Out for a couple

Wet night. Push the heavy front door of Alfie Byrne's. Across the threshold and down the steps. The back-and-forth buzz of conversation. And ping-pong. The bar glows at the centre of the dim room, beckoning. A new beer from a well-respected English micro was touted earlier on Twitter. There it is, minimalist design on the tap badge. But due diligence first: a glance across the other options, over and then down to... the handpump. Chalked on the blackboard Gate Crasher Bitter by Trouble Brewing. Thought I'd missed it, and certainly didn't think I'd see it on cask. A pint, please.

Settling in the handled jug to a dark amber, though not quite brown. And not quite clear, either. First pull: yeast, gritty and bitter. Behind it, tannins and floral spices. All that jasmine. Classic English bucolics and the potential for greatness, let down by poor handling. For shame.

Still chasing rumours, out into the night again, across St Stephen's Green south, past Sir Benjamin's Palladian mansion and Joyce's alma mater. Skirting by Cuffe Street flats and around the corner to Against the Grain. Busier here. Crowded by the bar. A glance at the taps, a scan of the blackboard, and back to the taps. There. Dortmunder. Galway Bay aren't known for lagers. A brave step. A pint, please.

Husky and hazy. A wan orange hue and orange marmalade-flavoured. Biting bitterness sits atop the full grainy body, its texture the only nod to real Dortmund Export. Debate: does the assertive hopping take away from the style, or an improvement, a stage in its evolution? No matter. Good beer. Enjoyable drinking.

We're a long way from Dortmund. Is that a stout on cask? A pint, please.

Grand tour

I mentioned the Alltech Dublin Craft Beer Cup in one of the earlier posts this week. Danish brewers Coisbo were outright winners for the second time in a row, with a barrel-aged version of the beer that won them top prize last year. Eleven is a 10% ABV imperial stout matured in sherry casks. It's not a subtle beast, smelling strongly of sweet oak, though dryer on tasting, but still very very woody. I think the barrel-aging may have left it a little overcooked for my liking.

Also waltzing off with a gold medal was the only Belgian beer I had all weekend. Bertinchamps Brune also has the distinction of being packaged in a half-litre bottle, the way Belgian beers generally aren't. And that's not the only unorthodox feature. In with the very typical rich Belgian chocolate flavour there's some lovely fresh roast coffee notes too. If it wasn't for the Belgian yeast esters this would almost be a first-rate porter. It certainly hits a lot of those notes.

Luxembourgian brewery Bofferding had a stand in the trade area just opposite Galway Hooker and Aidan dared me to try their lurid cherry beer Battin Fruitée. It's not all that bad, being one of those super sweet syrup concoctions commonly found in Belgium. It doesn't edge over into saccharine so it gets a pass from me.

There were some decent beers from the Spanish exhibitors Rosita and Lo Gambusi. Both had clean and refreshing blonde ales on offer. Rosita's Carmen has a chalky mineral element for extra quenching power, despite a hefty enough 5% ABV. Gambusi's Riu is simpler again but worked well as a mid-festival palate-cleanser.

The other Rosita beer I tried was a White IPA. The herbs in here gave it a strong sausagey smell, which wasn't at all unpleasant. Juniper has been employed, I'm told, but I didn't get much of that. Everything else from the herb garden is present, however. Lo Gambusi's second tap was pouring an amber ale called Cinteta. I liked this a lot: it's not too sweet though there's a proper dose of light caramel. To balance it there's lots of greasy hop oil and flavours of pine resin and white pepper. At 5.2% ABV it's a very nice complex sessioner.

Progressive Austrian operator Brew Age had some highly impressive offerings including a black IPA called Dunkle Materie, 6.9% ABV and hopped generously with Cascade, Amarillo and Columbus for a massive juicy orange effect plus just a slight echo of roast on the finish. Dangerously quaffable stuff. Their Hopfenauflauf pale ale was less of a powerhouse, but wasn't really trying to be one either. You get a sweet and spicy kick of bath salts and a light front-of-palate bitterness. No big hop impact, just perfect balance at 5.4% ABV.

