Meet the Hebrews

Tom is a beer geek from Israel, currently seconded to a work project in Dublin. Back in June he offered to bring some beers over from home for a tasting. A group of us got together in the Bull & Castle one quiet Sunday afternoon to get an idea of what's happening in the Israeli craft beer scene.

Under Tom's direction we started, perhaps unusually, with an Oak Porter from Negev brewery. It's only 5% ABV but smells a lot stronger. It doesn't look great in the glass, all murky and opaque. The wood has been laid on very thick with massive amounts of vanillin and a sharper lactic quality too. The heavy-handed ageing means any trace of the porter that used to be here is now gone.  Even drinking a small sample was tough going and I can't say I enjoyed it. Shapiro Oatmeal Stout was a much better proposition. 5.2% ABV and again smelling hot, this time with a kind of acetone quality, it's actually smooth and sweet on tasting with no off-flavours at all. There's lots of lovely chocolate and cream, to match the texture. Alexander Black is a more orthodox (not, not that way) stout: 7% ABV and looking clear, pure, but most definitely black, in the glass. It smells oily, like strong coffee, and has an almost Caribbean brown-sugar sweetness. That's about all it delivers, however.

From stout to black IPA and Ha'Dubim Paradox is next, another nasty-looking murky one. It has the spicy vegetal aroma which I'm coming to regard as one of the hallmarks of the style and makes excellent use of its hops. A beautiful chocolate and fresh mandarin flavour opens it up and there's a sharp biting bitterness in the finish. An absolute classic, this, and packing a lot of complexity into 5.6% ABV.

There were two more from Ha'Dubim ("The Bears") and we followed Paradox with Kodiak, badged as an "IPW", so what generally gets called "white IPA", then. It's yellow and cloudy and the aroma is all over the place: a little bleachy, a lot sugary and with added plasticine notes as well. It gels together a bit better on tasting with the sweetness dominating, creating a strong impression of drinking vanilla ice cream, helped along by the creamy texture. The hops arrive late, adding a pithiness to the finish. It's an odd beer and I'm not sure I'd want to investigate it further.

The inevitable Grizzly is Ha'Dubim's special edition double IPA: 9% ABV yet a rather wan and hazy witbier-yellow colour. The aroma is gorgeous, pelting out bittersweet mandarin spritz. The strength is immediately apparent on the first sip, but it's a clean heat, not heavy or boozy, reminding me a little of Trouble Brewing's Hop Priority triple IPA. But it's not all alcohol; the hops are working very hard in here too with an oily dank base cheered up by bursts of citrus zest. Double IPA wouldn't be my favourite beer style but then not many of them are as well executed as this one.

More IPAs next, starting with Pressure Drop by Ha'Shakhen. This 6%-er claims to be an "Extrememly hoppy craft beer" and I'll grant that hops play a big part in how it tastes. Onions on the aroma; mango, papaya and lime rind in the flavour: that's all hops. But there's a lot of caramel in here also and the whole is just a bit too sweet to be enjoyable. We had it next to one of the original Israeli IPAs and one considered to be among the best still: Srigim Brewery's Ha'Hodit Ha'Mekhoeret, "The Ugly Indian". 6.5% ABV, a brownish-orange colour (murky again) but smelling lovely, simultaneously sweet and spicy with lots of citrus promised. The flavour is very unsubtle, being big on bitterness but there's enough malt body to carry it. The murk lets it down a little however, allowing a savoury yeast coating dull the otherwise bright and fresh flavours. This one could do with a little polishing but is still perfectly enjoyable for what it is.

A couple of odd ones to finish. Dictator Irish Red has, for some reason, been blended with Laphroaig whisky, and plasters this fact across the label in huge letters. It's a pale murky orange and smells massively peaty. Peat is there again on the first sip but goes away quickly leaving a fresh, soft, peachy hop flavour. The old peat 'n' peach one-two is not something I've ever experienced in a beer before and it's not at all unpleasant. Shapiro's Jack's Winter Ale has also been liquored-up, this time with the addition of Jack Daniel's oak chips. They impart lots of oaky vanillins but no real whisky booze effect. Instead, this 8.2% ABV ale is big on warming toffee malt, all smooth and mellow. Even in the eastern Med, they like something for the fireside, it seems.

Overall impressions? Israeli craft beer is a little rough around the edges and not all of its experiments are worthwhile ones from the drinker's point of view, but there's some real talent on display in this lot. The beer fan certainly won't get bored. Thanks to Tom for the insight.

Pre-festival festivals

The biggest event in the Irish beer calendar kicks off this evening at the RDS in Dublin. I understand there'll be about 40 Irish breweries at the 2015 Irish Craft Beer Festival and we've been promised lots of new and special editions. And we're more likely to actually find them too, since the event has been sensibly reduced to a three-day run. But it's far from the first beer festival we've seen in these parts this summer. Earlier this month there were a couple of preliminaries.

