Freedom of movement

Rounding out this week of posts from the Alltech Brews & Food Fair with the small handful of foreign beers I tried.

There was a bit of a buzz around new English brewery Evolution, from Shropshire. They've taken over the former Battlefield Brewery in Shrewsbury. Where Battlefield brewed safe and traditional English styles, the new lot have gone for something more daring. I began with their pale ale Update Your Smile, a 4.6%-er. It's... perfunctory. It has the vanilla and a wisp of tropical guava, but that's all it does before finishing on a watery note. A bit of a damp squib here.

Picking something that would be harder to brew blandly I chose their imperial stout next: Descent of Man. It arrived almost headless, which wasn't a great start. The fermentation must have been done quite warm as it was full of toffee and banana flavours, quite out of keeping for the style. A certain roasted bite is buried deep behind this, but that's as stouty as it gets. The ABV is on the low side, but at 8.5% it should still be capable of greater substance and complexity than this.

I didn't try any more of their beers. I think Evolution has a way to go, and I hope they live up to their name.

At the Grand Cru stand they were pouring a new one from the Veltins Grevensteiner brand. This Naturtrübes Helles, per the name, is an unfiltered lager. Despite the novelty and the process variation it tastes very like a typical helles, and deliciously so. There's a lot of soft white bread in the flavour, plus a hint of spinach bittering. The one unusual feature was a hint of peachy fruit, but it was pleasant and didn't knock the rest of the beer off kilter. In keeping with the style, it's beautifully smooth and very sinkable. Worth looking out for, helles fans.

BrewDog had a large bar at one side of the hall. Martin Dickie was in attendance on the Sunday, announcing from the stage they'd be holding a sour beer tasting there during the afternoon. As far as I know it didn't actually happen, but while I was waiting for it not to happen I tried a taster of their Brutalist brut IPA. It's 6% ABV and very dry indeed, even by the standards of the style. There's a little bit of hop funk but not much else, making it disappointingly plain for the strength.

Not a festival exhibit, but a boxed bottle of BrewDog's Death or Glory was being hoofed around by Simon and he was kind enough to pour me a sample. For the record, this was decanted from casks 211, 212 and 221 of the barrel-aged eisbock, coming in at 26% ABV. It tasted supremely smooth; warming like a tawny port or Oloroso sherry, seasoned with a peppery spice and bringing a glow to the throat as it goes. Whatever the convoluted process was that resulted in this, it was worth it.

The week's final beer is another which was not pouring at the festival but was handed to me at it. Reuben had been on the inaugural BrewDog flight from London to their American brewery in Ohio and kindly muled me back a can of the commemorative IPA, Flight Club. It's of the session variety, a mere 4.5% ABV, and quite a pale yellow colour. The aroma reminds me of Punk on a good day: brightly tropical, all mandarins and passionfruit. The flavour, too, is exotically juicy, though there's also a cheeky herbal dankness and a grapefruit buzz in the finish. Said finish arrives quickly, the Achilles' heel being a wateriness that's not unexpected given the strength, but is a downer nonetheless. Like a lot of beers that go all-out on the tropicals, the first couple of sips have the wow factor, but those returns diminish quickly and it turns sharp and slightly savoury by the end. As a quenchable quaffer it gets the job done, and as a freebie I can't complain. Cheers Reuben!

And cheers to all the Alltech crew for another superb festival.

Would you like to hear the specials?

Today's blog post from the 2019 Alltech festival is dedicated to the handful of Irish breweries who went all out to present some weird and wacky creations for the event, most of them one-offs, never to be seen again. It's always a gamble, but you can't win unless you drink them.

We go first to Hope, and amongst their regulars and seasonals on day one was Wobbly Ladder, a 6.5% ABV red IPA. This is a tough style with which to impress me, but there was a good blend of the signature qualities here: lots of oily and resinous hops on the nose, a roasted grain bite to open the flavour and then an explosion of summery fruit -- all the jam and jelly -- set on a smooth and easy drinking texture. Red IPAs can be quite serious and worthy. This one is fun.

