I’m a real sucker for natty branding, I must admit. Whilst I am well aware that one should never judge a book by its cover (nor indeed a beer by its bottle) I do love it when breweries manage to combine both cracking contents with what can only be described as a well gilded lily.
So I’ve been noting recently with some satisfaction that a number of breweries have started to collaborate not only with each other in their brews (as you’ll note from some of this week’s selection) but also with local artists to help make their product a full-on sensory delight.
Omnipollo / Buxton: ‘Lemon Meringue Ice Cream Pie’
6% / 330ml / £4.60
So our first collaboration of the day is from Omnipollo and Buxton who’ve brought out a range of nice and summery ice cream themed beers, each with their own personalised splodge of Mr Whippy nipping across the bottle, courtesy of Karl Grandin. The Lemon Meringue Pie version does exactly what you’d hope for and delivers a fresh, sour and zippy citrus punch. The added lactose gives just a hint of sweet vanilla that brings great balance to a beer that would be just perfect chilling at a garden party, or a 50’s diner, or a BBQ, or your living room...
Two Tribes: ‘B-Town Pale’
5% / 330ml / £2.60
I’m surely not the only one who enjoys the festival spirit of the summer months, particularly with having had TRNSMT recently and the West End Beer Festival coming up this weekend (incidentally, if you’re reading this column and don’t have tickets yet, you ought to be asking yourself some serious questions…). Two Tribes brewed this pale ale for the Brighton Food and Drink Festival and it’s suitably crisp, fruity and fun. Passion fruit, grapefruit and orangey-tangerine notes dominate on a nice clean palate. They’ve recruited Pinky Vision to design a can that looks like an acid trip to bubblegum-land - or so I imagine anyway, never having visited the place myself - but it certainly fits in with the fun festival vibe too.
To Øl: ‘Brett and Butter Beer’
3.6% / 330ml / £3.00
The multi-layered pun-age in this one is almost too much to handle. Maybe that’s why they’ve tempered things down a bit with the actual beer and gone for a lighter style table beer. It’s been fermented with brettanomyces (hence ‘brett’ not ‘bread’- geddit?) to give a bit of fruity depth and then dry hopped with mosaic giving a bit of light crispness. They’ve credited Kasper Ledet for the monochrome design, which handily includes the disclaimer ‘does not contain butter’ for those of you lactose intolerants out there. Just in case you thought you were getting something from Harry Potter or worse: actual butter in your beer.
Up Front / Alechemy: ‘Kalamansi IPL’
5% / 330ml / £3.30
A thing I love about this job is the opportunity for pointless expansion of general knowledge. For example: did you know what a kalamansi is? Well I’m thrilled to inform you that it is in fact an oriental citrus fruit; a mandarin and kumquat hybrid, to be precise. As you might therefore expect, this IPL has strong citrus fruit notes coming through with well balanced hoppy bitterness that is characteristically lighter than a full blown IPA. The cracking can design is courtesy of Daan Wille, who’s managed to find a way of writing ‘kalamansi’ so that it looks almost like one of those ambigrams that confuse the heck out of me...and that’s before I’ve even drunk the stuff!
Northern Monk / Deya / Verdant: ‘Hazemaker IPA’
7.4% / 440ml / £5.80
Rounding off with something of a king of collaborations: a product of the ‘Patrons Project’ (which was set up by Northern Monk to foster collabs of producers, artists and athletes) is the pretty punchy Hazemaker IPA. And ‘punchy’ quite definitely is the word, right down to the spiffing Victorian pugilists having the old one-two with each other in Jon Simmons’ can illustration. But it doesn’t stop there. Amarillo, Simcoe, Columbus and Expo35 hops pack a rich, resiny hit with great tropical fruit notes of mango and passion fruit underpinning it all. At 7.4% this is definitely a robust beer but the carbonation on it is beautifully smooth and if you like your IPAs big and bold then this is the one for you.
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