From under the tree

Merry Christmas! You should be at least three sheets by the time you get around to reading this. Perhaps you're just taking a breather in a cool and quiet corner somewhere while the holiday rages around you. If so: hello! Here are some of the beers that Ireland's breweries have served up to me in recent weeks.

Eight Degrees, to begin, released a pair of large bottles as their 2017 Christmas offering, though both have also been making appearances on draught. I caught up with them at Mitchelstown's Fanah Fest at the end of November, marking the brewery's move to its new home a few hundred metres from the old one, and the completion of its impressive new (second-hand) 60hL brewhouse.

Handed out on arrival was The Oak King, described rather anodynely as a "Belgian pale ale", this one came out at 6.5% ABV after being aged in French white wine barrels and inoculated with Brettanomyces C. It's a dark orange colour with a flavour which blends beautifully the juicy green grape and heady funk. Though very drinkable, it rewards slowing sipping, each one bringing tiny explosions of different flavours, including diesel, white pepper and peaches. Think Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, in beer form. It was particularly interesting how, even super-fresh at the brewery, the bottled version had already developed a greater complexity than the draught, seeming somehow brighter and more vibrant in its flavours. Still superb in either format, though.

Its twin (it's a mythology thing; read the label) is The Holly King, a big ol' imperial stout at 9.8% ABV, from Pinot Noir barrels with yet more Brett. Our funky microbial friend gets all her business done in the aroma, leaving a flavour that mixes chocolate sauce, heavy red wine and sappy wood, with just the merest hint of farmyard seasoning. Overall I found it a bit sweet, which is why I made sure to buy a bottle. I think the Brett just needs more time to chomp through the sugars and add more to the flavour, so I'm going to leave it a while and come back to it. Look out for a review on Stash Killer!... eventually.

Beer of the day at Fanah Fest was Warrior, one the brewery has chosen to badge as an Irish red but is way more interesting than that. Big, classic US hops open it out: Nugget and Cascade, says the official description. They blend with, and balance against, a sweet and fruity malt flavour, reminding me a lot of classic American amber ale, except with a long and hard bitterness, more like a red IPA. A fun pine-perfume spritz finishes it off. Mr Macardle's-Drinker will find a lot to contend with in this Irish red but I thought it was very well put-together.

An Eight Degrees footnote, which should really have been the prologue, is Enigma Single Hop IPA. I drank this before I published my last big round-up of Irish beers, but my incompetent secretary lost my notes on it. When they turned up, they spoke glowingly of the deliciously spiky red cabbage foretaste and the sweet and sticky middle, like an orange ice pop. The best of these Eight Degrees single-hoppers show a gorgeous tongue-pinching bitterness, and this one does too. While there's no arguing with the hop rate, that sticky fruit thing does get a little too cloying a little too quickly: I'd prefer lighter and drier, but overall a big thumbs up.

But back to the reds, and a new one from White Gypsy that also manages to make the most of the style. At 5.6% ABV Big Fat Red is a strong-ish example which I found on tap at UnderDog, the pale pink shade of freshly polished copper. Flavourwise it is exactly as advertised: masses of sweet ripe strawberry on a heavy chewy body. A bitter metallic finish prevents it getting sticky or cloying. It's very much still an Irish red, and does everything the good ones do, just more of it.

Perhaps more a late-autumn seasonal, but still around, is the latest iteration of Wicklow Wolf's annual Locavore series. They've put their home-grown hops into a saison this year: 5.7% ABV and a hazy pale amber colour. There's bags of banana, front and centre, in the flavour. Thankfully the rest of the beer is dry and crisp enough to carry it, and there's even a lip-smacking layer of farmhouse funk, a spicy gunpowder bite, as well as an honest-to-goodness bitter kick from the Irish hops. Although it's heavier than I tend to like saison to be, it's a damn good example and very much not just a hop gimmick.

A quick visit to Bar Rua last month turned up a new one from owner Carrig: Oceania Hop Parade. It writes a big cheque with that name but unfortunately the beer cannot cash it. I got next to no flavour from the first couple of sips, though a light lemon curd and vanilla ice cream sensation emerged shortly afterwards. Riding roughshod over this is a massive dirty dreggy yeast flavour. It could well be that the beer is deliberately murky in line with modern IPA fashion but it definitely does not have a sufficient hopping rate to cover this.

