Hazy recollection

It's the season for pointless time-consuming traditions and dull end-of-year lists: yes, The Golden Pints are upon us once more. 2018's deliberation beer is one I acquired at the Mikkeller takeaway bar in Copenhagen airport with my final fistful of kroner. Hazy is a New England IPA of 6.6% ABV, an opaque orange-yellow, topped by a thick white head. In the minus column there's a pinch of dreggy yeast and a rising garlic note as it warms; the principal plus, however, is a massive juiciness -- mostly sweet orange but there's a balancing citric bitterness too, from the Simcoe, I'm guessing. Three months on from canning and this was still a perfect example of this style done well. It does need to be consumed cold, though: I was only half way through deliberations when it warmed up to the point of losing juice. A lesson for me to make my decisions quickly. Anyway, without further review, here are...

The Golden Pint Awards 2018

Best Irish Cask Beer: O Brother: The Whippersnapper
This cask-conditioned Berliner weisse ran a close race against another oddity, Third Barrel's Raspberry Stout, but just pipped it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Barrel-aged pale farmhousey beers rocked my world this year. Extremely honorable mentions go also to Rascals for the Chardonnay Sparkling Ale and DOT's Dainty Wood. This one, while perhaps not the most complex, had the best mix of classic wild-fermented and wood-aged flavours, very like an authentic Belgian gueze. I hope they can recreate it, and that there are customers in the local market who appreciate this sort of thing.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Larkin's: Baltic Porter
This award is based not solely on the quality of the beer -- though that is consistently excellent. It's almost as much the availability: this one has been there for me at regular intervals throughout the year; occasions when I just want something unfussy but great to drink. It looks to have been renamed now, as "Dark Matter", but it still tastes perfect.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Hope: Hop Hash DIPA
My standout from The Big Grill Festival this year translated perfectly into canned form. Citric hoppy deliciousness.

Best Overseas Draught: Purpose: Smoeltrekker #68
Another one of those barrelled sour blondes, hailing from Colorado but showing up on tap at the Leuven Innovation Beer Festival back in the spring. All the oaky spices.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Sierra Nevada: Tequila Barrel Otra Vez
I've been a bit grumbly about Sierra Nevada's harmless gose-alike but I was genuinely wowed when I happened across a bottle of the tequila-barrel-aged version.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Collective Arts: Ransack the Universe
In Ireland, "Overseas canned beer" is mostly going to mean "some murk from England with an abstract design on it" -- there are a hell of a lot of those on the market at any given moment and I don't bother trying to keep up with them. So instead I'm picking some murk from Canada with a sort-of abstract design on it, and very nice it was too.

Best Collaboration Brew: Jester Zinne
This one from De La Senne and Jester King -- barrels, funk, sour: you get the picture -- could equally have been awarded Best Overseas Bottle but I'm slotting it into the collaboration bracket where there's less competition instead.

Best Overall Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Scouring the above for the most memorable, pupil-dilating, beer experience of the year, and I think this is the one.

Best Branding: Kinnegar
The Donegal brewer switched its minimalist monochrome designs to the new busy cartoon bunnies and their associates. I haven't seen it on a label yet, but I loved the design for Rustbucket, featuring the late eponymous doggo.

Best Pump Clip: Beerbliotek: Shakes Fist Angrily
Still amused by the sheer daftness of this.

Best Bottle/Can Label: YellowBelly: Covert Operation
The Molloy's guys and YellowBelly are up to something. With a fox.

Not a skull to be seen.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
2016's winner returns to the top spot, though for different reasons this time. It still does excellent contract-brewing work, and the Brown Ale and Saison for Lidl were two very strong new strings to its bow, but the five limited edition seasonal launches really marked out the progression of 2018, and we got hints too of a pilot series a few weeks ago. The Rye River brand has come of age, and attached itself to some very fine beers.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Exchange
In a busy and diverse drinking year, no single overseas brewery stood out for me. This award is going on visitor experience, then, and the smart, bijou taproom of this place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, visited in September. It brews good stuff too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2018: Four Provinces
OK technically this was a 2017 launch, but it was 2018 before the new range started getting out and about. Láidir in particular was the best new regular-production Irish beer of the year, but there's no Golden Pint for that.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
In the grand tradition of the previous year's Best Newcomer winning Best Pub this time round, UnderDog takes the prize. Anyone who's spent any amount of time there will know why. It's always entertaining and only a small part of that is because of what's on tap. Shout-out to Paddy, Barry and Chris who make it what it is.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2018: GIST
I think I'm right with the timing here: I don't see any reference to its existence prior to last January. Anyway, Brussels has a new star in its pub firmament; a lovely blend of traditional cosy brown-café vibes with a bang-up-to-date modern beer list. A most honorable mention goes to the Metalman bar in Waterford which opened just over a year ago, pouring great beers and hosting fun events on the city's quayside.

