Super, darling

There's no particular story behind this bottle of Lagunitas's Super Cluster: it was just there in the DrinkStore fridge and I bought it. It's 8% ABV, hopped with Citra, and I was a little worried I'd left it a few weeks too long before getting around to drinking it. If it decomposed in any way then it must have been stunning beforehand because it was still very very good when I opened it.

A crystal-clear orange colour sets it in immediate contrast to current fashion. It poured quite thickly, a head only forming at the last minute. There's only the faintest trace of citrus in the aroma, presumably because of the lack of fizz. The flavour, in contrast, explodes with citric joy right from the off. There's a super-clean lemon and lime, where the emphasis is all on the flavour itself, not the bitterness or any pine or weed offshoots. It's almost like a high-end soft drink; quite sweet without being sugary, but mostly tasting of that zingy and zesty fruit.

It's rare to find a beer of this style and this strength that's actually refreshing, but we have one here. I quaffed it indecently quickly and would have been up for another straight away.

What Larks!

Wicklow's lager specialist, Larkin's, has been busy with the warm-fermenting yeast of late, dropping two new IPAs, both of which I caught up with at 57 The Headline.

The lower-strength one is called Dog Days, being a mere 3.5% ABV. It's a murky orange colour, but then pretty much everything is these days. I'm guessing from the name that it's intended as a summer beer, and I think it'll do that job well with its zingy thick-shred marmalade flavour. There's a little vanilla alongside this, and the whole thing shows a lot more body than might be expected from the strength. The finish is very quick, however: I would have liked a longer citrus buzz. While the murk makes it taste a little rough when it's cold, it does mellow and soften as it warms, and I was thoroughly enjoying it by half way down.

While there were hints of New England influence in Dog Days, the other IPA was much less subtle about it, even if it doesn't use the words. Outlier's badge simply says it's an IPA and 5% ABV. The hazy yellow-orange colour is a dead giveaway of the Vermont sensibilities, however, and the bright and peachy aroma is another. There's a slight yeast bite in the flavour but it's almost comprehensively buried by the hops. First there's a pure orange juice foretaste, then zesty lemon meringue, building in bitterness to a tangy citrus crescendo. And that repeats with every mouthful all the way down. NEIPA purists will enjoy the mild vanilla note as well; I'm not pushed. This is luscious and summery, pressing some of the same buttons as the beer above but really using the extra strength well. I hope it'll be around for a while.

A Larkin's post needs a lager, of course, and this one has Black Pine Rising. I thought from the name that it was going to be a black IPA, until Mark set me straight that this is actually a schwarzbier. It certainly didn't taste like a black IPA, nor at all piney, so that confusion was cleared up. It didn't really taste like a schwarzbier either, however. What I got was a soft-textured and wheaty dark beer, watery of texture low in hops, and with a touch of coffee in the flavour, almost like a mild. The crisp dark dryness I enjoy in its purported style is unfortunately absent. The result is inoffensive, but I know Larkin's is capable of better dark lagers than this.

Still, it's good to see the turnover and the variety. Keep them coming.

Do you want anything from the shop?

I was going out to the Mace on the South Circular Road. This modest convenience store with a kick-ass beer selection is possibly the only place in the country you can pick up an Ambrosia rice pudding and a De Molen Rasputin in a single transaction. A request for something strong and dark was proferred before I left the house.

Non-pastry stouts are hard come by these days. I had a choice of six or seven 8%+ ABV dark beers form the fridges but almost all had been "enhanced" with syrups and sugars of various kinds. Only one was unadorned: Jekyll & Hyde, described as a "double stout porter", brewed by Wylam with input from De Molen.

Coffee is the main flavour this is built around. Though it's sweet and gloopy, as befits 9.8% ABV, there's a lot of dry roast and coffee bean oils in the flavour. A dusting of red summer berries lightens it up while the strong and warming alcohol gives it a rich depth and long finish.

I don't know that this is fully up to the excellent standard of either brewery but it's bloody good drinking and great for a random pick from a cornershop shelf. Well played all.

De Molen also made a stout with another northern English brewery, Kirkstall. De Abdij & The Mill was the result, popping up on cask at The Black Sheep before Christmas. Manager Cormac was very keen I give it a try. It's 6% ABV and made with oatmeal, something that really accentuates the smoothness that cask already provides. The flavour is complex without being busy, mixing creamy Galaxy-Bar milk chocolate with a more serious dry and crunchy cereal. Enjoyable as the taste is, it's really the silky texture that makes this beer. Truly nothing shines on cask like a well-made stout.