Shortly after it came on, it was accompanied by an imperial stout rejoicing in the name Weird Flex, But OK. A big sigh on discovering it's a stroopwafel imperial stout. A cheer on tasting no trace of pastry anywhere in it. Instead this 10% ABV job is remarkably bitter, with the sharp/sweet aroma of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and a flavour big on roast and huge on old-world hop bitterness. The branding and description may be down with the kids but the taste is very grown up, and all the better for it.

It was two days before Hope's next double act arrived. With a nod to all the hours we spent playing Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge back in the '90s they're called Feather Touch and Power Drive. The former is a "micro NEIPA", 3.6% ABV and employing Simcoe, El Dorado and Mosaic. It's a murky yellow colour and smells of concentrated orange juice. There's a powerfully strong garlic flavour, one which lasts for ages despite the beer itself being quite thin. This is impressively full-on for the strength; fun if not exactly thought-provokingly complex.

The big one, then, is 8.5% ABV and sticks to just El Dorado, replacing the other hop varieties with peach and apricot. Again the aroma is sweet, though this time definitely more concentrated, like raspberry ripple ice cream. There's a lot of heat in the flavour, and bags more garlic. I could just about taste the fruit puree behind that but it's all a bit severe and unnecessary, however. A calming game of 8-bit golf it is not.

Carrig is rarely behind the door when it comes to rotating specials and had a bunch on its bar, as well as the first of its beers in cans. I had some catching up to do so began on Panda Nero, a coffee stout they released late last year but which I had yet to try. It's a very sweet take on the style, and more thickly textured than one might expect at just 5% ABV. That gives it a kind of latte effect. I found it tough going, but if sweet coffee is your thing, this is the beer for you.

Along the taps to Idaho (My Own Private), a pale ale made to showcase Idaho-7 hops, combined here with Chinook. It's a pale orange colour and quite dry. The titular hops bring a tasty and tangy bite of jaffa orange peel and a sizeable buzz of concentrated oils. There's not much complexity beyond that, but I like its clean and straightforward presentation.

A double IPA to complete this set: Heisenberg. 8% ABV this time but with a similar combination of resinous flavours. They turn a bit sharp towards the end, bringing in a lime shred and fried onion which is entirely in keeping with the west coast feel. This is a solid and reliable sort of US-style DIPA, as far from New England in style as Carrick-on-Shannon is in distance.

Just a pair of specials from Wicklow Brewery, and no stouts that I saw, alas. Their Ginger Beer was only 3.4% ABV and I'm guessing it's a ginger beer in the true sense, not merely beer flavoured with ginger. It's an innocent pale yellow colour and has a gorgeous soft-drink aroma: ginger ale and brown sugar, plus a suggestion of eye-watering spices to come. The body is full, but in quite a syrupy way. Pear was advertised as part of the recipe, and I'm guessing it was in concentrate form. There's a certain pear-skin bitterness but the ginger is lacking. I think this just missed out on being refreshing and ended up as a sticky alcopop. Needs more ginger.

The other one was a brut IPA called, as I'm sure several are, Brut Force. This is a clear pale yellow colour and sure it's dry, per the style spec, but not madly. Not interestingly, for good or bad. There's also not much by way of hop character, leaving it with a very plain lager vibe. It's inoffensive but really doesn't live up to what the style is meant to do. Brut IPA: just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Another daring pair of specials was presented by Dundalk Bay Brewery, an outfit I've come to associate with very plain and mass-market-friendly styles. My finishing beer as the lights went up on the Saturday night was Romanov, a straight-up, no messing, pastry-free imperial stout of 8% ABV. The aroma has a lovely kick of green bitterness with a slightly sour edge while the flavour jolts with espresso and bites with liquorice. There's a warmth too which belies the relatively low strength. The whole thing is beautifully complex and I'd love to see it as a regular beer in small bottles. Romanov is worthy of a place beside Guinness Foreign Extra and Porterhouse Celebration as an example of How Stout Is Brewed Here.