To the Harbour Bar in sunny Bray, first, which held a two-day event at the beginning of the month, inviting a handful of local breweries (and one cider-maker) to set up stall in the yard. Wicklow Wolf is a mere keg roll from the Harbour so they were present and correct, showing off the new Belgian Brown Ale. I was expecting something sweet and fruity but it's been fermented with a saison yeast so it resembles more an oude bruin: very dry with a tangy tamarind and vinegar foretaste. The dark grain comes out in the finish where there's an almost stout-like roasted quality. The aroma is also very big on coffee notes. It's certainly complex and mixing up some flavours that aren't normally seen together. And at a modest 5.5% ABV it's relatively sessionable too, if the tang is to your taste.

Further along the bar I snagged the first ever pint of Rascal's new pilsner. Rain Czech is number four in the World Hop Series and employs Saaz and Sladek hops, late and in quantity. It's 5% ABV and a hazy gold. The low carbonation gives it a wonderful creamy texture and my first thought on sipping it was of genre leader Keesmann Herren Pils. It's maybe not quite as polished but it does a lot of the same things. The aroma is gently grassy but the flavour is much more assertive, all moist, fresh grass backed by popcorn and candyfloss. The bitterness is maybe a little on the low side for a pils but there is still a proper bite in the finish. The classic Czech diacetyl is missing but certainly wasn't missed by your correspondent. This is one to drink as soon as you see it: I can't imagine those beautiful hop flavours will hang around for ever.

Less than a week later the second Big Grill Festival took over Herbert Park. Irish beer was well represented and, hey, Rascal's were back with new beer already. Chardonnay Saison is and does exactly what it says on the tap badge. It's 6% ABV but the base beer is one of the lighter and cleaner sorts of saison. This provides a perfect platform for the wine to shine. You get beautiful fresh juicy grape notes with a melon-skin effect that's much more reminiscent of a Sauvignon Blanc than Chardonnay. The wood comes through to an extent, but it's very much a subtle dryness, not the big honking oak-and-butter that blighted my Chardonnay years. An absolute stunner of a beer this, and perfect garden drinking. I understand that the last of it will be making an appearance at the RDS this weekend. Do not miss.

Rascal's still provides the brewing facilities for the Brewtonic brand and their new one for Big Grill was a 4.5% ABV wheat beer called Raspberry Beeret. A lot of raspberries went into this, says sometime Rascal's co-conspirator Rossa. But they're doing a great job in there, really imparting a pure essence-of-raspberry flavour, like chewing the seeds. And, of course, turning the beer bright pink. Perhaps surprisingly, it's only lightly tart, and the wheaty base gives it a lovely pillowy softness making for excellent drinkability. Lurid-coloured fruit beers that aren't just in it for the gimmickry are all too rare.

The Porterhouse also brought a new beer to Big Grill. Hopped to F#¢k is the veteran Dublin brewer's first go at a double IPA. I'm generally not a fan of double IPAs at the best of times but this one really reminded me of why that is. While it's a perhaps modest 8% ABV it lays on the malt in a big hot-and-heavy way. While it starts out zesty enough when its cold, the booze warmth increases with the temperature, turning to marmalade and then becoming full-on toffee by the end. There's a powerful hop acidity which I guess is provided for balance but I found it just made the beer harder to drink. Fans of Hophead may enjoy the opportunity to try something bigger but along the same lines, but I'm happier with the less intense option.

Franciscan Well ran a competition a couple of months ago to name their new saison but the barman running their stall (on behalf of parent Molson Coors, I assume) couldn't tell me what the final decision was. Later research revealed that Beast from the Yeast is the name they went for. I rather enjoyed it too: 5% ABV and another light and gently fruity saison, this time it's more of an appley vibe, perhaps sailing a little close to acetone nail varnish remover if it's allowed to get warm. But there's no need to let it warm: there's a wonderful lagerish crispness to it which makes for very easy drinking, and a dry roasted complexity from, I'm guessing, the dark grain which gives it that mahogany red colour. And regardless how long you leave it when wandering around the park blathering to people it never turns completely sickly, which is more than I can say for a lot of modern saisons, so a definite thumbs-up from me.

And finally to Kinnegar, which has released a gooseberry-flavoured sour beer called, obviously, Geuzberry. It's soured in the kettle with a yoghurt strain rather than wild yeasts so it's all quite subtle, a bit like a Berliner wiesse, though rather stronger at 5.2% ABV. At its heart it's a very simple and grainy wheat beer: clean, fizzy and refreshing. The sour tang is understated but it's definitely present and is essentially the same lactic flavour you'll find much more loudly in good Belgian lambic, without any of the vinegary qualities you sometimes get. As such, it may well be an ideal sour beer starter for a newcomer to this end of the beer world. I noted a white grape tannin effect on the finish and it's just occurred to me that that may be the gooseberries at work: I'm used to wine tasting of gooseberries but this may be the first time gooseberries have made me think of wine flavours. Anyway, this is a lovely beer and tremendous fun to drink.

