Hop House Lager 13

https://www.guinness.com

Brewed by Guinness (Diageo)
Style: Pale Lager
St. James’s Gate, Dublin, Ireland

Coming out of the Guinness HQ at St. James’s Gate, Hop House Lager 13 is another exciting innovative beer from The Brewers Project, the guys and gals who are allowed to experiment with recipes old and new in the famous brewery, and create beers that are a bit different to the traditional stouts that Guinness usually churn out.

Available all over Ireland (handy to have that distribution network!), and to further afield in Europe and even Asia, it is an interesting lager that certainly has people talking! Not least people are noticing it due to its rather catchy name and logo.

Review: 500 ml bottle of Hop House Lager 13: 4.1% vol.

Have had this on tap and thought it wasn’t too bad to be fair to Guinness, so lets see what it’s like at home from the bottle.

Comes in a very nice dark brown bottle, with a very eye catching “13” logo on show in red lettering, this double hopped lager definitely stands out.

My bottle said 4.1% while on most reviews I see 5%. Bought it in Ireland where our government dont trust us with strong alcohol.

Also from the bottle we can see that it is “named after the 100 year old building where hops are still stored at St James Gate”.

From the website we also get “Hop House 13 is a double-hopped lager made with Irish barley and aromatic hops and continues the 256 years of heritage and brewing excellence at St. James’s Gate”

Looks like a regular lager, small white head with a clear golden yellow colour. Head dies a little but does stick around a while.

Overall it looks ok, not bad, looks nourishing!

The smell is strong enough, a real lagery smell on the nose, quite strong. I am getting fresh hops, citrus, with a good bit of passion fruits. Stronger on the nose than what a regular lager tends to be be. Promising!

On the taste found it very, very hoppy. Well it is called hop house, but wasn’t expecting a “lager” to be so bitter. More an IPA really than a regular lager, I guess that’s all that double hopping then!!
Lagery taste on the fringes, the grainy malts there, but this is hop filled to the max.

Bit dry in the mouth too while very strong in the hops, otherwise can get the citrus and light malts. iF I really want to taste all those hops in a lager then I will just order a regular IPA!

Hoppiness and that’s about it really, otherwise a very bland beer from Guinness, at least from the bottle.

No real character or flavour, it is a very weak effort as a lager to rival the big boys. Just boring and not one to seek out what with so many to choose from these days.