Day drinking

Rye River celebrated its 5th anniversary with a festival last month, bringing a couple dozen Irish breweries, a handful from Britain, and two cider-makers to their headquarters in Celbridge. They very kindly comped me a pair of tickets and a handful of beer tokens.

The set-up was perfect -- a single compact venue, two taps per producer (some with rotating beers), excellent live music and the holy grail for Irish festivals: real glass glasses. The 8pm finish might have caught a few unaware but I found it damnably civilised, though an hour or two's head start from the 2pm kick-off would have improved things.

Six-hour limit notwithstanding, the beer will take two posts to cover, and we'll begin where I began, on My Cherie Ramore by Lacada. "Belgian Cherry Ale" is the official descriptor; it's broadly a fruit-flavoured saison. The earthy aroma is certainly saison-influenced, and while the taste isn't alcopop-sweet there is a touch of cherry cough sweets, with the attendant hot vapours. It's enjoyable, and different, but I don't think it's an improvement on ordinary saison made well.

Wicklow Wolf joined the 1% with their ultra-low-alcohol coffee ale Moonlight. There are cocoa nibs in here too, adding a distinct sweetness. The flavour made me think of drip coffee with brown sugar. Its concentrated coffeeness means the roasted side is slightly overdone, giving it a sweaty edge, but the texture is light, the fizz is cleansing and overall it works as a refresher. I'm really not sure how the market will react to this. It's probably best stored somewhere other than the beer aisle.

Can we have a beer without any unorthodox ingredients? Canvas went some way to answering that call with their two. Mallmann is a smoked beer of no particular style, using malt they've produced themselves. The resulting beer is 4.1% ABV and a deep red colour. It tastes strongly of smoke -- not ham or kippers or any of the usual smoke analogues -- but actual smoke, like a bonfire. An extra dimension is added by a mild tartness, like blackberry or loganberry. For all of the caveman qualities, it's clean and balanced, finishing quickly on the palate and inviting the next sip. This is very much a grown-up beer, a challenge for those more comfortable with milkshakes and pastries. It's tasty though, especially if smoke is your thing.

The brewery's gift to beer writers was Qwerty, and I'm pretty sure I've spelled that correctly. This is a saison fermented with kveik yeast; 5.4% ABV and a muddy red-brown colour. The aroma is of ripe-to-rotten apricot and there's loads of fruit in the flavour too: strawberry most prominently, but raspberry and peach as well. I guess it's the darker malt bringing a baked pastry edge, and there's even a touch of smoke. In combination, the jam and pastry make this a poptart of a beer. Another interesting one from Canvas. Regarding "saison" as the style, I guess the kveik had other ideas.

Bigger! Funkier! Weirder! Galway Bay, obviously accustomed to the high-end festival circuit, kept its taps turning over. The range included Lives Well Lived, broadly some sort of souped-up Flemish red. It's 8.3% ABV and goes big on malt. The flavour opens on heavy dark fruitcake, one soaked in booze. It proceeds to a spritzy tartness, like a rustic southern European table wine. The two form an interesting double act. I spent my glassful fascinated by the flavours and their interaction, but I found it hard to just enjoy. It's not the first time something like this has overpowered my palate.

"American stout" is not a style designation we see often around here. The words immediately conjure my first experience with Sierra Nevada's Stout and the joyous melding of dark malts and west coast hops, before the black IPA craze washed ashore here. That's what I was after from 3 Missed Calls by Hope. It certainly delivered in the aroma: even though it was served nitrogenated there was a massive hit of citrus on the nose. The flavour was surprisingly savoury, showing sesame seed most of all. The centrepiece bitterness is that of a roasty stout though it veers grassy, almost unpleasantly so, towards the end. I think a little more malt sweetness would help balance this, but it's an enjoyable novelty nonetheless.

For the overseas breweries I went sour, beginning with Quench Quake by BrewDog. This is a very accessible 4.5% ABV job, allegedly flavoured with grapefruit and tangerine but I couldn't taste either. Instead it's dry and sour all the way down; chalky and minerally with a minimal amount of quite generic citric zing. I enjoyed it for all that: it offers superb refreshment and was the perfect mid-festival reset button for my palate.

Later on I tried the oddly-named Bouba / Kiki from Birmingham's Dig Brew Co. This was rather more full-on: 6.2% ABV and including apricot, mango and (bizarrely) tonka beans. It has an opaque orange-juice appearance, while the beans give it a strong coffee aroma. The flavour mixes sharply bitter fruit acid with the rich and smooth coffee oils, which is a very weird contrast: a mojito served with an espresso on the side. It's fun, but I'm glad every beer isn't this daring.

Our hosts had a range of small-batch beers on their bar. The latest in the official limited edition series, the first for 2019, is Mother Pucker, a sour beer with blackberries. A mere 4.4% ABV, it's a pink emulsion and tastes, as it looks, like forest fruit yoghurt. The sour tang is lactic and definitely not puckering, and while the fruit flavour is very real, the texture is thin and the finish all too quick. This is simplistic and inoffensive; an introduction to sourness but no more than that.

Their oddity was a coffee milk stout made with oat milk instead of cow, called Oat Flatzer. It's very heavy on the coffee, showing lots of bitterness and a significant dash of dark chocolate. Dominating the flavour, however, is a strange cereal bar effect, all wholegrains, sticky with treacle and honey. This was yet another unorthodox beer, to the point of unsettling, but still enjoyable in its oddness. It seemed to be the day for it.

Completing the set of Rye River specials: Mash-Breaker, one of those brews awkward enough to imprint itself on the brewer who named it. This is a tripel at 8.3% ABV. The spice levels aren't as high as I'd like them -- just a pinch of white pepper -- but otherwise it's a classically-constructed example, with plenty of Belgiany banana esters and a quenching hit of fresh mandarin and apricot. They can always buy a new mash tun if they want to make it again.

We've been a little light on hops for this set. I'll rectify that in the next post.