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.