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.