Sun spots

DOT Brew has its summer clothes on today, beginning on two recent releases, very much not the sort of heavy barrel-aged dark beers on which the brewer has built its reputation, before reverting to type for the finisher.

First up is a Radler which I'm guessing is based on a pale lager, diluted to 2.5% ABV and with orange and lemon listed in the ingredients. The former is most prominent in the aroma, giving me orangeade, or even a more concentrated cordial. I think I'm within my rights to have expected this to be fizzy, but it's a little flat, and thin with it. There's not much sign of the underlying beer, suggesting to me that it is indeed a very simply constructed lager, and that's not unusual for radler. What you get instead is the orange syrup, adding a sickly sweetness to the front, which fades mercifully quickly, but nothing much replaces it. There's a slight citric bitterness toward the end, which I guess is the lemon, tasting more real than the orange, but easily missed. Of course, this is designed for easy-drinking low-alcohol refreshment, and it does perform that role. I think I would prefer a fruit-based soft-drink, however. This isn't any more pleasurable by virtue of being a beer.

DOT is well used to collaborating with distilleries, usually whiskey, and usually Teeling, but the next beer bears the name of Kerry distillery Skellig Six18 and is invoking its gin. Pole Star claims 18 botanicals, but the only unusual ingredients listed are juniper, birch sap and bilberry. Maybe that's enough. It's a typical light sour fruit beer, 4.2% ABV and pouring a pale pink colour with no head. The aroma is slightly yoghurt-like and the texture very thin, as is generally the way with kettle-soured beers, which I'm guessing this is. I found the flavour rather generic, based on an indistinct hedgerow berry effect, where bilberry wouldn't be in my first ten guesses. Then there's the lactic sour tang and that's about it. A slight peppery quality from the juniper? Maybe. This is fine, though unexciting. If it genuinely does contain 18 different botanicals, they're not really pulling their weight. Maybe it was a fun recipe to put together but, from the drinking side, I'm not really feeling the benefit. It's fine, though: another light and fizzy thirst-quencher with a fruity twist.

In the run-up to Christmas last year, via Aldi, DOT put out a joint effort with Two Stacks: a can each of stout and whiskey (canned whiskey being Two Stacks's Whole Thing) in a giftable cardboard tube. We didn't have to wait long for the 2025 edition, which landed in June. The beer, 2025 Stacked, is a barrel-aged imperial stout, though only 7.5% ABV. An 8.2% ABV version was a standalone release back in 2021, and I'm guessing Aldi's price-point needs prompted the cut. Still, it's a dense-looking affair: properly black with a tobacco-stain head. That said, the former-bourbon Two Stacks casks aren't much in evidence in the beer, other than a hint of spirit and honey in the aroma. The flavour is simple and good, offering a serious tarry roasted bitterness set on a full and creamy body that is in full compliance with the requirements of imperial stout. I couldn't find the vanilla and oak spice promised on the tube, but did detect a kind of smoky complexity in the background as it warmed. Trying it in tandem with the whiskey didn't add anything new. The spirit has been aged in DOT's stout barrels but didn't have the same chocolatey air as, for example, the Jameson stout barrel Caskmates. It's good though, with lots of typically Irish honey and a dark seam of Oloroso richness. Putting the two together is a gimmick, but it's fun and, at €12, relatively inexpensive fun.

While it's nice to see DOT branching out stylistically, neither of the light and fruity efforts were any great shakes. Yes, it's hard to impress me with any radler, but the sour one wasn't done to the same distinctively high specification as the strong barrel-aged beers. Is it churlish of me to ask that a client brewer with its own ageing and blending facility might like to try something fun with wild fermentation cultures? I'll ask it anyway.

The next phase

In the first pair of releases since they returned to contract brewing, Hopfully has sought to placate both sides in the pale ale civil war.

