Ogham - Willow
The Celt Experience

 

 

 

 

 

 

330ml bottle, lots of florid descriptive text on the label concerning the Ogham language, and their spiritual interpretation of a willow tree.

This beer pours a clear, crisp bronzed amber hue, with three fingers of bulbous, frothy, loosely foamy dirty white head, which leaves some stringy cloud lace around the glass as it evenly subsides. Rather attractive, this one is.

It smells of bready, lightly pastry-like caramel malt, orange and grapefruit cream, and perfumed floral, leafy hops. The taste is big and malty - caramel, toffee, sweet bread, a hint of treacle - with some very fruity orange, grapefruit, and pineapple hop notes, ones nearly bereft of bitterness. That comes with the zinginess in the later arriving, and still perfume-dominated leafy, floral hops.

The bubbles are soft, and a tad frothy, the body a fairly heavy weight, and agreeably smooth - neither the hops nor the alcohol making any serious ingress here. It finishes on the sweet side, as the malt keeps on its merry way, and those aforementioned tardy hops moving up their schedule a fair bit.

An interesting enough DIPA, my first from Wales, so there is that. My only complaint, and reason for the undercutting scores, is the lack of integration between the fruit and the bitter in the hops, and the hiding of the alcohol in that perfume warmth, as clever as it is. Close to the real deal, and one of the better versions of the style I've had from the UK.