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.