Spooning around

On a sunny Sunday in January, with nothing better to do I took a spin out to Blackrock. On the handpumps at The Three Tun Tavern they had Gadd's She Sells Sea Shells, "light summer ale from the Kent coast": out of season perhaps, but it was still a bright afternoon and I was on the coast, so why not? The "light" refers more to the colour than the strength, it being a full 4.7% ABV but a very pale and slightly hazy shade of golden. The taste is pure summer: a meadowy breeze of floral notes, a gentle honey sweetness and a tiny bittersweet hint of high-end lemonade in the finish. The texture is quite thick, so I question its utility as a summer thirst quencher, but as a means of getting a summer buzz in the depths of winter, it was spot on.

In no rush home, I followed it with Lo-Res session IPA from SixPoints which has been around a while but I had yet to catch up with it. It's on the strong side for the style, 5% ABV, and uses that extra welly successfully. The aroma is beautifully dank, full of pure and oily hop resins. The flavour offers a little of that funk, alongside fresh and spritzy limes and a touch of fried onion. The nod to sessionability is the quick and clean finish afterwards. This is a good representation of classic west-coast flavours, albeit from the east coast.

The Gadd's beer showed up again this past weekend when I made the twice-annual pilgrimage to Dún Laoghaire for the Wetherspoon festival. There were four new-to-me beers on the pumps at The Forty Foot, so I began with three thirds. Beginning in the middle of set, that's Flack Catcher, a 4.4% ABV golden ale from Flack Manor. It arrived surprisingly dark, a rich golden amber colour. A heavy stickiness goes along with that but there's enough flavour complexity to prevent it getting difficult. It's a kind of spiced honey and maple effect with maybe a pinch of black pepper or celery salt. A lower serving temperature and a bit more fizz would probably lift this from "only OK" to "quite good".

The bright and fun badge of Hop County immediately suggested a good time in store. This is brewed by... oh. I had inadvertently drawn the Shepherd Neame beer from the line-up and braced myself. It's a deeper golden again than the previous one. And it's not awful. It is very weird, however. There's an intense artificial sweetness, like Juicy Fruit gum or rhubarb-and-custard candy. A certain viscosity adds tutti frutti ice cream into that mix. It may be simplistic and silly but it doesn't taste like a Shepherd Neame beer, so I feel like I got away with something.

The Forty Foot has been eternal and unchanging since it opened in late 2014, but this year there was a novelty: pour-your-own gravity cask. And so the last of these, Contender, was dispensed by my own fair hand from a barrel at the end of the bar. It's one of the international collaborations, brewed at Banks's from a recipe by Shanghai's Boxing Cat brewery. Though officially a pale ale, it's a similar golden colour to the other two. The flavour is very pale ale, however: a very American blend of grapefruit and lime citrus, softened with juicy apricot and lychee. While still a pale 'n' hoppy English bitter at its heart this does a great job of channelling the new world, as the best of the Wetherspoon collaborations have always done over the years.

Before leaving I upgraded to a half pint of Ilkley Ruby Jane. Dark mild deserves to be consumed in quantity, after all. And this is a very classic mild: blackberry fruits and dark chocolate set on a light body. Where similar beers tail off into wateriness, this leaves a lasting tang of bitter green English hops. It's one of those beers I had to restrain myself from quaffing until I'd captured enough of a description. Unfussy, balanced and complex without being busy, it's the sort of thing I'd like to see available regularly.

To The Three Tun, then, where there was an emphasis on dark. Asphalt Jungle is another international job, brewed at Wadworth by Bagby of California. It's a 4.5% ABV stout, opaque black with a tan head. There's a salty chocolate tang here, next to a cinnamon spice and some dark forest fruit. I'd be interested to know what the original beer tastes like, because this is very much English cask stout all the way through. It's perhaps a little heavy, given the strength, but it's also a great example of how cask serve adds complexity to stout that it just doesn't get otherwise.

Elgood's next, and their Hen In Black porter. It's the same strength but visibly paler and... ooof... something's gone wrong here. There's a strong bleachy kick off this right from the get go. Fresh bleach, mind: dry and cleansing. There's a seemingly OK chocolatey porter behind it, but I didn't go further than a couple of sips. Bringing it back to the bar, indicator paper was produced, a test was done and the presence of bleach was not found, so apparently that's genuinely how it tastes, according to the Wetherspoon system.

The beer in the middle is Exmoor Beast, 6.6% ABV, of course. No roast or chocolate here. Instead it's a dense mix of fruit and flowers; a base of summer berries sprinkled liberally with rose petal. A bitterly tannic astringency finishes it on a dry note, while there's plenty of alcohol heat running in tandem. There's a bit of an old-man vibe off this; a beer with no bells and whistles, designed for getting grandpa nicely sozzled with maximum efficiency. I'm into it.

A cleanser was required next and I went with Kol Schisel, a pale ale from Hook Norton, based on an original by Aussie brewer Big Shed. It's 4.2% ABV, a light shade of orange, and tastes of luscious stonefruit: apricot in particular, but you can add peaches and mango into that picture if you like. There's a very slight fuzzy bitterness and a sweeter spongecake base. All-in, it's very tasty: dessertish without turning sticky or difficult. The fruity features of stereotypical "Australian" hoppy beer are all present and correct. Great work.

One last beer from the collaboration series, then. Gypsy Mask is another Shepherd Neame job, collaborating with Darling Brew from South Africa. It's a red ale, though on the pale side for that. It's a bit bland too: thin with just a dusting of toffee and marzipan. Perfectly quenching and drinkable, with a complete absence of off flavours or twangs. It's just dull. Very dull. Mind, that's two narrow escapes from Shepherd Neame awfulness. Maybe they know what they're doing after all.

Sunday brought me to Blanchardstown where the spangly tap badge of West Berkshire Brewery's Maharaja IPA caught my eye immediately. It poured a dense deep orange colour and at 5.1% ABV is strong for an English cask ale, though it tastes even stronger. There's a definite heat here; a slightly sickly buzz of vodka and orange cordial, accentuated by the heavy texture. A sherbet spice adds a lighter note and adds to the drinkability, as does a tannic dryness. It's definitely one to take time over. There's no other way of drinking it, really.

Ruby coloured Secret Kingdom, from Hadrian Border was next, a bitter of 4.3% ABV. It's fairly simplistic: dry cereal sweepings and a mild sour tang that suggests it may not have been the freshest beer in the house. It was far from spoiled, however, and made quite a decent thirst quencher. There's effectively zero hop character here but it somehow manages to get away with it.

The weekend's casksploration ended with Castle Rock's Snowhite: a bright golden pale ale. Though the aroma is all sweet old-fashioned lemonade, it's a bitter one on tasting, full of waxy lemons and a slightly soapy twang on the finish. The texture is soft and soda-like, so even though the sharpness is assertive, the beer remains easy to drink. Not Castle Rock's best work, but thoroughly passable.

Only about half of the above were official festival beers, but overall I think this was a good year for the event; a return to form after a few dud sessions. With the first branch opening in Dublin city centre in the coming weeks I might not be doing so much mileage come the next one.