No rush

I've never been to Bulgaria, though it's high on my to-travel-to list for exactly that reason. I leapt on some Bulgarian beers when they appeared at Craft Central last year, but then they languished in my fridge for several months thereafter. I was clever enough to not buy any IPAs so the bit of cold ageing shouldn't have done either much harm. Sofia Electric is the brewery.

First is a gose, claiming to be "classic", called Kisel. Marks before even the tab is pulled for being supplied in a 500ml can. The extended refrigeration allowed it to settle in there and only my greedy pouring meant the glassful wasn't completely transparent. A pleasingly firm snowy head tops it off. There's neither nonsense nor novelty in the aroma, just a nice dry saline kick with a suggestion of citric sourness to come. Sure enough, it's cleanly tart; precise and angular in its flavour. The dry cracker base is a little soggier than I'd like, lacking a crispness it suggests but doesn't quite deliver on. That does give it a fuller than expected body for only 5% ABV, and onto that they've spread grapefruit jelly and a spritz of sea spume. Refreshing? I'll say. I drank it very cold and it suited it well. And then there's just enough sourness to keep this sour beer fan happy. Overall it's a cut above what gets tossed out as gose by most microbreweries these days. Some coriander might have been good too, but there's plenty of flavour without it.

It's an abrupt about face to the 9% ABV imperial stout called 6 Months Behind Schedule. My drinking it certainly is. It smells quite sweet and chocolatey, though not excessively so by the standards of modern imperial stout. There's something more classically old fashioned in the flavour. Looking past the brown sugar and powdered chocolate there's hard Brazil nut, blackstrap molasses and something more savoury: aniseed, cardamom and eucalyptus. It's a very classy number, unfolding gradually as it goes, its multifaceted flavour elements held in equilibrium and leaving me trying to decide whether it's sweet or bitter on a taste-by-taste basis. I got good value out of my 33cl, sipping and pondering like some sort of beer nerd. Well sod the finer details: this is lovely, expertly treading the line between the sticky caramelised sugarbombs beloved of small stout-brewing breweries across Europe and beyond, with the sterner, stricter ones from countries with a tradition of this sort of thing. 6 Months? Worth the wait.

It seems I should have bought more from Sofia Electric. I will be looking out for them when I eventually get over there.

Paydirt

I have a lot of respect for Waterford's Blackwater Distillery, although I don't drink a lot of their wares beyond the excellent gin they make for Aldi. I particularly like the forthright and open way they communicate about their business, something not enough Irish distilleries and distillery-adjacent companies do. In their early days, they noted how, because of a technical quirk in our antiquated licensing laws, they were required to get a brewery licence in order to distill. It didn't seem like they ever intended to use it for its actual purpose, but now it seems they have.

Reviving the Irish pot still whisky style in the way it was before monopolisation bastardised it is one of their projects (as well as reviving the no-e spelling, another casualty of mid-20th century consolidation) and Dirtgrain the beer uses a 1953 pot still grain recipe, also used for Dirtgrain the whisky. It's an imperial stout of 10.6% ABV with added sour cherries and whisky barrel-aged, of course.

The result is fascinating. The cherries are particularly prominent, and there's a significant sourness, making it taste a bit like a Flanders red ale: that bracing fruity briskness that they have. The chocolate and coffee from the stout are second place and come through strongest in the finish. What's strange is how light-bodied and easy-drinking it is. Though packed with flavour, the finish is quick and it leaves no sticky residue behind. There's also no sign of the whisky, that I could detect anyway.

At €12.50 for a half litre bottle this isn't cheap, and I think you're paying at least a portion of that for the novel concept. It is a very good beer, though, blending classy aspects of both Irish and Belgian traditional brewing. Not bad for a non-brewery.

Unseasonals

I did a little bit of a go-around of the Dublin Wetherspoon pubs before I left town for Christmas. At Keaven's Port they had two new ticks for me.

Well, sort of. The cask of Oakham Below Zero ran dry before my half was poured but I still got a decent sized taster. It's lovely too, a bright and lemony pale ale with zingy notes of sherbet and zest: an impressive depth of flavour for just 4.1% ABV. Alongside a bonus tannic dryness there's a very slight soapy character in the finish which prevents it from being stellar, but I would have happily necked this by the pint had that been an option. 

