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.

Back in the game

My summer of beer festivals began in Cork, with the return of the Franciscan Well's Easter gig, delayed a month or so. It was a wise choice as the weather was beautiful.

I started in Rising Sons, for a pre-gig look at their new offerings, the first being Shield Maiden, a kviek-fermented orange ale. I thought it was going to be sour but it's not. This 5.1% ABV pale amber coloured beer is rather sweet, tasting of orangeade with a mild cinnamon spicing. There's a little old-fashioned hop bitterness in the finish but not much. It's light bodied and that gives the overall impression of a lager with a dash of fruit syrup in it. Kveik yeast may be exciting to use, but the beer it created here is rather bland.

Beside it was pouring The Dark One, a porter. This is also 5.1% ABV and cola-coloured. There's a huge amount of roast in the aroma, and the flavour is fully bitter, with smoke and tar in the ascendant, plus an edge of cherry with side notes of beech nut and aniseed. The mouthfeel is quite thin and fizzy, but for me that made an incredibly complex beer accessible and refreshing. This is pretty much exactly how I like porter to be.

Across the Lee at Franciscan Well, proceedings were in full swing when I arrived at 1.30. Rising Sons was pouring here too, and I went with Heartbreaker, an IPA. Although it's only 5.3% ABV, this manages to squeeze in a lot of the attributes of much stronger American IPA, and in particular the heavy and resinous pine flavours. It's slightly hazy, so not completely west coast, but close enough for me. And while it doesn't do anything fancy or complex, it's very decent.

West Cork Brewing was over from Baltimore, represented by new head brewer Tara, and with three beers all new to me. First there's Spice Island Red, a red ale with ginger, which is not something I'd seen before. It doesn't really work, however. While the ginger is perfectly pitched and gives it a beautiful summery zing, there's a slightly sweaty staleness caused, I think, by its interaction with the toffee-flavoured malt. It doesn't ruin the experience completely but it's not ideal. Perhaps choosing a different style to give the spice treatment to would work better.

The pale ale is called Beacon of Hops and is 4.1% ABV. This is fresh, light and lemony; softly textured so resembling somewhat a witbier. Though fruity and not very bitter, it finishes dry, which makes it delightfully moreish. Just what you want from a brewpub pale ale.

Finally, a west coast IPA given the faux-amis name Cape Haze. It is a little hazy, in fairness, but that's not a principal feature. It's a dark gold colour and very dank in both aroma and flavour, piling on the oily resin. There's a strange but not unpleasant sulphurous burnt-rubber note, and a crisply dry finish. Much like Heartbreaker above, this channels the main points of the style well, and this time at an even lower ABV of 4.7%. You'd never know it was that light from drinking it.

Lineman was in town for a tap takeover at Bierhaus and had two new beers at the 'Well. First there's Stopover, a blond ale broadly in the English tradition -- 5.1% ABV with flavours of vanilla, honey and cereal. The finish is crisp, though not in a lagerish way. This is quite plain fare and made an excellent palate cleanser when served cold from the tap on the warm day it was. I'm not sure what I'd make of it canned at home.

And there was a new IPA as well. No trying to give a false impression of strength here: Green Light is the full 7% ABV and a clear golden colour. It's bright and fresh and clean, and while perhaps a little low on bitterness -- no teeth-squeaking acidity here -- the flavour is absolutely full-on with all the pine and grapefruit you could want. I think I'd prefer it to be a little more challenging and assertive, but it's still lovely as-is.

I missed one of the new Wicklow Wolf beers but caught the other: You Can't Handle The Fruit. This is sour and contains apricot, blood orange, passionfruit and pineapple. I'm not sure there's much point adding lots of other things once there's passionfruit, because it's only going to taste of passionfruit and this absolutely does. A small citric bite in the finish is the only place where anything else gets a word in. Nevertheless, it's very tasty, with a good pinch of sourness and a lovely soft texture. Absolutely what summer days are made for.

Whiplash too was selling rapidly through the beers and all that was left for me was their Stigbergets collaboration To Evil. It's a medium hazy yellow, looking light and innocent but is all of 7.5% ABV. That brings a density and an oily flavour, with coconut prominent in the foretaste before it settles out to mango and lemon zest with a hint of vanilla. It's fine, but for something close to double IPA strength I think I'd like more going on.