Just around the corner, in Stephen Street News, I picked up the newly-released Voodoo Logic, a 10.1% ABV maple syrup imperial stout and the first of Trouble's new canned series to not appear on draft first. I think it may be the first of their beers I've only had at home. From the beginning of the pour it's clear it's a beast: the head is very dark and has multiple layers of cascading bubbles. I was anticipating density. Sure enough, it's like drinking jam. The finishing gravity must have been off the scale. The alcohol heat hits first, followed by a dry and tarry roast. There's a sweet fruit element behind this: damson jam, quince jelly and Nutella. A dry smoky rasp finishes it. It's nice, but to be honest, for the strength and almost €7 a can, I expected more happening. While unarguably good, it's not quite in the international league, in the way Trouble's recent IPAs have been.

Meanwhile, on draught, Trouble had another new stout, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, brewed as a collaboration with Storm Crow brewing just before Jason left Ireland for Atlanta. It's a modest 5.4% ABV with an unexpected but tasty spicy foretaste, like chilli flakes. For something that's technically a pastry stout it's not very sweet, with only mild hints of raspberry jam and peanut butter, then finishing with a properly grown-up dryness. If novelty flavoured stouts bother you, it's perfectly possible to ignore that aspect of this one, though the pastry features are present to be enjoyed also.

A new can from Boyne Brewhouse surprised me in the local Tesco. 6 for €10? Yoink! Boyne Brewhouse American Pale Ale is an innocent 4.5% ABV and a mildly murky off-gold colour. The aroma is pleasingly peachy though unfortunately the bit of the can which should be telling me about the hops is full of bollocks about some mythical Celtic fairy overlord. Lads. Anyway, I'm guessing Mosaic plays a part, right on the cusp between juicy melon and dry sesame seeds. The bitterness is quite sharp, in an old fashioned APA sort of way, though the hop flavour is thoroughly modern otherwise. A lovely soft texture and gentle fizz makes for very easy session drinking. It's not exciting, but very decent, especially for the price.

Along similar lines was Spot On, a 4.8% ABV pale ale from Dublin client brewer Two Sides, which showed up on tap at 57 The Headline. This has a mix of flowers and herbs that reminded me of an old-school English bitter. It's certainly bitter enough, and with a soft effervescent texture. While easy drinking, the flavour is sufficiently assertive to be properly interesting.

It's always great to see a new Irish pilsner and I was all over Galway Bay's Nuzoz Pilz when it appeared at The Black Sheep. As the name sort-of implies, it's made with Antipodean hops, and I think that's also its undoing. Clearly a lot of hops went into this, and the resulting flavour is a riot of fruits: apricot and mandarin, mostly, with a hint of drier hay. The soft and sweet fruit builds as it goes, producing a sticky cordial effect that tars over the clean lager base. The final picture is much more a Down-Under pale ale, which has its place and is perfectly acceptable drinking, but it completely misses the mark as a pils, which is disappointing.

I had a much happier time with Tartín, the latest dry-hopped sour beer from Galway Bay. It doesn't go to town with either the hopping or the sourness, balancing both elements deftly in an approachable 4.5% ABV package. It's pale yellow in colour with a certain briny quality, like you might find in a gose. The texture is beautifully soft, and a clean lemon-sherbet tang hits the palate first, finishing on sweeter tinned fruit. This is very easy-drinking refreshment, and reminded me of the wonderful 303 sour pale ale that made summer 2016 for me. I hope this one will be around longer.

I couldn't finish one of these random round-ups without some YellowBelly, so here's Hopped in Space, a 5.9% ABV IPA, employing Mandarina Bavaria, Simcoe and Summit. It goes quite heavy on the malt too, Cara Red giving it a darkish tint, and the first impression being sweetness. A whack of grapefruit lands next, then piney resin, but the hops are never allowed to dominate, held in balance by all that malt, avoiding becoming harsh. I liked it, finding it balanced and even more like a classic American amber ale than Warrior reviewed above. It's boldly flavoured yet accessible, which I'm guessing is why they've done a done a full scale can release. Get it while it's fresh, though.