We succumb to the pastry for the last one. Nightfall is also a collaboration, being an imperial stout brewed by FourPure with input from Brazil's Sunset Brew. It's 9% ABV and the Brazilian influence is manifest in the inclusion of chocolate and coconut in the recipe. There was pretty much no point in photographing it in the dimness of UnderDog as it's very dark indeed. The coconut aroma is massive, and it's concentrated in the flavour too: that almost crunchy effect you get from real coconut flesh. The chocolate is in second position but is definitely pronounced. Would I make the cliché'd comparison to a Bounty bar? Yes, I'm afraid I would because that's how it tastes. Sorry. Best of all, after all that, it simply cleans politely off the palate, not building or growing difficult. I think I could consume quite a lot of this.

This post started out as a sort-of rant against wacky-recipe stouts, but sometimes it's hard not to like them.

Stone immaculate

A couple of new Californian IPAs  to begin today, both part of Stone Brewing's "Hop Worship" series, developed, I guess, in case people thought Stone is a brewery that doesn't really care for hops.

Idolatrous is first up, brewed with El Dorado and Mosaic, two of my personal favourites. It's 7% ABV and there's just a slight haze to the pale amber beer. It's perfumed with a sweet spice, a touch of aftershave and incense. On tasting it's thick, first and foremost: bags of sugary resins. There's a strong green-bean bitterness, and where I was expecting the lighter tropical hop notes to rise to the surface, the sweet malt just steamrolls back in. I enjoy Mosaic and El Dorado for their brightness and fun but the base beer here, while not in any way bad, just drags them down into a hot malty soup. I wasn't relishing the prospect of starting into the same thing except without hops I like.

OK, Citra is fine, but I'm not convinced about Loral. They're both in Exalted, the other one of this pair. It looks largely similar, and from the aroma the big toffee malt base is immediately apparent. It's a big part of the flavour too, but I think the hops get more of a say in this one: they may just be louder hops. There's a fresh juiciness offering real jaffa flesh as opposed to Idolatrous's thick-shred marmalade. Alongside some very American lime, there's a slightly Germanic noble side too, bringing fresh spinach, celery and white pepper. While the thick malt is inescapable, the hops here do a much better job of counteracting, if not actually balancing, it.

Neither of this pair paid proper tribute to the hops, I felt, getting bogged down in too-dark heavy malts that stole the focus completely. The latter is a pretty decent beer, however, in a brash old-school west-coast sort of way. A first gold star for Loral from me as well, I think.

We finish on one from Stone's Berlin satellite brewery, a collaboration with Lervig called Hi, I'm Kveik. How would they handle the temperamental type of oh-so-fashionable nordic farmhouse yeast? Well, they've made it into an IPA for a start, which seems less than entirely traditional. A clear pale yellow, its aroma is an odd mix of lactic sourness and sweet stonefruit, like an apricot yoghurt. The flavour is not as intense as I was expecting with a subtle toasty champagne foretaste, dry and crisp, leading on to peach fuzz and a sharp but quick waxed-lemon sour bitterness. I took a good third of the pint to get used to all the twists it pulls. The crispness I approve of but I don't think it needs the busy hopping. It also seems thoroughly overclocked at 6.2% ABV, tasting like something a good couple of points lower. Sour and hoppy is one of my favourite things, and there should be more of it, but I prefer it more easy going than this.

No flagships here

Round-up time: a broad mix of mostly-new Irish beers.

Boundary has a raft of new cans just landed, with more on the way. The buzz has been positive, and I've done a terrible job of keeping track of their wares in general, so I made sure to pick up a couple of these when I saw them in Molloy's. First up is G.O.A.T., described as a New England pale ale and 4.5% ABV. It pours a very pale yellow colour, and almost completely opaque, like pineapple juice. Maybe it's a trick of the visuals, but it smells of pineapple juice too: all sweet and tropical. The flavour is quite muted, offering very little up front, before fading to garlic and spring onion and then leaving a spark of mango and lime as the aftertaste. Normally this sort of beer has plenty of body but that's not the case here, and I think it's the thinness that lets the flavour down. It's perfectly serviceable and pleasant, even though every sip left me wanting more from it.

The other one was called Almark, another sessionable job, at 4.9% ABV, and in the Belgian pale ale style. The colour is a medium orange-amber, clear at first, murked up by the dregs at the bottom of the tin. Pouring took a few goes, too, as the foam piled up. The Belgian side is very prominent on tasting: a mix of fruity esters bringing sultanas and orange peel, plus some crusty brown bread. Gentle tannins give it an English bitter feel. This is another thin one, however, lacking the substance that stronger Belgian beer offers.

Both are decent but unexciting, not really escaping the limitations of their modest ABVs. I think I'll go stronger when I next pick a Boundary beer, which I will, soon.