The next tap badge turned some heads, and I had to walk around it a few times before I ordered the beer. It's a misprint, obviously. It must be a misprint. It's not a misprint. Belgian Trappist American Pale Ale is the name. I'm guessing they got a batch of "Belgian Trappist" yeast and didn't really think through the implications of putting those words on the badge. Expect it to be re-named if it goes any further. And I hope it does go further because it's lovely. Only 4.6% ABV and a polished copper colour, it shows off the fruit and spice that Belgian yeast brings in a wonderfully bright way, sparking with cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper, with a smooth layer of banana and an orange-peel zest. The American side of the house is underrepresented, but no matter. The finishing dry tannins bring English bitter to mind instead and ensure that it remains drinkable, despite the multifaceted flavour.

That just leaves Lough Gill, which picked up a best in show medal among the Irish beers for the barrel-aged edition of its Dark Sunset imperial oatmeal stout. I can't say I got much of a whiskey impression from it, but there was a lovely espresso bitterness and a pleasing belly-warmth from the 11% ABV. For a whopper of a stout this is the very picture of balance and subtlety.

There was rather less subtlety, in both flavour and branding, when it came to Lough Gill's Chuckee Larmz imperial marshmallow milk stout. This is 9.1% ABV and dark brown in colour. There's a strong caramel sweetness right from the get-go but it's somehow not sticky. All the way through it shows the chocolate and roasted notes of a proper imperial stout, with a strawberry fruit complexity arriving in the middle. The finish is remarkably clean. A great job overall, and it's very easy to ignore the gimmickry if you want to.

The headline IPA at Lough Gill was (were) No-Boil, which came in two versions, one with Idaho-7 and Cashmere hops, the other with Idaho-7, Amarillo and Azacca. As the name makes clear, the wort wasn't boiled during brewing, and all the hops went in at the whirlpool stage. A New England yeast strain was used for fermentation, finishing up at 5.6% ABV. They went on tap in rotation so I didn't get to try them side by side, but I did think they were very similar to each other. The aroma is a fabulous rainbow of pineapple, mango and other tropical fruits. The flavour is as intense as might be expected, more so even, coming across with all the hop punch of a double IPA. There's an edge of garlic running in tandem with the luscious fruit, but in a complementary way without spoiling it. For breweries looking to get the most out of their flavour and aroma hops, this is a worthwhile experiment to repeat.

After all these fireworks, I found Lough Gill's Cutback session IPA quite dull. It's a middle-of-the-road 4.5% ABV, hazy orange in colour with quite a New England vibe: a creamy texture and lots of vanilla sweetness. There's little by way of hops, unfortunately. It's accessible I guess, but a little boring.

A cleansing sour beer to finish this round: Rollercoaster. It's a 4.6% ABV Berliner weisse with added guava, mango and passionfruit. As one would expect, the passionfruit absolutely dominates the picture. The light and clean base beer behind it allows an overall impression of sorbet, a tart edge contrasting with the fleshy tropical fruit. It's delicious and extremely drinkable; one to give YellowBelly's iconic Castaway a bit of competition.

I concentrated on the Irish beers in my time at the festival, and when I felt I'd given them a fair shake, there was just time to try a few of the imports, coming up next.

In the big smoke now

It's was great to welcome breweries to Alltech Brews & Food of whom we see little in Dublin: a chance to find out what the rest of the country are drinking; or at least the 3% of them drinking independent beer.