And there's more from YellowBelly in tomorrow's post, when I look at some recent dark and wintry specials.

American sour story

Two American sour beers today. Well, sour-ish. Neither seems to be going all-out for the pucker, both being from sane and established breweries with European capital helping them do their thing.

Dark Swan from Lagunitas is first. It's purple, so presumably there's some fruit addition but there's no mention of that on the label. Between-sentence research reveals it to be grapes. Sounds good. The result is rather plain, however. There's a grainy twang to the sourness, like in a classic Berliner weisse. The fruit is barely apparent in the taste, coming through as a mild blackcurrant jam flavour, suggesting grape concentrate rather than ripe fruit. It was all a rather simple and quite enjoyable affair until I noticed, in the small print, that it's a thoroughly unreasonable 8.5% ABV. If you want to go to Falling Down Town quickly, this beer will get you there faster than any yet devised: it really tastes like a sub-4% 2D quaffer. I kept having to remind myself that it's not. It's easy-going, fine and unexciting. Just be careful.

Round two is Founders, and Green Zebra, a gose with, for some reason, watermelon. It doesn't really work. The base beer is lovely: clear gold, gently sparkling, with a fresh and cleansing saltiness. But then there's this awful layer of sickly artificial cough sweets plastered over the top. No surprises with the strength this time as it's a sensible 4.6% ABV. It's still a very poor effort, though: spoiled by the lazy addition of a flavouring it really did not need. Just a regular black and white zebra for me next, please.

Good American sour fruit beer seems hard come by. The big accessible  breweries don't seem to have quite got the hang of it yet.

Bad sugar

Don't Gose Towards The Light! is possibly the most egregious example of that commonplace non-pun for gose names that I've encountered. It's used by To-Øl as the title of this one from their range, which they describe as a "black gose" though on pouring it's much more a purple colour than black, with a pink tint to the head. The colour is presumably a result of the inclusion of blackcurrants. I don't know if any actual dark malt has been used, but I suspect there's at least crystal because the first taste is sweeet. There's a shocking caramel and chocolate flavour, of the sort you might find in a thick brown ale, and which is definitely not gose-appropriate. The more customary light tartness sits next to it, sulking.

There's definitely a well-made gose at the base of this but it feels to me like it has been ruined by the inclusion of that thick sweetness. I'm surprised they were able to keep the ABV as low as 3.5%. The blackcurrant is detectable too, its own tartness almost drowned out by the beer's native sour flavour but the fruit element lingers on in the finish.

With a bit of roasted crispness, this recipe might have worked. I've no objection to black gose or fruited gose, or a combination, in principle or practice. But this is a disaster.

I'd barely recovered from the shakes when To-Øl's Nutcracker was put in front of me at UnderDog. This is an imperial stout with added hazelnuts; 11.9% ABV and incorporating a cornucopia of dark and smoked malts plus Simcoe hops. What that gave me, first of all, was perfume, which is not something one expects from an imperial stout. The aroma is incredibly flowery, the fabric softener borne upward on a sugary calorific draft.

Upon tasting it, the meadow takes a moment to reassert itself. The first flavour is the promised hazelnut, and there's coffee too, but set on a thick and sweetly cloying body, like a particularly boozy and unbalanced tiramisu. And then there's an attack of extra-cloying lavender bringing the flowers. Normally I enjoy that bit of purple in thick dark beers, but here the whole thing is just too sweet and busy to begin with. Even a small TeKu's worth is too much.

Remember when gose was sour and imperial stout was bitter? Happier times.

All the double ladies

IPA may be dead, but Ingrid lives on. BrewDog has released a new set of hacked double IPAs, following on from 2010's cloudberry-laced Hello My Name is Ingrid and the many sequels it has spawned over the intervening years. This time there are nine of them in total, each representing a different nation, symbolised by the added ingredient. All are 8.2% ABV and the pale gold colour varies only slightly between them. The set arrived courtesy of the brewery and as far as I'm aware you can't normally buy them outside their thematic countries. That means in Ireland you're stuck with...