One of them is Television, a hazy pale ale, being both very very hazy and very very pale. The hop combination of sweetly fruity Azacca and Strata with more serious Citra has given it a lovely balance between the dessert-like tropical fruits and the more jagged citrus and pine. It shows a dankness that's unusual in a hazy pale ale, as well as spicy herbs and the requisite juice and vanilla. I like how it skirts the edges of the hot garlic effect which can be haze's bane, keeping the boldness and heft but not tasting weird or off. This is another one of those hazy jobs done well, missing any of the bad features and delivering lots of enjoyable fresh hop fun. It's hard to imagine what else to ask of a beer like this.

Its companion piece is a west coast IPA called The Lads. Alas, there's an unacceptable amount of haze in this, lest there be any doubt which side of the war Hopfully is really on. Still, it's a nice amber colour under the murk. The aroma is more muted than I would have expected from Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe: all quite assertive hops in their own right. Although it's stronger than the previous beer, at 5.8% ABV, it's very similar in density, sacrificing west-coast crispness for a chewiness belonging to a far stronger beer. A token effort has been made at the west coast profile, with a hint of crystal malt caramel and a pinch of pine resin, but without the liquid being clean and clear, it's unconvincing. While it's a fine beer to drink, I think the style purists will be disappointed, and it's just not as interesting as the other one, like the brewers' hearts weren't really in it to do the style properly.

It's nice that Hopfully is still around, and very nice that it's still doing haze very well. Perhaps their new host (which should be named on the can but isn't) can teach them about clarity.

Wiccan mix

Hagstravaganza 11, the seventh of its name, took place at The White Hag brewery recently. As usual, a team of guest brewers from Ireland, the UK and Europe brought a wide selection of beers for us to work through, 200ml at a time.

I was looking for a lager to start me off but they were in somewhat short supply, so went for a sour IPA instead, for that post-travel refreshment factor. This was Sour Drop by Lambrate, seemingly a very typical example, being 4.5% ABV and a pale hazy yellow. The aroma is fairly standard too, showing the yoghurt-like tang of a kettle-soured beer. On tasting, however, its all about the hops, making excellent use of the plain base to showcase a firework display of zingy, zesty citrus flavour, with a punchy and invigorating bitterness. The finish is quick, but that only serves to help its thirst-quenching powers. I've been a fan of sour IPAs since my first encounter (hello Eight Degrees!), and while they're not always brilliant, this example was a reminder of why they're worthwhile, especially outdoors on a sunny afternoon.

The drops continued next, with Pressure Drop. Their Pale Fire pale ale is one of those modern British classics, but also a beer I had never tried myself, a bit like Elusive's Oregon Trail, reviewed last week. And a bit like that one, I wasn't a fan. It actually has the same savoury sesame or caraway kick which is one of the peculiarities of my palate when it comes to particular hops, although to a lesser extent here, thanks, I guess, to the beer being only 4.4% ABV. At first I found it dry and a little rough-tasting, followed by a growing pithy bitterness which I felt was a bit overdone in a session-strength ale. I don't doubt its boldness, or that it's exactly what the brewery and its customers want it to be. Too much of it was not to my taste, however. Could it be that the age of soft and fluffy pale ales has ruined my palate for big-boy bitterness?

The following beer proved immediately that this is not the case. Drink While Laughing (great name!) is from White Hag itself, in collaboration with regular festival participant Green Cheek of California. It's another pale ale, and still modestly strong at 5.5% ABV. They say "West Coast" in the description and they really mean it. For one thing, it's a gorgeous clear gold colour, and attention has been paid to the malt side of the recipe, with a lovely big and chewy golden-syrup base. Not that it's sweet; the malt provides a platform for some wonderfully complex yet accessible hop character, starting on the classic grapefruit bite which, instead of building, gives way to a subsequent mandarin softness. This one-two citric hop effect continues all the way through, so while it's quite easy drinking, it still managed to hold my attention. Cans of this are currently in circulation, and I'm very much minded to become more familiar with it. I flag it thus for the attention of all the west-coast whiners out there.