Beer Festival of the Year: Hagstravaganza
The only Irish beer festival that people talk about; the centre of the calendar for the last two years; performing stellar geek-service while also being just a fun day out. After a few hiccups in year one, the 2018 outing nailed it.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
Time was this was a back-and-forth between the supermarket near work (Fresh in Smithfield) and the supermarket near home (SuperValu Sundrive) but both have lost crucial staff resulting in the loss of elite status. I'm going with Lidl instead this year, largely because of the Rye River commissions above, as well as the exotic oddities from the summer. More tickworthy exotic oddities please!

Independent Retailer of the Year: Stephen Street News
Unlike the supermarkets, Martin's and DrinkStore have done nothing at all wrong, but here comes the disruptor, jumping on the aluminium bandwagon and making exemplary use of price-points and social media to corner the poorly-served ubergeek end of the Dublin beer market. Long may it continue.

Online Retailer of the Year: YellowBelly Brewery
I don't usually award this because I don't buy beer on the internet, except this year I did: I joined the first outing of the YellowBelly Beer Club which meant four six-packs in the post. As I mentioned in relation to the last one, they weren't all brilliant beers, but there's still a bit of fun in parcel-post beer delivery, especially when it's a local outfit rather than a, say, Scottish or pseudo-Danish one.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Good Beer Guide To Belgium, 8th ed.
The mostly-annual award for The One Beer Book I Read This Year goes to Joe and Tim for this one. It is genuinely good. You don't get Golden Pints, or any pints, for putting out dreck.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Every Pub In Dublin
I've mentioned in previous years how I'm a sucker for a grand project. Dublin has two which came to my attention this year, attempting to visit all the pubs in Dublin (for a given value of "Dublin"), so shout-out to Dublin By Pub, but for sheer indefatigable doggedness, and regular laugh-out-loud pen portraits, this one goes to Cian.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @Bill_Linane
It was well worth keeping a blackboard record of how many times each Twitter account amused me during 2018. The final tally shows Bill to be out in front. Well done Bill.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
The most frequent winner of this category takes it again and godammit it shouldn't be this easy for them. It's not rocket science for breweries to put information about their new releases out on the internet so customers can see what they're buying when they're buying it, yet Eight Degrees is the only one that has the information to hand when I want it. A spirited, and much appreciated, attempt was made on Instagram by Whiplash but they still didn't manage to document all their own releases (Love is Lost? Hello?). Meanwhile, every other Irish brewery: pleeease do this better.

And there we are. Can you believe that that's ten whole years of Golden Pints? Madness. Big thanks to Mark and Andy, of course, who originated the categories, ones which are looking a bit clunky for the current beer scene, but my unhallowed hands shall not disturb them, or the beer world's done for. See you in 2019!

Southpaws

A quintet from Colorado's Left Hand today, all courtesy of the 4-for-€10 at Stephen Street News.

Wheels Gose 'Round is the almost-punning opening entry. I didn't read there were raspberries in it, nor notice the cartoon raspberries on the can, so got a bit of a surprise when it poured a pinky purple, topped by a pale pink head. It's branded for the brewery's charity cycling team and I guess that's why it's a light 4.4% ABV with a sweet soda-like flavour to match. You really have to use your imagination to pick out any sourness or salt, but I think the latter is really there at least. Coriander isn't even listed among the ingredients. Of course raspberry dominates the flavour, as it tends to, though I think the accompanying lemon peel helps rein it in and gives it an extra tart citric bite. For all the sweetness, it's clean and not sticky, but it's still very far from tasting like a proper gose, or even a beer at all, really.

I paid closer attention to the ingredients of Juicy Goodness before I opened it, learning that it's not a fruited pale ale as I assumed, but a golden ale which achieves all of its juice through hops alone. How much juice? Not very much. It's spicy at first: peppery, like grapefruit rind can be, then there's a savoury seed-like taste, with unpleasant overtones of burnt plastic. The citrus fruit emerges from under this and it's syrupy-sweet, more like cordial than juice. Though an innocent clear gold and a modest 5.5% ABV, this is a little bit nasty, the perfumed candy-and-plastic double act lasting long into the finish. It's not clean, not refreshing, and certainly not juice.

No ambiguities about Left Hand IPA: it's an IPA. I wish they'd told me it was can-conditioned, though, as I got a few cheeky skeins of yeast murking up my glass at the end of the pour. The aroma is quite muted while the flavour is strongly bitter. There's a little bit of that plastic and then a harsh and bitter effect: boiled spinach and candle wax. Some candied limes take a little of the edge off, but it's still largely edge, lashing the tongue with its sharpness without any fresh fruit or sweet malt to lighten the load. Unusually for an American beer over here, this has a best-by rather than a packaged-on date which means I don't know when it was canned but the brewery thinks it'll be OK for another two and half months. That leaves me wondering if it had any hop subtlety to begin with as there's certainly none now.