Hello My Name Is Niamh, the only one without a fruit addition, using elderflower instead. There's very little aroma, reminding me of weak lager more than anything. The texture is light and the flavour clean. I get the sweet elderflower in the foretaste and then a hard bitterness behind. Definitely a beer of two halves. Where the two sides meet I got an intense peppermint effect, like a mint humbug. This came with a hope that they're not all this weird.

To follow, the Norwegian entry Hello My Name Is Aune, which uses strawberry. The first point of difference is the colour: this definitely has a bit of a blush going. The bitterness is lower than in Niamh, and the texture softer. The strawberry taste is extremely subtle, to the point where I'm not sure if I'd recognise it as strawberry. There's a pink chewing gum vibe from it, flashing briefly in the foretaste before getting smothered by the harsh hop finish. This is the point where I starting thinking saison or Berliner weisse would have made a better jumping off point than double frickin' IPA.

Germany next and I had been particularly looking forward to Hello My Name Is Helga as I generally enjoy cherry in beer and cherry double IPA sounds intriguing. This is the first one with a proper aroma, a heady smack of cherry essence, like cough medicine or lip balm. The cherry roars from the middle of the flavour sending the hops scampering for cover. There's a stickiness that adds a cherry liqueur note, and I'd be tempted to chalk that one up to the malt base, but the other beers are quite dry and light-bodied, so I suspect it's simply whatever flavouring additive they've used. I can't say I actually liked this one, but I appreciate its tenacity.

I got a laugh out of Hello My Name is Lieke, brewed with orange and representing the Netherlands, as in "House of...", I assume. Anyway, it's darker than average and really does taste of zesty orange. It's slightly artificial, more Fanta than the real thing, but it stands up to the hops and is a real orange IPA, even if it's increasingly apparent that no actual fruit was involved in the production of any of these. Still, it's tasty and clean, and probably the best so far.

Deliberately I put this next to the Spanish entry Hello My Name Is Maria which claims mandarin. It just tastes like a scaled back version of Lieke. Tanora instead of Fanta, sweeter but lighter, and those naughty hops are visible behind it. It's the most chemical-tasting so far, nearer to the flavour lab than the produce aisle, and I got an unspecific flashback to brightly coloured hard-coated chew sweets.

Last of this citrus trilogy is Hello My Name Is Sofia shouting for Italy and flavoured with lemon. Barely, it turns out. There's a lemon meringue pie filling sweetness but that's as lemony as it gets. Strangely the hop bitterness isn't taking the opportunity to seize control of the flavour profile — because the citrus is in sync? — and the end result is quite an inoffensive easy-going light lemony pale ale. There's no way you'd believe it was 8.2% ABV. You might believe it's a dilute floor cleaner, though.

Round three: berries. I'm starting on Hello My Name Is Marianne, representing France with blackcurrant, or "cassis" as the label pretentiously insists. It needn't have bothered, there's very little fruit, and actully not much hop either. I found myself forcefully looking for Ribena in here, but there's not even that. Meh. Moving on...

Hello My Name Is Sari uses bilberry and is the Finnish one. There's a definite blueberry twang off this (they're related you know) but it's quick and brief with nothing to replace it. The hops are behaving again and when it all settles down the fruit wafts back in, but it's ghost flavour: nothing substantial. It's fine, even quite nice, but no particular element shines or really takes control. This was the only one where I wished they squirted more syrup in. It needs the Helga treatment.

Last one already? Sweden brings us home with Hello My Name Is Agnetha, this one with lingonberry. Jam again, though this time there's a hard metallic sharpness running through it: aspirin and woody berry seeds. This is one of the rare ones in the series that tastes much more of the fruit than anything else, though here the tartness actually combines well with the hops. Although it's quite sugary, there's enough green acidic bitterness on the finish to lend complexity, and perhaps even balance.

In conclusion? I dunno. I wasn't overly impressed by any of them, and that's at least in part due to the base beer being fairly unexciting and a little too bitter: a criticism I made of the IPA Is Dead series when that was the annual horizontal tasting event. Orange seems to be the fruit, or syrup, that's most worth your while if you want to re-engineer a double IPA like this, which isn't terribly surprising.

As it happened I ended up with two complimentary sets of the nine, and the second became an episode of the Irish Craft Beer Show. Look out for that in the New Year.