That full-on hop experience necessitated something clean and fizzy to follow. Brewfist -- a blast from my beer-drinking past -- had a lager from their pilot scheme on the board: Italian Pilsner 03. Now, maybe it's not my place to tell a seasoned Italian brewer what an "Italian pilsner" should be like, but this wasn't the beer I expected. Full marks for the visuals: a flawless golden body topped with a perfect fine shaving-foam mousse. The aroma is also that of a top-notch Mitteleuropa pilsner, a pristine grassy note which, if it isn't from Saaz hops, is doing a convincing impression of them. And so it goes with the flavour: spinach and celery on a clean base, perhaps suggesting more German-style than Czech to me, and absolutely delicious, but shouldn't the Italian style have something a bit extra going on with the hops? And shouldn't pilot releases be rather more experimental? I'm probably overthinking it. This is a pilsner from Italy, and an utterly superb one. Version 04 could up the hop quotient a little, but I wouldn't change the fundamentals.

I came back to Brewfist a little later on, when I noticed the strong beers were running out and I didn't want to miss theirs. That was Vecchia Lodi, a 12% ABV barley wine. Style fidelity was in evidence here again, although it's not one of the hopped-up barley wines typified by Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot. Instead, it's sweet all the way through, from a syrupy treacle aroma to a cereal and cake flavour. A tang of grape and cork brings in the "wine" part of the spec, and is perhaps a result of this being a six-year-old vintage. While by no means spectacular, nor showing signs of much development after the extended ageing, it was simple and enjoyable fare; smooth and lacking any overweening alcohol heat or sharp hop edges.

A palate scrub was required again, so I followed this with New Moon, a gose by Manchester's Balance. The brewery specialises in the wild and funky end of things, so it shouldn't be surprising that their gose is a straight-up one, lacking any novelty add-ons. It's 4% ABV, a mostly clear gold colour, and presents flavours of zest and brine, the sour culture doing the work that hops might normally perform, giving the beer acidity and bite. Classic gose is made with coriander as well, and if that's included here, it didn't really make itself known. Still, I had little to complain about as the sticky barley wine residue was washed from my gob.

I stuck with Balance for the next one, a dry-hopped saison called Long Shadows. There was more than a hint of geuze about the aroma of this: an enticing spicy sharpness. The flavour was less impressive, but still good, with a lot more sourness than hops in evidence. The gunpowder spice of the aroma is reduced to a more saison-like white pepper, and there's a residual kick of vinegar, verging on the too-sour. I still enjoyed it, sourness and absent hops notwithstanding. There wasn't a lot of this kind of beer at the gig, so Balance's presence was very welcome. I should have tried their third one too.

At the opposite end of the sour spectrum, there's French brewery Nautile and their "lemon and almond pastry sour", called Sneffels. I'm rarely without apprehension on approach to things like these, but I'd had strong recommendations during the day, and they proved accurate. Although this is 6% ABV and presumably brewed with lactose, it's no sticky mess, and isn't horribly sweet. It's not sour either, but does let the lemon do most of the talking, with a zesty aroma and a lemonade flavour, including a sprig of rosemary for a bonus oily herbal effect. I did not expect clean and refreshing from something of this description, but I welcome it.

Nautile also had a Flanders red on offer, a big one at 9% ABV, called Katsberg. That heft didn't suit some of the drinkers who expressed a preference, but I thought it worked, and covered the style's requirements well. Yes, it's a bigger beer all round, with a denser body and more of a cherry and strawberry sweet side. The sharp and fizzy brisk sourness is not a feature, but I think the heftier spec works almost as well. There was certainly no shortage of complexity in the flavour, with lots of balsamic vinegar and dark chocolate in evidence. Flanders red, especially when produced by a brewery that doesn't specialise in it, can sometimes go too far with the acidity, and you get an unpleasant raw vinegar tang on the end. There's no danger of that in this big sour softie, however. It's unorthodox, but it's made me less of a purist about this style.

