Blind tiger

The hardest rocking man in suburban Dublin, Mr Joe Elliott of Stepaside (erstwhile frontman of popular Sheffield beat combo Def Leppard) has teamed up with The Porterhouse to produce a beer promoting his latest musical project Down 'n' Outz.

It's a lager, suitably labelled in the new band's livery and presented in the Porterhouse's infuriatingly titchy 33cl bottles. The labelling itself presents a bit of a marketing issue, since the band seem to have based their logo on Heineken's brand. To then apply this to an actual beer is a bit odd, making the craft lager resemble Heineken from the outside. Maybe it's subversive. I dunno.

Anyway, I nipped up to Porterhouse North one afternoon last week to give it a go in the surrounds of the newly-refurbished beer garden. The pub wasn't open yet, as it turned out, but fortunately the management were around and Dave very kindly sent me home with some bottles of the newbie to try out.

It is, I suspect, a very close relation of Porterhouse Hersbrucker: a beer I cannot stand on draught but isn't half bad from the bottle. Cara Malt gives it a dark gold colour and a caramel sweetness, while the brewery's signature Galena bittering hop, finished with Nugget and Hersbrucker balance the malt with a fairly intense and complex waxy, grassy bitterness.

I like it. It would have been nice to have in time for summer as the flavour withstands chilling excellently making it a tasty refresher. It's certainly a clear cut above the standard macro lagers, so I don't see how it all went so wrong for Joe here:

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