Festivals are literally the only places to find Bridewell beers here, and I like how Harry and Barbara-Anne always have a new one for each event. This time there were two: a contrasting pair created to commemorate the centenary of Alcock and Brown's transatlantic flight which landed not far from the brewery in Clifden, Co. Galway. Both are purportedly American-inspired, using American hops, though not necessarily American-style. That's certainly true of the blonde ale Pilot. My first impression on tasting this 4.9%-er was of a classic English golden ale, all biscuits and bubblegum with a grassy bitter finish and a soft smooth texture. It's very easy going but with enough complexity to be actively interesting. The companion is a brown ale called Navigator. This lacked the sweetness I look for in the style, going instead for dry roast, with an underlying blackberry and banana fruitiness. It's OK, but I'm a tough crowd when it comes to brown ale, and this didn't do it for me.

Kildare Brewing Company is only out the way, but you still have to go to Kildare to find their beer. The range has just had an overhaul with a series of new flagships. There's a 4.5% ABV pale ale called Soldier's Island, brewed with Amarillo and Cascade. It's very straightforward and pintable, almost like a pleasant pale English bitter. I got subtle summery notes of watermelon and peach, with a mild bite of lime rind at the end. Nothing strange or startling, just nice.

The highlight of the three I tried was called Fifty Three & Six, named after the headline digits of the brewery's coordinates. It's a clear golden colour and shows a spritzy, zesty lemon freshness first, followed by a more serious resinous dank. Mosaic is the dry hop and it's doing what it does best. Most impressively it has a properly full body for an ABV of just 3.7%. The pale ale was thoroughly upstaged.

Finally a Coffee Milk Stout, featuring cold brew from local roasters PS. This is pretty straightforward again; a modest 4.5% ABV with sweet mocha roast and a big dollop of cream. Everything a coffee milk stout should be, really.

I got a good chat with Alex from Loudons Brewery in Co. Clare about their ambitions. They're modest ones, and we're not about to see a plethora of Loudons taps around Dublin or the rest of the country. But if we did, they might have their two new beers on them. I began by tasting Loudons Pilsner, an incredibly soft-textured version of the style. A remark about that led on to a discussion of how the brewery uses 100% rainwater as its supply. The wet grass notes of Saaz add just the right amount of bitter seasoning and the whole thing is extremely sinkable at just 4% ABV.

Loudons Irish Stout is at the same strength, and it's rare for one of these to be that low. There's a light roastiness, a fair bit of sweet chocolate and then a tangy bitterness on the end. It's plain and easy-going, though a little too sharp for me.

I thought they had a superior example of the same sort of thing down at Ballykilcavan. Their Blackwell stout was launched late last year. It's a more typical strength at 4.4% ABV and has more of most of the classic Irish stout components. The flavour shows lots of early roast, while the balanced bitterness presents itself in both the finish and, pleasingly, the aroma. Perhaps my favourite feature, however, was the creaminess. That's a bit of a stout cliché, and not something I normally value in them, but it really added to the classic feel here. I think I could happily drink a few of these in succession.

Elsewhere on the bar there was a variety of specials. I thought Line Blocker pale ale was named as a dig the the big breweries' aggressive sales tactics but it's something much more innocent: the obstruction in the brewhouse caused by the excessive hopping employed here. It's a daring attempt at the modern murky pale ale style, going big on the tropical with a juicy aroma and a flavour in which I picked out pineapple, mango and guava. It does suffer a few of the typical flaws, namely yeast bite and a cloying gumminess, and I definitely don't think I could manage pint after pint of this, despite a mere 5.1% ABV. A small glass was pleasant, though, and shows the brewery has a definite daring streak among the safer alternatives.

You can't get safer than a 3.8% ABV lager, like Ballykilcavan's Lager Unlaois'd. Though brewed with Magnum and Saaz it's not terribly hop forward, showing a dry, rye-cracker aroma and lots of sweetish grain in the flavour. I found this quite bland and a little disappointing. Perhaps Ballykilcavan could swap a few notes with Loudons on the makings of lager and stout.