Cologne's own Freigeist caused a bit of a buzz around the room all weekend. Gose was the name of the game and Geisterzug the beer of the moment, in its rhubarb infused incarnation. Between the yeast and the fruit it delivers two kinds of tartness at once. Coupled with the addition of spruce needles it's a jolting, invigorating beer, but enormous fun to drink. I also had a taste of Abraxxxas, Freigeist's smoked wheat beer with added pears. It really makes full use of every ingredient involved, with a huge smoky fug in the flavour, layered over with a fresh and tangy pear fruitiness. I've never tasted anything like this but amazingly it all works really well.

A fake Rhineside beer to bring us home. Hoppy Cologne is by Moa in New Zealand and claims Kölsch credentials. One of the other connotations of the word Cologne popped into my head on the first sip: this tastes strongly of perfume. Given a minute it settles out into something less severe, but no more Kölsch-like: you get a spritz of lemon and a faint whiff of cattiness. It's a pretty tasty effort overall and I could easily envisage a session on it.

But, at this stage, a session on anything was furthest from my mind. A big thanks to all the exhibitors and organisers for making Alltech 2015 a fantastic event. Here's to many more years of random beery wonder.

Hungary for novelty

What got me most excited in the run-up to Alltech Brews & Food 2015 was the large number of Hungarian brewing companies listed to attend. It's far too long since I was last in Hungary so the opportunity to taste my way around its beer scene only a few minutes from my front door was one I relished.

First port of call on arriving into the Convention Centre on the Friday evening was Budapest brewpub Legenda Sörfőzde who brought a very impressive collection of off-kilter beers. Brettania is a 5.3% ABV dark red ale. It claims sourness but isn't really sour, having instead a big bretty funk and the heady sweetness of cherry cough sweets. There's even a slightly unpleasant sugary burn in the finish. An interesting sipper but I couldn't see myself drinking lots of it. Their Bazooka was altogether more integrated. This is a rye smoked dark lager and has the exact meaty aroma of a Bavarian classic. The taste is absolutely clean and balanced with plenty of rich smoky flavours. This guy I could drink in quantity.

There's a similar deft simplicity exhibited in Bunny Hop, a lager which Legenda Sörfőzde brews for Csupor. There's a fantastic ultra-fresh mown grass aroma set atop a silkily sinkable body. Csupor ThermoStout was also excellent: 6.3% ABV, big roasty aromas and a flavour which mixes a little bit of quality chocolate with a generous floral perfume. The shine comes off the partnership a little with Csupor Tántorgó ParIPA, a very minerally IPA with an unshakeable copper tang. The hops bring classic grapefruit and the body is quite light and dry. I think I expected more at 6.5% ABV.

Hello My Name Is Sudan was another Csupor beer but I don't know if Legenda Sörfőzde brewed it. It had its world première at Alltech and is named in honour of a the last male white rhino in Africa. It's an 8.2% ABV double IPA and very easy drinking despite that. Dry sherbet notes are the centrepiece and the body is remarkably light given the strength. No wonder it's endangered.

Legenda Sörfőzde brews for several other brands too, including Zodiak who brought Zodiak Red Rye Pale Ale. Though the colour was spot-on (it's almost pink!) it tasted rather grainy and stale. Along similar lines but much better was Mi újság Wagner úr? brewed for Hara Punk. This one is an amber ale at 6% ABV and with lovely cherry and cake notes, plus a slightly more grown-up funky overtone. Hara Punk also gets beer brewed at Hopfanatic in Kiskunhalas, including their new saison Monkey Funky Yeah, a modest 5% ABV and brewed with added coriander and black pepper. The latter adds a lovely oiliness to the aroma and the beer is very sharp and dry overall, though invigorating with it.

Zip Technologies was at the trade show part of the festival to show off its ultra-shiny brewing kits. But it had a small bar down on the main floor as well and I stopped by to try a couple of their offerings. Neither were much cop. Pineapple Noir is a dark saison of 6.5% ABV, with masses of stouty roast in its aroma and a flavour packed with crunchy burnt grain. There's only a very slight fruit juice element, and nothing I would have identified as pineapple. Without a label I would have taken this for a dry stout, and a very plain one at that.

The black IPA from Zip's is called Hopiverzum and it's 6% ABV but could pass for a lot stronger, with a nose full of spinach and tar, plus the burn of cheap vodka. It's smoother on tasting but loses its complexities along with the weird stuff and I got very little hop character. Another one I'd be marking as a very ordinary porter if I didn't see the style in advance.

