine, but no more than that: another of the not-sour "sours", and frankly not even Lough Gill's best work in the space. It was made for a market, I'm sure. I've just never met those drinkers.

No surprise here that the cleaner and sourer examples were more to my taste. I also like that we have a proper genre of summer beers across the breweries, all of which could have simply made another hazy IPA instead.

Holding the course

I noted back in March that Galway Hooker had started releasing new limited edition beers after years of sticking to a core set. Now a second pair has arrived for midsummer, once again giving us styles which haven't previously been in the brewery's wheelhouse.

Mind you, I'm not sure in whose wheelhouse "Export Helles" belongs. Is there any such thing? Are they simply styling-out that they brewed a Helles and it ended up finishing at 6% ABV? I'm sure that's not the case. This pale lager, called It's Complicated, is a dark, almost reddish, shade of sunset gold. It smells quite hop-forward, but in the very noble way which gives me dried grass, crepe paper and burnt plastic: not fun. I  was apprehensive on taking my first sip. And rightly so. While it's light-bodied, it is very strongly flavoured; no smooth and easy-going lager, this. The green side of the hops is laid on thick, presenting nettles, rocket and mulchy spinach with no apologies. Bock would have been a much better descriptor, and it reminds me a lot of the Mai-Ur-Bock from Einbecker, a beer I haven't drank in over 14 years but which appears to be seared into my consciousness, with its dusty mustiness and strong malt sweetness. This has both of those. It's clean beyond that, and is almost one of those beers I respect for the sheer bigness and boldness of the taste. But I'm just not wired to enjoy this flavour profile. If you like the very in-your-face side of pale German lager, or simply want to find out what the blazes I'm going on about, you should give this a try. I doubt I'll be reaching for another myself, though.

At least the flavour didn't hang around, so I had a clean palate straight after for the follow-up, Knockin' On Heaven's Door, a double IPA at 8% ABV. I think we can probably call this west-coast style as it's a translucent amber colour. It smells slightly boozy, with strong hints of hard citrus and resin to come. I was pleasantly surprised to find it's not overly bitter. It has something in common with 2010s American double IPA, in that it's a big fellow, the flavour intensity matching that of the bruising Helles. But there's a subtlety as well. Behind the lime peel and pine oil sits a cooler, gentler citronella and mandarin zest, plus juicy wedges of real grapefruit. It's unmistakably a strong beer, a little chewy, but not difficult drinking and certainly not hot or sweaty. Galway Hooker, under the old management, was expert at imbuing its beers with balance and understated complexity. This is very much one of those. If there's a possibility of any of these specials graduating to the regular line-up, this one is a definite front runner for me.

I like how they've thrown caution to the wind with both of these, and simply produced the most flavoursome beers they could. That's what small-scale brewing is all about. Keep 'em coming, GH.

House!

I'm sure I'm not the first beer commentator to make this observation, but dark lager should be a lot more common than it is. Just like its pale counterpart, when made well it's clean, accessible and pintworthy, with the added bonus of some extra flavour complexity from the dark grains. As such, it should be reaching the same sort of audience as mainstream session-strength stouts, if it weren't for the fact that drinkers there care more about the brand than the liquid. Although Diageo did make a lacklustre effort at it some years back, there's no national brand of dark lager, which is a disgrace given how many pale ones there are.

Of course, high-end pubs can create their own solutions to this problem. Brickyard in Dundrum has, commissioning one from Third Barrel and putting it out under the Two Sides brand. It's called Black Betty. At 4.7% ABV it is appropriately pintable, although the mouthfeel is quite dense and there's loads going on in the flavour. Soft treacle forms the background, balanced by a black tea dryness plus subtle notes of beechnut and cola. A growing peppery spice effect arrives as it warms.

If I were fitting it into a specific style I would say it has more in common with chewy Czech tmavý ležák than crisp schwarzbier or herbal Munich dunkel. Regardless, it does all the things that a house dark lager should, including creating a desire for another pint of the same straight away. I hope it's selling well at Brickyard because it should be there, and everywhere else, all the time.