And we were spoiled for choice, since White Hag were launching a Flanders red of their own. The name, Oud Foudre No. 1, implies that this isn't the last one of these they'll do. It's another fairly big one, at 6.6% ABV, and picks a different direction from the previous beer, and the style generally. Instead of going all-in for tartness, this is all about the funk, smelling almost like a ripe blue cheese. Not a beer for beginners, then. There's a sweet side represented by exotic dark fruit flavours -- tamarind and date -- plus a peppery spice, giving it a not unwelcome vibe of HP Sauce. It's still plenty sour too, which makes it a little curdling, but it's far too interesting for me to complain about such details. I could have spent the whole evening exploring its strange yet pleasant sensory features. Here's hoping this wasn't beginners' luck.

After all that microbial pyrotechnics, it was something of a comedown to drink a simpler fruited sour ale. Cloudwater's Cherry Gentle Breeze is a mere 4.5% ABV and pink coloured. Although two types of cherry are used, it tasted more like raspberry or redcurrant to me, with that level of tartness, plus a sweeter ripe plum side. That problem tells us that the cherries were added as real fruit, rather than a substance designed to make beers taste like cherries. I approve. This is a simple and well-made affair: smooth and very sinkable, and streets ahead of all the garish syruped-up fruit beers pumped out by lesser breweries. I'm no Cloudwater fanboy, but this was excellent work.

That brings us to end-of-the-festival silliness territory. Before hitting the rails, I took Dave from Wide Street's recommendation of their own Cuvée Spontanée, a geuze clone that was promising on its début in Mullingar last April but has now matured into Boon-like perfection. There was a snifter of barrel-aged Black Boar for the train, but my final tick was Band of Brothers, a triple IPA by Dutch brewer Folkingbrew.

As per, this is custard-yellow and completely opaque, the ABV a full-throated 10%. There's an odd aroma of vanilla mixed with gunpowder, and the spice carries through to the flavour. There, the soft New England vanilla takes precedence, balanced by a slightly harsh and dreggy hop-leaf bitterness, and seasoned by a kind of garlic salt and chilli pepper spice. That doesn't sound especially pleasant, but it all hangs together harmoniously, without any disturbing alcohol heat. I never would have guessed the strength, and it didn't take me long to finish.

But finish I did. It was good to be back in Ballymote after missing last year, though I was reminded, as I always am at Hagstravaganza, that I've never been drinking in nearby Sligo town. That will be changing soon.

Boozing my religion

As soon as I heard that Priory Brewing had filled in the gaps in its line-up, I was straight back to the tank bar in Tallaght, to pick up where I left off.

The new stout was my Priory priority: Guilty Pleasure. At 1.30 on a Wednesday afternoon, I'll say. It's 4.1% ABV, and served on nitro, though with a slightly "realer" ivory-coloured head, rather than the finely processed snow-white of the macros. That coarseness of bubble means it doesn't have the pablum smoothness of the mainstream brands, but equally there's more surface area for the flavour to cling to. I'm guessing they're going for old-fashioned with this, because it's bitter: leading out with aromatic medicinal herbs like eucalyptus and aniseed. Dark chocolate and very dark-roasted coffee add new types of bitterness later on, before a burnt-toast finish and some lingering aromatic oils from the early herbs. Wow. This packs a lot into the advertised strength,  to the point where I would question its sessionability. Luckily, the beer selection at Priory makes alternating with something else an easy alternative. I love to see a brewery take this serious and grown-up approach to stout and it has really paid off for Priory.

The red ale had a hill to climb after that. I've said before that the whole Priory tank bar concept belongs to a different era, but having a nitro red in the line-up takes us all the way back to the mid-1990s. Since when was that style a must-carry? Regardless, Cardinal Sin is a spot on 4.3% ABV and presents as the cream-topped mahogany of a Kilkenny or a Caffrey's (ask your parents). There's a very mild toffee aroma, while the flavour opens with the caramel and phosphorus of a cola or red lemonade. Generally, these sorts of beers lean into the gloopy sweet side, but this one takes a sudden turn into a metallic aspirin bitterness. It's different, but I don't think it really works. The sweet/bitter clash is curdling and awkward, and only the beer's fizzy lightness saves its drinkability. A finishing tang of saline sweat confirms this as a beer which is technically flawless but not well designed. I hope all the people clamouring for more red ales either appreciate it, or can use it to understand why they are wrong.

