Firestone Walk With Me

I'm slightly surprised there wasn't more of a fuss made about the arrival of Firestone Walker beer in Ireland a couple of months ago. By all accounts it was quite a coup by Grand Cru beers to get them over this way. But the first ones just quietly started showing up in specialist beer bars and off licences without anyone making too much noise, in my earshot anyway. I probably shouldn't complain. And with the company now part of a large multinational I expect they may start becoming more commonplace in Europe.

Anyway, three from the mid-Californian brewery today, though only two purchased on the white market, and only the one off the shelf of an Irish offy.

This can of Pivo, the brewery's pils, was acquired for me by Chris The Beer Geek, who took pains to ensure I got a fresh one, so the beer was a smidge over three weeks in the tin before I tipped it into a glass. The first surprise was the colour: a very nondescript pale yellow. At 5.3% ABV I thought it would at least look like a quality lager. Any fears over lack of substance are banished by the texture: the malt gives it a beautiful rounded and filling feel, plus that classic Dortmunder breadiness, shading towards the sweeter end of the spectrum with a hint of candyfloss. The promised hops are present but aren't at all overdone. There's the classic waxy, almost plasticky, noble hop bitterness then a mouthwatering cut-grass and pine effect, finishing quickly and cleanly, the way good lager should. I was expecting American hop perfume but that's not what it does at all: this is pure old-world elegance, reminding me a lot of the better, fresher, hoppier pale lagers I've caned in Bavaria. I'd happily see the whole "India Pale Lager" genre replaced with this sort of thing.

The Easy Jack IPA I obtained in DrinkStore so it wasn't quite so fresh, but still less than three months out of the brewery. It's another pale one: a crystalline golden hue. The aroma is rather candystore, all lurid chewsweet and sherbet fruit, plus the promise of plentiful sugar, which is surprising as it's only 4.7% ABV. The first pull reveals it to be pure Lilt, with a huge hit of juicy mango and pineapple. The sugar arrives after it and it's similar to the candyfloss in Pivo, much more than just a malt base. You need to wait around for any kind of bitterness but when it eventually arrives, right on the finish, even it is bringing fruit in tow: limes in particular, and maybe a slight spritz of grapefruit zest. At first I was really impressed by all that juiciness, but the sugary aspect makes each mouthful a little harder than the last. It's unusual to be saying a Californian IPA is unbalanced away from the bitterness side, but I think this is.

Finally, Wookey Jack, an 8.3% ABV rye black IPA I found on tap in BrewDog's Newcastle outlet recently. It's a dense beast, pure opaque black in colour and smelling worryingly of marker pens. The first thing to hit me on tasting was the texture: it's as viscous as it looks, thick and tarry with a slick, palate-coating bitterness but not much by way of hop flavour. Instead it's all roast, the only real hop presence being a certain dankness in the aroma. A disappointing experience, all told. Not what I'm after in a black IPA and completely lacking that dry grassy bite that hops and rye do so well together.

Double Jack has also been sighted on keg around Dublin. I wasn't a fan of this super-sticky double IPA when I first met it a couple of years ago, and recent revisits confirmed it's just not for me. I think perhaps they have too loose a hand at Firestone Walker when it comes to tipping the maltsack.

Beers without borders

You have to admire the international outlook of Carlow Brewing. Following on from a Japanese-themed Sorachi Ace IPA earlier this summer, two new beers produced in collaboration with brewers from abroad invited to the international crossroads that is Bagenalstown.

I met both beers at an event in 57 The Headline, to celebrate the visit of Virginia's Starr Hill brewery, but before those proceedings commenced I had a pint of Lublin to Dublin Milk Stout, the second in a series with Poland's Browar Pinta. Anyone expecting a janglingly sweet milk stout is in for a surprise. At 6% ABV this is serious business, and while the lactose sugar is certainly present, it combines with the dark malt to create a sumptuously smooth milk chocolate effect yet still maintaining a roast bite on the end. It pulls a surprise special move with the hop additions, bringing at first a floral Turkish-delight element which then builds into a proper hoppy juiciness as it goes down. This is all stout, but I really liked how it touches on a few amber ale buttons too.