Staying with the nordies, I mentioned Bullhouse's new session IPA in Friday's post. Its companion is a New England double IPA called Residents Only, and they brought both to an event at The Tap House recently. The big lad is 7.2% ABV but just 30 IBUs. Its texture is suitably big and soft and the alcohol gives it a satisfying warmth, something I wouldn't normally value in an IPA. The flavour is dominated by garlic, finishing with a pinch of bitter lime. A thick seam of sweet vanilla ice cream runs through it. This offers a lot of the things I dislike about the New England fashion but they work incredibly well together, creating a loud and full-flavoured beer without any unpleasant extremes. Witchcraft!

And if it's not New England these days, it's kviek. Or, in the case of O Brother's The Kraken, it's both. This double IPA is a humongous 9.1% ABV and a deep orange colour. A garlicky aroma leads to a taste of fresh and sweet pineapple, followed by a hot burst of concentrated spring onion. There's a significant yeast burr, with an emulsion mouthfeel to match. This isn't the first New England double IPA I've found fun for the first sip or two, but a hard slog for a whole glassful. As such it's typical of the style, with no point of differentiation brought by the farmhouse yeast. If you like 'em hot and dreggy, this one's for you.

For the Six Nations, Rascals has produced a sessionable pale ale, Offloaded, an easy-going 4.3% in a match-friendly 440ml can. It's a light golden hue with a subtle misting of haze. On the hop front we have Magnum, Citra, Ekuanot, Enigma, Amarillo and Mandarina Bavaria -- something for everyone. That should deliver the juicy tropical fruit promised on the can but I didn't get it. Citra's lemon-peel kick is there, briefly, but the rest is quite savoury. I got fried onion in particular, and there's caraway and sesame seed as well. I'd love to know enough about brewing to know how that thin border between tropical and savoury is tread. This beer isn't bad. It has plenty of body given the strength, and is no bland gulp-and-go job. However it didn't deliver quite what I was hoping for.

The Grafters range, brewed by Rye River for Dunnes, has had a refresh. The Porter has alas been consigned to history, and the kölsch-a-like has stayed largely as-was but is now rebranded "Clocking Off". The hoppy pair have been completely re-engineered, and a casual enquiry about them to head brewer Bill landed me a six-pack of the set the following day.

Labour of Love Extra Pale is aptly named: Bill is particularly fond of it. It's still 4.5% ABV and Cascade-based, but the colour is very different, ditching the '90s copper orange for a clear and bright gold. The aroma is enticingly fruity, offering up succulent peach and mango notes. Its flavour is more typically Cascade-ish, beginning on an assertive earthy bitterness, fading to jaffa orange , before tailing off completely. That quick finish was a little disconcerting: I would have liked it all to hang around longer, as tends to happen in beers badged as session IPA. The tropicality does return on the aftertaste, which is good. It's a very decent beer overall. Some additional complexity or hop wallop would have been good, but as a supermarket own-brand pale ale, built for the session, it's hard to fault.

The new IPA is called Working Day. Again the ABV has been retained, at 6.5%, and the hops have been switched from Cascade and Vic Secret to Mosaic and Ekuanot, which sounds like a trade-up to me. It should at least be fruitier. There's a grapefruit spice to the aroma, and the strength is very apparent from the heavy texture and boozy warmth. Unfortunately the Mosaic they've used is the variety that tastes of savoury tahini, not sweet pineapple. I hate when that happens. There's a certain lime and grapefruit citrus coming in after this, providing the high point, but it left behind a harsh and plasticky aftertaste which is a lot less fun. This didn't work for me. There are flashes of goodness, particularly when the grapefruit is in play, but too many unpleasant sharp and savoury edges for it to be relaxing drinking.

Also coming in pairs are the first two from Mescan's new Seven Virtues series. I assume there will eventually be seven of them. First out of the traps was Seven Virtues Lager. Mescan do Belgian styles so I wasn't sure what to make of a lager. It's 4.9% ABV, a hazy straw yellow with a thick long-lasting head, and it smells... wonky. There's bit of sweet witbier lemon, and a burning acetic sourness too in the aroma. As expected there's lots of crackly fizz, giving it a gassy, prickly texture. The flavour isn't sour, I'm happy to say, but there's loads of that candied lemon effect. Sweet at first, there's a more correct grassy pilsner note later on, turning almost acrid by the end -- caution: noble hops at work. While far from tasting like a "proper" lager, it's a pleasant fusion of lager flavours and more rounded and fruity Belgian stylings. Not for purists of any stripe, but I enjoyed it.

