A Thorny question

I'm taking a punt, and a liberty, with this month's Session topic. Boak & Bailey are hosting and have asked about "the best beer you can drink at home right now". Though an inveterate ticker, I do have a canon of house beers; the ones I buy on a near weekly basis and often have in stock for inattentive drinking. Kinnegar's Black Bucket is one, Schlenkerla Märzen another, Little Fawn, Duvel, Leann Folláin and Nocturne: desert island beers all, in regular production and a lot less pricey than the one-offs I tend to drink more of, on account of this terrible masochistic hobby I developed twenty years ago.

And because of that, I'm taking a gamble and not writing about any of the above-mentioned. In the golden age of beer blogging, from the UK at least, the beer that got mentioned most for its quality and accessibility was Thornbridge's Jaipur IPA. I'm very fond of a pint myself, when it shows up in my local Wetherspoons. There have been various brand extensions over the years, and last week an unfamiliar one arrived in my eyeline in Redmond's off licence in Ranelagh: Jaipur Noir. I like Jaipur, but I love a black IPA. By rights, and before opening the can, this should be the best beer I can drink at home.

On the can they assure us that this isn't just Jaipur dyed black, even though it's the same 5.9% ABV. An "array of dark malts" has been employed. An array, no less. It's pretty black in the glass, revealed as a clear deep ruby when held to the light. The aroma is all bright and fresh citrus, with nothing dark hinted at here. It's lightly carbonated, so only a little fizzier than cask Jaipur, and the first impression is the same grapefruit and lemon sherbet you get in the original. After this, there's a faint stout-like dryness, including a most unAmerican bitterness, being green and vegetal, but pleasant. That finishes on a similarly subtle toasty roast. The whole thing is quite subtle, in fact: classy and understated. I enjoyed it, but the beatings of Black Bucket? Not to my taste. It still meets the requirement of the topic, however, because every ticker knows that the best beer you can drink at home is one you've never had before.

So while I was perusing the Thornbridge section, I picked up a couple of other new ticks. In the middle is Simka, badged as a "plum sour", brewed with an allegedly renowned Japanese variety of plum which, presumably, the name references. It's not made clear. Neither is the beer: it's a hazy pinkish orange in the glass and doesn't smell at all fruity, exuding instead a dry cereal crunch. There's a little more sharpness in the taste -- properly sour, not one of those syrupy fruit concoctions. From the can text, it seems the brewery expects us to be able to taste dark fruit but I certainly couldn't, only a vague berry tartness, blending in with the souring culture. This is another subtle one, hitting the sour points well, and doing it lightly at only 4.2% ABV, but other than the colour, the plums are AWOL. Nobody likes an AWOL plum, and especially when it's a fancy Japanese variety.

We finish on Thornbridge 90 Shilling, created using the Burton union gadget that the brewery rescued last year from the dastardly grip of Carlsberg-Marston. How is proper 90/- supposed to taste? I have no idea. But what difference can we expect the union to make? Also, no idea. It's 6.3% ABV and badged as an amber ale, with Odell Brewing coming over from Colorado to have a gawk at the kit in action. It is indeed amber, and smells like a crisp and dry bitter: tannic with a little resin. On tasting, that resin blossoms into a full-on incense and black pepper spicing; dry, but balanced by a toffee element, which I guess is where the Scottish cosplay kicks in. Despite these strong and wildly contrasting flavours, it's all integrated, cohesive and balanced. This one isn't subtle: it's bold, and all the more delicious for it. The mineral spicing has me wondering if they've given it some extra Burtonisation, to make the union feel at home. Other than that spurious reasoning, I'm still none the wiser as to what the thing does to a finished beer. Regardless, this is a beaut.

Is it too late to change my best-beer-I-can-drink-at-home? I think I have a new candidate.

Eternal return of the same

Today's beers were released late last year by Galway Bay Brewery but strictly speaking they're not new ones. They were brewed and sold as versions of The Eternalist sour ale, and bottled about three years ago. I only ever had the raspberry Eternalist, back in 2015, so both of them are still new to me.

