Call the style police

As it's the beer producing arm of a brewing supplies company, one would have thought that Our Brewery would have all the technicals dialled in. I found some... not flaws, but anomalies, in the most recent set I bought.

I began with Is This How You Feel, presented as a witbier, and it does list wheat, coriander and orange peel among the ingredients, but there's chamomile too. 3.8% ABV is far lower than any Belgian brewery makes this style, and seems a little retrograde. And then the colour is almost completely clear, the shiny gold only very faintly misted. So it's not a witbier as the term is commonly understood. The aroma doesn't do much, offering little other than vague savoury herbs. It's as light as the strength number suggests, verging on watery, though there's enough flavour being carried to keep it interesting. That's a fresh floral character, giving meadowy lavender and violet with a jet of lemon zest and a heavier oily herb side. It's not witbier but it's very tasty and exceedingly refreshing. I can't think of what other style it could be designated as: this is the sort of creation that isn't really done any favours by the whole concept of beer styles. While it's delicious, I don't know that it would score many points in a style-based competition against other beers. This demands to be enjoyed on its own level.

Pils to follow: Any Kind of Weather, single hopped with Nelson Sauvin. This is a flawless pure gold, and with a bit of poke at 5.4% ABV. Immediate marks off for poor head retention, though instant forgiveness for a fabulous tropical aroma, combining mango and melon with a spicy-floral bathbomb background. I'm in. Expecting fruit, I was surprised by the bitterness of the foretaste, and there's a dry grain-husk character as well. Nelson's white grape follows that, and the spice reappears as a jasmine perfume effect, more sticky dessert wine than crisp Sauvignon Blanc. With that comes an unctuous texture which is most un-pils-like. I think they might have mis-assigned the style here, because it's really not much like a pilsner, what with the sweetness, strength and density. Regardless, it's another unorthodox beauty. I love Nelson Sauvin in full-throated tropical mode and that's what's on offer here, although I had looked forward to a pilsner and was a little disappointed it wasn't delivered. I'll take a gummy Nelson showcase quite happily instead, however. 

They're all special to me, so I don't know what makes the American-style IPA, Making Sense Of It All, a "special edition". They're trying to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds here, offering "west coast intensity with a touch of modern haze juiciness". I was sceptical. In the glass it's a west-coast amber, though reasonably hazed up, albeit far from opaque. The aroma is citrus pith and grapefruit segments, plus a savoury seam of fried onion, all of which chimes with the billed hops: Columbus, Cascade, Simcoe and Citra. There's nothing New England about anything there. The body is surprisingly light for 6.2% ABV, and there's certainly none of the full and smooth body that comes with the hazy side. Alas, that onion end of the equation is what dominates the flavour, leaving the grapefruit cowering behind it. No extra flavour dimensions appear either, so there's none of the promised haze character and it's all quite two-dimensional. I expected more at 6.2% ABV. Thin and severe, without any proper west-coast zing, this was quite the damp squib, unfortunately.

Still, two out of three is decent going. It's not like we needed another hazy IPA on the shelves anyway. Bonus points for the brewery's tweaking of the established beer styles and (mostly) making good stuff outside of the normal parameters. That's a more worthwhile type of creativity than bunging in some wacky ingredients.

Runners up

I'm such a sucker for a sequence of beers that I'm miffed to find these two are part of a series of three. It's obvious from the names, to which I wasn't really paying attention when I picked them up in Polonez just before Christmas. They're both from the Vienas Brewery in Lithuania. There's a ring of faux-craft about the branding, but I couldn't find any direct link to the big Lithuanian brewing concerns.

In reverse order, then, we start with Bronze Dark. "Pint of dark beer" it says on the can. Yes please. It's not actually all that dark: a clear copper tone, not dissimilar to a red ale. There's an estery aroma, of bananas and headaches, which is much less clean than the beer appears. Sweet chocolate opens the flavour, followed by a complementary nutty quality. It's a bit odd, but then the beer makes no claim to a style, so I can't really ding it on those grounds alone.

The alcohol kicks in next. It's only 5.8% ABV, but has the burn and cloy of manys a doppelbock or barley wine. The heat comes with a flabby, sugary texture, making it all a bit soupy and difficult. I'm guessing it's still a lager, mind, as the finish is at least more refined, cutting short any building unpleasantness and adding in some grassy noble hops and some light cherry and raisin. I hoped it would calm down as I got used to it but, half way through, it was still being a chore to drink. It's a combination of the heat and sweetness, plus bock-like intense Germanic hopping, that made it hard for me to enjoy. Your mileage may vary here. Just don't expect something along the lines of German or Czech dark lager: they're generally much more refined than this. A bronze is being very generous.