International dark young thing

Guinness was currying favour with the geeks when it set out an impressive array of guest beers for its International Stout Day celebrations at The Open Gate Brewery last month. Eight beers from three countries were new to me, though it was good to see the crew from Dungarvan Brewing representing our native micros and serving two lovely stouts on cask.

At the centre of attention were four large-format bottles from Californian brewer The Bruery. In the expectation that these would go quickly, they were the first that manager Padraig opened and shared with the early arrivals.

So Happens It's Tuesday is the place to start, a comparative lightweight at 14.6% ABV. This has been bourbon barrel-aged, and that's fairly apparent from the light woodiness in the middle and a vanilla aftertaste. It's quite highly carbonated and yet there's no aroma to speak of. Maybe it was the context in which I drank it but I found it very plain fare indeed.

There was rather more going on in Tuesday With Coffee, and not just because of the added ingredient. Somehow the whisky came through clearer, bringing with it extra heat. The oak was particularly strong in the aroma, turning out dry and slightly sawdusty. The big and oily coffee beans really help soften any harshness, and while it's not spectacular I enjoyed it a smidge more than the original.

We go straight up to the strongest of them next: Grey Monday, which is 20% ABV. And it really really doesn't taste like it. The texture is light and the chocolate flavours bright and fresh, as you'd find in sweet stouts a quarter of its strength. There's maybe a certain marker-pen edge, but the chocolate lessens its impact, rounding it into a kind of warming cream sherry effect. This one really deserved more than scribbled notes over a tiny sample: think snifter glasses, wing chairs, open fires and all the time in the world.

And even that was bested by Black Tuesday, though it's a slightly more modest 19.5% ABV. The gloves are definitely off now, with a cavalcade of hot tar and fudge just pouring onto the palate from the get go and all the way through. The two sides actually have a balancing effect on each other, while the flavour is further complicated by a ripe cherry fruitiness and then a whisky burn on the finish. It maybe lacks the multifaceted complexity of the highest grade imperial stouts, but it's impressive nonetheless.

The award for longest distance travelled goes to Devil's Peak of Cape Town, who brought two brand new offerings brewed especially for the event. There was a touch of Tweedledum and Tweedledee about the pair. The Chocolate Shake Stout, a large enough animal at 8.3% ABV, was staggerly sweet, full of perfumey lavender and sticky pink marshmallows. I'm sure it's as the brewer intended, but I found it tough going. And then there was the Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout which was harshly dry to the point of being acrid, plus edges of savoury autolysis and damp cardboard oxidation. After the luxurious Bruery imperial stouts, this tasted like dropping back into third class, with hard seats and drafty windows.

The final pair for me were Londoners. The London Brewing Co. was one I last met in late 2012 when it was still the house brewery at The Bull pub in Highgate. It has since moved out to standalone premises. The 4.6% ABV 100 Oysters Stout was what they'd brought, served on gravity cask and needing a long pour to establish a head. I liked the burnt caramel aroma, though it promises a sweetness that isn't delivered by the flavour. If you like your session stouts very dry then this will suit you; for me it was just too harsh and lacking softness, creaminess and all the other comforting things about good stout.

And then there was 40FT, a brewery whose beers I rarely seem to get on with. Deep, another sessioner, was almost another one on my shitlist: it's dry again, quite astringent, all sharp pointy angles with a weird aftershave flavour. But it works: it provided an effective antidote to all the bigger-hitters and the candy-and-caramel confections I'd been drinking. While I had my reservations while actually drinking it, I felt cleansed and ready to attack the range anew after it.

The evening ran late and I wobbled home at a terribly ill-advised hour. Thanks, as always, to Padraig and his crew at Open Gate, and everyone from Diageo and Wilson Hartnell who put it together. The event was billed as a celebration of stout, and I think it was definitely mission accomplished.

The blackest day

I confess that I have been most remiss in my marking of International Stout Day up until now. 2017's iteration would likely have passed me by also, were it not for the invitation from Diageo to attend worship in St. James's Gate. The feast day's founder (get well soon Erin!) led the ceremonies at Open Gate Brewery, and for the occasion our hosts had created a couple of new stouts themselves and brought more in from around the world.