The first they've called Ash, and it has added cherries in, as well as vanilla and tonka beans which aren't mentioned on the label. It's a deep purple colour with a firm pink head and smells strongly of the cherries: ripe and luscious and real. It's sour but not sharp; tangy more than tart, I'd say, and with a big and rounded body, reflecting the substantial 6.8% ABV. I can't say I was able to identify the tonka or vanilla, but there is a certain sweetness which can't be assigned to the cherries alone. It's entirely complementary with the sourness and quite different to the sugared-up effect of Belgian candy-kriek. Here, it's an added richness, of the sort you get from an amber-coloured malt. This does come at the expense of the wildness: I thought that a barrel-aged beer with wild yeast would be funkier but there's only a very faint trace of that here, right on the very end. On the other hand, I like cherry beer to actualy taste of cherries and this does so, quite beautifully. So while it's not as serious as many a cork-stoppered wild ale, it's very enjoyable in its own fun way.

The companion piece is called Oak, and this time the added ingredient is apricot. It's a plain golden colour, and the aroma shows little sign of the fruit, instead exhibiting a mineral spicing of the sort you often find from geuze: that brick-cellar nitre effect. It's even stronger than the last one, at 7% ABV, and again the mouthfeel is weighty, almost chewy. This offsets the sour punch, but here there isn't all the fruit to counterbalance the flavour, so it's plainer overall; or more subtle, depending on one's viewpoint. There is a certain tang from the apricot but it's far from central in the taste. For the most part, this presents like an unadorned lambic, albeit a strong and weighty one. There's a wax bitterness, the same mineral spice as I found in the aroma, and a lightly citric acidity which makes it refreshing and clean, despite the high strength. This is a classy character, wearing the added fruit and the barrel ageing lightly while exhibiting very proper wild beer characteristics.

I had skipped the two new versions of The Eternalist when they first came out, and that appears to have been a mistake. I'm very glad to have been able to catch up, even though I didn't know it's what these were when I bought them. Both belong in the canon of high-end wild Irish beer, and since there likely won't be any more, I recommend picking them up if you see them.

Peaks and troughs

Skiing has never appealed to me, so a brewery that seems to have made it its whole thing was always going to be a tough sell. Beer is more important than branding, of course, and even though I hadn't been very impressed by my first encounter with Outer Range -- based in both the Colorado Rockies and the French Alps -- I was willing to give them another go in this fallow period of the brewing year. Six cans should be enough to settle me on whether or not it's a brewery worth pursuing.

I'm never sure what to make of it when breweries have beers labelled with lager sub-styles such as Helles and pilsner, but also ones they're just calling "lager". It immediately suggests that, with the latter, they haven't really put the effort in to do it well. The first two today are a case in point, beginning with Cool Cool, a "lager" of 4.9% ABV. It seems it's the unfiltered sort, pouring a misty amber colour, with lots of head initially, then fading fast. There's a crispness and a greenness in the aroma which reminds me of many a decent unfiltered pils, and the flavour combines those mitteleuropa elements well. It is a little sweeter than most proper pilsners, having a light honey and caramel middle, but then there's a mineral bitterness with the fresh bite of raw spinach or lamb's lettuce. And even though there was all that foam, it's somewhat undercarbonated which renders it easy to drink but takes away from the refreshment power. Overall, though, it's a very nice beer, and well made as long as you don't mind your pale lager cloudy and low on fizz. Close your eyes and pretend you're in pine-tabled German brewpub.

