Brú have been knocking around for years, I actually attended a food and beer party at the brewery in 2014 which as I recall involved a lot of stout and chocolate ice cream pairing. Yeah sure, there were other...
Kicking off this Hop Bomb, a 5.5% IPA. This beer has what they describe as a rotating hop profile. This can has a 2 printed on the hop symbol and best before Feb 22 so I imagine it was brewed in February 21. The can has a Hoppy and Malty slider printed on it and in this case, the hops are all the way to the right and the malt all the way to the left. That's bang on actually. In bittering terms, it reminds me of the super dry hopped IPAs we used to get years ago. There's no escaping it and I love that in your face bitterness. There's little attempt to have a malt backbone, just a bit of biscuit and the barest hint of caramel. There's just no messing around here. Personally I would like just a little more body, a tiny bit more malt just to balance it out . There is sweetness to provide balance but it's not particularly malt driven.
Too many hops? Don't be ridiculous, there can never be too many hops!
Next up is a 7% pastry stout called Panda Nero. While I like pastry stouts, I can only stomach them in small doses due to the sweetness but I was pleasantly surprised that a beer described as a tiramisu dessert stout was rather more like a relatively bitter coffee stout with a bit of steamed milk thrown in.
I really enjoyed this one and if the battered can is anything to go by, there was either a huge rush at the Londis to grab this one or else it was accidentally included in a shipment of something else. Either way, it was the only can there when I picked it up. If I see it again*, I will certainly be grabbing one.
*Just to be clear, the local Londis is for emergency beer, that's not where I shop when restocking my beer fridge.
The next three are the core range that have gone from bottles to cans recently. These were kindly sent to me to sample by the brewery.
Brú Lager is your typical 4.2% lager on the face of it. Slightly biscuity with a bit of a spicy character. There's no head beyond a brief fizz which is the only odd thing. It reminded me of a Kolsch actually and that's high praise to be honest. I very much forward to getting back to Cologne for Christmas markets when normality returns. I expect I'll be picking up more of these over the summer.
Brú Red Ale is again a typical 4.2% Irish red ale. The malt is delivered with a slight biscuit and caramel note and then it's a little more bitter than most. It's decent and clearly aimed to tempt Smithwicks drinkers to something more interesting but still in their comfort zone.
That said, if I'm going for an IPA myself, I'd probably pick Osiris at the moment.
Thanks to Bru for sending on the core range to try.
Oh, if you're wondering about the title, Hey Bru is a South African greeting with Bru simply meaning Bro/brother.