Months after these three were consumed and reviewed, a new set arrived in. It included Polestar Pilsner, which claims to be German-style but looked much more the wan and watery yellow of an American light lager. It's not that bad, but I don't think I'd deem it German-grade either. While there's a very decent noble-hopped grassy and herbal bitterness, it is rather thin: inappropriately so for 5.5% ABV. The texture is soft rather than crisp, which means the hop bitters sit and build on the tongue instead of letting it be scrubbed clean. This beer has a certain character of its own, but not quite enough, I felt. I kept waiting for the flavour to unfold, to assert itself, and that never happened. Pilsner doesn't have to be the quaff-and-forget beer style, but this example is.

I had higher hopes for Pixan, a pepper porter, two words I'm a fan of and there's no reason they wouldn't go together well. It looked good in the glass: a crystalline black with ruby highlights and an off-white head. The flavour, again, doesn't quite work. The chilli is properly spicy, scorching the back of the throat a second or two after swallowing. It's set on a pleasant chocolate sweetness which complements it well. But. They seems to have decided that smoke would be a good addition. I don't know if peated malt is how they've achieved this, but the harsh phenols suggest it might be. Instead of adding a sophisticated complexity this just makes it taste, again, of burnt plastic, really stripping the beer of class and poise. And again it's thinner than it should be: 7.2% ABV suggests a substance that this just doesn't show. It's not offensive, and the long chilli afterburn is actively enjoyable, but it seems that a few minor tweaks could have made it an altogether better experience.

A bonus sixth beer arrived out of sequence via Mace on South Circular Road. This is Saison au Genièvre, described by my server as a gin-lover's dream. The juniper is definitely apparent: rounded and juicy berries are at the centre. There's a strong layer of seasoning, showing saison's white pepper and thick salty brine, and it's that thickness that is the beer's downfall. At 6.8% ABV it falls into the "strong saison" bracket, and the end of it I don't like. It's too heavy and cloying, the spices not getting enough clear space to spark on the palate, drowned by a weight of malt that's not sweet or sticky, but is just too...much. I want everything to be the same except drier and cleaner, and proabably about 2% ABV lighter. In gin terms, this has been prepared with a very heavy tonic.

Not a great bunch, this. The fizzy pop clone was the best of them, which is frankly a surprise from an established player in one of America's beeriest states.

Emergency porter

Browsing in Sainsbury's for easy-going trainbeer that would be drinkable at room temperature, I picked this bottle of own-brand London Porter. It's from Shepherd Neame and comes in their distinctive flask-shaped bottle, accentuating its blackness through the clear glass.

The ABV is a not-so-casual 5%, and it fizzed a lot on pouring, thanks to the lack of chill. The Shepherd Neame house character is very apparent from the aroma: a sweet sherry tang and a not-unexpected skunky twang.

The flavour was an improvement. While the Sheppishness never fully went away, the chocolate and liquorice came to the rescue, shouting loud enough to cover any unpleasantness. The herbal quality of the latter lasts longest, giving it a bitter-sweet quality without any dry roast. Its texture is lighter than I'd expect from the strength.

This wouldn't be my favourite porter ever, but at £1.50 it works perfectly satisfactorily as a distress purchase. All the same, I'll be trading up the extra 30p for a bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout the next time I'm in this situation.

Continental Christmas

No, I didn't go to any of the lovely markets. I went to the German discount supermarkets and they didn't let me down the way overpriced glühwein always does.

Aldi had Schwaben Bräu WeihnachtsBier on the go. It's a rock-solid pale lager of 5.5% ABV in a jolly swingtop bottle. I couldn't tell you what the difference between this and Festbier is; they're both slightly more chewy than usual lagers. Here I get a veneer of honey on top of the spicy green hops. It all finishes cleanly, however, resulting in something big and satisfying but inhalable at the same time. Classically German, whatever the time of year.

Meanwhile, over in Lidl, something a bit less gemütlichkeit: a one litre can of Faxe Royal Export. It's not even a Christmas lager, they've just decorated the gigantocan. Well it worked on me. It looks very handsome: a medium amber shade. Though only 5.6% they've seen fit to boost it with sweetcorn and glucose. Presumably because of this, it's quite sweet and lacks a proper hop kick to balance the sugars. There's a crisp huskiness, grainy or corny, and then an artificial plasticky note in the finish, probably from whatever extract they're using instead of actual hops. It's not awful, by any means, and you get your €3 worth.

If you're restocking with easy-drinking cheapo lager over the festive period, the Schwaben one carries my seal of approval. Or Spaten, obviously. There's always Spaten.

ICYMI

Bless you, DOT Brew. I missed the raft of new beers that were available at White Hag's Samhain festival, but a mere month later they landed in in small-pack form. Not that I'm susceptible to FOMO, you understand. This is more the joy of discovering you haven't missed out completely.