Above that on the podium, but below it in strength, is the 5% ABV Silver Wheat. I was expecting something in the weissbier line, though it poured kristall at first, only clouding up when some lees at the bottom of the can went in. There's a certain amount of phenolic fruit in the aroma, but we're talking watery tinned peaches rather than big banana. Clove-dodgers can rest assured that there isn't any here.

There is a little in the flavour, however. It's mild, but the rest is pretty bland so it sticks out, albeit at more of a rock-candy level than raw twiggy buds. The carbonation is low for the style, and the head-retention poor, so while I will admit that it does qualify as a weissbier and seems to have all the right ingredients for that, it's not a good one. There's nothing wrong, exactly, it's just all low-key and feels cheap, which of course it was. You might need to add a few pennies to trade up to Weihenstephaner, or even Franziskaner if you're not a snob, but I reckon it's worth doing.

Alas, "Golden Extra" will have to wait for the next medals ceremony since I don't have that to hand today. Mind you, on this showing I'm beginning to doubt that their purported credentials are warranted.

Fruit and pudding

A flying visit to Dublin by Jay Brooks last month gave me an opportunity to catch up on the recent beers from Urban Brewing in the docklands. More of them than I expected, in fact, thanks to Jay generously sharing his flight of samples.

A grape ale caught my eye. That's a new one for the brewery, but possibly inevitable given their prodigious turnover. Oenobier is the name, 5.4% ABV and a pale copper colour, or possibly rosé, for the wine-inclined. The aroma is sweet and broadly fruity, a bit like Lucozade, suggesting syrup to come. Not in the mouthfeel, though: it's fizzy like a lager and the light texture doesn't reflect the sizeable strength. Grape flavour is hard come by, and I looked hard. It's really just a vague, artificial, syrupy fruitiness, bringing us back to Lucozade, though it's allegedly Muscat. It is at least dry and slightly crisp, perhaps suggesting Champagne if one had to pin a wine style to it. I deem it fine, but there's room for grapeing it up significantly if it's being re-brewed.

Kalamansi + Blood Orange IPA doesn't need much explanation, though it's the session variety, at just 4% ABV. It's pale gold with a slight haze, giving off a mild perfume aroma. This is another understated one, with a hint of orange, but no more. You wouldn't guess that two types of citrus fruit were involved, and I'm guessing it's real fruit rather than concentrated, and as such has all but fermented out, leaving only an echo. The finish is dry, and the overall effect underwhelming. My main beef is that they did opt to describe this as an IPA, and that means there should be more hops, by rights. Maybe they didn't want to drown out the barely-there fruit effect, but that's resulted in a beer which sounded more interesting than it turned out to be.

It's a Scotch ale next, though they've used the Americanised name of Wee Heavy for it. Built for winter at 8.8% ABV, it's nicely dense: heavy by name and nature. I expected toffee from that, but while it's sufficiently sweet, there's no stickiness or any high-gravity unpleasantness. Instead, a surprise seam of tannin runs through the middle, drying it out. That's the balance, and for complexity there's a lovely port-wine and cork character. It may be a little unorthodox, but it works incredibly well, adding an extra dimension to what tends to be quite a by-the-numbers beer style. Small-batch creativity has paid off here.

The creativity continues with the daddy of the set: Christmas Stout. I don't think they've ever done this before: a 10.3% ABV imperial stout, aged in bourbon barrels, "seasoned" with dark rum, and with sticky toffee pudding thrown in too, presumably just to annoy the purists, and raising more questions than it answers. The bourbon element is very obvious at the start, showing a tang of sourness and some fresh-oak vanilla. Later, there's a rich and warming caramel fudge flavour, which might be the novelty dessert, but it's well integrated here, suiting the big cake-like body perfectly. This is very nicely done, overall. They've resisted the route-one option of piling in cinnamon and clove, which nobody really likes, and made something properly celebratory instead.

On a Wednesday afternoon in Christmas party season in Dublin's corporate law and banking district, the place was eerily quiet. I hope Urban is doing enough business to keep the lights on and, especially, the brewery running.

Unhorrible histories

It's taken a year, but we're not in any hurry. Trouble Brewing has created a set of beers to mark the publication of Christina Wade's multi-award-winning book on Irish beer history: Filthy Queens. Liam was deployed as production consultant and they decided early on that a by-the-numbers attempt at historical beer recreation wasn't going to fly. So where everybody else would have just lied about it, they settled on two recipes, showing aspects of what we know about porter as it was brewed in the 18th century. One is influenced by Irish brewing, the other by English.