Headlining was Guinness's Stouta This World which I got to late in the evening. It's a 6.4% ABV stout with vanilla and bourbon. It didn't do it for me, having too much fizz and not enough flavour complexity. The additions gave it little more than a sweet milk chocolate bar character; maybe a Cadbury's Crunchie on a good day with the wind in the right direction. I'm all in favour of keeping things subtle when it comes to bourbon, but this one omitted even that much.

The best of the house offerings on the night was Guinness Burnt Sugar & Sea Salt Stout. Yes it's very much a pastry stout, totally lacking in bitterness or roast, but it delivers exactly what the long name promises. Sweet and sticky toffee popcorn is the opening gambit, then a long caramel middle, followed by a briny lacing of real salt on the tail. It's hard to argue with the sugary intensity when the sugar is owned up to on the label. A small glass was plenty, even at just 6.3% ABV, but I really enjoyed the unabashed silliness.

Bringing up the rear was Guinness Chocolate and Mint Stout, again at the roughly six-and-a-half per cent ABV mark. This also delivered on the promises but not in a good way. The mint is insanely overdone, so from the first sip it tasted more like toothpaste than beer. When that fades it leaves a savoury herbal effect, like sunflower seeds and fresh grass. It's not offensive, just too weird for my tastes. Sweetening it up might have helped balance it better.

On my very first post on The Open Gate Brewery, back in 2015, I reviewed their Milk Stout, which didn't impress me. Some form of the recipe has now found its way through the Diageo corporate system and emerged as a new, bottled, Guinness Milk Stout. It's still badged with the name of Open Gate, though it would have been brewed using high gravity techniques at the industrial-sized Guinness plant across the street. The ABV has taken a frankly merciful dip from 6.4% to 5%.

It looked good as it poured, a properly dark tan colour to the head. Milk stouts are sweet so I was surprised to find the aroma quite harshly bitter: herbal, with a certain meatiness. The taste is remarkably dry for the style; unacceptably so, I would say. There's a twang which is half iron filings and half smoke, and very little under that, other than plain fizzy bottled Guinness. I used to think that Mackeson's was the basic bottom end of milk stout, but this is a new low. Whoever brewed this must have been a stranger to Left Hand's.

We'll return to Stout Day at Guinness for the next post, to check out the roster of guest beers.

Dropping a twenty

Way back in September, the PR firm for the supermarket Aldi sent me a no-strings €20 voucher. The German discounter has been upping its game recently, as part of the bigger war between the grocery giants which has had beer as one of the fronts for a couple of years now. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what sort of a selection €20 buys, beerwise, in Aldi these days. Of course, a more sensible and rational human, one without a blog to feed, would have blown the lot on Spaten, a beer which offers about the best quality-for-price ratio in the country. Would I be able to find the beatings of that?

I managed eight different beers before running out of new ones, and didn't even clear the voucher, spending €19.62 in total.

It was just before Halloween so there was a selection of Wychwood offerings available. We begin with Dr. Thirsty's No. 4 Blonde, a whopping 4.1% ABV and a middling lager-yellow. There's a definite caskish feel about it: low fizz and a loose head. I was expecting dull but there is real character here, beginning with a spicy incense aroma. That intensifies on tasting, turning to dry cedar balanced by a bubblegum sweetness and a gentle green bitterness. It sounds busy but it's light enough to carry it effortlessly. This is easy-going English blonde ale done exceedingly well.

So a tough act for Hobgoblin Gold to follow. Another blonde ale, this time a direct brand extension from Wychwood's dark flagship. There's a smidge more alcohol at 4.5% ABV and with a surprising haze. An off-putting funky aroma is how it says hello, and the flavour is roughly acidic as well, with worrying gastric overtones. Hobgoblin isn't the best beer in the world but it's inoffensive. This is rather more extreme. There's maybe a softer element of stonefruit in the background: lychee if you're feeling charitable. Overall, however, it's quite grim stuff.