At the main event, Wayne "Irish Beer Snob" Dunne hosted a panel discussion between Seamus and Conor from Carlow and Brian and Robbie of Starr Hill, comparing notes on their respective breweries and beer scenes. The visitors had brought a couple of examples of their work to taste, so I got to try Little Red Roostarr, Starr Hill's "coffee cream stout". The coffee isn't mucking about in the aroma here: a massive waft of fresh-brewed hits the nostrils straight away. Underneath, it's a very sweet and creamy beer. There's a proper roasted-grain edge to it but overall I found it just a little too sweet to be enjoyable.

And also floating around there was Starr Hill Reviver, which is a red IPA with a huge grapefruit aroma. The flavour is more malt-driven, with a sweet and almost meaty caramelised crystal malt character, but plenty of citric bitterness as well. Brewer Robbie says that when he brews established beer styles he does it by the book, but I don't know if red IPA is in the book yet. Something a bit like American amber ale, only a little bitterer is possibly how it would be described, and this certainly meets that specification.

The guys also brought along a pitcher of their collaboration brew, then just a couple of days in the fermenter but already showing promise.

A little over a week later the beer was finished, and Carlow Brewing's PR folk kindly sent me a couple of bottles. Foreign Affair is also badged as a red IPA and is a modest 4.8% ABV. It's a perfect clear shade of copper, topped by a loose-bubbled head from what proved to be pleasantly low carbonation. The aroma doesn't exactly leap out, but there's good stuff present: peaches, shading to grapefruit, and just touching on heavier piney dank, all done using the Falconer's Flight hop blend. These are joined by a generous dose of coffee in the flavour, but that's really all the malt does: there's none of the toffee or marzipan one often finds in American-style amber ale and the texture is light. I like it. That dry and citric hop bitterness is complemented nicely by the dry coffee roast, and while it's assertively bitter it remains quite easy and refreshing drinking. One to enjoy young, I'd say: the 14-month best-before date printed on the neck is perhaps ill-advised.

Conor and the guys at Carlow Brewing certainly seem to be on top of their game at the moment. How generous of them to share their acumen with others.

Shaking my confidence daily

Gluten-free beer seems to be where it's at these days. More and more brewers appear to be going after a slice of the intolerance dollar and, whereas once gluten-free beers were very much a compromise option not tasting convincingly like beer, more recent offerings like Wold Top Against The Grain and the quinoa beer UCC presented at Franciscan Well last Easter, have been closer to the mark.

The latest exhibit is Celia, a lager brewed in Žatec with, predictably, Saaz hops. Organic barley is high on the ingredients list and no other fermentable is named so I don't quite see how the claim of under 0.5mg of gluten per 100ml at 4.5% ABV was achieved, but there you go.

It's an enticing red-gold colour and smells like a proper Czech výčepní: gently grainy with a seasoning of fresh mown grass. The texture is light and smooth though pleasantly prickled, and the flavour perfectly clean. The hops are on the down-low and there are some additional soft fruit esters: a bit of peach, maybe. Really it's quite an unremarkable-tasting beer, delivering everything that most consumers of 33cl bottles of lager want. Good news for any of them that have found they aren't able to handle gluten, then.

Cheers to DrinkStore for the sample bottle.

Siren call

There are more Siren beers coming into Dublin than I can keep up with, a phenomenon which delights me. The importer is also the management of The Beer Market so that's where I've encountered most of them, including...

Siren and Omnipollo Life's a Peach, a 6.4% ABV IPA which tastes like the union of a marijuana bud and a pineapple: heavy and resinous in texture and flavour, but with a breezy tropical fruit zing bursting out of the oils. It delivers a lovely fresh hop sensation which coats the palate without getting too sticky or cloying and without any trace of bitterness or harsh acidity. Added lactose and peaches? Who cares? This is just a pure quality IPA with no perceptible extra weirdness.

