Posted on 31/03/22
New-ish breweries like Azvex, Baron, Floc & Holy Goat all featured in this week’s best new beer releases. Are the old guard in trouble?!
Let’s just say they should be on their toes.
Here are the best new beer releases this week.
The sour stash is looking MEGA this week, mostly thanks to the F**k Cancer Beer Project, who’ve teamed up with some huge US breweries for their latest collaborative release.
Every single can in above is one of the newfangled US Smoothie Sours that are currently taking over the world, brewed in collaboration with some of the best breweries in the USA. These are just bonkers – super thick, super fruity, super rich & deliciously sweeeeet. My favourite so far is looking like Cell Repel, which is made with Raspberries, Peanut Butter & Marshmallow. I mean, come on!
As F**k Cancer Beer Project is also donating 20% of all sales to support cancer charities, the beers wouldn’t even need to be so good to convince me to drink them. As it turns out, they’re the best new releases of the week.
Vault City have been taking inspiration from both the USA and Denkmark for this, making a thick sweet fruit smoothie sour in Danish Dreamcake form!
Strawberries, mango, honey and hand-toasted coconut flakes top this wonderbeer off – it’s as good as Vault City’s very best. (They ask drinkers to ‘gently roll the bottle before serving’.)
Holy Goat also upped their fruited sour ante this week too, this time with Unicornucopia Golden Fruited Sour.
You know all those flavours we all love in our hoppy beers? Juicy mango, ripe peach and tangy, zingy, passionfruit? Here, Holy Goat have poured in the actual fruits themselves!
Add to that even more unique tropical goodness from the yeast’s esters – it’s another mouth-watering piece of brewing brilliance. The sours this week are mad!
Just when you think there is no room for new kids in the craft beer scene, a whole host of new breweries emerge to shake things up!
This week, Baron continued their brilliant launch with Finger Puppet Table Beer, a sinkable 3-percenter, and the much more mighty Voodoo Doll IPA.
Voodoo Doll is just nuts – a weird hop bill brings in a gorgeous flavour combo of raspberries, cherries and tangy pineapple, with a dollop of indulgent fresh cream topping things off – outstanding!
Elsewhere Azvex continued their quest for hop domination this week with Quantum Boomerang Pale Ale plus Generic Hardcore Shirts IPA and Lab Grown Diamonds DIPA.
You’ll be hard pushed to find a pale that’s more of a murk-bomb than Quantum Boomerang Pale Ale.
At 3.8% it’s not strong, but it is PACKED with tropical fruitiness, plus a dankness that suggests it’s much, much heavier than it is.
Meanwhile Ampersand’s On The Wing Pale Ale has been a massively unexpected hit this week – the keg we got in in our taproom sold out in less than a day!
It’s tropical, yes, but it also has a lovely citrusy edge, and it’s velvet-soft to boot.
Plus somehow it’s only £3.95 a can!
The final hoppy beer I’d like to highlight this week is Fuerst Wiacek / KCBC / Barrier collab No Fun IPA, in which Fuerst Wiacek have teamed up with New York brewing royalty for a gorgeously hoppy, bright and smooth IPA.
You’d normally have to pay £10+ to try beers from New York. This is a wicked loophole!
Ampersand absolutely dominated on the darks this week, and that’s really thanks to the release of the latest Emperor’s collab Execute Order 66 Chocolate & Hazelnut Imperial Stout (it’s now sold out – subscribe & you’ll hear all about the next Emperor’s release early).
I personally have my eye on Cocow Chocolate & Milk Stout. “Big flavours of bitter chocolate tempered by milk sugars,” go the tasting notes. “Subtle undertones of dark caramel & coffee give a great depth of flavour… whilst the cocoa nibs provide that unmistakable dark chocolate finish.”
Is it any wonder there are only two left in stock at the time of writing?!!
I know it’s ironic, but the juxtaposition of the old style branding and the bearded skeleton on the new Holy Goat Scottish Export Stout 1897 just makes me laugh.
As you’d expect from Holy Goat though the elixir inside is deadly serious stuff.
Strong, dark and down the line.
Put the can in the fridge. Scare your kids.
The new twin drop from Polly’s proves that the new kids on the block learned from the masters. Now Here No Where DDH Pale is a Vic Secret celebration, while More Than Dreaming DDH IPA is a single-hopped mosaic masterclass.
Overtone were also in on the single-hop game this week with Citra, I’m Home Honey DIPA, a sweet double IPA brewed with actual honey! Meanwhile Atomic IPA wasn’t brewed with honey – but the sweet candyfloss notes could convince you otherwise.
A week rarely goes by without more hoppy brilliance from Beak, who this week released more of their trademark fluffy drops in Sweetspot IPA and the chewy Nom! DIPA. The DIPA is a gem.
Elsewhere Fuerst Wiacek kicked things up to TIPA levels in Futuristic Technologies TIPA, while Burnt Mill levelled things off with Waveform NEPA and the white-grape-laden Nelson Fog IPA.
From Drop Project we saw a collab with North repping the rise of the IPA/Lager hybrid in Link-up Cold IPA. A finer explanation of the style, I am yet to see.
Floc continued to show the world they mean business with Hard Sun IPA and Together In Silence Pale Ale, Brew York treated us to new chocolate stout Brew York-E, Ampersand added a Dunkel and Vault City’s Red Fruit Coconut Dreamcake proved they’re still one of the very best there is.
Still, for me, this week it’s all about snagging at least one US smoothie sour – F**k Cancer, Drekker, Burley Oak and The Brewing Projekt are all available now, fill your boots, these things are ace!
As always, I really hope you get to try some of these epic new beers at some point this week.
Cheers and happy drinking!
Oli, Olly & Charlie
(The three people behind Craft Metropolis)
Step 1
We trawl the globe tasting great beer