On, then, to the actual pilsner, called Alpen Pils. It's paler than the previous one, though still cloudy and very slightly weaker at 4.8% ABV. The same issue of big foam followed by a disappearing head and tokenistic conditioning occurs. It's an altogether lighter and thinner affair, the malt side in particular dialled back to a mildly oaty crunch, and the hops too are muted, missing the leafy salad and chalky minerals and offering little substitute in their place, only a very faint pinch of lemon zest. It's quite generic, really, with only the haze giving it any proper personality: a yeast-derived clove and cinnamon effect that would definitely result in marks off in any style-based contest, but which I think gives it a bit of much-needed character. This is fine; being moderately refreshing and filling, and just about interesting enough to hold my attention all the way through. I think the non-defined lager is the better of the two, and that swapping the stated styles around would be more accurate.

From lager to a lager-adjacent style, Kölsch: Après All Day. This is another hazy one, though only slightly, and an appropriate pale yellow. The aroma is also appropriate, being grain-crisp and wholesome with a very light hint of fruitiness, but nothing un-lager-like. The carbonation is spot on, although that didn't help the head retention, its generous white dome collapsing to near-nothing with indecent haste. The flavour reverses what happened in the aroma, with a pale malt background giving the finish a dry crunch, while up front there's a subtle mix of lychee or white plum. That means it's not true to the Cologne style, and it's a bit cheeky (not to mention illegal) to reference it on the can. But it is a lovely beer; subtle yet characterful, refreshing and quaffable, and all at a very reasonable 4.5% ABV.

The lightest of today's set is only 4.1% ABV and is a witbier called Wisp. Obviously, haze is to be expected; not so much the big heavy gobbets of gunk that came out of the can too. Thankfully, that all settled quickly to the bottom of the glass so didn't interfere too much with the drinking experience. There's a strongly herbal aroma, making me disbelieve the can's claim that no herbs were used. Maybe it's just a side-effect of the yeast, but I would be surprised. We're back in low-carbonation territory, and that's a big problem with this style, which really needs the fizz to brighten it. When nearly flat, it tastes quite stale and sweaty. The herbal character is much lighter in the flavour, and the main feature is the wheat, which manifests as a kind of porridgey breadiness. There's a tiny hint of lemon zest, but not enough to brighten what's a rather dull and lifeless beer overall. There's lots in need of fixing here, all of which should be obvious to anyone who has ever enjoyed a witbier.

That left me quite apprehensive when approaching the last two, both of which are also in Belgian styles. Final Summit calls itself a "farmhouse ale", which I'm reading as a saison, and it's the right shade of hazy gold. It's strong for that, mind, at 7% ABV. This gives it a heavy texture and quite a lot of sweetness: saisons ought to be dry, and while this has a certain amount of the style's typical straw and white pepper, there's lots of fruit too. It's almost juicy, in fact, with softly tangy satsuma and tinned pineapple, plus a little pear and grape alongside, for the full fruit salad effect. Sweet herbs also feature: spearmint and aniseed. As such, it's quite tasty, but there's nothing very "farmhouse" about it. If it had been sold to me as a Belgian blonde ale I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. It's probably for the best that they didn't use the word saison and kept things fairly non-specific.

Air Stream, however, is described as a Belgian-style blonde ale, and is stronger again at 7.9% ABV. Miraculously, it's actually clear, proving that the brewery can do that if it wants to. It's an attractive deep gold and the head retention is very decent, for a change, at least in part due to proper carbonation. This isn't the brashest of beer styles, and the aroma is appropriately subtle, with pleasant notes of honey, apricot and pepper, but not too much of anything. The floral side of the honey is at the centre of the flavour, turning a little artificial, like fabric softener. A pinch of citrus zest helps balance this, and then there's a similar sharp mineral bite in the finish. All of it is set on a soft and pillowy base which demonstrates that it's a big beer even though there is no alcohol heat. Overall it's rather good. Think of it more as a stronger Leffe than a lighter Duvel: exciting it's not, but as a calm and unassuming sipper it's still enjoyable.

All that left me curious to try their American equivalents to see how they differ, if at all. American breweries tend to do things more by the book than European ones, and I doubt that some of the shoddiness on display here -- some of it charming; some unpleasant -- would fly on the highly competitive US market. The beers above lack polish, and I'm not convinced they're all as their brewer intended them to be. As such, I'm not strapping on my figurative skis and rushing back for another go on the Outer Range.

