This box from Turning Point, based in Knaresborough, was timed with their release of Disco Kingdom, with four variants of their flagship Disco King pale ale which I’m really excited to drink because I’m a big nerd when it comes to comparing similar beers (and I really like Disco King!).
The OG Disco King is 5.1% and hopped with Mosaic and Chinook. Lightly hazy, it’s got the perfect balance of big fruity hop aromas and a mouthfeel and carbonation that’s still crisp and refreshing, which I really like. I get lots of tropical and citrus fruits, all of them mixed together, with some tropical fruit candy, tinned mandarin and tinned apricot. The bitterness is low and it’s a real crowd-pleasing pale ale.
Disco Jester is the beer I’m most excited to drink in this box. I’ve had Turning Point beers brewed with modern British hops before and they’re great. This one takes the same base brew as Disco King and swaps the US hops for Jester, Harlequin and UK Chinook, and it’s one of the best British-hopped pale ales I’ve had in the last few years. The best compliment I can give is that I don’t think many drinkers would know it was made with British hops if they didn’t know – you get a lot of juicy fruits, it’s reminiscent of tropical fruit squash, there’s apricot, fruit candy, citrus pith, and then just a hint of herbal, peppery bitterness which adds a distinctly British accent right at the end. Love it.
Disco Tropical takes the already-fruity Disco King and adds pineapple to it plus more tropical-tasting hops. One of those hops, Sabro, can bring a coconutty aroma to beer and the first thing I thought when I tasted this was definitely pina colada. The pineapple adds some light tartness, which is refreshing and distinctively that of ripe pineapple (so doesn’t taste fake unlike a lot of tropical IPAs), then the added hops bring both a creamy coconut and more juicy tropical fruits. Nicely done!
Disco Midnight is Disco King reimagined as a dry hopped stout, and it’s very good – it’s also really interesting to see how the dry hops in a pale ale change when put in a beer with lots of darker malts. The base brew is toasty and roasty, but not bitter like espresso and it’s more of a dark malt complexity and depth. The hops which were all juicy fruits in Disco King are now like charred versions of those fruits – think grilled pineapple and baked stone fruits. The hops still come through really well in the beer, and there’s a brilliant integration of hops with the darker malts. Superb.
Also in my box were four more of the Turning Point range.
Their core range Pilsner is Nova, which is 4.6% and gluten-free. It’s a little sweet with some fuller malt flavours, then the two classic lager hops, Saaz and Tettnang, come through at the end. It has a very slight acidity to the beer, which is normal in a lager and can add nice refreshment, though to me that was just a bit too high and unbalanced the beer a bit (plus I’d have loved more flavour from those hops).
Their Session NEIPA, Astral Voyage, is another core beer for Turning Point. It’s only 3.4%, and brings some nice aromas from Citra, Mosaic and Galaxy. It’s light with high carbonation, and has aromas like mango candy and citrus fruit squash. Nice and refreshing.
Sunshine Indoors is a mango and saffron lassi pale ale that’s 6% brewed with vanilla and lactose, to give that creamy quality of a lassi. The aroma definitely makes you think of sweet things and that continues as you drink it – it’s all sweet mango and vanilla (you need a sweet tooth for this one, I reckon). It had a bitterness that reminded me of jalapeno peppers, which worked well with the mango. I didn’t get too much saffron.
Milk Foley is a 6.3% strawberry and cream pale ale, and another beer that’s on the sweeter side. The aroma was very nostalgic to me of strawberry and cream hard sweets I remember having as a kid, and also of the chewy strawberry and vanilla sweets. It’s got a lot of candy qualities, but keeps a bitterness of a pale ale (which is perhaps a bit too jarring for me!). It’s not my kind of beer, and is too sweet for me, but the flavour of strawberry and cream is a lot of fun!