Williams Brothers supply the next two, starting with Re#Dial lager. "What's this? It's got a good beat!" exclaims the label. It does look well: a flawless golden hue topped by a handsome layer of pure white foam. The aroma is the first sign of trouble: sour and sweaty, like a forgotten gym bag. After the effort of pouring I wasn't sure I wanted to taste it. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared: a little over-sweetened, and yes there's a tinny twang that doesn't belong in decent lager, but the flavour is unobtrusive enough that it can be downed quickly, refreshing as it goes, and not cause offence. It's a mere 4% ABV, and if it wasn't for that woeful aroma I'd go so far as to describe it as sessionable. The texture is probably its best feature: light and spritzy, the carbonation in the Goldilocks zone below fizzy but well above flat.

Its stablemate for this round is Iconic, an American-style pale ale. This one is all Cascade, the ABV rocketing up to 4.4%. It certainly smells of Cascade: that classic, earthy, marmalade-and-metal aroma. It looks well too: the body clear and the head tight. It's another sweet one, with a flavour that's primarily spun sugar and golden syrup. The hops have the measure of this, however, giving bitter cabbage leaf and sharp grapefruit. The end result is an uneasy balance, with both the malt sugar and hop acid threatening to take over at any moment. It works, though, and while it doesn't taste especially American, it's a decent and light pale ale, one which is particularly good value at just €2.19 a bottle.

Medusa is next in line, brewed for Aldi by Marston's under the supermarket's "Harpers Brewing" fake brand. It's a red ale and the label promises "roasted chocolate". Eh? Who roasts chocolate? It's a lovely dark garnet colour, tinting red around the edges and topped by a thick layer of creamy snake-free head. The aroma is a very strong caramel and apples vibe, slightly headache-inducing and every inch of the powerhouse 5% ABV. The green apple is dominant in the flavour, and it's not pleasant, tasting like a harsh chemical solvent. There's no softness, no nuance, just aggression, and not even the good sort. An attempt has been made at something rich and autumnal but it hasn't worked out. This beer tastes of pure hangovers and half a litre was a struggle.

Apprehension, then, going into Wild Bill's IPA, from the same producer. It's a worrying dark brown colour and is once again 5% ABV, with rye and unspecified American hops mentioned on the label. It smells bitter and spicy, which is fine, but the flavour is simultaneously sugar-sweet and harshly astringent, neither of them making for a pleasant sensation. There are hops too, funky and resinous, interacting with the dark malt to create the sweaty taste I often find in amber ales and really do not care for. This is another pass from me. I get how it's been put together but  the harsh aspirin and tin astringency strips it of merit. As far as the UK beers go I think the Williams Brothers take this round with Wychwood in second place.

To Germany next, and an Aldi stalwart I've never tried before: Rheinbacher Weissbier. Seemingly it does actually come from a real place called Rheinbach, just outside Bonn. It's surprisingly dark for the style, looking more like Schneider Weisse than any other mainstream weissbier. Bananas in the aroma? Present and correct, though not overdone. The flavour is a little muted, reflecting perhaps the slightly low ABV of 5%, but I like that. It's very easy to drink and the bubblegum sweetness doesn't clag up the palate. There's enough crisp grain character to clean it off, and even a tiny touch of dry roast. This is a perfect budget weissbier and I don't think I could ask more of it at €1.49.

All that still left me well short of the total so I topped it off with a ten-pack of stubbies. I quite like this format for easy-access, swig-from-the-bottle, lawnmower lager. This one has probably the least imaginative name in brewing history: Brasserie. "Quality Brewers" and "Bière Supérieure" exclaims the packaging, in an almost pleading tone, alongside depictions of what look like competition medallions but aren't, as though it totally could win some, if it wanted to, like.

I was just happy that it wasn't skunked. Cardboard sleeves appear to provide better protection against UV than science was aware. Should one decide to pour it into a glass, one will find it flawlessly clear with lots of bubbles, almost resembling a glass of champagne. Almost. It's only 4% ABV but actually tastes like less: it's very thin and makes you work to find any flavour. There's a slightly contrived malt sweetness -- a bit like powdered malt extract -- and a sharp green bitterness which might charitably be described as grassy, though there isn't enough of it to describe it as anything much. Like I say, this is fizzy and thirst-quenching and isn't really designed to do anything else. There's not a thing wrong with it, however.

A couple of genuine bargains in this lot, particularly on the paler side of the spectrum. I'm still going to advise you to buy Spaten, however.