Sticking with the orangey IPAs, Dippy & The Equinox is a double IPA Siren produced with the help of Oregon brewery Boneyard. It presents dense and opaque, and innocently pale. However, it explodes violently on the palate, shedding a napalm bitterness that shocks at first and fades only gradually. The flavour it brings with it is a beautiful but deadly mix of gunpowder and mandarins. The fruit doesn't last quite as long as I'd like it to, getting replaced by a rather harsh waxyness after a short while. Overall, though, a beautifully constructed complex hop powerhouse.

With this sort of hit rate there just had to be a failure, and it came in the form of Liquid Monstrous, a beefed up version of Siren's rather tasty red IPA Liquid Mistress. Its appearance did it no favours at all: a very muddy red-brown. The aroma started well, with zingy orange sherbet, but it was no surprise to get a waft of mucky yeast sludge with that as well. It doesn't taste yeasty, mind, though there was a definite gritty quality in the texture. Instead it's hot and sharply bitter, big hops being part of that, but there's also a coffee-like bitterness from, I assume, the dark malts. Cherry fruit flavours lighten it only slightly, but it wasn't enjoyable drinking and lacked the usual bright and clear flavours I've come to expect from Siren beers, even the hazy ones.

We switch over to The Porterhouse next. Calypso showed up as their €4 bottled special a while back and that was enough to draw me in to try it. This is a 4% ABV Berliner weisse, dry-hopped with varieties that vary from batch to batch. Code G377 tells me I got one with Mosaic. It poured clearer than I expected, with just a slight haze through the gold. The head dissipates quickly, the millpond surface giving off enticing aromas of lemon sherbet, dank resins and the promise of a puckering sourness too. The sour leaps to the front of the queue on tasting, a big smack of tangy vinegar. But in proper Berliner weisse fashion it fades very quickly. First in behind it is a crisp and grainy, wheaty effect of the sort that predominates in Berliner Kindl's weisse. The hops don't do much here, adding little more than a whiff of urinal cake to the finish, but they don't get in the way. This hits exactly the refreshment points that a beer like this is supposed to and is, I would say, capable of resetting even the most jaded of mid-session palates.

And home again for the last one: Bones of a Sailor Part III. This is a 9.5% ABV imperial porter brewed with vanilla, raspberries and cacao and then aged in Pedro Ximinéz barrels. That's a lot to put on a label but the flavour does a great job of reminding you about all of it as soon as the dense black liquid goes in your mouth. The raspberries are first: an unmistakeable fruity tartness that shouldn't really be so obvious in a strong dark beer, but like that raspberry imperial stout Thornbridge did, it's very very present here. Pedro Ximinéz is so fashionable for beer ageing these days that I bought a bottle of the dark sherry when I was last in Spain to find out what it is. And as well as looking like it, this beer really tastes of it too, all sweetly tannic like plump boozy raisins. Vanilla and dark chocolate are present -- but only just -- underneath this, and I guess they're flavours you'd expect to find in an unadulterated oak-aged porter anyway. There's a smoky roast quality too, just in case you weren't sure that this busy concoction started life as a real beer. Though quite sticky, it's buoyed up by a busy prickle that helps with the drinkability. I was expecting a heavy and rich beer entirely unsuited to the sunny afternoon on which I drank it but the raspberry acid cuts through all that and gave me a powerhouse porter that's also really rather refreshing.

Liquid Monstrous notwithstanding, I'm in no rush to change my current high opinion of this brewery.

Bags of flavour

It's been a while since my last Belgian beer. Thankfully the Brown Paper Bag Project is there to scratch that particular itch with Aul Bruin Bagger, one they brewed at their usual Belgian outpost, ’t Hofbrouwerijke. They've squeezed a lot into that title: yes it's a Flemish oud bruin and there's their own name, but also that of their near-neighbours animation studio Brown Bag Films, for whom it's a 21st birthday beer. The twist on the regular style is an addition of cherries to the recipe, the alcohol content finishing up at 6.4% ABV. And how did that work out?