Still, mis-steps notwithstanding I was intrigued by what the Hungarians brought to the table. It looks like an exciting place to go beering right now.

One more international round-up to come before we head for the door.

States of mind

For a festival organised by a US-based company, we weren't exactly drowning in American beer at Alltech Brews & Food 2015. It took a bit of hunting to find what was there. Obviously, Alltech's own beer was front and centre, including the new Kentucky Honey Barrel Ale. This is mahogany red and has a very woody bourbon nose. Vanilla is massively dominant in the flavour and, coupled with a huge sugary sweetness and a high level of carbonation, the overall effect is very like a bourbon and coke. Not something I'm looking for in a beer.

Meanwhile, at the Grand Cru stand, they had tapped up Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout. The coffee flavour isn't too overdone here and at its heart it's a simple middle-of-the-road dry stout. Lagunitas DayTime was much more fun, all bright sherbet lemons and more serious heavy resins finishing perfectly cleanly for bonus drinkability. And all at 4.6% ABV, making it a session IPA truly worthy of the style.

DayTime, like the remaining American beers in this post, came from the Dublin Cup bar, where leftover beers from the international competition go to be disposed of. It's a wonderful idea and I took full advantage. Where else would you get to try Schlafly Oatmeal Stout, a marvellously smooth and sweet number, using its 5.7% ABV to give it extra welly but staying soft and approachable at the same time. The same can't be said for New Holland's Dragon's Milk, a 10% ABV imperial stout given far too long in bourbon barrels coming out the other side dripping with vanillins and only a late rush of milk chocolate offering any kind of complexity.

Back to simple and subtle again, and Major Tom's Pomegranate Wheat by Fort Collins brewery is light on fruit but makes good use of the dry flavour from the pomegranate for a very refreshing end result. Dark Horse's Crooked Tree IPA is also nicely refreshing, though perhaps darker and a little sweeter than many of its contemporaries. There's a lovely hard orange candy flavour but nothing blaringly bitter or citric. It's one that's worth taking time over, not that I did.

Two rather plain sweet dark ales to finish on. I've been very impressed with Great Lakes beers in the past but Conway's Irish Ale didn't do it for me. It offers only a few crumbs of biscuit and a dry mineral edge but otherwise failed to hold my attention. Similarly, Smuttynose Old Brown Dog is dark red and mostly tastes of caramel. This time the extra dimension comes from a few wisps of roasted grain but there's not really enough to make it interesting.

Some quality beers here, but nothing too daring or different in this selection. I've saved the more thrilling beers for the last couple of posts.

What else you got?

Several established Irish breweries brought beers I'd never had before to the 2015 Alltech festival at the Convention Centre. Galway Hooker, for instance, has just launched a new bottled IPA called 60 Knots. It's a serious dark gold colour and is all about the classic grapefruit aromas. As my first beer on the second day of proceedings it seemed sharply acidic to begin, and a little brassy. But there are mellower elements in the flavour too: a touch of that signature Hooker biscuit and a more fun gunpowder spicing. You know you're getting a full-on 6.5% ABV and 60 IBUs here. This is one for the Hooker Pale Ale fans who've spent the last nine years craving something bigger.

Hilden is also at the ABV-raising game. Their new one is a double IPA called Buck's Head and is dark gold once again. While the hops definitely make their presence felt -- bitter and waxy -- the malt is a major contributor to the overall flavour. You get a warming cake-and-caramel weightiness with this one. It's perhaps a little old-fashioned compared to the zingier sort of US-style DIPA, but it works perfectly well as a beer in its own right.

If it was zing you were after, Kinnegar was the bar to go to. The Donegal brewery has jumped on the white IPA (ish) bandwagon with one called White Rabbit, hopped entirely with Vic Secret and while allegedly brewed with the customary wheat, there's very little sign of it or any other malt in here. Bask instead in the glory of grapefruit and the roar of the resins. The rabbit beer from the rabbit (ish) brewery is unapologetically hoppy.

IPA fail of the weekend was a non-exhibit, but a bottle of Farmageddon Wet Hop IPA smuggled into the press room by Nigel. I can only assume a saboteur filled two thirds of this with TCP as it reeked and tasted of raw disinfectant and absolutely nothing else.