That wraps it up for this pair of bijou beer festivals. The real action starts at 5.

Mersey treat

I was given a hotel voucher for Christmas and, after performing full due diligence on the opportunities it offered, decided that one night in Liverpool was the most economical way to make use of it. So on a sunny Saturday morning in late July, myself and herself hopped over the Irish Sea, arriving in Albert Dock in time for coffee at the Tate and a cheery stroll around the International Museum of Slavery.

A beer was in order next and we went the long way about it, taking the Mersey Ferries cruise (surprisingly good) over and around to Birkenhead, where Gallagher's Pub and Barber's is a short walk uphill from the dock. The name isn't just a gimmick either: there is a real working barbershop at the back, just beyond the bar. The pub itself is smartly maintained, perhaps unsurprising when there's a broad military theme to the décor.

Two beers from local brewery Brimstage were on, including its flagship bitter Trapper's Hat. This is leaning towards brown but still safely amber, I guess, and has an approachable 3.8% ABV. And it's properly bitter too, pushing out cleanly acidic lime marmalade notes and balancing them with crunchy wholewheat biscuit. Simple, but nicely done and I'd happily have this as my local beer. The other Brimstage offering was Oyster Catcher, a 4.4% ABV stout. It's big on coffee aroma and the texture is light, so I was expecting something quite simple here. But there are complexities lurking in the darkness. Behind the strong roasted element there's a sharper forest fruit tartness adding a beautiful extra dimension to the flavour. Again, not a multi-layered taste experience, but a damn decent drinking beer.

Just one more before we move on: Stateside Pale Ale, a 5%-er by Sheffield brewer Exit 33. And they've definitely gone for the stereotypes here: a big biting grapefruit pith and zest. One of those beers that reminds you of what actual grapefruit tastes like, not just grapefruity hops. Refreshing and dangerously drinkable at such a stonking strength. I'd better move on before things get messy.

Old Garde

Back in Liverpool, high on my list of drinking venues was The Clove Hitch, a relatively new addition to the city's entertainment district. The basement bar was full but that didn't matter as the restaurant has plenty of beer choice and we were hungry. With my scallop and chorizo starter I had a BrauKunstKeller Laguna. I'd had this IPA before, closer to its home, and wasn't impressed, but the super-heavy bitter resins worked better here as an accompaniment to meaty food than during a festival session. I also got the chance to try my first beer from Manchester's much-lauded Cloudwater Brewery. Well, sort of: Old Garde is a collaboration with south-coasters Burning Sky. It's a bière de garde, pale amber in colour and highly attenuated. And while I'm positive it tasted as the brewers intended, it just wasn't pleasant drinking, tasting off in two different ways simultaneously: a jangling tangy sourness and then the dull buzz of oxidation. Your clothes are ready now, Emperor.

For dessert, Hop Damn, a chilli black IPA by Alphabet Brewing, also based in Manchester. It's 6.1% ABV and arrived properly black with a thin head. Nothing clumsy about the aroma, just a subtle dusting of fresh green hops. On tasting there's a light vegetal bitterness as the centrepiece of the flavour, backed by smooth stouty vanilla and an increasing burnt quality as it warms. There's a beautiful sherbet effervescence to the texture as well. And the chilli? Just a very gradual peppery catch, but no silly tricks. Very well put-together, I thought.

We ended the evening in The Belvedere, a poky little joint that came recommended by ex-Brimstage brewer Mike McGuigan. At 10pm on a Saturday it was packed and a little rowdy but we managed to squeeze into a corner. Just one tickable option for me, one with a Pumpclip Parade-able tap badge: Summer Blaze by Cornish brewery Coastal. It was actually a decent beer: pale gold, a lagerish malt base and then floral, lightly perfumed, hops. Straight-forward, easy-going, inoffensive perhaps, but well-made. As the pub got increasingly chocker, its drinkability became a major plus point. Down the hatch and out we go.

On Sunday it rained, but I'd planned for that and wasn't intending to move very far during the day, though that wasn't going to prevent a decent crawl of pubs. The Philharmonic was just down the street from the hotel, so it would have been rude not to drop in for a swift pint. Liverpool Organic's 24 Carat Gold was on the pumps, and I've always enjoyed their beers in the past. This one is golden and brewed with 100% Brewer's Gold hops, so full marks on the naming there. The bitterness is very low and instead the hops impart a gentle meadowy effect, with elderflower to the fore in particular. The malt keeps its head down. For all its understatedness, I rather liked it, but then it was the day's first beer.

Down the street next to The Fly In The Loaf, a highlight of my last trip to Liverpool, though that was on a busy Friday evening. It's very different on a rainy Sunday afternoon, feeling every bit as cavernous and empty as it looks. Still, the staff were attentive and there was plenty of beer to choose from. It shares a corporate parent with Okell's, so the Manx brewery featured large. Out of sheer curiosity I took a pint of Manx Pale Ale, the lightest in the range, at 3.6% ABV. It's a weak yellow colour and has a waxy lemon flavour which I associate with northern bitters, and Marble's Manchester Bitter in particular. The citrus aroma matches this nicely and there's a crisp cereal finish. I was all excited for the first few mouthfuls but it gets boring very quickly, turning rather watery. Still, it's not really designed for considered analysis and stands up well as a session bitter.

