Posted on 25/08/22
It’s birthday beer season right now, and we’re also all enjoying the last days of summer.
If you want to see out summer 22 with a bang… well… here are nine beers with which you can do just that.
This week, Siren have done something very, very bold.
In their new ‘Time Hops’ series, they’ve attempted to replicate some of THE greatest craft beers that have ever been brewed; the beers that influenced all of us from the very start.
The set of four very special beers includes Siren’s Time Hops: Centennial, which is a west coast Bear Republic Brew Co. replica; the Mad Scientist clone Time Hops: Citra & Mosaic; and even the classic Time Hops: Cascade, which is Siren’s clone of a beer that started me on my own craft beer adventure – Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale.
However, the one that interested me the most was Siren’s Time Hops: Simcoe. This daring brew is the legendary Russian River Pliny the Elder reincarnated, and it has all the bite and chewy sweets you’d expect from such an intense hop bill in a big, old-school DIPA.
This might be the closest you ever get to trying the legend that is Pliny. My advice: snap this up NOW!
Elsewhere this week, TIPAs are funny beasts for me. You’re always dealing with huge ABVs and personally I think it’s very, very hard to pull off a good one. So when Verdant said they were making their first ever TIPA this week I had to get it in and check the result.
Hand on heart, Verdant’s collab with Fuerst Wiacek, Intervention Denied, is just plain awesome.
Yes, some TIPAs sail so close to the sun they simply become piles of big, boozy, sickly gloop… but Intervention Denied has enough spice and bite to balance its spades of sweet and syrupy sexiness. What a beer – and I’ve only said that about a couple of TIPAs ever.
Also screaming from the new-out hops this week are the mega collabs from Track Brewing.
My pick has to be Discovery One DIPA with Equilibrium. Track are monsters in UK brewing. Equilibrium are monsters of the US beer scene. And the hop combo of HBC variants and Strata leaves this dripping with that big, classy, American hop-soup vibe.
Immense!
Sticking with the collab theme for now, we were more or less drooling at the idea of Azvex’s first ever collaboration this week – and not just because Azvex managed to snag New York’s legendary Barrier as partners…
Together, these two pioneers nurtured Long Island Deli Politics IPA into life, which is packed to the rafters with Nelson and Simcoe. Again, a beer with massive across-the-pond flavours, although Long Island Deli Politics also (just about) remains nice and smashable.
With all this collab chat it’s easy to forget it’s birthday season. Our own 7th birthday is coming up (more on that in the coming weeks), but right now it’s south London legends Gipsy Hill blowing out the cake candles… quite literally, in fact.
Their Blowout Imperial Chocolate Pastry Stout is, yep, a cake of a beer!
Brewed in collaboration with Chatsworth Bakehouse – the micro-bakery whose sweet treats sell out in seconds – this is loaded with oodles of chocolate and a mahussive 4KG of birthday sprinkles for unashamedly celebratory syrupy silliness.
We also welcomed Vocation back into the mix this week – when I saw they had Devil’s Leap Best Bitter upcoming alongside the 7% Honeycomb Chocolate Stout for just £4.50 I simply couldn’t say no.
Expect less fanfare than Gipsy Hill’s Blowout, yeah, but more sessionable qualities should never go underrated.
Notes in dispatches for the Elusive Whistling in the Dark Black IPA in this section. If anything sums up a well rounded beer that brings all the qualities of styles together, it’s a BIPA, and this one is a class act – ease your way into the end of summer with this mix of light and dark.
Pressure Drop are better know for their big hoppy numbers than their sour sizzlers, so it’s always refreshing when they drop something sour in summer that really hits the spot.
Fast Fruit Strawberry & Pineapple Sour is just perfect for this muggy weather, bringing both the pineapple and strawberry to the party in perfect measures, and being thin enough (in a good way) to sink.
Also knocking on the door of sessionable sours this week is Northern Monk’s Empress of Science, which somehow combines the flavours of tangy berry, tea and bergamot.
It’s unusual – which is precisely what makes it one to check out!
Normally a new drop of Beak makes it into our headliners, and the fact that none the shedload of new brews from the Lewes legends have made it into the main commentary this week goes to show the quality you’ve got to choose from right now. For what it’s worth, Beak’s best newbie is, for me, Maps IPA. Such a crowd pleaser, it’s classic Beak: dripping in the perfect mix of juice and bitterness.
There’s also new Pina Colada beers from Gipsy Hill and Vocation (you wait all year then two come along at once) in the form of Coolada and Bermuda Triangle Holiday Home respectively, alongside fresh Polly’s too. The Jungle Hop is my pick from the Welsh wizards this week with ALL the fresh fruit going on. Yes!
There’s also a belting NEIPA from Pressure Drop to get stuck into this week – Near Earth Objects is the usual murky and zesty turn you’d expect from this classy brewery, and it marks PD’s continued march as one of London’s best (and must underrated) blossoming craft powerhouses.
We also managed to add a couple of non-alc options to the mix this week: both Monk’s Holy Heathen and the Vocation / Mash Gang Get Wavy brews are both corkers with all the flavour and none of the booze! Add them to your Bank Holiday mix. It’s a marathon. Not a sprint.
As always, I hope you get to try some of these gems this week.
Cheers & thanks so much for your support!
Oli, Olly & Charlie
(The three people behind Craft Metropolis)
Step 1
We trawl the globe tasting great beer
