Rascalypso

Seems they're on bit of a fruity kick at Rascals: two cans of citrusy interest, released for the summer season.

I'll start on the lager: Yuzu Pilsner, a collaboration with Kaapse Brouwers and containing the titular Japanese citrus fruit. I confess that yuzu beers in the past haven't impressed me much. It doesn't seem to be a very bold flavour. The visuals here did suggest something other than a vapid lager, pouring a rich amber colour. The aroma is quite grainy, with only a vague lemon-ish tang perceptible. To taste it's clean and extremely crisp. 4.4% ABV makes it light, and it's almost oriental in its dryness. I had to check the ingredients to see if they used rice, but they haven't. The yuzu side is present but subtle. It's a complementary sort of flavour; a seasoning rather than a full-on ingredient. There's none of the foghorn syrupy fruit that plagues other novelty lagers. It's less intense than lemon or lime, but is very much in that corner of the flavour spectrum. I think this would make an excellent accompaniment to Japanese or Chinese food. It shares a lightness of touch that the familiar beers from those countries have, adding a fun but non-intrusive fruit side. Bring me sushi!

Lemon & Lime Sour is a special they've done for Aldi, following on from the Session IPA a couple of months ago. Like that one, it's 3.8% ABV, and it's a pale hazy yellow in the glass. Unsurprisingly it smells of lime, for the most part, in that slightly processed way, like shower gel or cordial. Both fruits are listed in the ingredients in both concentrate and zest forms. The sour side is not so prominent on tasting. It's no puckering enamel stripper, nor a riot of wild flavour-emitting bugs and yeast strains. It's plainly, simply soured, creating a clean cereal base with just a little soda-water acidity. That makes room for the citrus, but it's not overdone either, contributing in quite a natural and subtle way. It definitely doesn't taste like a big tub of sugary gloop was emptied into the kettle; it tastes real and, well, zesty. I mentioned that the Session IPA was the sort of budget supermarket beer you buy in bulk for summer entertaining, and this is exactly in that space too. Your non-geek party guests will get a beer that's really interesting while not out-there or scary. It's Aldi, so don't expect anything too advanced from this, but it's a quality offering, and well worth a look.

I enjoyed both of these. It's interesting how recipes which might once have been considered daring in their use of unconventional ingredients can now be fitted in as part of the normal beer landscape, of the sort you find in supermarkets. That's a sign of a healthy beer scene, I think.

Rí-freshment

I reported on Rí-Rá Lager a year ago, and now the Wicklow brewer has released a second beer. Well, sort of. Rí-Rá Lager Shandy is presumably based on the original, but cut down to 2.8% ABV with the addition of pineapple and grapefruit fizz, for a "totally tropical taste"™. There aren't many Irish radlers in circulation, so I was genuinely pleased to find this one: a very low-alcohol option that doesn't have the problems of non-alcoholic beers. Or at least shouldn't have.

However, it turned out that it's not really a substitute for proper beer any more than they are. The fruit syrup is laid on... generously, making it taste far more like the soft drink it's trying to ape than a lager. On the aroma that's rather artificial, with an almost metallic tang. This effect shows up in the aftertaste as well. The main flavour is quite tasty, as long as you have a good tolerance for sweetness. Pineapple is dominant, although there is a minor countermelody of citrus, albeit not identifiable as grapefruit specifically. I guess the colour has been affected by the additives as well: it's the pale gold of a glass of white wine, something that you just don't get from malt.

In fairness to the brewery, they make no claims for this other than it's refreshing, and it is. Drink it cold enough and the cloying syrup doesn't get a chance to kick in properly. I'd be wary of following it with a second, any more than I'd drink Lilt or Fanta by the litre. I give it a cautious welcome, but Schöfferhofer and Stiegl do this kind of thing better.

A second chance

There's hope for us all, I like to think. Today's beers aren't the first to come from a brewery premises whose earliest wares I didn't care for and thought poorly made, but under new management seem to have been turned around. Investment in better equipment? Less corner-cutting? Or just a more highly skilled brewer? I don't know. I do know that the beers from the Hillstown brewery in Co. Antrim were usually a raft of off-flavours, of the homebrew rookie sort. It seems that there's a new broom about the place now, going by the friendly and approachable name of Modest Beer.