The final brewery is WhiteField, their first outing since rebranding from White Gypsy. They had a lager they brew for the Cashel Palace Hotel, a 5.2% ABV job called Sunset. It's quite a fruity one with a peach and apricot sweetness and just a lightly bitter herbal grassy side. The body is full and there's a lovely pale-toast crispness too, giving it a bit of a Champagne vibe. This definitely isn't a by-the-numbers lager and shows bags of character.

Sticking with lager, the brewery has also brewed one as a fundraiser for Ukraine. It's called Resolve and I brought a bottle home with me. It's a kellerbier, which means it's fully murky, an opaque amber colour. The carbonation is high so there was plenty of head, which lasted. A sweet aroma starts us off, with notes of flowers and honey. The flavour goes in a different direction, offering savoury brown bread and a spicy herbal bitterness: rosemary, aniseed and cloves. That's all set on a heavy, chewy body, for the full wholesome and rustic effect. It's quality stuff, an on-point and characterful take on the kellerbier style. Its humanitarian credentials are a bonus.

And that was it for the festival. It was a fantastic day out, and great to catch up with folk I haven't seen since the Before Times. I imagine there'll be a lot of that this summer.

Birthday boys

Two of Belgian brewing's big brands are celebrating round-number anniversaries at the moment, and have released special beers to mark the respective occasions.

The gnomes at La Chouffe are presumably in party session mode and hence have dropped the ABV of their flagship to 5.6% to create Chouffe 40. It's the same hazy blonde, however, brimming with foam and smelling delightfully fruity and spicy in that signature Belgian way, a signature that La Chouffe must be at least partially responsible for designing. There's an oily wintergreen herbal effect in the foretaste, and I read that the recipe contains extra sage, so that makes absolute sense. Behind it there's honeyish candy, spritzy orange zest and some sharper nutmeg and raw clove. I miss the big Chouffe's easy-going heft, and it's lacking in the clean pepper spice too -- something I didn't think was optional with the house yeast. Still, it's a proper party, delivering most of what makes Belgian blonde a fun proposition, but at an extremely reasonable strength. Fair play, gnomes.

Lindemans, meanwhile, claims two hundred years of business this year. The celebration beer is Cuvée Francisca, 90% four-year-old lambic from three different foeders, topped up with 10% fresh and given a year in the bottle to find its feet. The end result is a beautiful honey colour with an aroma mixing enticing spices and strong sweet malt. 8% ABV suggests it'll be a sipper. I don't think it is, though. It's not heavily textured nor weighty with alcohol. Instead it leans right into the gunpowder and brick cellar that I adore in geuze, turning out amazingly dry for the high gravity. Two centuries of training have made the Lindemans yeast voracious because there's no residual sugar here. I tend not to like gueze at this high strength but they've absolutely nailed it this time, all bright and accessible, with none of the saline sweaty side. Past the sour there's a clean bitterness, suggesting lemon peel and grapefruit pith, adding a New World feel which has nothing to do with hops. Regardless, it's absolutely beautiful and a fully fitting tribute to one of the best in the lambic business.

Two quite different beers here, although each showing the great things of which its parent brewery is capable. I expect both producers will be around for some years yet.

The mask slips

Brand extensions are nothing new, and the big English ale breweries in particular are no strangers to them. They've invested heavily in their flagships so they (or their accountants) must feel that such assets are worth giving a firm squeeze now and again.

Timothy Taylor has taken the odd step of turning a pre-existing beer into a brand extension. Once upon a time they had a dark ale called Ram Tam, the pumpclip featuring a hardworking labourer. More recently he has thrown away his cap, peeled off the false moustache and revealed himself to be the beer-pumping landlord of Landlord; Ram Tam now renamed Landlord Dark.

It's a fair move: Ram Tam was only ever Landlord with added caramel. It's just unusual to see a brewery admit it. It looks well, though. I particularly liked the yellowing nicotine colour of the head, resembling a strong and wholesome stout, even if the beer under consideration is only 4.1% ABV.