Heresy! declares our last one. Because sour beer is anathema to the time-traveller who created the brewery? Back in the day, this would have been a raspberry wheat beer, and Heresy looks like one: a murky pink emulsion. The aroma is all raspberry, but cool and tart and fresh, not gloopy processed syrup. It's light-bodied, even for 4.4% ABV, but that adds to a refreshment quotient which is, I suspect, the beer's whole deal. It's not sour, as such, but it centres on a very real-tasting raspberry tartness, like biting down on an actual ripe raspberry. There's nothing behind that, just fizz and maybe a tiny, teeth-sparking, mineral buzz. I'll trust them that it's soured but it could equally be a lager given the crushed berry treatment. I liked it, and pending the brewery's Brett-and-barrel ageing program which I've just invented, it will serve nicely.

My second visit to Priory Market did nothing to reduce my enthusiasm for the whole project. If you can go but haven't yet, I think you're running out of excuses. Get in before they discover IPAs can be hazy.

Names are hard

I had two problems with this beer before I even took it out of the fridge:
1. Don't mess with pilsner. Your kooky craft-beer twists are not welcome in this space.
2. The name. Honey, I Shrunk The Pils sounds like a working title which never got fixed and ended up printed on the can. Woeful.

I was happier when I saw it poured. It's a flawless golden colour, topped by a classically continental pillow of pure white foam. There's no honey in the aroma either, which is floral and summery. Maybe that was Wicklow Wolf's plan all along: adding their own honey to impart a meadow-like quality which suits pilsner but doesn't at all resemble how other breweries "do" honey-flavoured beer. If so, the flavour gives the game away, but only a little. There is a basic honey-crunch sugary element lurking in the taste, but it's not the main feature. That's proper lager, though maybe a little heavier and lacking bitterness for a pils, so more of a light Helles, to my mind, at 4.8% ABV. Stylistic hair-splitting apart, this is good, plain, drinking lager: easy-going enough to be refreshing, but with enough substance to be properly süffig. If it wasn't for that mild pinch of honey in the middle, it would pass muster in any German beer garden. I still think that a pilsner was an odd choice when the brewery went looking for a beer to put their homegrown honey into, but I fully accept that it hasn't ruined it as I feared. There must have been a better use for it, however.

I won't even try to guess if "Suddenly Acai" is meant to be a pun or a reference to something. If you have to explain it, it's not good, Chief. This is a sour ale of 5% ABV, brewed with blueberries, strawberries and açaí berries, obviously enough. That all makes it purple and hazy, pouring to a short-lived head and smelling loudly of strawberries: real, but sweet and concentrated, like the canned variety. That the recipe includes lactose is immediately apparent on tasting. First it's the creamy, smoothie-like texture, and then it's the fruit yoghurt effect. The blueberries hold their own with the strawberries, and I don't think I know what açaí berries taste like, so they may or may not be there too. It's a gentle, happy sort of beer, not too sweet and not at all sticky. While not sour as such, there's enough of a lactic tang to keep things clean and interesting. If you must make these milky berry jobs, then this is the way to do it.

Two surprises for me, then. Wicklow Wolf is a brewery of many talents, but making beers which look like I'll hate them, and doing them really well, is a new one. I would finish by saying my prejudices need examining, but I'm far too old for that sort of thing.

And not a bitter in sight

After a one-year hiatus by the festival, and ten years by me, I was back at The Great British Beer Festival last week, for the Tuesday afternoon trade session. The big change is that the venue is now Birmingham rather than London, spread across two halls of the gargantuan National Exhibition Centre. I detected a certain change in ethos too. Once upon a time, there was a corner reserved for high-end international beers, American in particular, and that's where what passes for cool kids in our pastime could be found. But while there was a token set of casks from the east coast USA, the Brewers Association no longer organises a bottle bar, and the American, German and Dutch/Belgian bars were somewhat sidelined, in a corner away from the main action. That, of course, meant that the main action was all lovely British cask beer, which should be the whole point. With a mere hop from Birmingham airport, I was in early and ready to get ticking.