From ale to lager, briefly, and Remix India Pale Lager from the increasingly hyperactivie Trouble Brewing. It's 5% IPA and very dank, tasting akin to the air just outside the front door of Amsterdam Centraal. There's a fun peppery piquancy and a quick, clean exit from the palate like a proper lager ought to have. Big and complex while also being simple and quaffable. A taster really didn't do this justice.

Two more new Irish saisons made an appearace. Carlow's latest seasonal Spring Saison is the plainer of the two, No fruit, no esters, just very dry -- stale, even -- dusty burlap and grain sweepings. Wicklow Wolf, meanwhile, had the shortest-pitched seasonal I've ever encountered: Solar Eclipse was topical for about five minutes last Friday morning. It's a lovely dark copper colour and rather strong at 6.5% ABV. While it leans towards the fruit-forward type of saison -- green banana and lychee coming through in a big way for me -- it's all very deftly balanced with peppercorn and similar dry spices. There's great refreshment power here despite the strength.

I have to fit a couple of token stouts into these Irish posts, and Jack Cody's fits the bill first with their Paddy's Day seasonal Hail Glorious Saint Patrick. It's 5.4% ABV and absolutely bang-on for a slightly-bigger-than-usual Irish stout: chocolate looms large in the aroma and the flavour profile floats nicely between sweet dark malts and drier roasted elements. They've cheekily badged it as an imperial stout and I can kind-of see the basis for the claim -- it's pretty full-flavoured after all -- but it lacks the warmth to really pull off the illusion.

I finally got to catch up with the two 12th Abbey beers I hadn't tried, and to hear about the highly ambitious brewery development plans under way. In the meantime, Raven Stout is a very simple and straightforward Irish dry stout, throwing a bit of caramel into the mix as it warms, though also featuring a strange aspirin acidity. 12th Abbey Pale Ale also has this. Jaffa orange is the sum total of the hop fruit flavour, but it's more sharp than anything else. Like the Amber ale, all of these recipes could do with tweaking to smooth out their rougher edges.

Our last port of call before we head abroad is Station Works, up there by Newry railway station. They had a new pale ale on the go called The Foxes Rock. It doesn't really work, being all buttery diacetyl and nasty chalky mineral dryness. One of those beers that leaves you boggling at what the brewer could possibly have intended. Station Works also has grand plans to revitalise cask beer in Ireland and has been busily cloning the beers from its sister operation Cumberland Breweries. Station Works No. 1 was the first fruits of this, a 4.7% ABV cask brown ale. While there's more butter here, it works far better in this sort of beer. The overall effect is of milky coffee or chocolate ice cream. I'd love to say it hits the mild style spots but it's just too heavy and not refreshing enough for that. Still a decent beer: a regular sweet brown ale on cask could well be a winner.

That's the UK and Ireland covered. Where to next?

And not an Irish red to be seen

The arrival of new Irish breweries is always exciting, so I made sure to stop by the Wicklow Brewery stand at Alltech Brews & Food. I say "new": the brewpub on the caravan site in Redcross has been in production since last summer, but so far hasn't got much beyond its very local market. Not that it has to, of course.

My grin of delight became a little fixed when I noticed that Wicklow Brewery Helles was front and centre. New Irish pale lagers can be something of a gamble. All doubt was swept away with the first taste. Yes, it's a bit hazy, and there's maybe rather more sulphur on the nose than you'd expect for this style of beer, but it has just the right amount of bready weight in the body and some lovely light green vegetal hop notes: celery and raw spinach. It's very drinkable and I wasn't remotely surprised to learn that Mathis the brewer is German born and trained.

There's a Weiss in the line-up too, a spicy one, with more of that crisp celery backed by fruity candy and a slight edge of pear. Again a very easy drinker and very much on the cleaner and drier side of the genre -- no big bananas or clove notes here.

The outlier of the range is WB-40, a 6.6% ABV amber ale. It's mostly quite bitter, turning a little metallic in the finish, but the malt adds a raisin and fruitcake complexity, as well as a generous helping of caramel. So, nearly an Irish red then, but with enough other stuff going on to differentiate it.

Rye River really pulled out the stops to impress, with a vast high-tech festival bar and a sequence of one-off geek-bait beers. Saison? Obviously. This one was an approachable 4.9% ABV, golden in colour with a heady nose of honey and meadows. A dry crispness is the centrepiece of the flavour, almost like burnt popcorn, with just a wisp of peach esters alongside. A simple refresher, and further evidence for me that lower strength is better where saison is concerned.