The aroma is sweet and fruity: lots of very obvious hard caramel, sitting next to softer plum and raisin. The flavour is rather less complex. I was hoping that Landlord + caramel would unlock some new dimension of taste, but I could not perceive anything other than a quite hop forward English bitter -- meadow blossoms and earthy minerality -- spiked with thick and gloopy treacle. It's sticky, not wholesome, and the two aspects don't meld well together. The label promised chocolate and roasted malt, like a proper dark ale, but the flavour doesn't deliver that. I'm curious as to what I would have thought of it before I knew how it was constructed, but now I'll never know.

It's not awful, by any means, and if you're a fan of bottled Landlord, there's plenty for you here, which is of course the point of brand extensions. I had no problem drinking through it but it left me hankering after something dense and dark and properly formulated.

A right bunch of prinks

This Saturday sees the first ever Mullingar Wild Beer Festival at Smiddy's Bar. It promises to be quite the event and I'm really looking forward to seeing, and tasting, what the brewers have brought. This post is a mood-setter, highlighting some recent beers from the headlining acts.

We're not starting wild, though: Wide Street has a straightforward Vienna lager, named in the most straightforward fashion, Vienna Lager. It's got Magnum and Saaz hops, Vienna malt, and you can argue with someone else about whether the crystal malt is required or not. The result is a murky ochre with a parchment-coloured head. It smells quite rough, with a sweet estery pear effect meeting red wine and chocolate rasins. Not what I was expecting from the style. The flavour is altogether cleaner, but the strange and slightly sharp red grape effect remains. There's a certain roasted crispness, but not of the rich melanoidin taste that ought to be the hallmark of something like this. I give it a cautious welcome. It's drinkable, and by golly it's interesting, but it doesn't fit my idea of anything that goes by the description of Vienna lager, and if you're going to name the beer after the style, it ought to.

The next one is even tamer. Middle Lane from Otterbank is one of their straight-up offerings brewed by Third Barrel. It's a pale ale of 4.4% ABV, dry hopped with Citra, plus some Chinook and Centennial. That sounds quite old-school but it's also hazy, and smells deliciously juicy. Befitting the strength, the body is quite light, on that cusp where some would say it's pleasingly drinkable; others that it's annoyingly thin. I'm going to both-sides that one. The flavour is fairly clean, dominated by lemon peel and grapefruit flesh, with a hint of vanilla and a touch of dry murky grit on the finish. It's not a beer which demands a lot of attention, but does live up to its name in incorporating aspects of both the east and west coast sub-styles. Clever.

Otterbank also got on board with the international campaign to support humanitarian aid for Ukraine by brewing a beetroot stout called Resist. I gave an account of Ballykilcavan's 8% ABV version recently here. Otterbank's is stronger still for extra resistance at 10.5% ABV. It's not quite black, being a very dark chocolate or bromine brown colour. I've drank a fair few beetroot beers in my time but never one where the vegetable add-on leaps out of the aroma as much as it does here, all raw and crunchy with a lacing of purple sweetness. The roasty stout side of the smell takes a secondary position. The flavour brings the roast out more: concentrated espresso and a vegetal bitterness which is entirely appropriate for the style but also dovetails neatly with the earthy beetroot. A tiny umami soy-sauce twang finishes it off. The strength is most apparent in the dense texture but there's no heat. In fact it's all rather subtle and balanced for a powerhouse novelty stout. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed that it does good. Buy it if you see it.

Things get a wee bit wilder with the saison, Little Nelson, by Wide Street. The name comes from the New Zealand hop it uses, along with the fact it's only 3.7% ABV. It's a pale and fuzzy yellow colour with a fine froth on top. The aroma absolutely sings of Nelson Sauvin: cool and juicy white grape meeting a harder flinty bitterness. It's very light-bodied, even given the strength, but the hopping has been toned down accordingly for balance. The flavour offers a funky grassy foretaste, finishing dry and crisp. The saison side of the equation is muted, with only a mild earthiness giving away the style. Overall it's a tasty thirst-quencher and great vehicle for the hops. If Nelson Sauvin is a favourite of yours, don't miss this.

