The slowdown in the rate of limited releases hitting bottleshops and bars has been marked over the past year or two, but there are exceptions who continue to operate as if it's still mi-2020. And Fox Friday are very much in that category, putting out multiple new beers every month on both coasts. In October, they've put out no less than five on the East Coast alone – six if you count the Carwyn Cellars' birthday collab.
Starting with Harvest Moon, as it's my favourite Neil Young album (and the Poolside cover of the title track ends up on plenty of playlists), you have a beer tagged a West Coast pale: very pale, dry, lean, and with grapefruit and stonefruit present but held in check, as is pretty much every element. It has me imaging a session version of Thornbridge's Jaipur with deep lime and grapefruit hop flavours that linger. That or an XPA with a bit more oil / resin character. You decide
Fellow pale ale Barstools Built For Dreamers is even breezier, as lightly hazy and pale as it is light-bodied. There's something of the English pale to it, perhaps the use of Golden Promise malt or the rounded texture from Bluestone's New England yeast strain. That said, the US-NZ hop products combo ensures that side of things is very much in tropical / savvy B territory.
Thresher is an American wheat – a style that, to this writer, shares much in common with Pacific ales – and pours the colour of late season barley with a touch of haze. The brewers added orange zest and that's the defining characteristic here, contributing a Jelly Baby-like full sweetness to the aroma, and juicy, zesty orange to taste in this smooth-on-the-palate quaffer.
Taking a break from all thing hoppy and fruity and we have 12° Plato. The name is a reference to the density of iconic Czech lagers and here the combination of floor-malted Bohemian Pilsner, Vienna, Carabohemian, Melanoidin and Acidulated malts serve up a platter of cake batter and pretzels-baking-in-the-oven aromas. The hops play second, if not third, fiddle to the layers of malt, with just a hint of phenols in the mix too.
Side quest into lager and malt done, back to the hops... Detail Work is the sort of beer with which Fox Friday Mk 2 first made their name: a hazy ipa with milky levels of haze. Citra hops in partnership with Rakau and Nelson Sauvin from New Zealand bring stone fruit and pineapple aplenty on the one hand and also a grassy, vegetal hop texture on the other. It means the beer manages to have both a creaminess of texture and a grippy bitterness, and is certainly the most impactful of the quintet.
James Smith
Published October 28, 2024 2024-10-28 00:00:00