Global conflict

Sensing there's just too much peace and harmony in the world these days, Rascals has taken it upon itself to shake things up with its first two new releases of 2025. "North vs South" is the theme, though it could also be "Cold vs Warm" as we have one pilsner and one IPA.

Representing the north is Badlands, a pilsner made with American Luminosa hops. It looks well: a fine clear golden. It definitely smells American, more like a citric IPA than a European lager. While it's very clean, there's a lack of lager crispness; no snap, and no real malt character. Instead, the hops are all you get: bright and juicy, with lots of peach and lychee. It's less bitter than I was expecting from the aroma; less everything, in fact. For a beer that's presented as in competition with another, it doesn't put on much of a show. While it's perfectly acceptable as a lager with off-kilter hops, it doesn't offer the usual benefits of the pilsner style (see Wednesday's post), and runs the risk of being so clean it's bland. There's much more drama in the branding than in the glass.

On the southern side there's Outback, a hazy IPA with Galaxy and Eclipse from Australia. The haze is on the lighter side: translucent rather than opaque, and a rose-gold colour. The aroma is very subtle, showing only a gentle sweetness, of tinned peach and fresh mango. It's a full 6% ABV and a little sticky with it, though that suits the overall tropical flavour profile. That's mangoes again, plus even sweeter pineapple and cantaloupe. A very slight pithy bitterness arrives in the finish and helps balance things. It's a simple offering, though happily devoid of haze off-flavours. With this style, clean is good.

Both of these are decent if unspectacular affairs -- neither piles the flavours in to any great extent, but what's there is enjoyable. The pilsner didn't really deliver what I wanted so I'm finishing up as a member of Team South, albeit not through any preference of hops. Give the Americans the IPA next time out and perhaps the balance will be redressed.

A lesson in lager

I was very sceptical going in to Franciscan Well's latest collaboration, with their Molson Coors stablemates, Staropramen. I'm not even sure what the name is: the badge says "Franciscan Well Docklands Series Staropramen x Pilsner", so pick the title out of that word salad. Staro is far from the top tier in the Czech lager stakes but does perfectly acceptable stuff by Irish standards.

And this one is more than acceptable, heading fully into good. It's a lovely rose gold colour with perfect head retention, looking built for one of those hefty handled Bohemian mugs. The aroma suggests Saaz and nothing but: moist grass and slightly spicier rocket. That continues in the flavour, joined by quite a strong buttery note, extremely similar to that found in genre-definer Pilsner Urquell. It's set on a wholesome biscuit base while the finish delivers a burst of flowers and minerals, like classy bathsalts.

I've seen a brewer describe collaboration beers as a form of professional education, and I fervently hope that this is the case here, that the folk from Prague came in to show their Cork colleagues how to make pilsner properly. If Archway had tasted like this I would have consumed a lot more of it.

Bull in a candy shop

A new selection of Bullhouse beers arrived in Dublin in the last few weeks. I don't buy everything of theirs I see, but I do like to check in now and again. Let's see what we have here.

The first I opened, on a dismal February afternoon, was Saisons in the Sun, a collaboration with fellow Belfast northern brewery Beer Hut. It is sunny looking: a bright shade of orange, looking like a glass of orangeade. It smells pretty juicy too, with just a very mild funky farmyard quality to remind you it's a saison, not an IPA. The balance is redressed on tasting, with the earthy, spicy side to the fore, bringing straw, white pepper and dry cream cracker. Then there's a more contemporary haze-like fruit side, offering sweet satsuma and sweeter cordial. It's a balancing act that works well: at once thirst-quenching and summery, but with enough serious Belgian farmhouse character to please fans of that whole genre. I held off checking the ABV, and was a little surprised to find it's as strong as 5.5% ABV. That's not excessive, though. There's end-to-end enjoyment on offer here.