Also pouring was Vale Brewery's Gravitas, a honey-coloured pale ale, single-hopped but with what we are not told. As the name suggested, it's an alcohol powerhouse, up at 4.8% ABV. Careful now. The flavour is a strange one, being highly floral and perfumed, blending lavender sweetness with a jasmine spice. I guessed it was an English hop variety, but research revealed that to be not quite right: it's Cascade, of English ancestry but resolutely American, normally. Here it's missing its citrus tang and savoury earthiness. Technical details aside, it's a good beer. Once you're accustomed to the sweetness it's very clean, and like the above beer there's just enough tannin in the finish to enhance the drinkability.

Meanwhile, over at The Silver Penny they had one of those lovely art nouveau Brewsters pumpclips on display and, mirabile dictu, were actually pouring the beer it was advertising: Decadence, a golden ale. Kiwi and passionfruit are promised, though it begins on a slightly artificial fruit-flavoured chewing gum aroma. There's a certain amount of realistic tropicality in the flavour, passionfruit and mango for sure, though lacking the bitterness of kiwifruit, I think. There's a fun piquancy too: a little bit sulphur or pink peppercorn, but not to an excessive degree. This is another very decent affair, well designed and well kept.

Any of these would make for excellent summer beers but were equally welcome in the depths of winter.

Have it your way

Last time I drank their beers, I complained that Dublin contract brewer Outer Place only releases hazy IPAs and nothing else. Clearly they've treated that feedback with the seriousness it deserves and followed up with... three more hazy IPAs.

That begins on Mini Mini Disco, a hazy IPA of the session kind. It does look well: pale yellow, only slightly hazy, and topped with a handsome fine white mousse. The aroma is pleasingly tropical, giving up mango and guava in particular. Azacca is bringing the sweetness, so what are the Columbus and Cascade doing? It's not bitterness because there's very little of that in the flavour. Fruit candy opens it but then fades very quickly to almost nothing, leaving only a rubbery, soapy twang on the finish. It's very thin too, beyond what I think is necessary for session IPA and certainly more watery than 4.4% ABV would suggest. They seem to have gone all out for drinkability but missed the mark on making something actually worth drinking. A session on this would get very dull very quickly.

We go up to a full strength IPA next: Perpetual Dawn at 6% ABV. Simcoe, Citra and Cascade do the honours here. That said it's not a wildly different flavour profile to the previous one, though worlds away in terms of the flavour's depth. The body is full and has the oaty creaminess that hazy IPA does well. Tropical fruit is at the front again, bigger and rounder, and while there's still not much bitterness there is a certain spiciness, an edge, which helps balance the sweet side. Sweet it is though, leaving a sugary, boozy residue on the tongue after swallowing. I deem this one for strict haze adherents only; it has little else to offer the neutrals.

Finally, a sort-of style variation: double white IPA. Say A Little Prayer is 8% ABV and utilises orange peel and coriander as well as Amarillo and El Dorado. Both of the witbier add-ons are apparent in the aroma, and there's no sign of the hops and alcohol, so it smells like a witbier. Fair enough. The flavour is strong and doesn't sit right with me. Savoury green herb -- more rosemary on a roast than coriander -- clashes with puckeringly bitter citrus peel, this bit more lemon than orange. The jarring flavours are heightened by an almost syrupy mouthfeel. I can just about detect El Dorado's fruit candy struggling to make its presence felt behind all this but it doesn't stand much of a chance. I don't really like white IPA at the best of times; the only other double one I've had didn't suit me, so the odds were against this one from the start. Fair play to Outer Place for doing something a tiny bit different to their usual, it's just not for me.

More O/P hoppy haze will be along in due course, no doubt.

Reverting to type

"Liquid Hoppiness" is a bit on the nose as a name for a Sierra Nevada beer. That's the thing they've been known for providing since the early 1980s. Nevertheless, here it is: a 7% ABV IPA, claiming to be "juicy" and I wonder before popping the tab if that's simply a trend-chasing word to put on the front of a can containing nothing of the sort.

It is hazy, though lightly so: translucent rather than opaque. It smells hazy too, with a dollop of creamy vanilla coming through first, before satsuma and pineapple. I don't think "juicy" is the word for the flavour. It's sweet all right, but more orangeade-like, with a carbonic sharpness and a pithy bitterness. The vanilla drains away quickly leaving a clean and dry finish.

