Back at it

Another Irish beer round up in the same week as the last one? 'Fraid so.

Wicklow Wolf, for one, has been very busy, with the harvesting and the collaborating. The 2018 edition of Locavore landed, in two cans of oatmeal pale ale with two different hop combinations, all grown on their own farm. It must be going well as they also supplied the green for White Gypsy's Emerald this year. Named literally after where the plants were growing, The Top Field is Bramling Cross, Challenger and Fuggles, while The Bottom Field is Cascade and Chinook. They should be quite different so I opened them side-by-side.

Both are a deep orange colour, with the US-variety one almost completely clear while the English one had a slight haze. A tall pillar of foam was also common to both, one which subsided quite quickly. The Top Field is sweet, with lots of floral honey in particular, and the blackcurrant jam note I associate most with Bramling Cross. There's quite a heat for just 5.4% ABV, the flowers turning to a concentrated solvent in the finish. The Bottom Field is also quite malt-driven, giving a first impression of golden syrup rather than honey. There's a flash of sharp bitterness but it's brief, and quite waxy and English-tasting. Maybe if you bring Cascades east across the Atlantic again they turn back into Fuggles. If not exactly leaping with hops, this one is at least clean with a pleasant crispness. The Top Field does not improve as it warms, getting hotter, dirtier and more sickly as it goes. It's counter-intuitive, but new world hops seem to be the ones worth growing in Ireland.

Moving on, Dark Flight is the third in Wicklow Wolf's collaboration series, a 7% ABV five-grain porter brewed with Anspach & Hobday. It looks like a proper porter: deepest black with a crackling tan head. I thought from that it was going to be thin and crisp but instead it's rich and sumptuous, full of gourmet coffee and spendy chocolate. There's a certain cereal dryness and a lacing of bitter herbs, but mostly this is all about that coffee roast. It bears a strong resemblance to A&H's own The Porter, which is great: proper Saaaf Laahnden character in a beer from Wickla. I really enjoyed my single can of it and would suggest that if Wicklow Wolf are planning to regularise any of these arrangements, Dark Flight is the one to do again.

Whiplash had a new pale ale, a scaled back version of their Drone Logic single-hop Simcoe double IPA from last year. Let Forever Be is 5.5% ABV. The aroma is sweet and juicy with a lacing of citrus pith. Lots of juice in the flavour too, at least at first. It tails off slightly, leaving a savoury sesame seed buzz, the sort that would normally annoy me, but I think the lower alcohol helps make it less severe. There's a smooth texture that drifts over any flaws, and the residual juiciness lasts long into the finish, ending up as the feature you remember about the beer overall. The whole thing is pintable and sessionable, and very tasty: all the fancy stylings of modern hop murk, but you can drink more than one of them.

Two modest-strength Whiplash beers in a row? What are the chances? Here's Slow Life, their first porter since the original Scaldy, 4.5% ABV and served nitrokegged. And it's a very good example of why nitrokegging is generally a bad idea. Whatever flavour complexities the brewer intended to feature here have been comprehensively buried by the nitrogen. There's a vague chocolate taste and a light grainy biscuit finish, but that's the sum total. Very dull and very disappointing, this, though I'd happily give a straight-carbonation version a second chance.

Can you tell that this was originally written as an all-Wicklow post? One last Garden County beer before we move on. O Brother's If You Say So is the first in a series of arty collaborations. It's a double IPA of 8.5% ABV and an opaque orange colour. The aroma is fresh and zesty but its flavour is heavier, hot and sweet with a strong resemblance to orange cordial. Despite this, and a bit of a dreggy murk burr, it finishes cleanly, leaving just an afterglow of garlic. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you're in, it's an enjoyable one with plenty of hop wallop, a pleasant warmth and no sharp edges.

A half-step away from O Brother brings us to Red Red Redemption, which landed in UnderDog yesterday evening. It was brewed at YellowBelly with O Brother as collaborators.  The style, uniquely I think, is a New England red double IPA. And amazingly it's just what one might expect. A hazy pink colour in the glass with its foretaste presenting a massive sweet kick of tinned strawberries, brimming with concentrated summer fruit. Oily hop resins row in behind that, buoyed up on a dense 9% ABV malt body. That blend of sweetness and hops is very different, bringing in characteristics which are generally unique to red IPA, New England IPA and double IPA. Though they're combined here, each element is distinct and well defined. It may look murky but the whole creation is actually very well polished.

Two very different offerings from Dublin's Third Barrel next. Brickline is a very plain lager, created for the Two Sides brand, presumably as an approachable house beer for the principal Two Sides pubs, T. O. Brennan's, 57 The Headline and Brickyard. It was at The Headline that I caught up with it. This is a bright pale gold colour, light-bodied and fizzy like any generic industrial lager you care to name, but also with an authentically-Bohemian tasting golden syrup sweetness to serve as a nod towards flavour complexity. Mostly it's very clean and easily drinkable, with one pint inviting the next. This really achieves what I'm certain it set out to do.

From Third Barrel's own brand comes Instant Gratification double IPA. A highly involved hopping schedule had been promised here, utilising Citra and Enigma in "silly" quantities. It came out at 8.5% ABV and poured a soupy orange. There's more than a hint of New England about it: that sort of fluffy mouthfeel with a tang of sweet vanilla. The hops are indeed insane, simultaneously dry and punchy -- all grapefruit pith and lemon rind -- while also juicy and tropical, full of ripe pineapple and mango. And yet the finish is surprisingly quick for such a powerhouse, the hops fading fast leaving an unpleasant yeast bite as the aftertaste. It's still an excellent beer for this sort of super-fresh (slightly unfinished?) style. With the great and good of Irish microbrewing starting to get themselves international reputations, Third Barrel could be the industry's best kept secret.

The last beer for this week isn't exactly a new one, having been around since the summer. 9 Rubies is that rare bird, a raspberry IPA, brewed by Lacada and kindly supplied by Mr B. I wasn't expecting it to be pink but it very much is. The flavour is, well, raspberries, in no uncertain terms. It's not quite the tang of real berries but the sweeter, spicier taste of raspberry jam or sherbet. Any hops? Not really, just a very slight metallic bitterness in the finish. From the label it seems they're going for a milkshake effect here, including lactose in the recipe. It's surprisingly light-textured for that, with no cream or gumminess. This is easy-going sweet summer fun, feeling much more like a silly raspberry wheat beer than Serious Craft™ and for all that I rather enjoyed it.

 Enough local beer for now. It's back to the travel notebooks for next week.