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.