Quite interestingly, actually. The fruit leaves the beer more of a maroon colour than brown and there's a pleasantly strange interaction between the tart and tangy acetic element and the still-juicy cherries, in both the flavour and the aroma. The sourness is relatively mild but it does linger long, bouncing around the back of the palate, aided by quite a heavy texture for a sour beer. At heart this a classic brown-saucey Flemish oud bruin with the cherries adding just a subtle extra complexity. Nicely done.

Closer to home, Brown Paper Bag also produced a 4.5% ABV cask Summer Ale as part of the 5th birthday celebrations at parent pub L. Mulligan Grocer. An arrangement with north Dublin brewery Craftworks (more on them when I've had time to drink their beers) means that BPBP can produce beer on their own junior brewkit, covered by the Craftworks licence.

My pint, as shown, was murky as hell but tasted delicious when cool, blasting out jubilant peals of mandarin and peach. The yeast grit only began to show its dirty face as it warmed, but this isn't a beer to let warm; it's a chugger. Though that's not to say it wouldn't be a whole better experience if left to settle properly. This was over a week ago so maybe it has by now. Anyway, the idea of the  'Project brewing cask beer locally is an exciting one and I hope there'll be more along these lines in due course.

Trust exercise

On a number of occasions Richard has said that Lagunitas is one of the breweries he trusts enough to buy their beer without knowing anything about it in advance. And, in general, I trust Richard. Or perhaps I have an interest in proving his rule to be flawed. Either way, I bought a bottle of Lagunitas Hop Stoopid.

8% ABV and 102 IBUs it proclaims on the label, so it's a bit of a beast. In the small print it mentions that it's brewed using hop extract rather than real hops, for "cleaner" hop flavours with none of the vegetative mess. And from the first sniff that seems to have worked: there's an intense fresh lemon smell, turned sherbety by the generous amounts of malt.

It all takes a turn for the stoopid on tasting, however. The malt is absolutely dominant here, intensely sweet like honey or lemon curd, turning to toffee as it warms. Meanwhile the hops are merely a light perfume backdrop. It does not taste like a zingy west coast IPA, though I noted that it makes no claim to that style. And bitterness? A hundred and two bitternesses? No. I peered down the neck of the bottle and they weren't in there either.

I guess it's not a bad beer, but it tastes to me like a dodgy Belgian impression of an American IPA. I was in the mood for fresh American hops and it left me wanting.

And while that was sitting in my drafts folder I also chanced upon Lagunitas Sucks on tap in 57 The Headline. This is a multi-grain affair, including rye, oats and wheat, finishing at 7.85% ABV but once again missing a style designation. Most sources seem to regard some sort of IPA as the best category to fit it into but I'm not so sure. Though certainly pale -- a clear golden hue -- there's not much hop aroma from it, just a slight Californian buzz of dank and citrus, while the centrepiece of the flavour is heavy, sugary malt with a disconcerting caramel note that's really incongruous with the colour. The hops cavort behind this, a sticky-fingered mix of succulent fruit: nectarine, pineapple and sweet plums. It's a strange beast and I don't think it suits my tastes very well. The sheer density makes it hard work to drink and there's a dizzying back and forth between the hop kick and sickly ick.

I'm not going to write off Lagunitas completely on this showing: there have still been more hits than misses for me in the range. But these two have definitely not inspired any blind loyalty.

Brittany's beers: one more time

It has been a while since I've written about beer from north-western France but I'm prompted to do so again by this pair, kindly donated by Mark from his trip there last year.

I quite enjoyed the Dremmwel Blonde on the last outing, so here's Dremmwel Dorée Bio as a follow-up. This is all of 7.7% ABV and thick and heavy with it, pouring out a dense golden amber troubled by just a slight haze. It smells... golden: lagery cereals with a definite waft of strong alcohol. Unsurprisingly, the flavour is big on malt -- sweet and chewy -- but with an extra perfumed intensity, all oils and spices. It took me a little while to settle into it, but when I did I enjoyed it. It makes for a relaxing and warming outdoor sipper just as the evening chill begins to set in.