I got a shock from the name of the second in the sequence: Seven Virtues Lambik. Isn't that a protected designation? Turns out no: "lambic" and "lambiek" are reserved, while "lambik" is a nonsense word that doesn't mean anything. Except in Mayo. The assistant in Redmond's warned me it was a gusher, and so it proved, but I was ready. The coppery amber colour looks like proper lambic, and the smell is most of the way there, with champagne toast and a damp bricky funk. There was something else, though: a solvent whiff that shouldn't be present. It's only 4.5% ABV but it tastes hot: that solvent smell grows to full-blown marker pens in the foretaste. There's a massive fruity kick of peach, lychee and plum in the middle, which isn't unpleasant but isn't especially lambic-like, and then a raw white-vinegar burn finishes it off on a downright nasty note. This is bootleg bathtub lambic; step one on the journey to making it well, perhaps, but not worth buying unless you're very curious about how an Irish brewery would approach the style.

Carlow Brewing have an interesting collaboration on the circuit at the moment: a witbier, of all styles, brewed using Tullamore DEW whiskey yeast and intended to be paired with the spirit. I was dubious to begin with: aren't whiskey yeasts designed to maximise the alcohol output without a care for the flavour? Why would that be a good idea for a beer? Anyway, they very kindly sent me a couple of the beers and a bottle of whiskey to try for myself. Irish Wit does not present like a wit. It's hazy, yes, but a deep dark ochre colour. The aroma is coarsely grainy, and the flavour similarly dry and husky, like Ryvita crackers. This isn't a good profile for a style that works best when frisky and spritzy: there's not an ounce of Belgian summertime in here. On the plus side there's some fun gunpowder spicing and a genuine rye bitter kick, though no rye was used in the recipe. The blurb promises whiskey-like fruit, but the only way I'm going to get that is by drinking whiskey with it. Here goes... Yes, that does actually work. I've had no joy with whiskey and beer pairings in the past, but here the dryness of the beer really helps accentuate the raisin and vanilla in the spirit; honeyish Irish whiskey notes fill in the gaps in the beer profile, making up for its shortcomings. Carlow Irish Wit isn't a great beer by itself, so it's worth having a sweetish whiskey to hand when you open it.

The latest from Third Barrel is an imperial stout called Black Stuff; amazing that nobody thought to call a beer that before. It's 9.1% ABV and a slick obsidian colour. The alcohol is very obvious from the get-go, combining with the dark malt for a kind of Tia Maria or liqueur coffee effect up front. It softens quickly, turning to chocolate, but still the bitter and crumbly kind. That's pretty much all you get, but it's charming in its simplicity: a big and heavy imperial stout without any unnecessary embellishments. I have a lot of time for that sort of thing.

JW Sweetman had a new beer last time I was in, chalked up as Brexit Bitter on the blackboard. It's an on-point 3.8% ABV and brewed with Challenger hops. I was less convinced by the choice of nitrokeg dispense. Still it looked well: a bright and warm golden colour. The flavour was surprising, in that there was some. It's dry and tannic, with a distinct cut-grass hop bitterness. That, and the colour, is enough to qualify it as a proper northern-style bitter for me: warming and comforting, but definitely hop forward. It's only as it starts to warm that it turns gloopy and cheap-tasting. When the pint is fresh, however, it's impressive.

Also codding the macros was YellowBelly, with House of Hops dry-hopped lager at (tee-hee) 4.13% ABV. Beyond the nose-thumbing at Diageo there's a murky orange beer with a texture that's heavy for the strength, not feeling or tasting at all like a lager. The hops bring orange sherbet, damp grass and fried onion: a fun balance of the juicy and dank sides of hops. To me this tasted like a pleasant and refreshing pale ale, with just a pinch of New England fluff. I still would have liked it to be crisper, though. "Lager" should mean something.

Third Circle is back on the Brettanomyces wagon. I make this their third Brett beer, but they've called it #1 Brett. A pale ale of a clear orange colour and 5.2% ABV, it offers a deliciously complex spice and wood flavour, all exotic frankincense and cedar. While this brings a certain resinousness with it, the base beer is horribly thin, at least at first, and this sucks much of the joy out of it. It improves with warmth, becoming more full bodied and developing an enjoyable juicy mandarin note. Overall I liked how it worked, and certainly deem it a promising start to the series; the recipe just needs a bit of beefing-up.

Valentine's Day gave us a cheeky new release from Wicklow Wolf: 50 Shades of Bray, badged as a "New England black IPA". I'm nearly surprised I hadn't seen that before. It turned out to be more a dark chocolate brown than black, and brought the New England side out with an immediate soft and sweet cherry and strawberry effect. It all firms up immediately afterwards, becoming a sterner, danker, hot tar and liquorice sort of black IPA. The texture is beautifully creamy, and the aroma shows the same punchy green hops as the late flavour. I really enjoyed this. It's a proper full-on black IPA given a contemporary twist that adds complexity without fundamentally changing its nature. Fittingly playful, given the name.

