#black-boar-orange-bitters

Big fruit, little fruit

The White Hag made a big deal over the launch of Nektar . It was in the quiet period at the beginning of the year when little else seemed to be happening in Irish beer, so perhaps it was an opportune time to get the attention of the half-dozen people, me included, who give two shits about an Irish brewery releasing something new. Nektar itself was tricky to track down, and when I did, I found it's a peach-flavoured lager of 2.6% ABV. How worthy of attention would that be? It's hard to see from the photograph, but it looks like... a lager. It's clear and yellow, with a fine and thin topping of foam. The syrup makes its presence felt early doors, with an aroma which is very much nectar: all sweet and perfumey, more jam or jelly than beer. The benefit of a lager base is evident on tasting. While it's very sweet and novelty-driven, it avoids turning unpleasantly sticky by having an extremely clean -- bland, arguably -- basic lager base. One gets to, er, appreciate  the fruit concentra