There was a very porterish Brown Ale, more roast and toast than caramel and toffee, and all the better for it; and a Double IPA. The latter was textbook stuff: peach and pineapple aromatics; a thick, almost greasy texture, and an explosively tangy flavour consisting mainly of mandarins but with a darker edge of dank. Very, very nicely done.

And last of the Rye River specials was their Berliner Weisse, claiming to be brewed to just 1.3% ABV. It hits all the usual style points within that, however: a grainy wheat quality, a crisp finish, and of course an electric buzz of super-refreshing lactic sourness.

Another German-style Wicklow beer to end on: Distinction Lager is from the newly-established Manor Brewing Company in Blessington. This trial batch is an all-Saaz job, 5.1% ABV and beautifully clean, allowing the hops to shine out. It was one of only two Irish gold medal winners in Alltech's Dublin Craft Cup (the other being barrel-aged Leann Folláin) and it was a deserving winner, I think. Hopefully nothing will change between now and full-scale production.

That's the new and surprising Irish stuff at the festival. More from the local breweries next.

Events, dear boy

Alltech Brews & Food returned in spectacular fashion for 2015 at the end end of last month. Rumours of a dialled-down beer offer at the three-day event proved totally unfounded, with a host of brewers from across Europe and further afield represented. The only bit that irked me was the translucent plastic beaker we were given to drink from. It made it impossible to photograph the beers so, rather than leave you bereft of the benefits of my singular lensmanship, I abandoned mine early on and used whatever clear receptacle I had to hand. On the upside, tasting my way like that through all three sessions did mean I got to try a vast number of beers. We have a lot to get through between now and Saturday. Let's get stuck in.

I'll begin where I left last week's Thornbridge teaser post, with the British breweries. Beavertown had a whole stand of its own on the Four Corners strip. Talk of the festival was Londonerweisse, a 2.8% ABV Berliner-weisse-style beer, prepared with gin botanicals. It's a hazy pale yellow colour and offers up a very fruity and funky aroma. The herbs are unmistakeable, lending a peppery bite to the clean and gin-crisp flavour. You sometimes get a waft of grainy wheat in this sort of beer, but there's no such fuzziness here, just perfect poise.

Staying on a highly-attenuated kick, Applelation is a saison, brewed stonkingly strong at 8.2% ABV, and with added apples. It's all about that saison funk, plus a dry finish preventing it from getting difficult to drink, as I often find with strong saisons. I'd been hoping for more of a fresh apple flavour but there's really none to speak of. I'm not complaining, though.

From dry to sweet and Beavertown Moose Fang made its début at the event, a super heavy brown ale of 8.6% ABV and tasting richly of espresso and chocolate ice cream sauce. The coffee roast balances the sweetness and makes for an excellent sipping beer. This is possibly the first "imperial brown ale" I've met that adequately hits the spots normally reserved by imperial stout.

And the other Beavertown headliner was Bloody 'Ell, an IPA with added blood orange, strong again at 7.2% ABV. This is quite new on the market and its freshness was evident from the get-go: a huge hit of heady, oily hop volatiles opens proceedings. The added ingredient works really well to complement the hop effect and you end up with a beer that's juicy in two different ways at once. So juicy, in fact, that it's very easy to forget how much alcohol is present. Handle with care.

Redwell from Norwich was back for a second year, with Mr Nate Southwood at the helm. He insisted, insisted, I try all their beers. There was: the irrepressible Redwell Hells, as smooth, full-bodied and bready as you'd like a helles to be, though at a happily modest 4.6% ABV; Redwell Steam Lager, a lighter, simpler, copper-coloured job; Redwell India Pale Lager, bringing us up to 5.5% ABV but not doing a whole lot flavourwise to justify the extra strength as the hops are quite muted; the near-inevitable session IPA Redwell Anytime: not a great example, with a bit too much butter happening and little else; and new special Redwell White IPA, a 6% ABV souped-up witbeer which holds back on the bitterness and allows the traditional spices to come through more, with a candy-fruit sweetness and a warming buzz of alcoholic heat.

Thus with Britain taken care of, let's see what our own lot were up to.