It's hard to guess where on the label the name of the product, as against the description, is. For the first, I'm going with Fruit Salad, the can label also would like us to know it's "tart & refreshing" and "mango & strawberry". That's plenty to tell me what to expect. In the glass it's a densely opaque orange, looking like mixed tropical juice. Is it tart and refreshing? Not really. There is a decent kick of tartness, I will grant it that, but even though it's only 4.8% ABV it's not light bodied and the mild sourness does not translate to palate-scrubbing cleanness. It's a bit gloopy; a bit fruit-concentrate. Not sweet, but thick and chewy. More fizz would be welcome, instead of the slightly soupy effect we get instead. I couldn't taste either fruit distinctly, the mango lost in a fleshy mish-mash that could be anything; the strawberry arriving late and easily missed by drinkers who weren't looking for it. This doesn't work for me. It's a bit rough: sharp and difficult. As fruit beers go, it's not the classy sort.

My standard way to judge any unfamiliar brewery is with their pilsner, and Modest gave me two of them. The simplest offer is Fragrant & Refreshing, which is 5% ABV -- generous for an Irish take on the style. In the glass it's almost totally transparent, with just a tiny level of acceptable haze. Despite Magnum, Saaz and Hallertau Mittelfrüh, the aroma is more malt-forward than hop: crisp cracker, with only the faintest of damp vegetation in the background. The fireworks begin with the mouthfeel: gorgeously smooth and creamy, taking full advantage of that above-average ABV and doing a superb impression of how top-tier German breweries do the style. The flavour they've set on it is also beautiful, the hops to the fore, at once tangy and spicy: a squeeze of citrus, a smear of stonefruit flesh and then Saaz's warm damp grass effect. Yet it's not busy or any way weird. All is balanced and integrated, again, just like the Germans do it. It's maybe a bit strong to quaff litres and litres of it in one sitting but... I think I might like to give that a go. Great Irish pils does not come along very often and I'm delighted to have found this one.

That had me expecting great things from Sweet As: Pilsner. It looks to be a similar deal: a pale and slightly cloudy 5% ABV pils, except here the hops are Motueka and Riwaka. For all that these are German-derived varieties, the experience is quite different. The aroma is massively fruitsome, giving off mango and cantaloupe to beat the band. Its flavour is a little more restrained: still tropical, but bringing back the crispness and a clean dry finish, to remind you it's definitely a proper pilsner and not simply another IPA. While tasty, it's somewhat simpler than its stablemate, and I don't think that's only because there's one fewer hops in it.

My learnings from trying these two side-by-side is that the Kiwis may have better PR in the Anglophone beer world, but the Germans still absolutely bring the quality. Regardless, these are two excellent beers, whatever one's hop predilections.

When testing a new brewery, I often don't bother with an IPA, but again it was the promise of New Zealand hops which made one irresistable. This is Complex Notes: 6% ABV and hopped with two processed forms of Nelson Sauvin. It's a bright and dense hazy yellow, smelling sweetly tropical, of mango and pineapple. Nelson can go this way, or a harder mineral-oil bitterness, and the flavour is mostly fruit driven too. I got pleasant sorbet-like orange and lemon, with softer honeydew melon and juicy mandarin. There's a token pinch of bitterness in the finish, but not Nelson's heavy-dank herbal effect, which I found I missed. It's a good hazy IPA, and that's never a given for the style. However, there's nothing especially distinctive about it. Good is good enough.

OK, there may have been something of a bias in my choices, because the next one is New Zealand-hopped too. Sweet As: NZ Brown Ale utilises Nelson with Motueka and is 4.8% ABV. It looks a bit muddy in the glass, a pale-ish chocolate brown and completely opaque. The aroma is crisp and bready, and a little stale with it, while the flavour opens on a sharp and slightly vinegary tang. Maybe this is what happens when you put pungent Kiwi hops in a sweet and smooth brown ale, but if so, it creates an effect like a beer which is not quite right. It's a clash, basically: the hop acidity burning into rich and coffeeish brown and chocolate malt. I don't think either of them gets a benefit from it. As well as the flavour clash, the texture is a bit thin, reducing the malt richness further. The Munich/Chocolate/Brown/Oats bill promises a great deal which isn't really delivered. It says on the can that this is an experiment, and if the brewery is considering another brown ale, I suggest going normcore with the hops and giving the gravity a boost.

