#374: Lussssshhh

In the last few years most of my beer buying has been taken up with pils, saison, gueuze, kolsch, pils again or whatever else occupies that queer twilight in the venn diagram intersect of austere and fun. 

But then, every now and again, a homo heidelbergensis such as myself craves the sweet juice of life and nothing will do but a modern soupy IPA. 

The one I've been returning to the most of late is Dot Brew's Lush DIPA. Seemingly first released in mid/late 2024, cans of this still survive in my local and yes, I still buy it and yes, I know it's not fresh and yes, I too waste a massive fucking amount of my life miserably checking the infuriatingly indecipherable 'canned-on' dates of the Northern Hemisphere's canned IPAs but yes, even if you're not sucking the beer straight from the samplecock of a BBT it will still be very nice if it's a very nice beer. 

And Lush is a very nice beer indeed. It's soft and sweet in the main but with a burst of overripe citrus intensity. Crucially it avoids all common DIPA pitfalls; the finish is clean and swift, like a flat Lilt (in a good way). It's definitely sweet but it's definitely not sticky, and even more definitely moreish and approachable. Grapefruit abounds, orange marmalade supports, vanilla recedes, and the body is not as thick and creamy as expected - there's a gentle but essential little sparkle of life in there. 

I don't know how regular Dot keeps their beers, I suspect this might be a one and done situation. And what harm, there are a quintillion iterations of this exact beer to be iterated and all are deserving of their glimmer of life from the immense void of the brewers' subconcious. That said, if you see this one around, it's still got it.