My other half went all craft, choosing a two-thirds of Northern Monk's mocha porter, Northern Star. There's a big coffee aroma in this 5.9% ABV beer, with an added undercurrent of blackberries and damsons. It tastes very sweet, like the coffee creams which inevitably get left behind in chocolate boxes. I could tell there's a proper porter underneath it, but the coffee effect is just laid on too thickly. Two thirds would be too much for me.

Continuing down the hill and just around the corner to The Roscoe Head. This tiny traditional pub manages to squeeze three saloons into its miniscule footprint, each little bigger than a couple of phoneboxes. Trade was brisk but we found a banquette to perch on. The pub's claim to fame is as one of the Magnificent Seven: a rather grand title for the handful of premises which have featured in every edition of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide. My pint of Backyard Brewhouse Centennial IPA was well-kept, though could probably have stood to be served cooler. It's 5% ABV, dark gold and tastes warmingly spicy and rather green, in a good way. There's little by way of citrus, just a slight lime jelly bitterness, but more than anything the flavour put me in mind of gunpowder tea. Not what I was expecting from Centennial hops, but tasty all the same.

Journey's end was a short hop from The Roscoe at a place that's unlikely to catch up with its GBG record: BrewDog Liverpool. This is the biggest of the six BrewDog bars I've been to, and all the more comfortable for the ample seating. Just released a day or two earlier was Elvis Juice, an IPA laced with juices of non-Elvis origin. Orange and grapefruit, I think. It smells like a stiff and resinous IPA and tastes properly bitter: spiky, spicy and dank. The citrus adds a sweet fruit lacing to this, a complexity that doesn't feel tacked-on or out of place. Its mouth-watering acidity is preserved and it's all rather enjoyable, though at 6.7% ABV more of a serious beer than the name and ingredients might suggest.

Also new to the BrewDog line-up is Mashtag 2015, billed as a 10% ABV black barley wine. It's very black, and smells stouty -- dry and roasty, plus a big hit of vanilla from the added oak and, er, vanilla. As you might expect it's very boozy, but smooth and warming with that. The finish has a peppery piquancy and then the bitterness of high quality dark chocolate. For a recipe compiled by a public vote it all holds together very well indeed.

To finish, before a quick dinner and a sprint to the airport, Westbrook Gose, one of those beers I keep seeing pictures of on other people's Twitter but had never seen in real life. I decided to make this the day it stops bothering me. Beer ticking is really just a form of exorcism. So, 4% ABV, hailing from South Carolina, presenting just on the pale side of amber, with skeins of yeast floating through it when poured. It smells how seawater tastes: pungent yet refreshing, and the flavour blends the salt and sour elements really well. Coriander does seem to be the poor relation in modern gose. If I'd poured more carefully I might have got less of a yeast bite, but even that didn't prevent this from being beautifully invigorating and energising which, after this busy couple of days, was exactly what I needed.

I'd recommend Liverpool to anyone looking for an easy, short city break, though if you're coming from these parts it's probably best to wait until the exchange rate recovers. I really picked the wrong summer to make three beery trips to England...

Out of the darkness

Rooting around at the back of the beer fridge turned up this pair. I don't know how long they've been sitting there but a couple of years at least. Both are tripels from the Westoek brewery in Flanders, though they're quite different from each other.

Westoek X was just over a year past its best-before and took revenge on my neglect by spewing violently as soon as the cap came off. What was left was a largely headless pale gold tripel, liberally infused with yeasty bits. It's fairly inoffensive stuff, the grainy flavour more that of a Belgian blonde than a tripel, which matches its 6% ABV. The aroma has a bit more life to it: ripe pineapples, intensifying to whiteboard markers. It risks getting hot and heavy but the finish is quick and the texture light and breezy. Putting a bit of tripel character into a standard blonde is an interesting idea but this beer suffers a little from being neither one thing nor the other. And from being an antique too, of course.

After the pyrotechnics of the first one, I sneaked out under cover of darkness to open the Westoek XX in controlled conditions. Thankfully it behaved itself. At 8% it's only just within the bounds of tripeldom, and it's darker than most, more of an amber colour than gold. It smells darker too, almost roasted, but definitely bringing in some of the figs and plums you find in dubbel. I get lots of sweet sherry on tasting, but I think that's built-in rather than oxidation since this bottle is still over a year in date. Although there's a brown sugar sweetness, it's not heavy, and actually quite highly attenuated. In short, this beer is all over the place and not very enjoyable as a result. I'd give the previous one some benefit of the doubt given its old age, but no excuses here.