And a stout to finish off. Deep & Toasty is a standard session strength of 4.3% ABV. It looks a little brown and murky in the glass, though the old-ivory head is classical. It smells heady and rich, far stronger than it is, with enticing notes of tiramisu and Irish coffee: definitely roast rather than toast, with vanilla and liqueur for extra luxury. The flavour is drier than that was all leading me to expect. Coffee is still at the centre, but it's a morning's espresso, not an evening's dessert. There's quite a busy sparkle, adding to the dryness, and a quick finish which does show a few sparks of flinty burnt toast. It's a simple flavour profile, and makes for quite a refreshing light-bodied stout, yet still with enough character to be worthwhile. Modest, you might say.

Six beers from a brewery I was suspicious of was a gamble, but I think it paid off. Nothing here was badly made, even if I didn't always appreciate the brewer's intention. For all the headline modesty, there is plenty of daring in the recipes. I will definitely be back for more from this outfit.

... and friends

They're a collaborative bunch at Hopfully. Today's three were co-created with a diverse set of co-conspirators.

For the first one, they're the guests. Jonah was brewed at Bullhouse, and when these two breweries got together, they chose to defy our expectations of both with... a hazy IPA. Ah lads. It's an opaque eggy yellow colour with a milkshake froth on top. The New Zealand hops bring a lovely tropical fruit character to the aroma: ripe, sweet and fleshy. The foretaste opens on vanilla, but that's brief. Afterwards it's incredibly juicy, pushing cool mandarin segments, moist coconut and a rub of tropical lime. If the fruit side of New Zealand hops is more appealing than the harder mineral bitterness then this is the hazy IPA for you. Impressively, too, it's only 5% ABV and there's no excess heat, as well as no savoury garlic or caraway. This just works. I was sceptical up top, but it really is the coming together of two breweries who have proven track records of great hazy IPA, sharing their expertise for the drinkers' benefit.

And now for something completely different... from anything else. Hopfully teamed up with Waterford distillery Blackwater to create Farmland, badged as a "farmhouse ale blend" but really defying classification. They don't tell us much about the base beer(s), only that pear and elderflower were added to it and it was aged separately in cherry brandy and rye whiskey barrels before blending. The finished piece is 10.1% ABV, a pale shade of amber and fizzes noisily in the glass when poured. From all the ingredients and process aids, it's the pear that shines brightest in the flavour. Behind it, there's a rough and headachey solvent twang, all nail varnish remover and whiteboard markers. Although the texture is light, there's no doubt as to the alcohol, with a palate-scorching heat in effect. There should be all manner of complexity here, given the production method, but even the aroma has nothing to offer above booze and pears. I had no choice but to drink the 440ml can slowly, and I can safely say that at no point did I detect anything resembling cherry brandy, elderflower, or even the basics of saison, assuming that's what the recipe started out as. I'm all for daring experimentation and taking beer to places it hasn't been before, but here it just didn't work. Maybe some Brettanomyces in the mix would have added what it needs.

I like a sour IPA, though I don't think I've had a double one before. This is Horseman, created in collaboration with To Øl. It's 8.3% ABV and hopped with Citra, Riwaka and Motueka, and smells much as you'd expect: intensely herbal with lots of bitter citric zest. The addition of actual lemon probably helps with that. I get a strong sense of the souring culture as well, adding a sharp flinty mineral edge to the aroma. It's a mostly opaque orange colour, with a fine foam initially, but which faded away indecently quickly. Also in the ingredients is vanilla, and while I couldn't smell it, it's very prominent in the foretaste, making it sweet and dessertish to begin; quite the opposite of sour. The flinty tang I got in the aroma is there too, but the edge has been knocked off it, while the fruit, and fruity hops, are sweet and cordial-like. What were they thinking with that vanilla? This could have been delightfully tart and zesty, and the alcohol is well hidden, but instead it's a chewy confection -- colourful, but a bit silly. At least the label is appropriate, then.

