I always have a bit of back and forth when new Cloudwater beer lands. I know everyone will be talking about it and I'd like to be part of the conversation, but the beers are terribly expensive and too many of them aren't any good. The phrase "sucker juice" always jumps to the front of my mind when I'm looking at those arty cans in the off licence fridge. This time I thought I'd just go for the cheaper ones: a fiver a can, which is still pretty steep for low to medium strength beer.Cloudwater Seville Orange Sour is certainly low-wattage, at just 3.5% ABV. A dark orange colour, opaque and headless, it looks like Fanta in the glass. And it tastes like... Diet Fanta. There's lots of unmistakable orange flavour, but there's very little else other than water and fizz. It's certainly not very sour. While this is far from unpleasant, I don't really see the point of it. It's thirst-quenching, I guess, but it's too thin, too one-dimensional and definitely not a fiver's worth of beer.
Higher hopes, then, for Session IPA Citra Mosaic. It looks similar, mind: hazy and orange. The aroma is fabulously juicy with just a slight edge of red cabbage spice. The texture is fantastically smooth and carries a magnificent soft hop flavour, with the tropical mango and apricot of Mosaic and the lemon zest of Citra but only minimal bitterness. It's one of the most sessionable session IPAs I've ever tasted, the softness making it highly gluggable. Classic stuff, and about the only session IPA that gives Little Fawn a run for its money, even if it does cost as much from the supermarket as Little Fawn does in the pub. It would need to be cleaner to compete fully, though.
That gave me the confidence to go shopping again and shell out the whopping €7.50 for NW DIPA Citra. This seems to be the end point of Cloudwater's numbered double IPA sequence that's been running for the last year and a bit. Yeast from JW Lees has been used again and the poured beer looks like elderly custard: a dull yellowy beige. The aroma is fully in keeping with the New England style: sweet in two ways, with sticky mango juice and stickier clove rock. It smells like it's going to be hard work. It's not though. There's not a trace of heat, despite an unreasonable 9% ABV. And it's not especially sweet either. It's savoury in an alium sort of way, with the burn of raw garlic, and then a spicing of nutmeg and clove, leaving a residue of citric lime. Confused by how Citra was doing all of that I turned to the back of the can to discover that Hüll Melon, Mosaic and Simcoe are also involved. Well that makes a lot more sense. What amazes me most is the subtlety. It's so smooth and unbitter it's almost sessionable, though at near-wine strength that obviously would not be a good idea. Part of me thinks I should be getting more flavour for my money but another recognises the technical achievement of making a double IPA with this lightness of touch. It's still too much money for one beer, though. I might leave it a while before my next one of these from Cloudwater.