These two aren't great ambassadors for Belgian beer, though both are unmistakably Belgian.

Three letters that mean nothing

IPA, eh? What's that all about? I'm sure I'm not the only one to have noticed that this so-called beer style has come to be less and less specific over the last ten years if, indeed, it ever really meant anything at all. I'm a seasoned scoffer at the "3.6% ABV? That's not an IPA" brigade, while also holding that the term still has something to offer to the beer drinker trying to pick out hoppy beer from less-hoppy beer. As if to throw the issue into even sharper relief, Californian-Carolinan brewery Sierra Nevada, which stopped making a beer called simply "IPA" about seven years ago, has dropped three new beers into my line of sight recently, all using those particular letters.

First up is Golden IPA, the baby of the bunch at just 55 IBUs and 5.9% ABV. I imagine the true-believers squinting their eyes and reluctantly granting it a pass. Yes, it's golden, and frothy too, with a fine haze spread through it. It smells of grapefruit bubblegum and tastes spicy: that bitter herbal green hop effect is to the fore, done with classic Cascade, says the label. There's a rich golden-syrup malt sweetness acting as the perfect counterweight to the hop edge and the body is smooth, making for lovely sessionability. I can imagine drinking several in succession, with the Cascade kick reminding me on each sip that there's something here worth paying attention to.

In the middle of the trilogy, the real chest-thumping IPA: Hop Hunter, the one which almost resulted in a legal dispute with another brewery over the use of those three capitals. Distilled hop oils are what it's all about here, according to the label. Cor! Futuristic! Turns out that this is even golder than the Golden, 6.2% ABV and 60 IBUs. The aroma is sharp, grassy and dank, smelling of real hops, not a processed by-product. And while the flavour hits a lot of the same notes, it's not bombastic or exciting, adding a red onion edge to the citrus and resins but otherwise being quite calm and drinkable. Hop Hunter is another one which I think would work well by the six-pack (not that I ever buy the same beer six bottles at a time) but I reckon I'd enjoy working through a half-dozen of Golden more than this.

A twist into the dark side next, and Blindfold, a black IPA bringing us up to 6.8% ABV and 70 IBUs. And yet all I got from the first sniff-and-sip was roasted grain. It's very stouty: think molasses and liquorice and that kind of unctuous bitterness rather than any real hop action. It's easy drinking too, slipping down smoothly. But I don't get any IPA sense from it at all. It may, in fact, be one of the least IPA-ish black IPAs I've ever met. It's a pretty decent porter, though.

I wasn't sure how this was going to pan out when I started drinking the set, but I think it's come out clearly that it's time to give up on "IPA" as anything but the bluntest of blunt instruments when it comes to describing beer to your customers. Breweries will need to work harder on descriptions and drinkers will need to pay more attention if we're to communicate what to expect from a new beer successfully. And the "not an IPA" brigade can just keep digging themselves into ever-deeper holes. Everything's an IPA, if you want it to be.

In the belly of the beast

Until Derek pointed it out, I hadn't noticed that 2015 was the third year in a row that the Beoir AGM was held in the south-east. As the chief organiser of the annual think-in-with-the-drink-in I should have given greater consideration to matters geographic but Wexford Town has a new brewpub - Simon Lambert and Sons, home of the YellowBelly brewery - helmed by caskmeister and sometime otter Mr Declan Nixon, so I needed an excuse to get down there and I figured nobody else would object too much. As a bonus, the train journey from Dublin to Wexford, it turns out, is one of the prettiest Ireland has to offer.

The meeting itself took place in The Sky and the Ground, a charming bric-à-brac-filled pub with a lovely sunny upper deck. Lamberts' is just up the street and their beer is on sale here so I started with a YellowBelly Blackcurrant Ale. It arrived very cold, a clear pale amber colour. The fruit has been added judiciously, meaning you don't get a sticky purple glass of fizzy Ribena. Instead it's a light-bodied ale, not a million miles from Irish red or English keg bitter, with subtle malt biscuit notes and then just a gentle jolt of tartness from the blackcurrants. Not massively complex but perfectly serviceable as a summer thirst-quencher. After it I switched to YellowBelly Hefeweissbier, a crisp rather than fruity example of the style, hazy orange in colour with a little bit of pith and some worrying headachey high-alcohol heat. It's sinkable enough when cold but it's possibly a bit dangerous for session drinking.

With business concluded it was time to go over to Lamberts' for lunch and a looksee at the brewery. At first glance, Simon Lambert & Sons is a very normal high street pub: a narrow saloon bar at the front and wider covered smoking area out back. It all goes a bit Wayne Manor once you go through the staff-only door at the back. Nicky Lambert told us they excavated a lot of the basement themselves, by hand. The brewery was also acquired piece by piece from wherever pumps and tanks and electrical components are got, and put together as they needed. Those pretty wooden-clad vessels are old dairy tanks covered in spare bits of the flooring from upstairs. Though it's in a space not much bigger than a domestic garage it has the only laboratory I've seen in an Irish microbrewery and uses all liquid yeast, a different strain for every beer. The conditioning tanks are on wheels and, when the contents are ready, they're simply trundled around to the keg cellar and hooked directly to the taps. The attention to detail at YellowBelly is jaw-dropping.