Bakewell start

On the eve of Alltech Brews & Food 2015, Grand Cru beers held a meet-the-brewer session with Thornbridge in Against the Grain, tasting the classic line-up of Chiron, Jaipur and St Petersberg and finishing on the 10th anniversary special Jaipur X. This monster is 10% ABV but really doesn't taste it, being the same innocent pale gold as Jaipur and exhibiting the same waxy, honey flavours as the basic edition, just  a small bit more of them. I've never been much of a Jaipur enthusiast, but I think the profile works better in a mellower, stronger beer, like this.

Two other special editions were on: Eroica (left) is a 4.3% ABV golden ale with little by way of hop character. Some might call it simple and sessionable; I'm afraid I'll have to file it under watery and boring. The complete opposite can be said of Jehanne, an amber-brown bière de garde of 7.4% ABV and laying on that alcohol in hot and heavy fashion. The dominant flavour is green apples (acetylaldehyde, if my beer chemistry is correct) which I found drowning out any subtleties on offer. Still, it's nicely smooth and warming from the keg and a full pint (cheers Wally!) sent me home glowing.

And so to the main event. Alongside the Irish breweries, Alltech attracted a wide international selection from brewers brought in by their local distributor and those present off their own bat. From the Thornbridge end of the Grand Cru section I snaffled a taste of AM:PM, a 4.3%-er in the must-brew style of the moment, "session IPA". This is rose-gold in colour and has a lovely rich golden syrup aroma, with a matching weighty English ale body. The hops offer little more than a pleasant buzz, with a faint metallic edge. It's not boring and certainly not unpleasant, but it had its work cut out sharing space with the genre-defining Founders All Day IPA and didn't quite match up to it, in my estimation at least.

And that's where it started. There's more to come from Alltech Dublin 2015 next week. A lot more.

The next round

I have yet to delve into the notes I brought home from three days of downright promiscuous beer speed-dating at the Alltech Brews & Food festival a few weeks ago. But among the events there have been since then was a much smaller affair but along similar lines organised by beer distributor Barry & Fitzwilliam. It was more a trade fair than a festival, set in a hotel function space on a Friday afternoon and offering journos and retailers the opportunity to meet with brewers and cider-makers, and taste their wares. Most of the breweries were relative newcomers to the scene and for me it was a chance to try some of the new additions they'd added to their existing ranges.

Munster Brewery was a case in point. I covered its first two beers here and the new one is the first non-lager: 12 Towers red ale. It's quite pale for the style, but has a fairly typical ABV of 4.2%. In what may be another sign of the evolution of the style away from toffee-laden crystal malt showcases, this one is light and refreshing with a sherbety spice to it, gently primed and conditioned in the bottle for a pleasantly understated prickle of carbonation. Better than you might expect for something calling itself an Irish red.

At the next table over, Liam from St. Mel's was pouring his latest seasonal: Spring Bock. It's a bock. For the spring, like. Pale bocks are pretty rare in Irish brewing, and it's another style where the real thing doesn't usually put a smile on my face. This one did, though. Darkly gold and properly weighty at 5.6% ABV it doesn't have the big horrible melted plastic thing I often get from strongly hopped German-style beers. Instead the clean lager base buoys up a random and unexpected smoky note. Since there's no smoked malt involved, this is probably one of those things that counts as a technical flaw, but it's one this drinker is perfectly happy to tolerate, nay encourage.

Keeping things Teutonic, relative veterans Bo Bristle were at the event, ably represented by brewer Dave. Shamefully, I'd never tasted Bo Bristle Pilsner so made sure to put that right. It presents very very pale and smells worryingly... uric. Thankfully the flavour is entirely piss-free, Mount Hood hops giving it a decent kick of bitterness with gentler green flavours coming from the Hersbrucker. It's a tough one to judge on just a small sample: I think it's made for pinting and I'd be very willing to try that at some stage.

Into every trade fair a little rain must fall, and the disappointment of the evening, for me, came in the form of West Mayo's Clifford's Connacht Champion golden ale. I've previously pointed out there's a big diactyl issue with their red, and this one too is more Danish butter cookies than beer. The extra hopping gives it a spicing which, unlike the red, means it isn't a complete disaster, but pale ales from an established brewery should not be coming out this mucky.

I mentioned Tyrone brewery Pokertree last week, and owner-operator Darren was pouring his beers at the event. It was my first chance to try Seven Sisters, a 5.2% ABV treacle and oat stout. It's lighter than the description suggests, but more than your typical roasty flavours or any dark sugars, I got a kind of beefy, Bovril-esque flavour. The calling card of autolysis? Possibly. It was still perfectly drinkable, just a little unsettling.

