As 2020 has been an absolute bag of horse manure, brewers are now adapting and dealing with everyday tasks differently. One such noticeable change is a collaboration effort between two breweries at opposite ends of Northern Ireland – Lacada from Portrush and Beer Hut of Kilkeel.

To my knowledge, and correct me if I’m wrong, this is the first recent collaborative brew between two NI breweries that resulted in two similar but different beers. No physical encounters but WhatsApp and Zoom calls are the order of the year.

Both 6.2% ABV sour IPAs, Surface Noise used the same base with different dry hops. Let’s begin with Lacada’s effort.

Hopped with the ever-popular Simcoe and Citra, the north coast version is a very palatable mix of ruby red grapefruit, passion fruit and a dab of blood orange. An initial mid level sharpness fades a little, to be replaced by a delicious sweetness from those aforementioned citrus fruits.

The County Down coast version is dry hopped with Vic Secret and Ella and is hazier in the glass. It’s much softer with very low level passion fruit sourness filtering through – a sour IPA for entry level sour beer experimenters.

After I took these photos I realised you might think the Lacada version is only in the Lacada glass and the Beer Hut version is only in the Beer Hut glass with only the can changing, but in each photo, one beer is in both glasses. Um, ya get me? Clear as mud. And I said ‘only’ too many times in that sentence. Moving on!

Legendary DJ John Peel once said, “Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, listen mate, life has surface noise.”

Who knows what the great man would have made of these?