A tripel to follow: Duchesse Anne by Brasserie Lancelot, down near Nantes. It's lighter in colour than the previous beer, but oddly lighter in alcohol too, at just 7.5% ABV. The tripel spicing is present and correct in the aroma but the taste is miles off the mark, showing all the refreshing sweet lemon notes of a witbier. I'm not complaining: this beer tastes lovely, but tripel purists are in for a surprise. If you like the idea of tripel but find real ones to be too much work, Lancelot has you covered.

Northern brewers

You'll only find one entry on RateBeer for my home town of Armagh. Hardly surprising as whatever the opposite of a beer Mecca is, Armagh is one. There isn't even a brewery in the county, though quite rightly its cider industry appears to be thriving and on my last trip I was very pleased to see MacIvor's making great in-roads to the on-trade.

That solitary beacon of hope on RateBeer is The Wine Store, an off licence attached to the sprawling Emerson's supermarket. I rarely get a chance to drop in but did so on my last visit, grabbing everything I'd never had before from the considerable selection of Northern Irish beers.

I opened the Hopburst IPA from Farmageddon almost immediately. This is 6.2% ABV and a nice clear dark orange, despite the cheeky advice on the label that "it may be cloudy - harden up - it's craft beer." There's a certain tart sourness in the aroma, redolent of lime marmalade. Malt drives the flavour but there's more of that lime too, all sharp and rather oily. I guess it's really a classic English-style IPA at heart, reminding me of the marmalade-on-wholegrain-toast effect I always enjoy in White Shield, but it's been given just an extra citrus twist in line with modern tastes and it all works rather well. The last Farmageddon beer I encountered was undrinkable so Hopburst has gone a long way to restore my faith in the brewery.

Next up, Crann, the first in a collaboration series between west Ulster breweries Poker Tree and Inishmacsaint with the former doing the brewing while the latter handled the bottling process. It's a 6.6% ABV bière de garde, pouring a gorgeous clear honey colour and smelling crisp, sherbety, and with maybe just a mild sourness too. A look at the label tells me that cranberries, raisins and spruce tips have been added to the recipe, and it's the first of these which really shines out: that refreshing tartness combined with sweet juicy fruit is a winning combination. There's a slightly harsh and vegetal bitterness in the finish, which could be either the hops or the spruce, or a combination of both, but it doesn't interfere with the main act. They've marketed this as a winter beer, but I found it worked just as well on a warm day. It's a wonderful accomplishment and I look forward to many more daring collaborations like it.

Hillstown is a brand new brewery to me, based on a farm in Co. Antrim. First up, a red ale with the suitably farm-y name of Massey Red. The label makes claims of sessionability but at 5.2% ABV we're dealing with a bit more booze than is usual for the style. It's a relatively clear copper colour, which is a pleasant surprise, and the texture is light and the carbonation low. Flavourwise I get a generous dose of milk chocolate, a decent amount of roast cereal, and then lots and lots of balsamic strawberries. Strawberry isn't unknown in the Irish red flavour profile, but the balsamic bit suggests to me that this hasn't turned out quite as the brewer intended. The acid sourness is very apparent in the aroma too, adding an unpleasant gastric tang. Homebrewish and all that it is, it's still drinkable. I doubt I'd be on for a session, however, especially not if letting it get any way warm is on the cards.

We move to smaller bottles for the next ones. Horny Bull stout is 7% ABV and looks handsome in a half pint glass, topped by a rock-steady tan-coloured head. There's more of that balsamic in the aroma plus the promise of lots of dark malt. There's a lot of vinegar in the flavour. "Fruity hops," says the label, "chocolate and coffee": no, not really. There's a strong Flemish Oud Bruin vibe, the heavier sort with those HP Sauce molasses and tamarind qualities. It's tough going to drink and again I don't think this is how it's meant to taste. These two bottles suggest to me that the brewery doesn't have its hygiene protocols nailed down. So how about a third, then?