I started with the dark stuff, perversely perhaps. Back to Black looks dead handsome in the 440ml can. It's a black IPA with rye, and despite the style going out of fashion, we are extremely well served for this subset in Ireland with Kinnegar's Black Bucket. I'll try not to make this a direct comparison, though they are near identical strengths, with Kinnegar's at 6.5% ABV and this one 6.4. It's not quite black though, more a dark brown and distinctly red around the margins when held to the light. From the first sip there's that beautiful burnt tarry bitterness I enjoy in these, matched with a perfect unctuous texture. Yet before it burns through the palate, the flavour immediately softens, exploding in a floral burst of rosewater and lavender. This doesn't fade out completely but is gradually replaced by a sharp grapefruit bitterness which forms the main part of the aftertaste. That mouthfeel means the whole flavour progression happens slowly and each element gets to fully unfold before the next one moves in. This is absolutely beautiful, with its extremely intense flavours and smooth drinkability. All the complex alchemy of great black IPA.

Also canned, 12 Dots is a collaboration with DOT's regular host brewery 12 Acres in Laois. It's a rye IPA of 6.7% ABV, pouring a bright and hazy orange colour. The flavour is fresh and sweet Seville orange, aided by a rich and full texture. There's a grassy bitterness with a pinch of pepper typical of rye, but the sweet fruit reasserts itself as soon as that arises. Despite the density this is a zingy and refreshing number, clean and balanced, exactly what a rye pale ale is supposed to be.

Next it's the fourth in DOT's tequila barrel series, the intriguingly named Barrel Aged Tequila Black. According to the blurb this started life as an "imperial Belgian ale" (not a style I'm familiar with) and had a full year in the casks. It came out at 10.8% ABV and, between this and the Belgian roots, I was shocked at how thin it was. That means the flavours don't get the platform that I think they need to perform. My first impression was of white wine, but turning quickly oxidised and more like medium-dry sherry after a moment or two. When the beer was still cold, that was pretty much the extent of its complexity; later it does offer some extra chocolate and black pepper, but no more substance. I can't believe I'm complaining that a beer of this strength needs beefing up, but it really does. While it's far from bad -- very far -- every sip made me think it could be better. Probably not constructive criticism but we'll all have to live with that. Next!

Rum Red Dark is basically an Irish red, aged in ex-rum whiskey casks. It's 8.9% ABV and a dark ruby colour, flat-looking on pouring with no real head. The flavour is sweet toffee and caramel with an underlying twang of old oak. I don't pick up whiskey but there's a certain vinous quality, like tawny port, perhaps. It never really escapes being a bit of a dull Irish red ale, despite the extra alcohol and barrel ageing. It's cruel to say, but there's a touch of Innis & Gunn about this. Not DOT's best work.

I had much higher hopes for Mad Imp imperial stout, created exclusively for Redmond's off licence in Ranelagh. No head worries here: it pours with a thick pillow of foam on top. It's 10.8% ABV and there's a lot of resin about it, bitter balsamic, like retsina. Floral lavender provides a lighter note, and then the concentrated herbal bittersweet taste comes back, accompanied by a wisp of smoke. There's only a little milk chocolate from the underlying stout and I think I'd have liked more of that. While it's undoubtedly a quality beer, there are too many bells and whistles and not enough attention to the fundamentals of imperial stout. At least there's no pastry.

The odd outlier here was the aptly named Why Not, a barrel aged lager. Going in I was sceptical that pale lager, of all styles, might be improved with a bit of whiskey barrel. I took the first sip before reading the label and got a definite kick of white grape, so was pleased to read that the barrel had contained Muscat wine before the distillery got its hands on it. There's a peppery spice too, and a green-cabbage noble hop bitterness, the clean profile lining these flavours up and delivering them one by one. Corky oak finishes it, but there's no spirit heat. I'm going to say this is interesting rather than good, and I don't think it's a real improvement on an ordinary decent lager. But I can see what's going on: it's not some Innis & Gunn-style oaky butterbomb, there really is a character that's all its own. I think your mileage will vary from mine on this, so probably best to ignore my review.

We round out this post with two more I discovered last week on the taps at Alfie Byrne's. Another tequila one came first: Barrel Aged Double Tequila which, despite the name, is actually lighter than the black one above, at 8.8% ABV. It's a dark red-brown and absolutely loaded with woody flavours: oak and pine in particular. Just when I thought that was going to be it, in drops some luscious ripe fruit: sweet strawberry and juicy grapes. I found myself wishing this side were more prominent. As-is, the splintery wood gets in the way of the subtleties without really bringing any charm of its own to the picture.

