Love & Death Inc: The beers

Its taken a little longer than planned to get this post written up, but etter late than never!

As previously mentioned, Belfast cocktail destination Love & Death Inc have recently launched a new  beer range, which I gather has been brewed at ??? I've had no replies to my attempt at contact, but I was told Lurgan when I picked up the beers (see below for more details). They are priced at £4/ bottle but I was given a couple of bottles for review purposes.

The first beer labelled Gold I (Dry hopped) (4.7%) pours clear pale gold with slight white fluffy head. Resinous pine and pithy lemon on the nose. Fairly high carbonation, with a big lupulin hit but little hop flavour, there's some grassy/cereal malt there instead. Bitter and dry finish. An enjoyable beer but needs more late hops. Great level of dry hopping though, and impressive for a first iteration, I could see this being well received by the lager crowd looking for something different.

IPA 3 (5.7%) on the other hand pours a hazy amber with a creamy dense head. Tangerine and Weet-a-bix on the nose is a promising start but none of those aromas translate into flavour - possibly they're obscured by the high carbonation. Instead we get a dry, rasping herbal bitterness and plenty of vegetal hops. Very much a traditional English style IPA, not sure if that's what the bar was going for. Again, missing the flavour addition. Pleasant enough, but for me just wrong choice of hops.

Its great to see another brewer on the Northern Ireland scene, there's plenty of space for more! A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests 18 breweries per million people in England; so Ireland's 1.8 million people could support a few more, especially brew pubs (more on that in a future post perhaps)! Of course antiquated licensing laws and the purchasing power of that well known South of the border conglomerate don't help.

I think the first trial batches have already flown out, but if you happen to be passing through, make sure to ask as I expect future releases will soon be forthcoming. Let me know your thoughts if you've already tried them!