This is rather tasty. There's nothing fancy going on, and the hop kick isn't as big and bold as some of Sierra Nevada's other IPAs, but there are echoes of both the flagship pale ale and Torpedo in here. They've been given a very slight modernisation though nothing too much. It's bitter at heart and that's how it ought to be.

Odell is another American brewery which made its name with generous hopping back in the heyday of American IPA. Even though classics like their flagship and Myrcenary are still very much around, we also get a lot of... other... stuff from them. Their Sippin' Pretty sour ale, launched a few years ago, has now spawned a rake of brand extensions. I dealt with one of them, Sippin' Tropical, last August, and now here's another, with the inauspicious name of Sippin' Lemonade.

From the branding it appears to be one of those carefree, outdoor, summery fellows that European breweries often create at 4% ABV and below but Americans can't countenance making less than 5%, which is what this is. "Ale brewed with lemons and cane sugar" is the brewery's rather blunt description of it, which does say much about how it's made.

In the glass it's a slightly hazy yellow and the base beer's tartness is immediately apparent in the aroma. Similarly, the flavour starts out puckering and tangy, suggesting rather more souring than most kettle-soured beers get. The cane sugar is asleep on the job, then, but I don't mind. The lemon lands in late and comes with a herbal side which I guess justifies the name: it's lemonade of the classy, cloudy, homemade sort that they're invoking here. Those herbs -- basil and rosemary to me -- occupy the aftertaste and are the best bit. Overall this works well. It's a properly tart sour golden ale while also a summer soft-drink analogue with more complexity than I was expecting. Keeping it simple with lemons yields better sour-beer results than berries or tropical fruits, I reckon. And you can quote me on that.

Finally it's Oskar Blues with Mutant X IPA, seemingly named for some unspecified hop extraction technology. It's a very eggy yellow and 7% ABV. The aroma is fresh and juicy, I'm sure as intended, like mandarin in particular. It's altogether more bitter and even a little savoury on tasting. Touches of fried onion and roast garlic, calming down to lime and grapefruit, before the fruit salad slides in again in the finish. A building weedy resinousness creeps in as it goes along, leaving the tongue coated by the end, in a very west coast way. It's quite the tour of American IPA attributes that Oskar brings us on here. Hard bitterness set on a fluffy New England texture. It's different, but I like it.

None of these three are their respective breweries' best work, but I can't really complain when their excellent core range products were on sale next to them. This is the life I chose and you're under no obligation to follow.

More of the similar

Seems like forever since I last had Larkin's on here, though it was only August. They've been hella busy since and I have much to tell you about.

Sour has never really been their milieu, but I was extremely impressed by Chardonnay, a sour ale aged in French white wine barrels with added mango and passionfruit. And yes, I will state up front that even though your saisons and wild ales given the vin blanc treatment is one of my favourite things to encounter here in the beer world, I still approached this with the cold sarcastic cynicism I bring to every glass served me. At 7% ABV it's a heavy one, and hazy with it, but it uses that heft, and the fruit additions, to pile clean peach and cantaloupe flavours onto the palate in a way that's more Riesling than Chardonnay, but I have no objections. Likewise, the sourness is buried a little under the sugar, with a peppery spice more part of what it does. Not sour; not Chardonnay but I adored it. I tend to prefer beers like this to be refreshing and invigorating, but a sippable ponderable, once in a while, floats my boat too. I drank it on draught in UnderDog and will be giving a can or two a spin as well, for as long as it's around.

Regarding double IPAs, they've gone all-in with the thiols, yet another way of mechanically extracting the good bits of hops from the rest to maximise flavour and aroma. The first example I have for you is Citra Thiol DIPA at 7.8% ABV. It's strangely flat, with no hiss on popping the can and no head on the beer. The body is an opaque sludgey yellow and there's not much aroma, possibly also a factor of the poor conditioning. There is a very faint sparkle in the mouthfeel but far from proper fizz. There's nothing special or distinctive about the flavour either. It's broadly tropical with some juicy ripe tangerine and a teeny whiff of savoury onion on the end. It's fine. To its credit it's perfectly clean tasting with none of that murk bringing anything unpleasant. There's a light touch on the alcohol too, and I don't think I would have guessed the strength. This is one of those beers where you have to make up your own mind on whether it's accessible or boring. I certainly couldn't taste any new hop tech being showcased.