The last pint for the moment is Carrig's Lady Jade which which I caught up at the newly remodelled Bar Rua. I can't say I'm a fan of the move to combine it with the Catch 22 restaurant next door. It takes away from its essential pubbiness. Anyway, the beer.

This is a pale gold IPA of 4.2% ABV, brewed with Pacific Jade and Simcoe. It was a lot sweeter than I expected, packed with honey and lemon, like a throat lozenge. A sticky texture goes with that, one which overpowers the hops and their bitterness completely. It's not terrible but I was disappointed. Needs more hops, as we used to say.

That's your lot for now. Expect another mega round-up sooner rather than later as the pre-Paddy's Day releases start to arrive.

Taken to cask

Can you believe it's already the ninth year of Franciscan Well's winter celebration of cask beers? I made my way down as usual on the Saturday, tasked once again with helping a panel of Beoir judges to decide the best beer of the festival. It was the last day of the gig, and samples of beers that had already been tapped and emptied had been kept aside for us. The standard was pretty good overall: daring small-batch recipes, which the festival encourages, often do not equate to quality beer, but there were fortunately few outright bloopers. The elegantly constructed Brettanomyces symphony that is Kinnegar's Phunk Bucket took the top gong on the day. In parallel with my scoring, I kept notes on the beers I was given to judge, matching them to their names afterwards. New to me there was...

Dungarvan Blackberry Milk Stout, an early highlight of the afternoon. The floral aroma lets you know you're in for something fun, without specifying exactly what. A massive fruit flavour follows, making me think of Raspberry Ruffle bars first: the intensely sweet berries balanced against a dark chocolate bitterness. The base stout is fantastically clean and smooth, showing just a little milk sweetness, and it does a great job of supporting the luscious and ebullient blackberries.

I liked the cheeky nod to Wild Beer's classic Millionaire stout in the name of Lough Gill's pecan salted caramel ice cream imperial stout Next Year Rodney. This is only 7.2% ABV and a purest black colour. The pastry isn't overdone and it's only gently sweet, though the lack of alcohol is also apparent. What you do get is a tremdously fun mix of cherry, cream, vanilla and cake. In short, a trifle. It's silly, unpretentious, and very tasty.

One pale beer made its way onto my team's roster later on, one which turned out to be Bullhouse's Roadtrippin' session IPA. It's a simple little chap, a light 4% ABV and with a thinness that goes with that. There's a pleasing lemony zip but not much other character and complexity. This offers unfussy refreshment, and I'm fine with that.

There were two hacked stouts from 9 White Deer, one of which I'll get to below, but the one that passed my way in the judging was the Cappucino & Tiramisu one. This arrived a hazy brown colour with a chocolate and nut aroma. It tasted horribly sweet, as though it were laced with concentrated fruit purée, and then there's a weird sour tang in the finish. I don't think it was infected -- I certainly couldn't pick out any recognisable off-flavour -- but it was very tough drinking, with its loud and clanging combination of tastes.

Wicklow Wolf had a couple of interesting new offers. We judged Few Scoops, described as a vanilla Perle porter. There wasn't much aroma, but the taste was much more interesting than the name suggests, in a good way. There's a strong spice component, cinnamon in particular, and a floral rosewater perfume effect too. While only 4.8% ABV, the texture is wonderfully creamy. There's a certain exotic middle-eastern dessert quality about it all that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Down on the main festival floor afterwards I had a pint of their Breaking Borders lemongrass and carrot red ale. What? It wasn't red at all, more a watery-looking murky orange. It really does taste of carrot; specifically a ginger and carrot juice drink. As such it's rather nice, if quite un-beer-like. The finish is quick and clean with a smack of spice heat, and as such it's very refreshing. This would be a good one to bring back for summer.

Metalman's new offer for the gig was called Atomium, described as a Belgian amber and all of 7.2% ABV. I wasn't sure what to make of it, and I suspect it didn't quite know itself. There's a lot of alcohol heat but not in the rich and fruity Belgian way. Instead it's harsh and cloying, mixing caramel sugar with headachey solvent. It definitely didn't taste like anything I'm familiar with from Belgium. A vague peach fuzz is one redeeming feature, but it doesn't go nearly far enough to cover the flaws. Maybe cask just didn't suit it.