It's clearly an indication of our innate moral superiority that the Irish version contains less weird stuff. This is Fire & Labour, named for the non-ingredient expenses of brewing. It's 6.5% ABV and has molasses and gentian as its historical-meets-craft ingredient twists. I can see how they might be used as malt and hop substitutes, respectively. Reading about old-style shortcuts and adjuncts, I often wonder how easy they were to hide in the flavour: would drinkers have noticed? On this first showing, quite possibly not. I thought there would be an out-of-place extra bitterness from the gentian, but there isn't; nor is there an overdone sticky treacle effect from the molasses. This tastes like a decent, if heavy, strong dark ale. Yes, there's a leafy, green-tea, greenness and lots of brown-sugared filter coffee, but it's all within the accepted flavour profile of porter. Where it misses that mark is the finishing gravity. This is a thick boi, and you would want to have portered up one hell of a thirst for it to be slaked by it. A brisk thirst-quenching porter would be a basic requirement for 18th century me, and this isn't that. It will do for breakfast in lieu of chocolate Ready Brek, or serve as a dessert drink when we're at war with Portugal. Daytime invigoration, though? It has the calories, but thirst quenching was not on offer. Still: this is a lovely beer, even if I'd have shelved it with the extra stouts rather than the porters.

Representing the neighbours is The Fox, a derogatory term for substandard beer. The ABV goes up further, to 6.8%, and it's as thick as the previous one. Our novelty ingredients this time are treacle, liquorice and ginger. I would have thought the latter is unmistakable in any beer, and that's its whole point. There's no ginger in the flavour here, however: no spice nor candy, cake nor biscuit. This is another straight-up heavy dark beer, and while it's altogether plainer than the one before, it's tastier too. Wherever the bitterness comes from, it's doing an especially good job, making me think of old-fashioned export stout. It's a vegetal effect, with overtones of cabbage leaf meeting a harder mineral zinc and iron. I understand why people thought this was nutritious: the flavour must have resembled any number of medicines. As a 21st century leisure beverage, again it's one to drink slowly and appreciate rather than quaff for refreshment.

The absence of the interloper ingredients in the finished flavour profile is perhaps the lesson here: 18th century brewers knew what they were doing when they cheated, and there's nobody but the taxman and the more compliant breweries to say they were doing anything wrong. These days, the problem is not that your porter contains ginger and gentian, but that it doesn't explicitly taste of them. Consider that.

Well done to all concerned, and a special big thanks to L. Mulligan Grocer for hosting the sort of launch event we used to have, back when beer was fun.

Oi, lightweight

This large bottle of St Hubertus Tripel Blond was foisted upon me during my last visit to Belgium. The brand is Carlsberg's take on Belgian beer, and I've not been impressed by others in the range. The bottle bears only the address of their Belgian distributor so I don't know where it's actually brewed; the wire cage snapped before I could twist it open; and it's only 7.2% ABV, so this had a hill to climb before even the first sip.

It looks more like a blonde ale than a tripel, being pale gold and almost completely clear, topped by an inconsiderate amount of foam. The aroma is blonde too: light on esters, with a hint of citrus and flowers, plus a minimal level of Belgian spicing. Before the flavour, the fizz. Tripel does tend to be gassy, but here the relatively light body makes the high carbonation busy and intrusive. Given time to settle... there's not much there. The bitterness is an aspirin or zinc twang which would be harsh if it were more pronounced, but here is merely an annoyance. I will give it the floral sweet side, however: that's undeniably pleasant, if unsophisticated. It doesn't last long, however, and it's back to the much louder aspirin and fizz after a mere moment.

I did my best not to let my prejudices affect my review of this one, but it's simply, objectively, not a good beer. It doesn't have the correct heft and complexity for a tripel, and doesn't even work as a strong blonde ale, lacking the crisp drinkability that the best ones exhibit. I reckon the gravity is the prime factor in its failure. 7.2% ABV may have seemed generous at the office in Copenhagen or Stockholm or wherever this was dreamed up. It's too light for Belgium, however, and completely inadequate to carry the bittersweet complexity that this attempts to pull off.

Good boys

Today's beers are the tail end of what was a very busy 2025 for Wicklow Wolf. The styles are nicely varied, as is the brewery's wont.

A suspiciously short time after Ireland's football team won some important matches in November, a commemorative lager arrived. They've given Heimirken a stunt ABV of 4.42%, which is well within the range of their flagship Arcadia. I've not had Arcadia in a while, so I'm not too bothered if this is a sneaky rebadge. I don't remember Arcadia being so hoppy, however. There's a sweetly fruity flavour at the centre, which is very new-world, suggesting peach and melon to me. That's emphasised by a soft texture and gentle carbonation, so it's definitely not lowest-common-denominator fizz. A crisp grain bite finishes it off and reminds me it's a lager, not a pale ale. I was quite impressed by this, and if that means I should go revisit Arcadia, I will. 