Now Dead Centre we do get in Dublin, though more canned than draught in recent times. There were two new releases on tap at their bar, first on being Wizard of the Sonic double IPA. This is a full 8% ABV and quite a dark copper colour. The malt which caused that also adds a toffeeish flavour. This is set next to an onslaught of resinous US hops: Columbus, Citra and Mosaic doing the heavy lifting. It's a bit loud, in keeping with the name, I guess. Good though.

Bringing up the rear on the Dead Centre range was Sham Maths, an American-style amber ale. It's another big one for the style, at 6.2% ABV. And it's another serious-tasting recipe. There's a heavy hop funk to this in both flavour and aroma. On the malt side it manages to be both dry and caramel-infused, and there's a raspberry flavour I associate much more with Irish red ale than American amber. While I liked the serious bitterness, a little more gentle hop flavour -- some citrus or tropicals -- would have improved it immensely.

The last festival bar for today was actually pouring a Dublin brand, albeit brewed in Co. Limerick and quite limited in its locations around town, namely Persistence. I was disappointed to learn, first off, that the excellent P42 pilsner they did has been discontinued. Damn you, Irish drinkers of poor taste in lager. Replacing it is P45 Lager which is a much sweeter and less hop-forward affair. It's fine, if shading a little to the sickly side. I hope all you haters of proper pils will love it.

Also new to me was P50, described no more explicitly than "session ale". It's a dark amber colour so I thought I was getting something toffeeish. It turned out to be be incredibly dry; full-on astringent, in fact. There's a little blackcurrant fruit in the flavour, and then loads of super-strong stewed builders' tea. I'm really not sure I could do a session on this.

An interesting mix of beers here, and plenty of examples where safe styles don't at all mean bland or low quality. Tomorrow, however, we take all the safeties off.

And you're back in the room

The run-up to St. Patrick's Day saw Alltech taking over the Convention Centre for their seventh annual celebration of beer, spirits, food and allied pleasures. There was a lot of beer to try down on the main floor, but proceedings began for me with a tasting event in the media room on the Thursday evening. Three brewers had been selected to present new-release beers to us.

Rascals came first, bringing a freshly canned milkshake pale ale called Froots & The Maytals. They've added mango and passionfruit to this, and I found it interesting that the latter doesn't completely dominate the taste the way it tends to in most beers. Behind the lactose thickness there's a proper citric bitterness, grapefruit and lime rather than anything tropical, and a slightly salty tang as well. There's a pleasant green resin note from the hops too. Despite the far-out branding, this is a serious beer, and a well-made one. It tastes just silly enough to be fun, without being outright stupid.

James from Alltech talks beer

Cementing its reputation for being ahead of the curve in beer trends, Black's of Kinsale had a new IPA called OG Kush. The rise of cannabis-derived products in the leisure beverage industry hasn't passed them by, and this one uses a THC-free extract to bring extra terpenes to the party, complementing the ones contributed by cannabis-cousin, hops. The result is genuinely skunky, but in a good way: the weighty resinousness of marijuana plus the spices and grapefruit of the C-hops. Yes it's gimmicky, but like the previous beer it offers a genuinely interesting new flavour perspective.

And of course we got some Alltech beers too. The latest sub-brand from Station Works in Dundalk is Clocked Out, a series of small-batch runs on the pilot kit, created by the brewing team after hours. Clocked Out had a bar of its own at the gig, and its wares will be popping up in pubs over the coming months.

First to be demonstrated was a Kveik IPA. This 8.5%-er had been brewed six days previously, fermented at 36°C. It smelled and tasted oddly jammy: a sweet red fruit and sugar quality which I can't pin on the Citra and Yellow Sub hops, so I'm guessing must have been the work of the kveik. There's even a dry crunch of raspberry seeds in with the sweetness. A heavy texture made it tough going to drink, but it was much better than one might expect from the turbo-charged fermentation process. It fits entirely into the US DIPA genre, even if it's not a brilliant example.