I had a better time with the beer beside it: Down Down, presumably a relative of the Double Down served at Big Grill, as the badge artwork is the same. As is the ABV, more or less, at 9.6% here, and it looks similar and tastes similar too. That's a wonderful mix of herbs and coconut, plus a spicy cedar complexity, some oaky white wine grape and a pinch of vanilla. It's smooth and big-bodied, much better suited to a grim winter's evening than a summer festival in the park.

DOT ends another year with a thought-provoking selection. I look forward to what's in store for 2019.

The King isn't quite dead

Citrus-infused pale ale is a trend I thought had almost died out. Sure, the beer that made them popular in these parts, Elvis Juice, is still around as part of BrewDog's core range, but new ones haven't been arriving as fast as they used to. Like with any style of beer, there have been some standouts -- O Brother's The Smasher was the most memorable for me -- and also plenty of dreck. Today I'm deciding which pile on which to place FourPure's Easy Peeler.

It's badged as a "citrus session IPA" and is 4% ABV. It pours a wan shade of white-gold and smells mostly of fizzy orange drink. Unsurprisingly, that's the main feature of the flavour too, laced with bitter herbs, and sweetly oily coconut. I guess that's a decent bit of complexity for what it is. The texture is light without turning watery and there's a lingering rough bitterness that could be orange zest but I think is actually a slightly acrid hop burn. It does no harm, anyway.

My biggest gripe is its lack of real fruit flavour; it tastes of pulp and concentrate rather than fresh squeezed. It's perfectly sinkable and refreshing, however, and one of the few of this sort where I'd happily drink another straight away. The words "easy" and "session" on the can are more than aspirational.

Coffee, nuts, chocolate, berries and hops

Following a fortnight of blog posts about Away, it's time to come home again for some local beers. Here's a round up of a few of the recent Irish releases to come my way so far in December.

I was intrigued by Carrig's early winter offering, White Wonka, described as a "white chocolate nitro cream ale". Neither nitro nor cream ale normally floats my boat, but this had to be tried. My pint in Bar Rua arrived a clear gold topped with a snowy head, just a shame about the dirty glass. The aroma -- yes there is one -- really does suggest the sweet sugar and condensed milk of white chocolate. It's less sweet on tasting, the real chocolate joined by a floral rosewater element. This is the nearest thing, in beer form, I've tasted to the Turkish delight square from a box of Milk Tray. A slight nutmeg spice adds complexity as it warms. It should be sickly, it should be overdone, it shouldn't work, but it absolutely does. More a dessert beer than a pintable sessioner, though it is only 5% ABV so your mileage may vary.

Being more explicitly Christmassy, Hopfully launched Sumthin For Santa at the TapHouse a few weeks ago. It's a 4.2% ABV brown ale with added hazelnuts. I wasn't keen on the appearance -- a soupy red-brown colour. And it doesn't improve beyond this: the texture is thin and the flavour is weak and watery, tasting of grain husks and cheap chocolate, with just the mildest hint of nut oils. Lough Gill's excellent MacNutty set a particularly high bar when it comes to the sub-genre, but even without that comparison I don't think I would have enjoyed this.

And speaking of Lough Gill, they've released a collaboration they did with Hopfully and Donegal newcomer Old Mill Brewing. It's called Purple Haze and combines the New England style with açaí berries and blueberries. Again, that doesn't sound like it would work, but again it does. There's the soft New England fuzz, a layer of citric American hops, and lots of tart berries. Somehow the two sides don't clash with each other, though I'd definitely class it more as a fruit beer than a pale ale. Pale ale shouldn't be purple, for one thing.

O Brother's Once Too Much is a more unashamed purple fruit beer. "Blackberry Wheat" is the straightforward description on the tin, and it's 5.5% ABV. It presents a hazy pale orangey-pink in the glass, the head not building or lasting, so not like a weissbier. The base flavour is quick and plain: clean grain husk; all very neutral for a wheat beer. On top of this sits the blackberry, hard and sugary, like concentrated blackberry jelly. A certain yeast grittiness adds complexity and helps offset the sweetness, though doesn't bring any extra joy. This is a simple beer, not much more than an average neutral wheat ale with some forest fruit concentrate thrown in. It's not offensive or difficult, however, just simplistic. This is fine, but doesn't quite live up to the fancy arty branding.

Back to the TapHouse, and a beer that isn't especially new but which I'd never seen before: Wicklow Wolf's Mr Mojo, a 4.5% ABV pale ale single-hopped with Mosaic. You go after Little Fawn, you better not miss. And this doesn't. There's a massive juicy hit of peaches and honeydew melons with a spicy and floral jasmine complexity and a pinch of lemon rind in the finish. Mosaic as Mosaic is meant to be used, and given enough malty substance to perform optimally. The colour is a pale and slightly hazy gold, while the aroma is lightly tropical. They announced this as a keg-only special but I could see it, or something like it, going a bomb during the summer, especially canned.