The beer engine upstairs was pouring YellowBelly Belgian Stout which almost everyone started with, presumably for fear of it running out, which it didn't. There's a crazy amount of complexity in this ultra-smooth black draught: tart dark fruits and sweetly tannic raisins, bookended by sweeter cherries and drier roasted grains. I only had a half pint, but every sip introduced something different. And yet it's silky enough to swig down, if you wanted to. A Sweet Stout was also available, on keg: a simple beer, this, with lots of caramel and a typical milk stout lactose tang.

Turning to the hoppy side of the house, YellowBelly Summer Ale is 4.5% ABV and an amber gold colour. It's in the English golden ale vernacular with those floral, orangey hop flavours. It's perhaps a little overly sharp for my liking, but refreshing nonetheless. In lieu of an IPA there was a Strong Pale Ale, 6.1% ABV strong. This is rose-gold in colour and tastes very caramelly, with the hops adding to the heavy sweetness with a strong perfume effect, plus lots of sticky herbal resins. The weighty, earthy character is accentuated by a thick, greasy, ambergris-like texture. Tough going, but rescued somewhat by a dry finish. And I don't know what went wrong with the Amber Ale but the brewers saw fit to pump in a vast amount of dry hops right before tapping it. As a result it has a massive raw, green hop aroma, hugely peppery and spicy, and that comes through in the flavour as well -- red peppercorns and five-spice say my notes. There's a dry acidic finish but none of the harsh grassiness you tend to get in beers that are dry-hopped overly long. I still couldn't help wondering what the 3.9% ABV base beer tastes like because there's barely a trace left of what it was.

And my beer of the day, the one I bought a growler of to chug on the journey home, was YellowBelly Lager. I guess this is one of those beers that brewpubs feel they have to make, for the unadventurous punter, and brewpub lager tends not to be the most inspiring of sub-styles. But this hazy gold 4.1% ABV conversation beer is perfection. The flavour performs very simple tasks, presenting a perfect crisp and clean golden malt base garnished with just a light lemony lacing, but the finished product is cleansing, quenching, magnificently fresh and immensely sinkable. I suspect the other beers come and go with the whims of their creator but this really deserves to be a permanent fixture, and a reference point for every other brewpub proprietor in the country.

The locals are very fortunate to have an operation like YellowBelly on their doorstep. A big thanks to everyone at Lamberts' and The Sky and the Ground for hosting us. It's well worth the daytrip, Dublin folk.

A lonely voyageur

Well this was a pleasant surprise: Roukine, a Québécois red IPA by Brasseurs du Nord, delivered to my missus by Máire from 57 The Headline. It's a foxy red brown colour in the glass topped by an ivory head. The aroma is that enticing mix of marzipan, chocolate and caramel, spiced with herbs, familiar from good American amber ale.

The flavour is a little less complex: the Cluster-derived bitterness hits home first, metallic and almost acrid, but held in check by the soft sweet toffee-pudding malt. The great balance means this would be a good six-pack session beer were it not for the whopping 6.5% ABV.

I don't know from red IPA, but as a strong American-style amber ale this does a great job. Thanks Máire!

Scenes from an Irish summer

Time to draw another line under the last few month's of random new Irish beers and put together an anthology post on what I think of them.

To start we go way back to early June and the Killarney Beer Festival I wrote about here. Liam from St. Mel's gave me a handful of unlabelled bottles of his newest beer Neomexicanus, brewed as it is with Neomexicanus hops. This extremely rare variety is grown exclusively by a Benedictine monastery in the New Mexico desert. When asked what style of beer to use them in, the salesmonk replied "anything but a pale ale", so Liam made a brown one. It's a clear mahogany red and the head is thin but stays stable down the glass. The aroma offers the strangest mix of savoury fried onions, sharp limey citrus and candystore jellies. On tasting I encountered big tannins and found the onion effect becoming spicy, like an exotic tea, perhaps, though I don't know enough about exotic tea to say more. You can also throw raw moist pipe tobacco in the mix as well, ending on a beautifully mouthwatering dry finish. Neomexicanus is very very strange, but enjoyable too. It has since acquired a label and is available wherever St. Mel's beers are got.

And one more bottled beer before we head out: Northbound is a new outfit in Derry and has two beers on the market so far. I've only been able to find one of them, however, the pale ale which they've called 26. It looks handsome in the glass, a clear medium orange-gold with plenty of fizz and a comfy looking head. There's a promise of citrus in the aroma and that's delivered sharply in the flavour, along with a kind of alkaline mineral quality: lime in both senses of the word, I guess. Nelson Sauvin is mentioned on the label as a signature hop but I couldn't detect any of its calling cards. This beer is all about the bitterness and doesn't leave much room for flavour niceties, and that's despite the claim that its name is also the number of IBUs. There's some decent refreshment here at just 4.5% ABV but I think the recipe could do with a bit of livening up.