I spent a fair bit of time down at the Clocked Out bar, exploring the other options. I rarely pass a new Black IPA, and made no exception for theirs. It's 5.5% ABV and designed to have no roasted flavour at all. In this it succeeds, but there's also a lack of hop punch; a pinch of liquorice being as bitter as it gets. I found it almost mild-like, showing a dusting of autumn fruits on a light texture. Decent, but very unexciting.

Yes Dave, that's the number
 of beers mixed in here

Possibly the most talked-about beer of the festival, in my hearing anyway, was the Clocked Out Latte Stout. This was blended from two taps, neither of which Dave would let me taste separately: the New England pale ale is too sweet and the coffee stout too acrid. Combined, however, the effect was wonderful. The texture was every bit as creamy as the name demands, and the flavour has as much chocolate as it does coffee, with the evaporated-milk sweetness of a Milky Bar or Caramac. It might get a bit sickly if consumed in quantity, but a half was delicious.

There was what was described as a Micro IPA on the bar too. My notes say it was 3.8% ABV, which isn't very micro. The texture was odd: big and creamy at first, but tailing away to water very soon after. There's a soft vanilla and lemon curd flavour, lacking in bitterness for my tastes. My sample was probably too small to give it a proper shake; let's just say it wasn't strikingly brilliant and leave it there.

Just time for one more Clocked Out beer; one I nearly passed by. This was brewed at Alltech's US brewery in Lexington, as their flagship Bourbon Barrel Ale. I've never been much of a fan of this heavy, sticky beast, and didn't reckon that turning it into Brett Bourbon Barrel Ale would make much of a difference. It did though. The first impression is of a very clean and zingy Flanders red: that ripe summer fruit and quite an intense sourness. The bruiser of a base beer didn't succumb without a fight, and there's a residual dark mix of toffee, biscuits and builder's tea, as well as a dangerous ABV of 8.2%. As an expression of what Brettanomyces can do, it's fantastic. There's no real farmyard funkiness, per se, which I found a little confusing; but the clear and clean sourness provided plenty of complexity in its place.

Lots of other breweries were making return visits to the festival. I stopped by Kinnegar early on to try Phlegmish Phunk, this one a stated attempt at the Flemish red style, Bretted, though not wood-aged. It offers an enticing white wine aroma, which isn't funky at all. You have to wait to taste for the funk to arrive. Here there's the almost-wrong-tasting leathery tannic twang of old scrumpy cider, but it's clean behind that. The funkiness reminds me of that found in a well-aged bottle of Orval, with all the hops and most of the carbonation gone, leaving vinous richness behind. This may not have the beatings of that Clocked Out one, nor answer exactly what I'd like in this style, but it is very good.

Still Kinnegar, still sour, but a little less involved, there's Behemoth, a Berliner weisse with added basil and lime. Easy to review: it tastes like a margarita. It's tangy, it's sour; the citrus is quite concentrated, almost oily. Though 5% ABV it tastes like less, so maybe a more childish analogue would be appropriate: a Calippo, or a Loop-the-Loop. This is cold and refreshing fun, definitely not a beer to take seriously.

There's a grand tradition of larger-than-life Rye River bars at Alltech, kept alive in 2019 too. It was slightly surreal to see a wide selection of the brewery's many many beers on display together in one place. Specials and rarities were confined to a single tap, which was pouring Hop Colossus when first I went to check it. Of course this is an IPA, 6.5% ABV and murky as you like. Quite possibly murkier, actually. That brought with it an amazing freshness, the American hops absolutely popping with aromatic oils. I didn't even bother writing down what it tasted like, just that it was absolutely delicious, and an excellent illustration of why cloudiness gets treated as a virtue in IPAs these days. If only more of them tasted as good.

When that ran out it was replaced by Fobby's Oakily Smokily, a quirky name for a very straight-up grodziskie. It's a little strong for the style at 4.6% ABV but that had no detrimental effect on it. From the right shade of pale custardy yellow to the huge burnt-rubber smoke foretaste, to the quick and quenching finish, there were no surprises lurking in here. As long as you knew you ordered an oak-smoked wheat beer, that's what you got served.

