If you prefer beers that aren’t too sweet but still give you a whiff of the sweet stuff, Five Barrel have a couple of brews just for you.
In Frostbite Cold IPA, the aromas up front are sweet as anything – clean citrus interwoven with tutti frutti bubble gum – which had me expecting the taste to follow suit. But I found this beer to do a complete backflip in the mouth, bringing dry, earthy, bitter, resinous notes. These all his the back of the palate with the force of an old school West Coast IPA, but without any of the sticky mouthfeel that might come with a Westie. The resin then disappears faster than your sweat when you go for a run in those newfangled exercise clothes that use sweat wicking technology called something like QuikWik or AntiMoist (patent pending). A trail of earthy bitterness is the way this cold IPA leaves its mark.
Swap out earthy bitterness for tart berries you’ll find Fowler’s Jam Raspberry Sour. Five Barrel first brewed this beer in the first half of 2021, and have brought it back a few times to sate the cravings of their fans.
Throwing more 80 kilos of raspberry purée into an 800 litre batch of Berliner weisse results in this neon pink beer. True to its name, it smells delightfully jammy and sweet. But take a sip and you’ll find it’s more tart and dry and refreshing, with the fruity and floral raspberry notes hitting as high as your palate goes.
Mick Wüst
Published January 11, 2023 2023-01-11 00:00:00