Along sort-of similar lines was Melony Snicket, the first beer I've had from Fat Walrus, a client brewer working out of Third Barrel, like everyone else these days. 57 The Headline had it on tap a couple of weekends ago. This is another hazy pale one, 4.6% ABV this time. It's bitterer than Mr Mojo, but not excessively so: a pinch of bergamot and some soft lemon sherbet. Effervescent rather than fizzy, it has a dry mineral quality which helps accentuate the citrus. What it's not is melony: there's no juicy, fruit-flesh flavours. Overall it's a decent and clean pale ale, well suited to those who like theirs dry and citric.

Also at The Headline, a small-batch chocolate milk stout from Rye River's pilot brewery. It's called Xocolatl and is a bit of a whopper at 8% ABV. I liked the density here; the rich and slightly sticky sweetness of hot chocolate sauce. There's a pleasing warmth, with some mild spices and even a hint of oaky vanilla, though it's not barrel-aged, as far as I know. It makes for perfect winter drinking, and I'd say a second glass would be manageable without it clogging up the palate completely. This is the first Rye River pilot beer I've encountered and it's a promising development. Keep them coming!

The award for the worst beer name of the year goes to Third Barrel for Banana Hammock. It's a a banana-flavoured stout, and that shouldn't work any more than the name does. But I really enjoyed the pint of it I had at 57. There's a roasty bite up front, making no mistake that this is a real and proper stout. There's a spice as well; a note of gunpowder and nutmeg which I associate with black malt though could equally be from another dark grain. And then, running in parallel with this, a creamy banana milkshake sweetness. It's a very marked contrast. The two sides of this beer all but ignore each other, providing their own flavours without acknowledging the other. That sounds like a recipe for a tangled mess but it's actually quite tasty. A big 6.3% ABV helps accentuate the smooth sweetness, though I was still glad it wasn't nitrogenated. This is a different take on stout, and offers a more complex experience than just stout with fruit flavouring bunged in.

Whiplash's Love Is Lost was an unexpected find on Friday last when I took the rare opportunity to have a daytime beer at L. Mulligan Grocer. "Double Brown" is the designated style and that gets you 7.1% ABV. It's a murky chocolate-brown colour, tasting dry at first, with a little roast then long milky coffee. Sweet rosewater creeps in next, and as it warms an increasingly dominant note of brown banana tkes over. Overall though, it delivers everything a brown ale should, with added complexity. I'd never have guessed the strength, and it's perhaps a little thin on it, but it's a difficult beer to complain about, with all that smooth coffee luxuriousness.

The final Eight Degrees release of the year is a red IPA called Vermilion, the 440ml cans ending up very reasonably in the 4-for-€10 at Stephen Street News. It's 5.8% ABV and pours a deep garnet shade with lots of head. The aroma is very west coast, all grapefruit and pine, with just a slight added malt sweetness. That translates to a very bitter flavour, transcending the pine and heading into wax and perfume: things that aren't meant to be tasted. There's a woodiness too, like biting into a whole clove, while a coffee note added by the dark malt just throws fuel on the fire. Although this was literally just two days in the can when I drank it, it tasted like one of those IPAs left on the shelf with all the fun hop flavours long since faded away. Maybe it's just my low tolerance for bitterness, but I thought this was in desperate need of lightening up.

Another closing-out beer was White Knight, the last in the YellowBelly Beer Club series of exclusives for 2018. This is a 9% ABV imperial stout and despite that relatively modest strength they've gone all-out for the texture, including Vienna malt and Special B in the grist. There's almost no roast here, with mostly a rich chocolate flavour instead. The aroma is Galaxy-bar creamy and sweet but it tastes substantially bitterer, with notes of high-cocoa dark chocolate and an acidic green hop tang which the accompanying notes helpfully tell us is Magnum. It's no palate-thumper; there are no gimmicks or stand-out oddities: it's just a well-made straightforward imperial stout, and a good one to have a six-pack of. The Club has been a bit of a mixed bag and not all of them suited me, but this finishes out the year on a high note and I'm already on board for the next one.

Larkin's dropped a pair of canned IPAs, both with a little individual twist. I began with Cascade In The Rye, a strong rye IPA of 7.5% ABV and utilising not only Cascade but Citra, Mosaic and Centennial too, fermented with a Vermont yeast. It's a hazy dark orange colour with a juicy and pithy aroma. The New England sweetness lands first on tasting, a peach and apricot softness. It bitters up quickly after that, lemon and lime acidity exploding onto the palate, joining the grassy spice of the rye and a hint of garlic. The carbonation is low which allows the soft fruit side to dominate, perhaps a little too much as a sticky cordial note arises after a couple of mouthfuls. Overall, though, it's very good. The contrasting hop flavours keep it interesting, the finish is quick and clean with none of the residual dregs these often show, and the alcohol provides support to the taste without adding any heat. Quite elegantly constructed overall.