Last up from Hillstown is The Goat's Butt, a wheat beer with added rye. It's certainly carbonated in keeping with the style spec, ie up the wazoo. The first pour gave me a lightly hazy pale yellow glassful, made only slightly more opaque when I topped it off after the foam subsided. There's a farty sulphurous aroma which I've encountered in microbrewed wheat beers before, generally when they're very young and I suspect that's the case with this one. It's not off-putting, though. Beneath it there's a rather crisp and plain witbier, the light texture hiding 5.3% ABV very well indeed. I get a touch of juicy jaffa, though from the hops I assume, as no orange is listed in the ingredients. This is simple, refreshing and, gloriously, not infected.

Hillstown's heart seems to be in the right place with these recipes but the execution needs a bit of polishing. Mind you, the same could once be said of every other brewery featured here so there's good reason to be hopeful.

All about the content

Everything but the beer is the preferred topic for The Session this month. Host Jack is asking us to look at the odds and ends that go with: beermats, bottle caps and the like. One brewery with a very distinctive look to its packaged beers is Stone of San Diego and it's one of theirs that's the subject of my contribution.

This bottle of Xocoveza was kindly donated by Chris and Merideth on their recent visit to Ireland. There's nothing too unusual about the shape of the bottle: it's your standard American 650ml bomber. But they've made great use of the space it affords to tell the convoluted story of this beer.

Its roots lie in Stone's annual home brewing competition which in 2014 was won by Chris Banker, so that's his name you see emblazoned across the top of the main printed space. His recipe is an 8.1% ABV milk stout brewed with added coffee and spices, intended to recreate the effect of Mexican hot chocolate. The dense wording on the back introduces the drinker to everything they're about to experience, with quotes from the creator as well as Mitch Steele from Stone and the brewer at Cerveceria Insurgente, the Tijuana outfit which also participated in the brew.

The beer itself is heavy on the nutmeg, with a real Christmas-cookie effect, made extra sweet by the lactose sugar. Bitterness from the dark chocolate and strong coffee is fleetingly perceptible behind it. The only other pieces of entertainment it affords are the luxuriously smooth texture and a cheeky pinch of chilli in the aroma. It's not a subtle beer, nor as multifaceted as the list of additional ingredients on the front might imply, but it's fun to drink if you don't take the grimacing gargoyle on the neck too seriously.

And if you have a complaint, you'll find ways to contact the brewery on the underside of the bottle cap:

Double Scotch

Scotch ales (by which I mean nothing more than beers designated as such by their brewers) are rare in Ireland. I guess the standard Irish red already covers a lot of what Scotch ale is meant to do. It just so happens that two Irish breweries have recently launched beers they're calling Scotch ales so I think a bit of side-by-side is in order. Though since both are confined to their breweries' tied houses it'll have to be a virtual one.

JW Sweetman Scotch Ale is the younger of the two having been out only a few weeks and receiving its official launch last Thursday. It's 5.6% ABV -- strong enough for the brewery to describe it as a "wee heavy" -- and appropriately dark red. It's very sweet: laying on the toffee in a big way, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Probing my palate for a second sentence to write about the flavour, I found maybe a hint of ripe strawberry and a lightly acidic finish, but that's your lot. I thought it was going to be a hard one to finish but a second freebie pint at the launch event disappeared much faster than the first, so maybe it's the sort of beer one can settle into.

The second one has been available for several months now: Galway Bay's Respect Yer Elders. A cask version does the rounds occasionally but it was on keg when I found it at The Beer Market. It's a similar red-brown to the Sweetman one, though rather lighter in alcohol at 4.5%. And while still very much malt-forward it's nowhere near as sweet, showing lots of quite dry grain husk and then chocolatey bourbon biscuit at the centre. The best feature is a subtle metallic hop tang right on the finish, adding hugely to its drinkability. I'm still not sure it's one I'd drink a lot of, but cold from the keg it proved a lot more approachable than I expected. I can imagine it being a bit much on cask, though.

Neither of these has turned me into an avowed Scotch ale fanatic, but a bit of variety is always nice.