Moving on from celebrating Verdant as one of our most regularly stocked stalwarts to totally new, yet possibly familiar territory, Baron Brewing from our very own Hertfordshire! They have a 1000 litre kit and a focus upon the most modern hoppy pales and nuanced, refreshing lagers.
We’ve tried some samples and are pretty optimistic about where this seems to be going, especially given Baron has only been commercially operational since September of last year. Anyway, the team are keen to get tucked into a few of (who are we kidding, all of) the cans due for delivery later in the week so that we can get analysing. Hopefully this excites you as much as it does us!
Let’s start off the breakdown of freshies by sifting through our most regularly stocked breweries…
Howling Hops know where it’s at: Tropical Deluxe Cryo (exciting?!) and the return of Somewhere Quiet should keep us hopped up without breaking the bank or derailing an evening.
Cloudwater have been busy rebrewing some of the hoppy pale releases - notable for hydrating us and capturing our imaginations nearly a year ago is Little Pumphouse At Kinder Reservoir. For the crispier bois - Clear Break West Coast Pale or the larger Volley might better hit the spot. More miraculous is the return of the straightforward Helles which we recall several people asking about in its long absence from our fridges.
Pressure Drop also have a few returning goodies in single hop Simcoe West Coast IPA Alligator Tugboat, the ever popular core range Pale Fire, and then a couple of new hazy boi recipes in The Journeyman Galaxy & Citra NEDIPA & Morning Person 6.8% NEIPA with an atypical line-up of hops.
DEYA too are sending us a direct shipment of beers that nicely span hop forward, pale beer. Fresh Tappy Pils is always a tall order to beat. Meet Me In The City also returns, this time accompanied by two new juice bomb DIPAs (You See Me Laughing & Allkin collab Road To Unruin that promises a drier take on the usual DEYA formula) & Such Magic Never Lasts that is daring to make 500ml tins of 10.5% hoppy wizardry the norm.
Beak are sending four lines of tinned goodies, two being fresh iterations of Verdant collab Teamwurk & Locals V5. We’re also excited to try Mousse, a Halertau Blanc hopped Rustic Lager that promises a heady pour with it’s particularly wheat heavy grist. Wuff 7% NEIPA has its dry hop led by Eclipse, backed up by possibly the winning hop combos of the moment - dank like "Californian dispensaries"!
And we’re not done yet…
We have yet two more Polly’s to add to the hop heavy collection, and we hope you’re into Mosaic because both of their fresh releases go large with it - Runaway Draper 6% NEIPA exclusively so. Distinct Kingdoms also adds Idaho-7 into the mix whilst targeting low bitterness in a 5.5% NEPA, an interesting choice of support hop that we’re keen to sample given Polly’s recent run of solid juicy beers.
There’s also a trio of Buxton tins after what feels like a heck of a hiatus, and they’re ticking all the nostalgia boxes. Dark complex and indulgent, Black Axe BIPA; sticky tropical and a little sweet, Sesqui Axe TIPA; double strong & hoppy in the most literal sense, Double Axe Quadruple IPA marking a decade since the original brewing of UK craft original, Axe Edge.
And finally, North Brewing Co have paired up with Full Circle on what could possibly be one of the last Fresh Hop IPA releases from the surge of crops that recently landed on our shores. They too went down the route of steering towards the classic American IPA (using the somewhat alien approach of adding all the whole-cone Mosaic to their cooled wort post whirlpool, but back in the mash tun instead of a fermentation vessel).
