Taking sides

Two evenings at the 2018 Big Grill Festival was enough time to get round to all the beers I wanted to try. As usual the beer and cider offer was prodigious so I'm going to have to split the review into two posts, arbitrarily on geographic lines. We begin at the bars on the west side of Herbert Park.

Rascals, at one end of the row, had brought a new spiced milk stout called Chai So Serious? It's a sort-of answer to calls for them to bring back their original ginger porter. There is, apparently, a complex mix of flavourings added to this, but for me it was all about the ginger. That was present as flavour rather than heat, as you'd find in a ginger cake or biscuit, with plenty of it in the aroma too. The base beer is balanced and creamy, with enough of a roast bite to prevent it getting overly sweet, and a modest ABV of 4.8%. Although this was a small limited batch, it is due to be scaled up and tweaked to bring out more of the spices.

Brewtonic had one of the sensations of the festival: Passion Wagon, a sour ale with passionfruit. It's a light and refreshing 3.8% ABV, not overly complex but great at what it does. The sourness is merely a dry chalky tang instead of full-on tartness as found in, say, YellowBelly's Castaway, while the texture is smooth and effervescent rather than fizzy. There's loads of real passionfruit flavour as well, but like the milk stout above it's not too sweet.

Next door to them, Rye River was showcasing the third in its limited edition series. After a big stout and a big IPA, part three is a summer lager called Ól. They've added orange zest to this, as well as a cocktail of orangey hops. I expected zingy and clean but that's not quite what I got. The flavour is certainly fun, sweet and juicy first, then with a more savoury spice, as found in orange skin. All of this lasts long into the finish and I think that's my problem with it: it lacks the cleanness and crispness of a good lager. Enjoyable, but not quite what I was looking for.

From an unmarked tap, Simon was offering sneaky tastes of Rye River's new smoked stout, Big Smoke, and this was much more my sort of thing. The almost meaty aroma from this paired well with the enticing smoky smells coming from the festival's barbecue pits. The mouthfeel is big and satisfying, suggesting more than its 5.7% ABV, and then there's an unexpected but pleasing spicy bite in the finish. I don't know what the availability of this is, but it's worth keeping an eye out for.

Next along was Metalman who had brought a new pale ale, badged here as The Pitmaster, though also known as Waterford Walls and other things, apparently. It's 4.2% ABV, yellow-amber in colour and with a charming lemon tea aroma. That develops on tasting into a dry white wine, Pouilly-Fumé in particular, with a similar kind of smoky edge. That's a lot of complexity for such a light ale, yet it's all well-integrated and not busy.

On day two, they tapped up Calypso which, in defiance of the New England trend, they've badged as a "South-Eastern" IPA. It's pale yellow and slightly hazy with a full body and sweet core flavour. So far, so New England. Lemon-flavoured chews was the main impression I got on tasting: zingy, with just a small bitter tang on the end for balance. That's pretty much it. It's simple and tasty, if maybe a little overclocked at 5.6% ABV. It will enhance your lazy summer evenings, if you can still squeeze a couple of those out of the next few weeks.

The first stretch of bars ended at Eight Degrees, offering MAD as their new one. This 4.5% ABV IPA gets it name from the use of Mosaic, Amarillo and Denali hops. I think I just plain don't like Denali, and nothing here convinced me otherwise. It tasted sweaty: a bitter staleness with an added sour fruit tang and vanilla sweetness. Nothing about it suggested Mosaic or Amarillo to me, so I'm laying the blame squarely on the Denali. Your mileage may vary with this one; in fact I hope it does.

We turn the corner, literally and metaphorically, by moving on to the perpendicular row of bars, and O Brother. Their new one was called The 1%er, and yes that's the ABV. It's an IPA too. Brave. And yet there's a proper depth to this. It's the hazy yellow of a table beer, and has a similar kind of yeasty buzz, but there's no unpleasant thinness. There is a proper IPA bitterness, and even a mild dankness, while it avoids being harsh or acidic -- another pitfall that often besets these. The flavour is smooth and orangey, and while the finish is quick, there are plenty of IPAs at five times the strength which do the same. I hope there's a market out there for a beer like this as I think there are plenty of occasions for it.

Kinnegar was next along. There was a bit of a buzz about Phunk Noir, the Brett-aged version of their Yannaroddy coconut porter. Maybe I'd built it up too much by the time I got to it but I was underwhelmed. It tasted like sour chocolate: two things that are fine when separate but just don't meld together well for me. Add in a thin texture and a heavy dollop of dark soy sauce and I was done. It's distinctive and complex all right, just not very nice.

Luckily they had a handy counterbalance available in the form of Inquisitive Hare, a lager which is usually only available at Tigh Neachtain in Galway. "Hoppy" is how the brewery describes it, and it is that: almost greasy with resins. A sticky sweet-apricot aroma wafts from it, while the flavour mixes refreshing herbal notes with a bitter and zesty lemon bite. The combination, akin to some sort of fancy cloudy lemonade with green sprigs and twigs, is lovely and refreshing in spite of the full body and 5% ABV.

Wicklow Wolf's new draught special is called No CAN Do, in part because it's draught only, but it's also another hop-acronym, representing Citra, Azacca and Nelson. All of them were added late to the pale ale which is a mere 4% ABV. It's a slightly hazy golden colour and offers an enticing aroma which is dank and tropical in equal parts. I was surprised by its density: this is a thick beast. A hard lime-skin bitterness kicks it off, bringing in a wisp of friend onion on the end, and a tiny vanilla aftermath. While not complex, it has a lovely punchy hop character, very much in the Wicklow Wolf style.

My standout beer of the whole gig came from the last bar on the row. It's not the first time that a Hope limited edition has been the highlight of Big Grill: beers 1 and 2 in the sequence caught my particular attention way back in '16. Number 12 is the latest: Hop Hash Double IPA. I understand this is the first Irish beer to use hop hash, a miracle ingredient which is essentially a by-product of the pelletising process. It's sold as being capable of concentrating the hop impact, and the Centennial and Amarillo varieties used here certainly did that. A very large basket of tropical fruits is on offer here. I'm not going to list them, but it's all the ones you'd expect. Now maybe the bitterness is lower than it should be, and at just 8% the ABV is too. But this is the DIPA's DIPA: clean, bright, fresh and simply booming with new world hop goodness. If you see it, get it.

Only twelve beers in and I've run out of bars. Guess I'll have to start again over on the other side of the park. Sit tight...