Fat friars

It's a function of nothing other than my advancing age that I'm bemused to see Northern Monk as part of England's brewing establishment. I remember them as young contract-brewing upstarts, a less-convincing BrewDog, but they're still on the go and don't seem to have been affected unduly by the general downturn in their sort of craft beer. Good for them.That said, I don't drink much of their beer. For today's post I picked three, all pretty chonky ones, to remind us that this model of brewing comes to us from the USA, where beer strength has little effect on beer price, and bigger is deemed better.Unusually, I'm starting with a double IPA. It's called Above the Clouds and, as the name implies, is hazy. The can neglects to tell us what the hops are, but I'm sure it's some typical combination, because the whole thing is very typical. You've got your tangy mandarin segments, leading to slightly sharper lime zest; you've got your soft and fluffy texture with a vanilla and pink-marshmallow…