#happy-coincidence

Fresh fish

Assuming a 12-month best-before, I drank these Lough Gill beers six days after they came off the canning line. It's not a metric I pay a whole lot of attention to, in fact I think the importance of freshness is massively overstated by a certain sort of beer geek who are marks for the breweries, but I thought I should mention it on the rare occasion it happens. "NEIPA" proclaims the headline on Nectaron Drift , even though its 4.5% ABV might boggle the minds of any visiting Vermonters. The "drift" means that Comet, El Dorado and Citra are also in the hop mix. It's a fairly standard beaten-egg yellow murk job, and there's a lovely spice aspect to the aroma: fresh grass and rocket leaves, to an almost peppercorn intensity. The flavour carries that right through without much change. I know Nectaron is from New Zealand, and their hops tend to have Germanic roots, but I've never encountered Nectaron tasting so Saaz-like. Isn't it supposed to be fruity? Regardless, it's lovely. The other hops