Rye River has a couple of new cans on the go and one of them -- Daragh's Grapefruit Session IPA -- picked up a gold medal in the festival competition for best IPA. Not best fruited or speciality IPA; the best IPA in the entire field of entries. It is, I assume, simply the brewery's regular session IPA with added grapefruit syrup. It's the same 3.8% ABV anyway. The fruit has had a big effect on it, making it taste like a Club Orange or Orangina: mineral fizz overlaid with pithy pulp. It's juicy without being sticky and retains a mild bitterness. I couldn't shake the feeling it's more of a shandy than an IPA. Another one for the summer.

Also present and correct as usual was Galway Hooker. The new one on their stall was Galway Gold, a 4.5% ABV golden ale that tends to get rebadged as a house beer out in the wild. The badge here claimed it was an IPA. I'm not sure about that. It's appropriately gold and shows a clean and simple lager-like profile: dry and crisp with a touch of peach and a pinch of celery. Very much a conversation beer for venues where beer isn't the centre of the offer, but a well-made one too. Since it's not often seen around these parts I was pleased to get the chance to try it, and in tomorrow's post I'll be exploring the beers from breweries which don't have much presence here in the capital.

Tetley Ležák

Beer shopping in Armagh, never a wonderland of quality and choice, took a turn for the worse on my most recent attempt. The most interesting things I could find were today's pair of warmed-up Tetley beers. The brand has been owned by Carlsberg for decades but as far as I know these revived beers have been brewed at its spiritual successor, the Leeds Brewery.

Tetley's Golden Ale first, a 4%-er. It smelled a bit skunky, which wasn't a good start. The flavour was very decent, however: a mostly sweet and slightly spicy mix of golden syrup and Earl Grey tea, providing sugar, tannin and bergamot. It's fizzy, but not thin with it. Consumed ice cold it's very refreshing, and just complex enough to be worthwhile. Not a million miles from a quality Czech lager, actually. Yes it tastes very similar to plenty of other English golden ales, but then that's not something I drink very often. I was on board for the sequel.

That would be No. 3 Pale Ale. Pale ale trumps golden, right? Wrong. While this is similarly coloured, and only a little bit stronger, it's horribly dry, to the point of acrid. It's crackers: spun wheat or rye crackers, topped with sesame seeds and possibly sawdust. There's an even harsher finish, all musty and dusty, and even a little sour. Three sentences later I have to remind myself that they've called this a pale ale. There's no hop character, and no malt kindness either. A cruel beer, in short, and I doubt any dispense variant would save it.

Georgian Yorkshire, then, is a land of contrasts. Top notch golden ales and execrable pale ones. Tread carefully.

A tickle of zwickl

Since they arrived almost two years ago, the Stiegl beers haven't exactly been making waves in local beer geek circles. Importer Carlow Brewing has carved out a mainstream niche for Goldbräu lager, and the excellent Radler was a welcome feature on rotation taps last summer, but other than that it's been quite quiet. I paid attention, then, when Paracelsus appeared out of the blue at UnderDog last year.

It's described as a "bio-zwickl", so an organic unfiltered lager, then. The ABV is 5.2% and it's a hazy shade of orange. I got a surprising amount of juice from the aroma; a zesty hit of freshly-squeezed orange. The more typical grain husk is also there, and that's what leads the flavour: dry biscuit at first, building in sweetness to the level of golden syrup, reminding me a little of Budvar. The juice has vanished, strangely, and in its place stands a noble hop bitterness: raw green veg; assertive, verging on harsh to my sensitive palate. The texture is noteworthy too: deliciously soft and chewy.

Overall this is very good at what it does. It's a wholesome and flavourful Mitteleuropa lager of the sort we don't see much of in these parts. I know from the launch event that Stiegl has some very interesting items in its repertoire. It would be great to see more of them around.