The nearest bar to the entrance was full of awards nominees, with judging for Champion Beer of Britain happening nearby. Here I found my primary target for the day: Oregon Trail IPA from Elusive Brewing. It's become quite the cult beer in Britain recently and I had never seen it in the wild. In proper west coast style it's bright and golden, and is shockingly bitter at first, going beyond mere grapefruit into raw lime peel and concentrated pine resin. A rapidly-arriving finish adds an unwelcome savoury note of caraway seed to the picture. It's very dry and sharp, and needs its full 5.8% ABV to give it substance. As a result, while it's far from balanced, it's not harsh either. Still, my half pint was tough going and I think this may be an acquired taste. It has several points in common with Thornbridge's mighty Jaipur, but lacks that one's subtlety and (dangerous) drinkability. Maybe I'll have a better time when next I encounter it, but first impressions were that, in hop terms, this is too rich for my blood.

Before moving on, I thought I'd better have a go of the one mild that was in awards contention: Penzance Mild from Penzance Brewing. As it happened, this was later crowned Champion Beer of Britain, and while I'm sure the competition was intense, I think it was a very deserving winner. Right from the outset of the aroma, this ruby-russet beer is the last word in 3.6% ABV luxury. Heady roasted grain vapours mix with fine milk chocolate, creating an effect like bourbon cream biscuits. The texture is full and silky, making it feel wholesome and nutritious, like a throwback to when beers were treated as medicinal and, obviously, tasted better than nowadays. There aren't any surprises in the flavour from all this: it continues with darker chocolate, warm cookies and plump currants, given a tiny pinch of cut-grass bitterness in the finish. This is absolutely majestic stuff, fully deserving to carry the flag for mild, and for British cask beer generally. Do not miss it if you see it on the inevitable victory tour.

Liberation's Herm Gold had also found its way onto this bar, though I don't think it was in the running for any gongs. A shame, really, because it's a very decent golden ale. It has a touch of the beeswax bitterness of the best golden English bitters -- looking at you, Timothy Taylor Landlord -- plus an altogether more modern (whisper it: American) burst of lemon and lime. But not too much, of anything. I found it a perfect refresher at around my half way point, and would very happily lean into a session on it, in different circumstances. Golden ale is a highly unfashionable style, but when it's on point like this, it can be amazing. A new campaign, now that mild has been saved?

My token visit to the American cask bar landed me McGowan's Cream Ale from Brightpath Brewing in Pennsylvania. I'm sure I've said before that I've never really seen the point of this beer style. Like American Light Lager, it was created by the 20th century's giant industrial breweries to cut every corner available and make something that still counts as beer as cheaply and profitably as possible. That the craft movement has attached some retro credibility to it is bemusing. Anyway, this one was lovely. What they've done, right, is hop the hell out of it, so you get a 4.5% ABV blonde beer with a delightfully spritzy citric aroma and flavour. It's palate-cleansing, easy-drinking, and plenty characterful to boot. While it has lots in common with America's pale ales, I got a sense of witbier about it too, albeit rather more intense. I'm glad I gave it a go.

And from the continentals, there was the opportunity to try the three-brewery Trappist collaboration, produced at La Trappe, with input from Zundert and Tynt Meadow. The Three Rules of Authentic Trappist (lest you be in any doubt that there are such) is a dubbel of 7.4% ABV. It was served on keg and I found it a little cold and thin for that. I think the flavour suffered too, and it didn't seem as characterful as any of the classic Trappist dubbels. Still, it managed to hit the necessary style points, with a raisin fruit side melding with chocolate cake. It's slightly tannic, making it dry where I would have preferred more dark malt sweetness, and the alcohol expresses itself as a portwine heat in the finish. It's not bad, but I was prepared to be much more impressed by it than I actually was. I don't know how much of a rarity this is, but you aren't missing a lot if it doesn't come your way.