After the judging I grabbed a few from the leftover bottles that I'd missed to drink on the train home. Among them was Tóg go Bog É, a seaweed IPA by Dick Mack's in Dingle. It doesn't look great: a murky brown colour, but the aroma offers an intriguing briny edge that set me thinking everything would be OK. And indeed it is. We leave normal IPA territory far behind and enter a seaside herbal wonderland of salty iodine, bitter marjoram and a condiment trug of white pepper, seasalt and sunflower seeds. I just love the off-kilter, no-rules vibe here. IPA creativity is something I thought had peaked, but no: it turns out there are plenty more ways to hack the style beautifully.

I don't know what the deal is with DOT's Barrel-Aged Saison Blend III, but here I am drinking it. It's pretty good too, a clear gold colour with a clean honey and golden syrup foretaste, turning to white pepper and green celery after. I don't get a lot of barrel from it, but there's definitely a complexity: a mix of fruits and spices that are very much part of what saison does. Through multiple sips I kept waiting for the killer app: the big jump that would let me verbalise how great this is. But it didn't happen. Instead it's start-to-finish solid, with no strange flavours or off-flavours: no gimmicks, no weirdness, and honestly no serious complexity. You can barrel age a saison and make it taste, well, nice. Is that desirable? I liked it.

Last of the plastic bottles on the way home was 9 White Deer's Wild Strawberry & Boysenberry Stout. It's only 4.2% ABV but it tastes a lot heavier, full of jam and candy. There's a dry sherbet and gunpowder complexity at the back but no escaping the gimmick here. It delivers what's promised: a forest fruit payload on a fairly basic chocolate-forward stout; but there's nothing fancy or interesting. Stir a dollop of jam into your pint and you'll get the same effect. There are no off-flavours but, between this and their other one, it also makes me think stout shouldn't be messed with.

On the way out I dropped into the Abbot's as usual. I don't think I'd ever had their Abbot's Lager, currently brewed by Cotton Ball, though apparently that changes. It's only 4% ABV though is a perfect example of the helles style: soft and fluffy with malt, adding a slight kick of noble hop bitterness for balance. It's not madly complex, nor is it meant to be, but it's properly rich without being difficult, and far better than a house-brand lager needs to be. If the plan is to turn industrial lager drinkers away from the big brands, this is exactly how to do it.

I just had time to follow that with another, picking White Gypsy's Sour Weisse, 5.2% and a deep red colour. It follows that light Flanders red thing, gently sour with a strong grainy backbone. It's not jaw-pinchingly sour but it's just sour enough, with a tang of raspberry and strawberry in the picture. This is the sort of accessible yet complex sour beer that you'd find on tap in any mature beer culture, so it's weird that Ireland has one. Good on the Abbot's and White Gypsy for making it possible. There's a teaching moment here.

All-in-all a fun and educational day out. And it's good to get the year's beer events calendar properly under way.

Points of order

A rapid catch-up with some beers from London brewery Five Points today. They've been fairly throwing them at the Irish market and I can't hope to keep up. Here's what's in the backlog.

There's a series of single-hopped cask bitters which have been popping up at UnderDog in recent months. The only one to coincide with me visiting was Green Hop Fuggles, and I'm on record as not being much of a fan of this classic English variety, so I was apprehensive going in. I shouldn't have been. It's lovely. I suspect a lot of Fuggles went into this as it's sharply herbal and bitter, to the point of being spicy, and none of the nasty soil flavour I associate most with Fuggles. There's a decently sweet base to balance it, with notes of toffee and fruit candy. I tend to prefer a bit more tannin in my brown bitters, but this one is perfect without it. It's still English bitter with the volume turned all the way up.

I wasn't that impressed by the last fruited pale ale from the brewery, Field Day, back in April. I still took a chance on JUPA when it landed, claiming pineapple and mango flavours on the front of the tin but not listing either of them on the ingredients. I guess we have to use our imaginations. It's a pale hazy orange in the glass, with not much aroma. I braced myself for the wave of fruit in the flavour, but no: exactly like Field Day it's all savoury sesame and caraway; aggressively so, drying the palate and offering only the faintest, distant citrus fruit. Not offensive, but definitely disappointing.

The brewery's fifth birthday saw a slew of collaboration beers land in at UnderDog. I began working through them with the Table Beer, a copper-coloured offering at a daring 2.2% ABV, with Wiper & True sharing responsibility. I got an odd tinny tang from this, like you'd find in a cheap English supermarket bitter at around the same strength. It's saved somewhat by mild grapefruit and a surprisingly rich layer of toffee, serving to make it helpfully thirst-quenching. But that metallic tang kept niggling me all the way down.

I thought I was on safer ground with the Magic-Rock-assisted IPL, failing to notice the formidable 6.5% ABV. It's not shy about reminding you either: there's all the syrupy thickness of a super-strength lager with a powerful, and slightly harsh, bitter finish. "Tropical" said the breweries' description, something I didn't get from it at all. It tasted classically German to me; a weighty, chewy märzen or Dortmunder. I'm sceptical about the India Pale Lager style to begin with, and this was a classic example of the "India Pale" being superfluous.