Darren was over in Manchester recently, putting together a collaboration brew with Marble. The result is a pale ale named after the infant heir to the Pokertree empire: Little Barney. This is 5% ABV, amber coloured and extremely dry, with a definite astringency coming through in the flavour, reminding me of cranberries in particular, while the strong aroma is all fresh damp grass. It's one of those beers that requires a moment or two of palate recalibration, but is worth the effort.

It wasn't the best beer I tried, however. That honour goes to a new start-up operation from Laois called 12 Acres. They're currently using 9 White Deer's brewing facilities but, here comes the USP, the malt is home-grown. The family farm has been producing malting barley for years. Now they've started asking Boortmalt to separate their crop and give it back to them when malted. That's then used (with a bit of extra Munich malt) to make 12 Acres Pale Ale.

It's 4.6% ABV and golden in colour. The hop aroma is powerfully sweet, perfumed even. They've made good use of Citra, giving the floral sweetness just enough balancing bitterness. A superb refresher with plenty of complexity at a modest strength.

Thanks to all the brewers for their generous samples, and to the Barry & Fitzwilliam guys for inviting me. More wandering around event space with a plastic beer receptacle coming up...

Lager vs. Ale

There's something very wrong-looking about Anchor beer packaged in a container other than their iconic stubby bottle. Even the veteran brewery's large-format bombers have retained the classic shape. So it felt a bit weird to come to this can of their California Lager, but that's just the times we live in.

This San Francisco 4.9%-er pours a hazy, bitty yellow, topped by a thick mat of loose bubbles. It's plain but decent fare to taste, mostly quite grainy but with a heavy layer of banana and mango on top. The fruit is accentuated by quite a dense texture and very low carbonation for a lager. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. It's a bit too weighty to chug down but isn't quite complex enough to be a sipper. I guess they're going for a kind of Munich helles smoothness but it just doesn't quite have the cleanness of that style.

We stay in California next, well maybe: this bottle of New DogTown pale ale carries a helpful reminder that Lagunitas operates out of Chicago now too. It's a tangy beast, an innocent pale gold but tasting brassy and galvanic at first while the aroma is all rubber and sulphur. So far, so industrial. My palate took a little time to refocus. Once it did I found there's much more fun to be had in here. Yes it's intensely bitter, but there's orange and grapefruit, gunpowder and sherbet, spinach and weed to be enjoyed too. It's perhaps a little watery, especially given the stonking 6.2% ABV, but those powerhouse hops leave me feeling very forgiving indeed.

Apologies to anyone who thought this post was going to be on the respective merits of beer genres. Like any self-respecting beer fanatic, I enjoy both.

Hold, fold and punch

Boxing and poker are the themes for today's beers, though we're in Northern Ireland rather than Las Vegas. You can fit your own joke about fear and loathing in here.

Ghrian is a 4.5% ABV dark golden ale from Pokertree, bottle conditioned yet miraculously clear, doubtless due to the deal with the devil that gave the brewery its name. And it's a damn fine version of the style, with clean and crisp oatmeal biscuit and golden syrup, overlaid with a leafy vegetal complexity: bok choi and spinach plus a garnish of peppery rocket and finishing on a slightly metallic bitterness. The body is properly aley and full but the residual sugar isn't allowed dominate and it stays perfectly refreshing throughout. This is a deftly put together beer, positioned well for both the cautious newcomer and those looking for an extra dimension or two of flavour.

It turns out that a fondness for big floppy jumpers isn't the only thing I have in common with the late Kurt Cobain. We both have our roots in Pokertree's home town of Carrickmore, Co. Tyrone, and Dark Nirvana is the brewery's tribute to him. I'm sure the one to me will follow in due course. Badged as a "cascadian ale" this is 6.5% ABV and smells enticingly of fresh coffee, cherries and incense. That fragrant, oily perfumed bittersweet incense spice is a big part of the flavour, with a breezier turkish delight and milk chocolate sweetness humming along merrily behind it. It's a very strange beast, and won't be for everyone, but I loved it, even if I probably won't need another bottle any time soon.

