The names of Wylam’s ales could quite easily be mod-rock album titles. And not mainstream albums either. Albums that are more Radio 6 than Radio 1. They’re names that you’re more likely to come across browsing through a Tate Modern exhibition. They’re less Monet more Melville. Utterly surreal. Perhaps that explains the surreal, quirky and unique labels that don their pumps, bottles and cans containing this liquid excellence. This typifies a brewery that loves experimenting with a wide array of flavours and ingredients. For Wylam, brewing is an artform and their latest masterpiece, The Economic Growth of the Geek, adds to their growing collection.
It twangs with zest like a rattling thwack on one of the winding, mazy pipes that adorn the label, reverberating with flavour. You smack your lips together, trying to get your head around the combination of flavours. This is a GALAXY IPA. It’s a nod to the galaxy hops accrued to brew this wonderful ale but that shouldn’t stray you from the accuracy of the underlying metaphor here. The taste is unfathomable, a swirling cosmological vastness in the vacuumuous void of deep space. Galaxy hops are an import from down under so constellation-wise this is less borealis, more australis. All the same, this astronautical ale is an absolute triumph. We’re just hoping that Wylam brew this in planetary quantities. Jupiter-sized.
Luke Connelly