So what happens when you add coffee to all that? You get Coffee In The Rye and an ABV reduced to 7%. This is just as clean as the base beer, and the rye grass note survives, but all of the hop subtlety has been buried under the coffee. The coffee was chosen carefully: Ethiopian Keyon mountain, bringing notes of "blueberry, apricot jam and papaya", and I do get a certain amount of sweet fruit here that's provided by the coffee rather than the hops. I don't think it's an improvement, however. The aroma of cold stale coffee put me off every time I went in for a sip and I really miss the hop bittering. The can says "We opted for a light roast and a cold brew infusion, to limit the roasted notes and max out the fruity elements" but if the aim was to make it even fruitier, it didn't work. I would probably have enjoyed this more had it not been part of a pair. It's well made for what it is, I'm just miffed at how the hops have been neutered by the coffee.

Back on the New England bandwagon, Kinnegar has dropped Double Bunny, an enhanced version of their Big Bunny NEIPA from last year. The vital statistics aren't that different, its ABV up to 7.8% from 6. The looks fit the style anyway: an opaque orange with a head of cottony fluff. It smells pure and good, sweetly of mandarin and peach. A first taste is not merely invited but demanded. And yes it's an orangey onslaught: bright and juicy jaffa, satsuma, tangerine and a chalky effervescent sherbet. No yeast, no garlic and only a very slight lemon-and-lime bitterness and a tiny alcoholic warmth. It's so clean and poised it's almost one-dimensional: just juice. I loved it way more than I expected to, and drank it indecently quickly. Get this while it's fresh, folks.

A particularly interesting cross-section of Irish beers here. Something for everyone when everyone's out drinking.

Around Europe on the dry

As I mentioned yesterday, Carlsberg hosted the EBCU for one day of their most recent meeting. The Carlsberg Conference Centre is richly appointed, and just beside the coffee machine there was a fridge offering a plethora of non-alcoholic beers from the company's European portfolio. Well, it would be rude not to.

Birell Belgian Wit, from Poland, is delightfully peachy, sweet and a little sticky, with overtones of lemon. There's that worty quality I associate with non-alcoholic beers generally, though the fruit content is high enough that it gets away with it. Not sure I can imagine drinking lots of it, however.

There's also a Birell Lager, which honestly tasted more like a wit than the wit. Or maybe a radler. Either way, lemon features big. It doesn't have much else to say, just a mild metallic tang in the finish. The texture is thick and un-lager-like, though that does give it a gorgeous stiff head of foam on top. While not unpleasant it's just too sweet. Pretty typical of this style.

Carlsberg's own Nordic Hvede is a wheat beer. This is lighter textured but no more beer-like. The aroma is all rich baked apple while the flavour is mixed fruit bubblegum. After the initial candy punch it finishes dry and quite watery. Most of the others I'd nod through but this is actively unpleasant.

My fellow tasters made faces when it came to the Greek offer, Fix 'Aneu. It's a pale yellow colour. It smells horribly funky; agricultural, like slurry or silage. The flavour isn't as bad, but still terrible. Over-boiled vegetables is the main thing, and a sharp metal tang, leading to carbolic soap. It is, in short, absolutely disgusting.

San Miguel 0,0 at least looks better: quite a rich golden colour. Sweet and worty candyfloss is the aroma, and it's sweet to taste, finishing with a bitter tinny tang. The worst of both worlds, really.

Switzerland brings us Feldscholossen Alkoholfrei Blanche/Weizenfrisch. It's fairly inoffensive. The worst of it is a soapy tang, but that sits atop a bright and juicy pineapple and stonefruit element. The texture is nicely fluffy. I still wouldn't count it as good though: it never manages to shake the feeling of laundry detergent.

Naturally there's a Feldschlossen Alkoholfrei Lager. It starts with a sharp and sickly aroma, leading to a medium-sweet flavour carrying a sense of toffee popcorn, but finishing quickly. There's a light dusting of banana and familiar tangs of tin and soap. Pretty poor fare, but at least it's not loud and brash.

I'd forgotten that Carlsberg owns Baltika. Baltika 0 is another wheat-based one, very pale and only slightly hazy. There's a delicious lemon candy aroma and that adds a different sort of sweetness to it. The base is a standard worty alcohol-free weiss but it's quite successfully masked by the flavouring, perhaps more grapefruit than lemon here. Yes it's a little artificial tasting but it's quite nice, like a posh lemonade. Adding syrup is one way of hiding non-alcoholic beer's flaws. My Russian isn't up to much, but I can't see any mention of added flavouring on the can, mind.

The Lithuanian option was a stout, called Go Juodas. It looked convincing in the glass: deep brown with a thick creamy head. There's a strong chocolate aroma and, unsurprisingly, it's hugely chocolatey to taste. It's sweet like a chocolate breakfast cereal though surprisingly light textured and properly stout-smooth. I really enjoyed this. The flavour profile hides the innate sugariness common to non-alcoholic beers. I'm not at all sure I would even have pegged this as alcohol-free.