They've done something similar as part of the McHugh's Roadtrip series, of which the north Dublin offy kindly sent me a couple of cans. Here we go then: Road Trip Explorer 5: Thiol Double IPA, a little ballsier than the previous at 8% ABV. It's not as murky either, and there's a decent head on pouring. Tropicals are back but far more pronounced in the aroma, leading with a quite intense pineapple effect. That's the flavour too, pineapple first, dusted with a little cinnamon and finishing dry and a little chalky, like a soluble vitamin tablet. Here I think can detect something different going on; the hop profile of this beer is unusual. I don't know that it's an improvement on just hopping something to hell and back in the traditional way, but maybe it's cheaper, so hurrah for that. Overall, you get a very decent and just as clean hazy double IPA. Good enough.

In late November Larkin's dropped a sequence of single hop hazy IPAs, all hip and urban with their branding, in a way that just screams smalltown Co. Wicklow. First is the 6.2% ABV Jagged Sky, showcasing Sabro. It does so with aplomb, providing all the orange pith and coconut that one comes to this hop for, set on a beautifully soft and fluffy base. No bitterness, but no need for it. As a single hopper there's a lack of complexity but I don't think it matters: the two dimensions this hop provides are plenty, and all is bright and fresh. And educational too.

So that had me all geared up for Staylo, a little bit stronger at 6.5% ABV and the single hop is the always-fun El Dorado. Again the texture is all pillowy and the bitterness is understated but the hop just isn't as bold and interesting this time round. I expected sweet and tropical, which is what El Dorado does best, but instead it's quite dry and minerally; flinty sparks and zesty rind. It's fine as a drinking beer, and the not unsubstantial strength is well hidden. It does suffer from a lack of complexity with a less intense hop, however. Sabro has you covered, El Dorado on its own leaves you hanging. There are no flaws here, just a lack of any wow factor. Let's call it a worthy experiment and leave matters there.

Next under the microscope is Simcoe, via the 6.6% ABV Après. It looks pretty much the same as the others and smells fabulously juicy, in a way I don't associate with this hop. That's what it does on the flavour: freshly-squeezed orange juice, mildly pithy and slightly zesty with nothing else at all going on. In a hazy IPA I will absolutely take that and consider myself lucky. There are none of the common off flavours, and a surprising lack of heat making it very easy to down. Even the body is lighter than the previous ones despite the ascending strength. Maybe it gets oniony or something as it warms but my glass never got the chance. This was one of those rare occasions where I immediately wanted another can of the same right away.

Top that, you say? This subsection tops out with Scenes, the one that's 6.7% ABV and hopped solely with Hüll Melon. The aroma goes for a burton here, offering nothing beyond a vague green-leaf herb. The flavour too is extremely muted. What happens if you remove the hop flavour from a New England-style IPA? You get custard: a soft and sweet vanilla effect. As with all of these it's incredibly clean, without booze burn, garlic or grit, but unlike the others the hops have not shown up for work. It's bland in a way beer like this should never be. A very gentle curry-leaf spicing is all I could find when I really went searching. It's not enough. I suppose if you're into haze more for the texture than the flavour then this works, but otherwise it's skippable. Buy more Après instead.

We enter the imperial stout phase of this round up with Coco Loco, a simple rum barrel aged toasted coconut job at a light and brisk 8.3% ABV. It's a foamy beast, taking a little time to settle, even in a wide glass. Nothing leaps out in the aroma, just a little sugared coffee; no coconut or rum, neither of which are usually shy. I thought it would be sweet but there's a surprising, and refreshingly different dry and bitter aspect in charge here. Oak and coconut do feature but both are very definitely toasted. I can't detect any rum and frankly I'm relieved: the sickliness it too often adds is not to my taste. Only in the finish, as it warms, is there a subtle echo of the rum. This is very good. The name and description suggests brash and gimmicky but really it's all smooth, mature, balanced and integrated. Coconut/rum imperial stout has grown up.

November saw a trilogy of barrel aged imperial stouts, or "Triple Impy" as they've cringingly written on the cans. First to come my way was That's Not A Stout, This Is A Stout, complementing the reference to Australia with... maple syrup? It's a sizeable 13% ABV but dresses well for a big lad, having a mature and mellow texture; soft and smooth. The flavour is complex but very nicely blended together, sweet coconut meeting dry cola and making off with bitter liquorice. The finish offers a more sober sense of treacle-infused brown bread. It looks to be pitched as a daft novelty but it's quality through and through. Anyone looking for a one-dimensional whack of boozy maple syrup should move along. And yes, it distracted me sufficiently that I neglected to take a photo in UnderDog, but take my word that it was black and came in a TeKu.