When I went downstairs to the main floor, I was as surprised as you to find myself heading first to the Greene King bar, but I had reasons. The first of these is their own mild, XX, and while this doesn't seem to be a particularly rare beer, it has always eluded me. Could the fact that I'll generally avoid Greene King pubs when there's any other choice be connected to that? Maybe. Anyway, here it was in all its 3% ABV glory, and I got to scratch the itch. This one is properly black with stout-like garnet hints where the light shines through. The aroma says fudge to me, and the flavour continues that way, with a sweet mix of soft buttery toffee, some condensed milk and a light layer of chocolate or mocha. It's thin too, and I initially had that flagged as a flaw but, really, the sweet flavour profile needs this lightness of touch; any thicker and it would be hard work to drink. What's missing is the roasted grain and the dark fruit to give it an extra dimension or two. I can see how this would stand out amongst the other prosaic Greene King offerings, but it's far from a superstar. It won't be getting me through the doors of any of the brewery's pubs.

The bigger itch at Greene King was 5X. This is a genuine rarity, used as an ingredient in some of their blended beers, but you need to go to a special event to find it on sale, and I had missed it at GBBF before. At this point it was still a bit early for a third-pint of a 12% ABV beer but I didn't want to chance it running out. In the glass it's a very dark brown colour, and the hot solvent aroma is the first indication that it's not really meant for drinking. Bizarrely, it's very thin, which I was not expecting, and neither is it especially sweet. Instead, this is very fully attenuated and tastes quite vinous, with the cherry and redcurrant of a light Italian wine, leading quickly into a rough and stale old-cork finish, with acrid splinters of young and sappy wood. It does not taste matured, or rounded, or seasoned, or any of the other positive adjectives I had planned for it. While it has some features in common with English barley wine, there's a surprising lack of refinement. Sipping through it slowly, I was glad to get it finished, to deem it done.

Second place in the Champion Beer of Britain had gone to Sarah Hughes brewery, for their Snowflake winter ale, and that was next. This is 8% ABV and gives immediate cosy vibes from its chestnut colour and toffee aroma. On tasting, that unfolds into strawberry and raspberry, but without their tart, cleansing qualities. While that's fun to begin with, it wears off quickly. I found the sweet side grows rapidly and the beer turns sickly and cloying too soon, even with only a half pint to contend with. I see what they're trying to do, and it's not the first time I've found a beer in this style hard to drink. But I thought that a medal-winner would show rather more finesse. Sometimes a lack of subtlety is needed for the win, or at least for second prize. Maybe I'm the real snowflake here.

Time was running out and I needed to stop idling my way through the menus and grab the beers I knew I'd regret if I missed. Siren was next, and a variation on their magnificent Broken Dream stout, called Recurring Dream. This brings the ABV down to 4.6%, from the quaffable original's frankly dangerous 6.5%, and it was served here on keg. Trying the two side-by-side would have been interesting, had time allowed, but I did get the impression that this has a lot in common with it. The coffee is in full 3D Technicolour, beginning on an aroma of freshly roasted beans and proceeding to be enjoyably dry and free of gimmicks. The flavour's coffee is toasty, not sweet, and there's a balancing chocolate character to add a little fun while keeping things classically composed. With session-strength stouts seeing a bit of a boom in the UK these days, it's right and proper for Siren to be getting in on the act.

Having ticked off a Channel Islands beer early, Manx was next, represented by Kaneens brewery and their Dhoo "black beer". What type of black beer? Let's see. It's a light-bodied one, even at 4.6% ABV. When the internet tells me it's a Schwarzbier I don't disbelieve it. What I have noted as thinness therefore becomes lager-cleanness. There's a gentle hint of plum in the flavour, and a dash of chocolate too, so this probably could have passed as a mild if the brewery so chose. The finish goes a bit funky, unfortunately, adding a rough stale-sweat tang to the end. I had been enjoying the beer up until then but found it going a little off course here. On another day I might have welcomed it, but next to the general high calibre of the day's dark beers, it was disappointing.