Collaboration beers should quite rightly be about doing daring and different things, and that's certainly the case for the latter two beers here. That neither of them were quite to my taste is immaterial. Keep experimenting and maybe I'll like the next one more. Or the one after that.

Lough around

It's a little surprising that, in today's cosmopolitan beer environment, we still cling to the notion of types of beer deriving from specific places. It's cute. Hazy IPA belongs to the world, for good or ill, but we still connect it to New England, and probably always will.

An upshot is that you can get a taste of the whole planet without leaving, for example, suburban Sligo. Here are two new beers from Lough Gill, channelling specific places.

Pine Road is a west coast (of the United States) IPA. That accords it a golden clarity, though it should also include alcoholic heft and significant bitterness. Unfortunately it's only 4.5% ABV and is sweetly tropical, thanks to Azacca and Comet hops. I doubt anyone visiting from the western US would find it an accurate representation of the beer their home territory is known for. It is, however, absolutely delicious. Once you get past the misnomer and misrepresentation of style, there's a fresh, bright and fun session beer, full of melon, mango and summer meadows. It finishes a bit quick due to the low gravity, so approach it as a thirst-quencher rather than a considered sipper. Every healthy beer scene needs both.

With the exception of Belgian theme-brewery Mescan, few Irish producers bother with the Belgian blond style. It's not that difficult to find it at discount prices in the supermarkets, I guess, so why try and make a premium version? Lough Gill did anyway, and here's Irish Abbey: 6.7% ABV and including candy sugar and coriander. For me, the style ought to taste of honey, and this does, with only a mild buzz of banana behind it. There's a certain botanic layer floating over this, which may be from the Belgian yeast, but I'm certain the coriander is adding a modicum of savouriness too. Throw in some fun clove and almond as it warms. I wouldn't say it tastes authentically Belgian: breweries there add the digestible lightness of touch to their blonde ales; this is no 8%+ madman, but still tastes and feels hefty.

For all their sense of place, then, neither of these really offers a channel to somewhere else. The one up top certainly isn't the kind of beer I'd expect to find other than on this island, or the one next door. And that perhaps demonstrates an even more fun fact about beer: for all the place-based style strictures, individual variety is always present, and makes hunting out new takes an endlessly rewarding experience.

Beach bunny

Today's beers were a bit of a new departure for Kinnegar. They created a mixed four-pack of summer specials, keenly priced, I thought, at €13 in Molloy's. I presume that Kinnegar's regular "Brewers At Play" small-batch series fed into the development of these ones, as some of the styles have shown up once or twice in that sequence.

First out of the box, however, was one they haven't done before: Raspberry Grisette, a farmhouse ale, the orange-pink colour of rhubarb pie filling. Grisettes aren't usually sour, but here the fruit has added a tartness which makes the aroma seem a little like something more wild-fermented. I thought there would be a bit more of a funky, flowery, farmhouse flavour, but the raspberries reign in the taste. It's very real; not sweetly jammy or candy-like, but still juicy with an assertive acidity. The finish is quick, though it's not watery, having a soft and pillowy wheat-enhanced body.  As a summer refresher with something different going on, it works well. If the character were sustainable at ABVs below its 3.8%, it could even be an excellent upgrade on a radler. There was only one in the box, but a couple more would have gone down well straight after.

A Pilsner was in order before we hit the hops. Kinnegar generally knows its way around lager, so I wasn't expecting anything untoward here. It's a pale one, despite a substantial 5% ABV, and very slightly hazed. There's a surprisingly new-world-smelling lemony aroma, and this takes a strange but fun turn on tasting. The hop profile is... strong... and I always like that in a pilsner. Although, usually, the hops bring familiar zaps of grassy Saaz or herbal Hallertau. This one suggested to me those modern German hops which are aimed at copying the Americans: Saphir, Mandarina Bavaria, Hüll Melon, and the like. A glance at the label tells me it's done with non-specified New Zealand hops, which makes sense. There's definite citrus zest, bitter to the point of pithy, and then something altogether more earthy and vegetal. The Sorachi Ace taste-a-likes seem to have gone out of hop fashion recently, but I got a little of that vibe here. Which is to say, this is a somewhat odd but very tasty pilsner.

