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.