Time for one more mild, and it's local brewery Green Duck with their Bostin' Mild, fully appropriating the regional beer style of the West Midlands. And it's a basic one. I liked its dark mahogany colour, and its ease of drinking, helped by a mere 3.4% ABV. The flavour is dry and uncomplicated with a burnt toast effect scrubbing the palate but not much else going on. If anything, this tasted more like a Schwarzbier than the one before. Clearly, it's designed to be sunk by the pint, so sipping a half at the tail end of a day's drinking means, I now realise, that I didn't really give it a fair shake. One to come back to, for sure.

And that's all I managed to... wait... Theakston's has made an Old Peculier tie-in IPA? What? I spotted this on my way out the door and inched towards the exit with it in hand. I don't think Peculier IPA really has anything in common with its part-namesake: it's a 5.1% ABV amber-coloured cask IPA, brewed with an unlikely combination of Simcoe, Cluster and Bullion hops, plus some of the brewery's home-growns. It absolutely works, however, being a little on the sweet side, but allowing the malt heft to soften the hops. There's plenty of modern, new-world, hop zing, but instead of a pithy, piney bite, there's creamy and dessertish lemon posset or curd. It's beautifully mellow and, not for the first time that day, I found myself wishing I could settle into a slow pint of it.

But that's where I called it a day. Commentary on the good points and shortcomings of the festival and its new venue had started before I was even home, and I'll leave that to others. I had a jolly day out and feel I managed a happy cross section of the sort of British beer I like, with a couple of interesting foreigners to add colour. That's all I was after.

Unnecessary extensions

Did Sierra Nevada need to add a Peachy Little Thing to its already extensive range of hazy IPAs? No it did not. But, as always, I am obliged to drink and tell you about it. To give it a properly fair shake, I opened it on a warm afternoon, on the assumption that this is a more frivolous and summery kind of beer, although the 7% ABV means it comes with some serious heft. It's mostly opaque and the bright orange of a diluted squash. The peach... substance... is very apparent from the aroma, adding a strong and artificial sweet-smelling perfume. Who remembers Magic Hat No. 9? I didn't, until I took a sniff of this. The mouthfeel is beautifully soft, making good use of that high gravity to give it a deliciously chewy texture. And though they claim it's an IPA, there is precious little sign of any hops. Instead, that concentrated peach essence rides roughshod over everything else, unsubtle and overly sweet. I guess it works in a complementary way with the pillowy texture, but it doesn't create a pleasant beer; this barely tastes like a beer at all. I will credit that it could have ended up a syrupy mess, and instead it's simply syrupy in a straightforward, one-flavour, fashion. I don't see the point.

My local SuperValu occasionally gets shipments of expiring stock from local distributor Grand Cru, so you'll need to ignore the "fresh" aspect of this Cryo Fresh Torpedo, the bottle being a bit over a year old by the time I got to it. One again, it's a 7% ABV IPA, though this one is an altogether warmer-looking amber shade, and mostly clear with it. The aroma has survived well, and still has the classic Torpedo pine sharpness. Surprisingly, the bitterness doesn't dominate the flavour. It still tastes plenty fresh, though, with zesty orange juice and thick-shred marmalade. Only in the finish is there a drier and bitterer lime rind effect. It's all quite subtle too, lacking any punchy extremes, with neither harshness nor heat. Despite all the technical hop wizardry, this is a decent, accessible and enjoyable IPA, very much in the West Coast fashion, but not overdoing it. My only quibble is that overdoing it is basic Torpedo's main feature, and I'm a fan of its resinous severity, none of which is on display here. For €2.60, I got a very good bottle of beer, though I still think I would trade up to a fresh bottle of OG Torpedo.

Torpedo and Hazy Little Thing are very good beers in their own right, and I'm a fan of both. These attempts at using established customer good will are, I think, misguided. Not everyone will come in on the ground floor, and I hate to think that anyone would eschew the originals having tried and disliked these cash-in variants.