Concept beers are crucial and meritable – they keep brewers on their feet, and they keep compelling beers coming onto the market. Obviously, it is not enough to exist, beers like this need to have substance.

Tuireann Bán is a White IPA. The attempt is to take a Belgian Style Wheat beer and mix it with an IPA. The Ingredients instantly offer us a look into this beer as a Belgian Wit:

Having a lot of ingredients can be perceived as a negative quality in beer. This might be a “fewer moving parts” mentality, a leftover from the German Purity Law, or simply a preference for small over large scale production. In the case of a Belgian style beer, 9 ingredients is certainly not a problem. Nothing is chemical here, nothing is superfluous.

First Impressions:

When I first pour this White IPA, it is clear, as you would expect an IPA to be. It is a light straw colour, pale for an IPA.

When I mix in the yeast, which has settled in the bottle, it becomes cloudy, better reflecting the white side of this beer. The head is very strong – thick and foamy, as you would expect from a bottle conditioned Wit.

Second Impressions:

This beer is very complex to taste, which is no surprise. Up to this point, it would be very difficult to distinguish it from any Wheat beer – it doesn’t have the typical strong fruity aroma of an American IPA and it initially dresses as a Wit.

The initial point of clarity that this is a mash-up comes from the mouthfeel. It has the strong carbonation of a wheat beer, but also has a mouthcoating which compliments the strong bitterness in the flavour. It is a fruity bitterness, with notes of citrus peel. The bitterness and alcohol volume are definitely in the IPA ranges.

The head dissipates much more quickly than I expected. The Belgian flavouring is certainly present, with a herbiness to the beer from the adjuncts. It is unlike a typical piney-IPA, but is not completely unreminiscent.

Final Impressions:

The White Hag are making some of the most interesting beers in Ireland. Rather than playing it safe with styles which attempt to maximize market share, or creating beers which sound interesting on paper and taste like boring home-brew, they are creating genuinely unique, envelope pushing beers.

This is the kind of beer you pick up off the shelf because it has an interesting spin, and it follows though – it is challenging enough to hold your interest, and makes you keen for more from the White Hag.