Good old Belgian Wit, that most reliable and accessible of styles, wasn't going to let me down, was it? This one, aided by Burning Sky, was a middle-of-the-road 5% ABV. But that's where the safe and mainstream aspects end. Witbier generally has a gentle citrus bite; this one was pure meringue pie perfection, concentrating the lemon sweetness into a luxuriously smooth confection. And yet it's not hot or sweet, the dessert aspect giving way to an aperitif (stay with me) full of spicy black pepper, thyme and rosemary. The texture is soft yet light and the combination is a bright and summery zippy homemade-lemonade thing. I have a tendency to fall back on the classics with witbier -- St Bernardus and even Hoegaarden. If you're going to tamper with it, however, here's a masterclass in how.

The most outré of the lot is the Blueberry Sour on which our own YellowBelly collaborated. Deep purple with a cerise head, it lays on the fruit flavour strongly, giving a first impression of fizzy Ribena. It's only 4.3% ABV and is quite thin, but turns jammier as it warms up. There is a real blueberry flavour and a persistent Berliner weisse sourness, so it's exactly as advertised, even if it doesn't do anything very exciting within that.

We finish on a bottle of Old Greg's Barely Wine from 2016. It poured iceman-flat, a hazy dark red colour. There's still a strong aroma: a toffee and sherry buzz that reminds me of English classic Thomas Hardy's. The "wine" part of the name gets a proper outing in the flavour, a raisin and cedar richness, like something dark and red and Iberian. The "barley" bit elbows past that, bring malt's caramel and treacle. A scratch of old-world bitter green hops finishes it off. The sweetness is maybe a little too much in charge, but that's a minor quibble: it's an excellent beer. I fully expect later vintages are worth ageing.

And right on cue, a fresh bottle arrived at a bottle share, via brewery rep Francesca. Though labelled as the 2018 vintage, this was brewed in late 2017. It was very different to the above, starting with the colour: a bright orange-amber instead of wine-red. It showed a zesty, spritzy flavour on top of a toffee base: a bite of satsuma and kumquat. There's much less warmth here, despite the ABV climbing from 9.2% to 12.4, and there's no sign of the classy richness of the older one. I expect that will develop in time, though I can't imagine they'll end up identical. It's tasty now, and likely to remain so for a number of years. Win-win.

One of your classic mixed bags here. At least Five Points can't be accused of standing still.

Take one down and pass it around

Bottle shares aren't usually my bag, but I'm not completely averse. When Wayne and Janice announced they were putting one together at Piper's Corner in late January I figured I'd tag along and offload a bottle I'd been keeping for just such a purpose.

As it happened, when we lined the beers out, mine was the lightest and palest of the set, so that's where we started. Matawin was a random pick from a Montréal liquor store last September. It's from Quebec brewery À la Fût and is fermented completely with a variety of Brettanomyces strains, beneath which it's a barrel-aged blonde ale of 5% ABV. It poured a pale yellow with lots of froth and gave off a powerfully tart aroma. I was poised for a sour assault on tasting, but no: it's much more typically Brett-ish, presenting luscious ripe peaches and an aftershave spice; jelly candies and white pepper. It's a wonderful expression of Brett in a beer, deliciously clean and only very slightly flawed with a plasticky twang on the finish. The tasting was off to a good start though the same can't be said for my photography.

Keeping the ABV at 5% the second bottle was a wild beer from Wild Beer. Squashed Grape is, obviously enough, a grape ale. This is a style I have high expectations of and this one didn't measure up for me. It's a hazy orange colour and has a somewhat harshly funky aroma with a scary twang of vinegar. This acetic quality comes through too strongly in the flavour. If you like the less subtle sort of Flanders red beer this might be for you, but its mere cursory nod at fruit flavours before going all-out vinegar did not suit me at all.

The squad voted for a sour break at this moment, and malt relief was provided by SchuppenBoer, a barrel-aged tripel by Belgian brewer Het Nest. I've no recollection of tasting anything in this sub-style before, and this example offers some very good reasons not to brew them. The diacetyl was rife, first of all: a slick and unpleasant butteriness. This was followed by a parallel seam of ethyl acetate: a hot and solventy nail varnish remover effect. There's none of the sparky spiciness that tripel ought to bring, just a lesson in the chemistry of off-flavours and a taster glass of toffee, banana and headaches.