Inevitably there was haze in the box, represented by a 4.5% ABV Hazy Pale Ale. Oats in the grist make it another full-bodied one, with a properly fluffy body. On this there's typical vanilla and zesty yellow chew sweets, but a balancing citric bitterness too, making it all seem much more grown up. There's enough of haze's good points and few enough of its downsides to give this broad appeal. Those who are generally well-disposed to what cloudy pale ale brings will find much to enjoy in it. Haze sceptics, however, should also appreciate this as a well-honed example, showing none of the really unpleasant features the genre sometimes, too often, evokes. If the thought of a hazy pale ale puts you off committing to the box, it shouldn't.

After this, a theory was emerging about the theme here. The last beer would settle it.

This is a Cold IPA, still not breaking the bank on ABV at 5.3%. Lots of foam on this one, and it's a clear pale golden. The theory is holding. There's not much aroma, so for a lager/IPA hybrid it's doing a poor job on the IPA front. The flavour doesn't quite gel either. Where I expected a big up-front kick of hops, there's nothing really. It's only in the finish — too late, frankly — that there's an echo of fading zest. A tiny burst of white onion acidity ensures compliance with the broad cold IPA specifications. In front of that it's very plain, having a decent heft in the mouthfeel but without even the grainy foretaste of most bland lagers. It's the refined blandness of a highly processed industrial beer, which is not what it is, and I'm sure not what it's meant to be. I think that an attempt to make it lager-clean has malfunctioned, Incredible Hulk style.

My theory, and it's not an especially insightful one, is that all four are drrrrrrinkin' beers. You're meant to have this box in your cooler box, outdoors, possibly in one of the handful of public spaces in this country where it's legal to drink alcohol. They're fire-and-forget thirst-quenchers, and if I'm correct that that's what they're meant to be, then big applause for making them so interesting. Accessible beer does not have to be bland. The Cold IPA didn't suit me as much, but I still finished it happy.

An addendum is another Kinnegar summer beer, one that has been making appearances on draught around the country recently. It's a ginger beer called Jackrabbit: 4% ABV and, when I ordered it in The Back Page, it came served with a wedge of lime and a couple of shakes of Angostura Bitters. It's a murky orange colour in the glass, and mildly spicy, like a cola. Thirst-quenching and fizzy is about all I can say about it. The flavour doesn't offer much ginger, which is a little disappointing, though perhaps explains the pub's desire to garnish it. I see this more as a mixer than a standalone drink.

As a brewery named after a beach, it's very much on-brand for Kinnegar to lean into the summer beers like this. It would be nice to have a counterpart 4-pack for winter, though.

Dry Sierra

It takes a lot of prompting to get me to try any non-alcoholic beer. Choice has never been greater, but by and large they just don't taste like real beer. That goes especially for the lager and pale ale versions, which seem to make up the bulk of the segment. Anyway, I've heard good things about today's pair, enough to make me go out and buy them. Both are from trustworthy US stalwart Sierra Nevada.

First up is Trail Pass Golden, which is indeed golden, and west-coast clear. The aroma is lightly lemony, although I also get a hint of the excess sweetness which usually plagues non-alcoholic beer. Sure enough, the flavour is highly sugary, suggesting a diluted orange cordial rather than a beer. In its favour it doesn't have the clanging metallic off-flavour that's another common problem with these, but that's not much comfort. I guess they're going for the lager market with this, and if non-alcoholic lager is something you drink regularly, then here's an inoffensive, clean-tasting, thirst-quenching example. As a beer substitute, however, it misses the mark significantly.

It being Sierra Nevada, I thought Trail Pass IPA would be amber coloured, but it turned out to be a very pale yellow, and slightly murky too. The aroma is much sweeter than the previous one, that light lemon zest becoming full-on fruit-chew candy. Strangely, there's not much of anything in the flavour this time. It's certainly not overly sweet, and has quite a pleasant dry cracker-like malt base. The hops, again, are orangey, tasting a bit dull and artificial, with none of the intensity that a proper American IPA ought to have. There's also a twang of that metallic aspirin effect, meaning it's not really much different to most other alcohol-free IPAs, which is unfortunate. I wouldn't trade a real beer for this one either.

And so my scepticism continues. If Sierra Nevada can't make a convincing non-alcoholic pale beer, I'm not sure anyone else will.