Now, I'm first in the queue when it comes to bemoaning the infantilising of beer that's come with the hazy IPA era. If you want juice, drink juice, and leave beer to the adults. But I was still amused to see Bullhouse leaning into it with 10p Mixup, a hazy IPA named after a confectionery product of my youth, one which is presumably long extinct. It's another murky orange job, looking rather greyer than the previous. It doesn't smell like sweeties; it smells rough and dreggy, with quite a lot of heat from the 6.3% ABV. It's quite thick, unpleasantly so, and while there's a certain artificial fruit candy and sticky pink marshmallow taste, there's as much savoury sesame seed and rye bread too; clashing, not balancing. An intensely syrupy sugariness finishes it off, in a way that's truer to the title, but isn't actually very enjoyable. I see what they've done here, and if you squint, it does have the flavour profile of a bag of ersatz-fruit candy. But that's not a good way to make a beer. 

Things don't get any more traditional with the finisher: a grapefruited double IPA called There's No Time. Again it's a darkly clouded affair, sticking to the luminous orange palette the brewery seems to favour. There's nothing unusual in the aroma, which offers a lightly zesty orangeade zing. When mixed with a heavy, creamy texture, the orangeade effect becomes more like a milkshake or an icepop. While it's thick and sweet, it's manageable too. Here they've kept the boozy heat on the down-low, helped I'm sure by the modest 7.5% ABV. That does wonders for the beer's drinkability, as does a deftly balancing burst of citric bitterness towards the finish. I was really not expecting to like this, but it works very well. The novelty side is both restrained and fully complementary to the well-made base beer. There's something here for both the haze-addled kiddies and the old-school double IPA purists. Beer brings people together once again.

Bullhouse is a brewery that delivers on its promises. Nothing here was any different to how it was described on the outside of the can, and not every brewery does that. I may not have liked all of it, but I can't say I wasn't warned.

Fully on board

Today in backlog clearance, I have the winter specials from Hopfully, and big fellows they are too.

The lightweight is daintily named Dancing Shoes, a barley wine of 11.7% ABV. It's a lovely dark red colour, though would be even prettier if it weren't so murky. The aroma is a gently sweet mix of toffee and jammy fruit; strawberry in particular. It's as heavy as you'd think, lightly carbonated, chewy and warming. Something would be very remiss were this not the case. What usually goes wrong at this point is that the beer is too hot, or too bitter, or too dreggy, or all three. Happily, none of that occurs with this one. The flavour is quite gentle and malt-forward. I was half expecting some big American hops, and the body could have supported that, but the summer fruit is as hopped-up as it gets, while underneath is all caramel, marzipan and Nutella, giving an overall sensation of fancy donuts and cupcakes. It's not too sweet, though, and you get your value out of the strength from the comforting belly warmth it delivers after swallowing. Back when other people used to write beer blogs with tasting notes, the phrase "fireside sipper" tended to get thrown around in winter. I'm happy to wheel that one out once more and apply it to this in the most complimentary way.

Without looking too closely, I thought the next one would be something similar: 12.3% ABV and barrel aged. But it's actually a sour fruit beer: purple with a pink head and employing raspberry, blackberry, lemon and cherry. They've called it Levitate. It smells tart, but in a lemon juice way, not the souring effect of yeast and bacteria. The raspberry also sits to the fore here. There's a lot of raspberry in the flavour too: rich and jammy, like compote or even simpler ice cream sauce. That runs parallel with a bourbon heat: vanilla and honey, shading towards ice cream and flan. Sourness is not part of the taste, and I can't pick out any of the fruit other than raspberry. It's still very tasty, though. I very quickly got used to the barrel and berry combination, and was enjoying it before the end. It's a lovely blend of summer and winter flavours, and they don't clash with each other. I feel perhaps there should have been more complexity, given the convoluted ingredients list and production process, but I liked it as it is: frivolous, dessert-like, but with a warm and grown-up centre. Unusual, but delicious.

Proper winter beer doesn't have to mean stout. Well done to Hopfully for the creativity on display here.