Much as I complain about all the hazy IPAs, I'm never too upset when they're centred on New Zealand hops. Still Far Away (New Zealand is; I checked) is one such, advertising all the joys of Riwaka, Motueka and Nelson Sauvin. I don't have much to say about the haze, only that it's there. Head retention is excellent, the fine foam resembling that of a mixed-gas draught beer. The aroma isn't very punchy, but there's good stuff here: the mix of tropical fruit and diesel bite that are what makes Kiwi hops special and distinctive. Happily, there's more of the same in the taste. The fruit is dominant, and quite concentrated, with tinned peach coming to mind first. There's a complementary pithy orange quality in the finish, but the centre is that mineral oil kick. I'm not sure how others perceive this very typical Nelson Sauvin aspect, but to me it's the oily, volatile smell of aeroplane fuel when in the vicinity of a jet engine. It's odd, but it's lovely, and complements the tropical aspects beautifully. Set that on a soft base at 6% ABV, with no hot or gritty off flavours, and you have a winner. I could have stood for a bit more hop intensity, balance be damned, but there's pretty much nothing for me to complain about with this one. Top work.

It's Double Trouble, to finish: a coffee and vanilla imperial stout. This poured slowly and gloopily, beige bubbles rising to form a head the colour of coffee cake icing; foam fine enough to form a dome over the rim. Fully as expected, it smells of the advertised ingredients, the coffee dry and nutty, while the vanilla adds a custard note to the chocolate malt base. At 10% ABV, it doesn't smell hot, but boy is it thick: an almost-unpleasant gelpack of a beer, the carbonation suppressed by its sugary density and barely detectable. It coats the palate and tongue, leaving a longlasting slick, a sensation I didn't especially enjoy, so thought I would share with you. For all that, there's no explosion of flavours, and that's disappointing. Chocolate, coffee, vanilla and hazelnut all feature, with a slightly floral rosewater note on the front, turning to a more viscous raspberry syrup towards the end. But it all spins through very quickly, and fades long before the residual gloop. The aftertaste is clean and little roasty; the afterfeel lingers, however. I guess it's not meant to be anything other than a bit of fun, and it is that. I give thanks that it's not an overly sweet hot jammy mess, but I think the collaborating coffee roaster could have been somewhat more generous with their side of the bargain.

The lager and hazy IPA trumping the imperial stout is a bit of a turn-up for the books. I guess if they had left the dessert ingredients out of the latter, it might have had a better chance.

Nothing naughty

A pre-Christmas visit to the Rascals taproom in Inchicore turned up a couple of new releases, their first for me since the summer.

I'm old enough to recall when microbreweries making something they described as "Mexican lager" meant a beer which was crisp and, often, a dark-ish amber colour, drawing influence from central European lager traditions. At some point they seem to have collectively decided that "Mexican" means there's lime in it, as though the habit of sticking a lime wedge in clear-glass longnecks wasn't something we beer snobs deride. Rascals Lime Light is 4% ABV and includes lime zest in the recipe. Lime and light: I see what they did there. My expectations weren't high, but they've done a good job with the concept. For one thing, the citrus is not especially prominent, adding quite a subtle tang to the whole. It's a bit of character, rather than the beer's whole deal. The beer behind it has a decent malt substance, maybe not quite like an Austrian lager, but certainly no clone of mass-market, brewed-under-licence, pseudo-Mexican crap. A lightly floral hopping is just as much part of the taste as the lime. This is a delightful summer refresher, and a ray of sunshine on a dismal winter evening.

Recently launched in cans, but on tap at the brewery, was Freewheelin', a hazy IPA with New Zealand hops. That's quite an interesting concept, and combines haze's sweet vanilla with a more spiky herbal hop bitterness. There's not so much of either that they clash, and the result is all very complementary and integrated. Although it's a substantial 5.8% ABV, I found this very straightforward and drinkable, entirely in keeping with the chosen name. Anyone looking for those big Kiwi flavours may be disappointed, but it's just not one of those beers. Think Trouble's Ambush with a bonus antipodean spicy twist. As far as I know, it's a special edition, but Rascals has form on making such things permanent. This could be a candidate.

I had just missed the apricot double IPA so was a little disappointed there was nothing properly strong to finish. Instead, there was the welcome return of Breakfast of Champions coffee stout for dessert. Something for everyone (by the pint) at Rascals.