And so to the pub. New draught beers have been coming so rapidly of late that I resorted to something I almost never do: a tasting tray. The flight measures at 57 The Headline are sufficiently generous to make this worthwhile when there's lots of new stuff to try. One was a recent return of a beer they'd had brewed exclusively for the pub by Rye River: Old Grocers Brown. It's very brown indeed, a deep rich shade, turning to red at the edges. There's a suspicious sickliness in the aroma but the flavour is perfection: a gorgeous milk chocolate and soft toffee sweetness balanced against some light forest fruit tartness plus a pinch of dry roast. Fantastic complexity for something well under the 4% ABV mark. It's a recipe which could be a very interesting base for all sorts of different directions, and I suspect it would be a real stunner on cask, but it's a lot of fun just as it is and I hope we'll be seeing it again.

From the same flight, Born in a Day, a 4.8% ABV pale ale from new outfit Boyne Brewhouse, produced at White Gypsy. It's a clear pale yellow and smells mostly of brown sugar to me. I was expecting an absence of hops but they're there in the flavour as a huge blast of floral perfume. Luckily the malt weight manages to carry this along, doing a great job despite the modest strength. If anything, the density and blaring hops make it a little too hard going to be truly enjoyable for me but it's still well-made and certainly not bland.

Next to it is Yankee, the third beer in Rascal's international hop series. To showcase the American varieties they've taken the unusual step of making a white IPA. It's pale and not especially hazy, sharing the spicy lemon effect you get from good witbier. Like other examples of the style it does suffer from a slight bathwater soapiness but the fresh and clean citric pop with which the flavour opens lets me forgive that. It also drinks much lighter than its 5% ABV. This a magnificent refreshing summer beer.

We haven't had a seasonal from Leitrim brewery Carrig in a while so I was happy to see a new wheat beer from them, called Summer Daze, on tap in the Bull & Castle. I was less happy when I took the pint back to my table and took a drag from it. At 4.8% ABV it's lighter than a typical German weissbier but that's no excuse for the terrible watery thinness here. But the texture is just a sideshow. On top of any proper beer flavour there squats a nasty, smoky, burnt plastic taste which I'm pretty sure is not supposed to be there. Something has gone wrong with this and frankly I'm a little surprised the brewery let it out and the pub put it on sale, but there you are. I don't mind paying money to explore the awfulness of any beer, but I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone if my experience is what normally happens.

Onwards to a cheerier summer beer: Connemara Summer Ale by Independent Brewing, on tap at Beerhouse. It's a little unprepossessing, the cloudy dark gold colour doesn't exactly shout "summer!", but that fresh mandarin aroma definitely does, and the blend of juicy mango and bitterer papaya in the flavour is totally beach-ready. At 5.4% ABV it could perhaps stand to be a little lighter, but only if it doesn't compromise the sheer quantity of sunshine they've managed to pack in here.

Also on draught in Beerhouse was another disappointment: Lazy Eye, the first IPA from Jack Cody's, a brewery with a lot more hits than misses under its belt. It's a serious 6.2% ABV and a dark orange colour. There's not much aroma to speak of, and what's there is certainly not hop-derived. It smells vinegary and tastes of earthy brett funk. Definitely not what anyone wants from an IPA.

Eight Degrees Nomad, however, delivers magnificently on this front. The Mitchelstown brewery has form on super-hopped recipes, and has also produced several excellent lagers. Here, the two combine perfectly. Nomad starts with a bright and spicy aroma, full of the earthy greenness of Cascade hops. It's assertively bitter to begin, even a little metallic, following through with lots of grapefruit acidity. With an ale body there'd be the risk of this burning too long and turning acrid, but as lager the whole sensation finishes quickly: it's just a big smack of a grapefruit and then it leaves you alone just as suddenly. Quite sessionable at 5% ABV too.

Hoppy lagers are abundant at the moment, and Galway Bay has got in on the act too with their latest, No Sweat, on draught at The Black Sheep. It's no lightweight either, at 5.8% ABV. As usual from this brewery it's hazy, and yes there's a dirty yeast bite right in the middle of the flavour. But that doesn't interfere too much with the main acts: a funky marmalade aroma and a zesty, sherbetty orange flavour. This time there are no clean lager characteristics and in fact the finish is long and ale-like. I wonder how lagery it actually is. Passable drinking, but it lacks subtlety.

I've not yet mentioned Galway Bay's In Bloom witbier even though it's been out for a while. I caught up with it at The Beer Market where it was pouring on draught though a bottled version also exists. The twist here is the inclusion of gorseflower which does actually add the coconut effect it's supposed to. Otherwise it's a very wheaty wit with little by way of spices, and a tangy metallic aspirin finish.