And I almost missed Tourtel Twist because I didn't think it was a beer. It certainly doesn't taste like a beer, being powerfully sweet, thin of body, with a tacked-on lime and mint taste, like a basic alcopop. I'd complain it's a drink for people who don't like the taste of drink except for the fact it's not drink. It's a sugary fizzy thirst-quencher and doesn't really belong with the others who are at least trying to seem like beer. It's probably not legal to sell pre-packaged 0% ABV margaritas to kiddies, but if it were they'd taste like this.

And that, in a mere six posts, was my Copenhagen. A proper smorgasbord of a beer city it is.

The men in white coats

At the last Copenhagen meeting in 2012, Carlsberg hosted one session of the EBCU's autumn gathering. For the return visit in 2018 the vast former brewery complex was all but unrecognisable, with almost every spare plot of land currently being redeveloped as part of the city's "Carlsberg Quarter". The Jacobsen microbrewery is still going in the middle of it all and that's where the company treated us to lunch.

With that came a couple of Jacobsen beers I'd never tried before, beginning with Jacobsen Extra Pilsner. Despite the name it's even less like a pilsner than most beers bearing the label. Thickly textured, it has a powerful candy sweetness running in parallel with a liquorice bitterness, plus some cinnamon spicing and a hint of red apples. Does that sound like a pils to you? It's only 5.5% ABV too, but tastes bigger and hotter, and not in a good way. I'd have been properly disappointed if I'd ordered this based on the name.

Jacobsen Pale Ale came with it, one made with orange peel. It's a dark gold colour, and a whopping 6.4% ABV. The base is lager-clean and a powerful bitterness is built upon it: wax, plus a hard citrus of lime and bergamot. A touch of nondescript spice, possibly from the peel, adds a tiny level of complexity, but mostly this is about that palate-punching hop acidity. It's certainly not bland and corporate, but at the same time it's a tough one to enjoy.

Did you know Grimbergen was owned by Carlsberg? A lot of us at the lunch didn't. The Belgian brand was owned by Alken-Maes, itself a part of Scottish & Newcastle until 2008 when that portfolio was divided up. Most of Alken-Maes went to Heineken but Carlsberg got Grimbergen for some reason. They served us Double Ambrée with dessert, a super sweet and sticky dubbel-ish, full of raisin, toffee and chocolate flavours, despite being only 6.5% ABV. A couple of sips of this was plenty and had me hankering after the clean profile of the Jacobsens.

In the evening we were granted a backstage look at the Carlsberg Laboratory, a vast institute which continues the scientific research for which Carlsberg has long been known. Our guide, the charismatic Zoran Gojkovic, hosted a short tasting at the end, to illustrate some of the experimental work they do. One beer presented was Carlsberg Red Lager, which has been around a while but never released commercially as far as I'm aware. This looked and tasted to me something like a berry-infused Berliner weisse, bright pink with a touch of yoghurt in the aroma and notes of blackberry and loganberry in the flavour. The trick? It's all malt with no additives. They use a highly unusual strain of red barley and ferment it to include an exceedingly high level of diacetyl. The end result is surprisingly good, a kind of fruit beer convergent evolution.

I wrote about Carlsberg's Rebrew project back in 2016. One of the long-term spin-offs from that experiment was Carlsberg 1883, a new mass market dark lager. I took one to drink on the train back to the city centre which means I didn't get to look at it, but it tasted properly dark, centred on caramel with an added complexity of herbs, and especially aniseed. It's a little thick and sticky but clean, and I liked its comforting old-fashioned vibe. I also like that Carlsberg has put something like this out in the beery mainstream.

That's all I have from that visit but I'm going to throw in an addendum from shortly after I got home. Diageo reps for Carlsberg in Ireland and earlier this year they launched Carlsberg Unfiltered into the market. I didn't see any of this in Denmark, and reading around it seems to be confined so far to Ireland, the UK and Sweden. I'd been meaning to give it a spin but before I could buy one I got invited to the opening of a dedicated Carlsberg Unliftered bar operating behind The Bernard Shaw for the run-up to Christmas.

This stuff is 4.2% ABV and a bright hazy orange, as one might expect. And for all that it's a big-beer product, it really does show the features of proper real kellerbier or Czech nefiltrovaný. There's the extra smoothness in the texture, and a lightly spicy complexity. I went in sceptical and came out convinced. Yet another example of a macrobrewery (two if you include Diageo's involvement) offering a lager of genuine quality as part of their mainstream portfolio.

We're not quite done with the Danish giant yet, however. Consider tomorrow's post as a sort of DVD extra on the Copenhagen trip, possibly a blooper reel...

Zoran in the Carlsberg Laboratory, minus white coat