Up the other end of the M1 there's Belfast, now boasting a second microbrewery with more on the way. These samples from Knockout Brewing arrived courtesy of Steve.

Take a swing and feel the hops connect as a haymaker of a punch hits your mouth says the label of Knockout Irish Red Ale. Um, OK. It's not 100% hyperbole, either: this is a strongly flavoured beer, but not really in a way I enjoyed. The toffee is laid on very thick, and while I guess an attempt has been made to balance it, it ends up being a harsh and acidic bitterness. There's definitely no subtlety or nuance here, but then the name doesn't exactly imply there should be. More than Irish red, it reminds me of some of the more intense German bocks, beers which have legions of fans but just don't suit my palate at all.  It looks nice, however, beaming rosy red and topped by a comfortable layer of foam, and I can't say I was able to pick out a single technical flaw anywhere. I just didn't like the bugger.

At 4.5% ABV, Knockout's Middleweight IPA is the same strength as the red and features the same strained boxing metaphors on the label. It's another massively weighty and quite sugary one, and once again the hops are simply trying to out-shout the malt. This time they're a bit more coherent, but there's not much of the fruit flavour associated with the advertised New Zealand and American varieties. Instead I got intense coconut, sticky pine sap and marmalade rind. Like the red, the recipe doesn't quite gel together and it's all very harsh and tough going to drink. I feel I've gone more than a couple of rounds with these two.

Still, I was singularly unimpressed with Pokertree first time out so I'm definitely not counting out Knockout yet.

Here we are now

The theme for March's Session is Up-and-Coming Beer Locations and it would be remiss of me not to stay close to home for this one. Ireland really genuinely is an up-and-coming place to drink beer and this post reflects just a few of the recent new additions to give you a flavour of what's going on right now.

Though the national beer scene has changed immeasurably, even in just the last two years, I'm still drawn back again and again to the place where I first discovered independent Irish beer in the mid-1990s: The Porterhouse in Temple Bar. It's currently doing a great job of tapping up what's new and interesting from all over the country.

It was, for example, the first place I found the new beer from Jack Cody's: Drogheda Cream Stout. Something didn't quite work out as planned with the colour of this one, arriving as it did a distinct ruby hue instead of properly black, but don't let that distract you. From the first pull this is most definitely a stout. A rich latte creaminess kicks it off followed by a smack of intense burnt dryness and then a big vegetal hop acid burn, possibly even more so than you get in bitter Porterhouse classic Wrassler's XXXX. That hop kick lasts long after swallowing, building gradually on the palate. The name suggests that this might be an innocent sort of introductory stout but it's far bolder than that and all the better for it.

Brewed down the other end of the country, but pouring beside it, was Gasman, another uncompromising hop bomb from Eight Degrees, their second with rye in the grain bill. It's a whopping 7.8% ABV but could easily pass for more, being thick and greasy. It's basically pure Aussie hop napalm, 68 IBUs of Topaz and Vic Secret burning into your palate in a slow, determined way. And despite the strength, all of that is down to the hopping: the beer itself is not harsh or hot in any way, even if the bitterness does get emphasised somewhat by the rye. After the initial shock, what are the flavours in here? I got semi-composted grass cuttings, top-shelf marmalade sold in very small jars to the Discerning Gentleman Who Knows What He Wants and chewing lime skins for a bet which you immediately regret. Did I say it's intense? It's intense. And on balance (if that word isn't complete anathema in this context) probably not one I'd go rushing back to. It's a little severe but there's no doubting the quality of the product.

When I'm not chasing new beers in The Porterhouse, there's a good chance of finding me doing the same in 57 The Headline. It was first on the southside to tap up another antipodean-hopped Irish beer: Kiwi Pale Ale from Dublin's own Rascal's. Wakatu, Waimea and Motueka are the chief performers in this otherwise quite simple 4.5% ABV clear dark gold beer. The sticky, sappy, resinous grass looms large, and there's a bit of a minty element too, particularly as it warms. It's a pretty stark reminder of the German heritage of these hops, and even reminds me of Germany's own Polaris variety in its effect. Don't expect much by way of juicy explosives, herbal dank or (thankfully) cat piss, but it's a fun, bold quencher and I was quite happy to follow up my first pint with a second.

So that's a fairly representative sample of a few days pub-hopping in Dublin. If it sounds like the sort of thing that interests you, you'll find us just to the left of Wales.