Another lager before I wrap up, one from the brand spanking new Corrib Brewing Company in Oughterard Co. Galway. Although that's the official name, the beers are branded Wild Bat and this is Pilot 001, a California Common. It was pouring at The Jolly Monk on Abbey Street where they were having some difficulty with their gas set-up but I was perfectly happy with the level of carbonation: a decent amount of head and enough of a soft effervescence. It's chestnut red and perfectly clear, smelling properly lager-clean, with fresh golden syrup and a light toasting. On tasting it's more roast than toast and with enough mild toffee that it could even be mistaken for the drier sort of Irish red ale. At the end there's a nibble, rather than a bite, of noble hops. But above all that deceptively simple lager cleanness wins out, aided in its thirst-quenching mission by a tannic sidekick. Pintable yet complex and a great first outing by Corrib.

And a stout for dessert, the third offering from Reel Deel Brewery. Marcus has gone back to his Yorkshire roots with Say Nowt Stout. This was a freebie I got at a tasting in Probus a few weeks back. It's only 4.8% ABV but it has a lot of the features of much stronger stouts, and I'm thinking of Carlow Brewing's definitive Leann Folláin in particular here. There's big roast and lots of caramel set on a thick tarry body. After a second or two the nuances creep in and you can detect the blackcurrant notes from the Bramling Cross hops and a tangy metallic bitterness too, which I'm guessing is the Admiral at work. This is definitely a cut above your average Irish stout, and it's good to see another one out. As the above demonstrates, we're not exactly drowning in new stouts over here.

I'll end there. Congratulations if you've managed to read this far. In the months it took to compile this lot, even more new Irish beers have arrived. I'll try and get them blogged in more reasonably-sized chunks.

Give 'em the works

"The Landscape of Beer" is the topic of this month's Session, hosted by the Active Brewer blog. Allen wants us to look at the way beer is now and how it's likely to change over the coming years. With the rise of Big Craft, the regular acquisition of little guys by bigger guys and the audible puffing of the established megaliths trying to keep up, it's an apposite topic for the moment. But I'm not going to go bigger-picture on this one. I'm keeping things domestic because I think there's a local development which means big things for the landscape of Irish beer.

Dublin's first white-label brewery has finally emerged into daylight after years of planning and wandering. Craftworks utilises what was once the Emerald/Galway Hooker brewkit and is situated in the north-west of the city. It opened for business a couple of months ago, offering brewing services to those without the means of making their own beer. Stone Barrel was one of the first to get to work in the facility, but a number of other new beer brands have suddenly sprung up from nowhere, all using the Craftworks kit.

Postcard is the owner's personal marque. The first out is an India Pale Lager called The Spire and it made its début, as so many beers do around here, at 57 The Headline. It's 5.2% ABV and poured a hazy orange colour. The first sip brought to mind kellerbier: that unpolished grainy rawness you tend to get in German brewpub lager, all yeast fuzz and protein bits. The hop qualities are rather Germanic too, waxy and bitter rather than the New World fruit I was expecting. The hops' flavour contribution is actually fairly minimal: a bit of pith is about your lot. A pint of The Spire was hard work to get through and is in need of some serious cleaning up.

The Pilgrim is a strong red ale from a team of homebrewing friends working under the name Wood Key Brewery, taking this opportunity to bring their recipe commercial. It looks a bit murky in the glass but is actually perfectly clear, a bright cherry-juice red. The head had faded by the time I got my nose near it and the aroma is a fun mix of raspberry sherbet and chew sweets. Expecting a sugar bomb I was pleased to find it's much more subtle on tasting. There's a rather astringent, tannic quality, calling to mind English bitter with the spicy and metallic hop notes which go along with that. Then a lightly tart and sweet strawberry jam effect swings in. But none of it is loud and shouty, all is clean and well-mannered, and there's a lightness to the body which makes it very drinkable, even at 5.8% ABV. I'm not wowed by The Pilgrim, but it's a decent, well-made twist on Irish red ale. You could do a lot worse than this when choosing one.

Same brewery, same style, same bottle shape, different parentage: we finish (for now) with Third Circle Red. (To save you looking it up, the third circle is where Dante put the gluttons.) Marks in favour immediately for putting the brewery of origin on the label, something the Wood Key guys neglected to do. But points off for bottle conditioning. There's a lot of sediment in the bottom of the bottle and even pouring carefully I got a hazy glassful of orange-amber beer and quite a hefty savoury yeast bite smothering the flavour. Peeking around it as much as possible I got glimpses of jaffa pith and a light dusting of incense, but absolutely nothing that says Irish red, or any other style, particularly. At 5% ABV it should be robust enough to carry a bit of yeast interference but this really isn't. Like Postcard, Third Circle needs to clean up its act.

The potential of the Craftworks project is enormous, and I'm expecting lots of new beers and brands and recipes, with the possibility of entirely novel vistas being opened in the Irish beer landscape. The gap between wannabe-brewer and brewer has never been narrower. Keep them coming guys, but think clean.