YOU don’t get much in a 10p mix-up these days – they're probably not even 10p any more. That's probably for the best, though, as warnings over kids' sugar intake scream at us from the front pages of the Daily Mail every other day (when they're not screaming about immigrants or miracle medical cures, that is).
One of my favourites in a mix-up used to be the flying saucer. Sour sherbet powder encased in edible paper in the shape of a UFO.
That healthy dose of nostalgia came racing back to me when I drank Sputnik IPA from Pokertree. The Tyrone brewers went through a revamp before launching their rebranded range towards the back end of last year. The labelling has changed and they’ve introduced a few new exciting brews into their roster.
One of them is Sputnik, a bottle-conditioned American-style IPA which weighs in at 6 per cent abv. It has a peachy aroma and pours a light, hazy golden colour. The first gulp showcases the chewy mouthfeel and the rush of new world hops such as Simcoe, Galaxy and Cascade give luscious fruity and citrus flavours. It's so fruity and bitter, with a spikey carbonation, that the defining flavour I took from it was a kind of lemon sherbet – just don't go plunging a stick of licorice in it.
Another of the new beers from the Tyrone-based brewery is Dark Nirvana. Its name is a homage to grunge rock legend Kurt Cobain, whose ancestral roots can be traced to the village of Carrickmore, where head brewer Darren Nugent now concocts Pokertree's beers.
It's billed as a Cascadian coffee ale and is quite a complex brew. It's a real winter warmer of a beer. It has a lovely smokey base, from the smoked malt they use, and it's a robust enough ale at 6.5 per cent abv. Those roasted malts give it a dark colour but it's not overly heavy and there are lovely hints of coffee throughout and dried fruit.