Just because you could...

Someone's been mulin' De Molen. The following beers were suitcased back from Amsterdam by my lovely wife, who chose them from the wide selection on offer in De Bierkoning. They're not what I would have picked, but I fully admit I was intrigued by the descriptions.

In a world of degenerate beer it's wonderful to find one called Koffie & Toffee that contains neither as an ingredient. That's especially true because it's a Baltic porter, a style which rarely benefits from craft-style dicking around. This has all the classic hallmarks: a clean lager body and a big vegetal tang of old-world hops. And yet it does manage to live up to the name. The coffee side isn't huge and is a standard feature of the style, but the toffee is a bonus sweetness, entirely complementary to the rest and adding an appreciable chewiness when the ABV is a little on the light side, at only 8.5%. A straight-up beer with novelty characteristics? We're through the looking glass here, people.

Snoep & Spin is the unlikely offer of candyfloss-flavoured barley wine. The good news is that they've got one part of this right: it has the artificial pink-tasting sweetness of candyfloss. I checked the ingredients to see how they did it. The answer: candyfloss. There's not much else, though, just a very characterless base beer, thick and hot as befits 10% ABV. Hops? Malt? No, it all gets buried under the sugar and suchlike nonsense. Nobody wants candyfloss flavoured beer, and if you don't believe me, drink this one to find out that you don't either.

Today's first imperial stout is called Kiev & Mule, being as it's brewed with ginger, lime and mint: an unusual approach to the style, but that's De Molen for you. In the glass it's a very dark brown and proves to be as thick as it looks. The base stout may be 10% ABV but it takes a back seat in the flavour, putting spicy ginger, spritzy lime and, to a lesser extent, aromatic mint, in first. The first two give almost a feel of sushi, which is not what one expects from big strong stout. Big strong stout arrives later, and there's a solid heavy roast and a kick of vegetal hops in the finish. It's tremendous fun: mostly a gimmick that tastes more like ginger beer than imperial stout, but which also has the goods for anyone looking for classical attributes. Good times.

Cocktail hour concludes with Rozekoek & Pinklady for which a helpful gloss tells us means "Glaced cake & Pinklady". OK, but I'm none the wiser for that. It purports to be another barley wine, at 10.5% ABV, and the only unorthodox things on the ingredients list are apple juice and squashed cochineal beetles. We're very much on the same page as we were with the candyfloss one: it's monstrously sweet, with the aroma suggesting a sticky raspberry or cherry candy that's never been near real fruit. I don't think I would have picked out the apple from the flavour without knowing it was there, but yes, it does taste of apples, and cake, and fake cherries. It's not very beery though: something this strength should at least have some malt heft or heat, but it doesn't. What happens when you take a gimmick beer and remove the beer? You get this weird mess of a thing that has no resemblance to real barley wine. It is bright pink, though, so at least the beetle employees did their jobs competently.

A rare mononymous beer follows to finish. Balcones is another imperial stout, this one named after the Texas distillery which supplied the barrels it was aged in. So definitely not bourbon then? It smells and tastes a lot like a bourbon-aged imperial stout, very big on the vanilla, leaving the stout's chocolate unsure as to whether it's sweet milk or bitter dark: there are elements of both. This is the fresh 2024 edition, and I think it's an advertisement for letting it mature a while, or buying an older bottle, as it's a little hot and harsh, with more splintery dry oak than is ideal. There's some good fruit complexity in the background -- raisin and plum -- and I think that will come out more after the beer has been allowed to mellow. As is, it's decent stuff if barrel-aged stouts of 11.7% ABV are your thing. I think I hold De Molen to a higher standard, however.

By and large, these are gimmicks, and should be understood as such. All of them are completely honest and upfront about their nature, and they deliver what's suggested. If candyfloss barley wine is what you feel the beer scene has been missing up until now, I heartily recommend them all; if not then you probably needn't have read this far.