Now it's time to get the bugs out. First up is Idol Eyes from Wide Street, a golden ale fermented with mixed yeast varieties and aged in Chardonnay barrels. It is indeed brightly golden with lots of lambic-like spicing in the aroma, plus a serious eye-puckering acidity. That big sourness is the main feature, given prominence by an excessively low ABV of 4.8%. Opposite the sharp side there's the Chardonnay, luscious and juicy. You only get a flash of it, however, before the acid is back to scour your palate on the finish. I whine about beers like this when they're too strong, turning sweaty and cloying, but this goes too far in the opposite direction, with a little of the harshness often found in big-flavoured beers that lack the malt base to carry it. I can't be too cross with it, however, as it has lots of great sour and spicy features. Being low strength doesn't make it sessionable, however. One 75cl bottle was plenty.

Back to Otterbank for the finisher, a 9% ABV red ale called Time Will Tell, first in a new collaboration series, this one with -- oh surprise -- Third Barrel. Brettanomyces fermentation and wine barrel ageing all feature, as do Mosaic hops but I wasn't expecting too much of those. We're in Belgian oud bruin territory here, with the dark brown body and an aroma that has more than a hint of high-end balsamic vinegar about it. The texture is beautifully smooth, though with very little sign of the prodigious strength. That mutes the sourness somewhat, so instead of sharp cherry, or even vinegar, it's richly fruity, with raisin and plum plus a little chocolate and pudding. This works well as a dessert, where you might otherwise put port or a liqueur: smooth and calmly warming, and a nice place to finish. For now.

See you in Mullingar.

In the loup

A new pair of Wicklow Wolf beers arrived in early May, adding respectively to the brewery's collaboration and limited edition series.

Mayo's Mescan is not really known for its collaborations, and as a steadfast producer of Belgian-style bottled beers, their logo on a can is an odd sight. At least the beer is Belgian style, a witbier called Wit or Witout You. The specs are almost orthodox: 5% ABV with coriander and orange zest, though there's an extra addition of black pepper too, just for fun. It's quite fruit forward on that, with a definite sweet mandarin juicy quality. The herbs and spices are subtle, and meld into the spicy effects of the Belgian yeast. That in turn adds a banana sweetness as well. I hoped for more black pepper than I got, and it leans a little too far on the sweet side than is ideal, but it's still a very nice beer and a worthy interpretation of witbier. I think the host brewer got their money's worth out of their guest's expertise.

Is This Pop Art? they ask next. The name references the use of the Cryo Pop hop blend, as though that's still a novelty. It's an 8% ABV double IPA, seemingly on the New England side of the house, judging from the custardy orange-yellow appearance. The aroma is coconut with a bit of tropical fruit, making me think I was in for a cloying piña colada experience. But no, the flavour picks the fruit direction and runs with it in a big way. Bouncy boinging pineapple, mango, apricot, guava and passionfruit all feature, given a quick squirt of lime and a glug of something cleanly alcoholic. It's beautiful, and completely devoid of any hazy pitfalls, even as it warms. The only quibble I can think of is that it doesn't taste properly double: it's stupidly drinkable and impossible to sip. I'm sceptical about advances in hop technology in general, and haven't been wowed by Cryo Pop before, but if this is what it's meant to do, I'm on board.

Last time, I remarked that Wicklow Wolf was very good at making stouts. Well here's a couple more strings to their stylistic bow.

Third time... lucky?

Gueze is hard to resist. That's why I've come back to Lambiek Fabriek, even though I don't think their beers are as good as those of their more established competitors. But they're available here now, and faced with a bottle of an unfamiliar one in Molloy's I was compelled to buy it. Maybe this will be the breakthrough.

Natur-Elle's signature feature is that it's organic. That doesn't mean it'll automatically be brilliant, but hey: it works for Cantillon. The beer had been in the bottle for almost a year and had developed quite a lot of gunky sediment, necessitating very careful pouring. The aroma is decent but unspectacular with an understated level of gunpowder spicing. The flavour carries that along well, but is plagued by the same issue as the flagship Brett-Elle: a thin vinegary sharpness in place of the richer and smoother sour quality of good geuze. 6.2% ABV is a significant strength so I feel I have every right to expect something more rounded as a result, but this is all pointy angles with not enough of what makes geuze enjoyable.

So they're not there yet. And perhaps they never will be. Will I eventually be buying a fourth bottle to test this further? Bank on it.