Back to the sour, then, and Saturnalicus, a Flanders red from Speciation Artisan Ales in Michigan. It's a big 'un at 7.3% ABV and shows a lovely and spritzy red grape aroma. Despite the strength, its texture is quite light, and while it's plenty sour there's a proper balanced complexity in its jammy strawberry and raspberry flavours. I don't think this quite has the beatings of the Belgian classics -- the sourness is a little overdone -- but it reminded me a lot of Russian River's Supplication, a beer high up on the second tier.

To actual Belgium next, and one from Alvinne: their Cuvée de Mortagne, a beer I've tasted in smoked and fruited form, but never this 12.8% ABV wine-barrelled version. It got off to a bad start by gushing everywhere, doing nothing to offset my general belief that the brewery isn't fully in control of its ingredients. The beer which emerged was heavy, like a malt loaf with chewy crusts. There was a harsh waxy bitterness on top of this, and an acetic throat-burn of a finish. Maybe some people like this sort of weighty, busy, hot-and-sour palate-pounder but it was just too much work for me. I just wanted it to calm down, and was glad I only had a small sample to get through.

Another American Flanders red followed, this one from Odell, called Flemish Giant. It's only 6.5% ABV and presents a clear copper colour. Like the Saturnalicus beforehand, there's a lovely vinous nose, leading to a juicy grape foretaste, but after that it's a very different picture. I found this much too sweet: the taste of unfermented sugar intensifying until it reaches saccharine levels. A very poor finish after such a promising start.

A magnum of lager came next: the "dark imperial lager" (doppelbock, basically) called Sticks n' Stones, brewed by Stone in collaboration with Lost Abbey, as part of a series to mark the opening of the former's Berlin brewery. The doppelbock style points are present and correct: it's a dark brown colour and has a strong liquorice bitterness coupled with lots of dry roast, in a package that's 8.3% ABV. Some sticky butteriness is perhaps less in keeping with the Germanic style, leaning it more towards a Belgian dubbel. This, plus the musty noble hops, made it hard work for me, and I found it quite cloying in a way that properly-brewed German lager shouldn't be, regardless of the colour or strength. I'd chalk this one up as "interesting" more than "good".

Before we jump into the stouts there was an imperial red ale to deal with first: Brewdolf, the Christmas release from 5 Lamps. It poured a very dark red colour, smelling weirdly of sour toffee. They've aged it in bourbon barrels, resulting in a very unsubtle blast of oaky vanilla right in the middle of the flavour. This calms a little after a moment, fading to caramel, but it never quite loses its underlying harshness. The barrel ageing really adds nothing beneficial to this beer, and it's not at all fun or festive. I'd have been disappointed to get one for Christmas.

I was owed another win at this stage and it came in the form of Hope's Flat White Imperial Stout. I understand this isn't a general commercial release but was gifted to customers and friends of the brewery at the end of last year. 9% is the ABV, and it puts the coffee to work immediately. There's a huge raw coffee aroma, followed by a flavour that piles the oily cold-brew in as well. There's not much room in that for any beer character, but I was enjoying it too much to mind. The flavour is fresh and bright and the texture wonderfully silky. This is uncomplicated enjoyment, camply over-the-top but tremendous fun.

The next imperial stout came from Beer Nouveau in Manchester. This was a barrel-aged version of their Salacia, brewed with chocolate and oranges. Everything that goes wrong with barrel-ageing had gone wrong in this, the flavour an unpleasant mix of cork taint, stale oxidation and savoury Marmite autolysis. It finished with a sour tang that might have been the oranges but I suspect was more likely an infection of some sort. If it wasn't so busy with awfulness this would be a compact and instructive off-flavour testing kit. Next!

Next was Double Shot from Kees, a big 11%-er. As the name sort-of implies, this was brewed with coffee, and that gives it a bit of a sweaty flavour, like drip-filter which has been stewing too long. The aroma is the best part: a rich mix of caramel, nuts and chocolate. On tasting that turns harsh, dry and almost sour. Maybe it's an acquired taste, but the little sample I had didn't do much for me. At least it wasn't openly offensive.

The finisher was an iteration of BrewDog's Paradox imperial stout, still going 11 years after its début on this blog. The company has moved on a fair bit since the days of handwritten labels, and the whisky this one was aged in was BrewDog's own brand: Uncle Duke's. There's a massive vanilla aroma and a flavour of honeycomb and crème brûlée. That's fun for a moment or two but gets cloyingly sweet very quickly. Unlike the Paradox of old, there's no proper stout flavour and nothing really of the spirit about it either. This is Paradox re-imagined for the Omnipollo generation, all cupcakes and candy corn.

Considered together, a handful of standouts aside, it wasn't a great line-up, but obviously that's the sole fault of the brewers, not the event's organisers or participants. Thanks to everyone involved, and better luck next time.