"One to warm you on a cold night" says the can of Quit Your Jibber Jabber Fool! and I put that to the test on the first properly cold evening of the year. Again it's 13% ABV and this time there's cacao, lactose and vanilla in the mix. It looked at first to be pouring quite flat but a proper head did form eventually. Strangely, given the ingredients, there's a blip of grassy green hops on the aroma. The flavour is a slow build, starting a little watery, then gradually adding in marzipan, cherry syrup, espresso and finally dark chocolate. That's fun, but it's quite thin for what it is. For possibly the first time ever I'm annoyed that the lactose isn't more prominent. This gets better and fuller as it warms, and I strongly recommend allowing it to do so. Do that and you get a decent but unspectacular imperial stout, treading nimbly between bitter roasty tradition and contemporary candy-coated whimsy.

And speaking of candy-coated whimsy, we finish on Both Barrels, the same strength but brewed using marshmallow. "Actually not overly sweet" promises the label. I'll be the judge of that. Reader, it is overly sweet. The very real and sticky marshmallow makes this both taste and smell pink. There's a certain coffee roast bitterness, which might be how they've attempted to balance it but it hasn't worked very well. The thinness which plagued the first one is back again up front, before the lactose and marshmallow take charge, clogging up the palate by the end and leaving a thick residue behind in the mouth. And yet there's no proper warmth either. This is a difficult beer to like, especially if like me you think marshmallow has no place in a beer glass.

Larkin's isn't really a brewery that goes in for style diversity in a big way. You need to be into IPA or strong stout to like them -- I find that a little sad for a company that set out to specialise in lager but I'm sure there are sound commercial reasons behind the decision. And generally they're quite good at making what's trendy.

An epiphany

I've just managed to catch Hopfully's Christmas 2022 release before the season officially ends. This is Jingle Juice, a single-hopped Strata pale ale, which is 4.5% ABV and exclusive to Molloy's off licences, presumably intended as a casual fridge-filler or party beer. It's quite a pale hazy yellow and does indeed smell juicy, sweetly of jaffas with a hint of vanilla and a drier savoury edge too. It's light-bodied without seeming thin and the juice carries over neatly into the flavour: big firm orange segments, bursting with bittersweet citrus. Don't expect much complexity beyond that. There's maybe a tiny hint of garlic in the finish, but I'm hypervigilant for such things and it's barely noticeable. At €2.50 a can (and a free Christmas jumper if you buy 24), this is a cost-effective crowd-pleaser.

Something perhaps a little more seasonally suitable follows next: Nightwalker, a Baltic porter. I'm not usually a fan of breweries messing with the basics of this style so was sceptical about the inclusion of chocolate and coconut in this one. It's quite pale too: a reddish cola brown rather than black. The ABV is just about acceptable at 7.5%. The coconut is present in the aroma but not overwhelming, and there's still some more traditional bitter liquorice in the mix next to it. There's more coconut in the flavour, all the way through from fore- to aftertaste. Unfortunately there's not much else. I guess they were aiming for a clean lager base, but it's so clean as to be almost characterless, leaving you with just the coconut. There's a tiny hint of that liquorice, but no chocolate and not much dark malt either. It took me a while to make my peace with it, and it's definitely another example of why you should never try and improve on Baltic porter with novelty ingredients. That said, it's not a bad or unpleasant beer. If stout with coconut normally floats your boat, here's a slight variation on that which is worth your while.

We say goodbye with Howdy, an IPA in which the Strata is joined by Citra and Comet. It's hazy, as is Hopfully's wont, and the same shade of bright yellow as the can. Oranges and lemons says the aroma, though more diluted cordial than fresh fruit. The body is a little thin for something at 6.5% ABV, and there's a sweet vanilla aspect to the flavour which is a bit odd without a matching density. In the flavour the Citra is doing most of the heavy lifting, setting a sharp lime bitterness at the centre. Around that there's softer orange and a tang of spring onion. I guess this is one for those who enjoy hazy IPA but find their cloying sweetness unattractive. If that means they're better when thinned out, here you go. It failed to spark any fireworks for me, however.

Turns out the dinky seasonal sessioner has the beatings of both the big IPA and the Baltic porter. That's not how I expected this to go down, but it's Christmas, Theo. It's the time of miracles. Just about.