Man up!

Tesco has a new own-brand pilsner, Manislav. The packaging is rather sparse and Eastern-Bloc'y, though I guess it's Budvar they're aiming to gently knock off. It's not a rebrand from some lesser Czech brewery however: it's brewed just up the road in Dundalk at Alltech's Pearse Lyons Brewery.

I consciously picked a bottle from a few rows back and kept it out of the light for as long as I had it, but I still got a slight skunky whiff when the cap came off. Green glass may look continental but it's not doing this beer any favours. Thankfully that initial hit was the extent of the lightstrike.

Behind sits a very decent pilsner. It's properly full-bodied, with the pillowy candyfloss and brioche malt that the Czechs do well. This is balanced by a noble hopping that's dry more than bitter: a hint of yellow mown grass, leading to a slightly harsh boiled-cabbage finish.

It's no finely-polished dvanáctka, and could do with a bit more hops at the front, but it does taste authentic. And for the money it's superb. I drank mine as a post-run beer on a warm evening and was kicking myself I only bought the one. I'll be getting more. Cans would be nice, though.

You can't say Leeds without smiling

Work brought me to Leeds for a few short days a couple of weeks ago. Pubbing time was limited but I got a bit done; places both new and familiar from my last visit.

First stop was Assembly Underground, a down-with-the-kids dude-food basement hangout, a large section of which is dedicated to a Vocation Brewery (and guests) 50-tap bar.

Warm evening, long day: pilsner please. Vocation's own Yakima Pilsner, as it happened. As with many a high-level new-world-hopped pils it ended up tasting more like a pale ale than a pils. There's lots of peach in the foretaste, followed by a leafy dankness, the bitterness intensifying to the point of pine resin and tin. Despite the oiliness it doesn't linger, leaving the palate respectably quickly. Something plainer and more Germanic would have suited me better at that exact moment, but this wasn't half bad. I do like a peachy hop.

Cornish brewery Verdant seems to have become a byword for great beer in recent UK discourse. I'd never tried any of their beers, and since there was a sour IPA on here, that seemed like the obvious next choice. My elation lessened on seeing It's Friday Almost Tomorrow is an unreasonable 8.4% ABV and a weird opaque pink colour. Turns out rather than souring an IPA with a bacterial culture they've simply dumped blackcurrant and lime juice into it. It's an approach, I suppose. The first taste gave me creamy coconut, something I often confuse with lime. The warmth of the alcohol and the burn of the bittering hops sit behind this, sulking, probably. It's all very simplistic, as you might expect from an IPA watered down with juice. I don't really see the point. It's fine to drink, though: refreshing in a juicebar sort of way. Can't help thinking it's a waste of IPA, however.

Winding my way back to the river I dropped in to the Head of Steam for a pint of Boltmaker: a beer which I swear is different -- darker and less hop-driven -- than when I last tasted it as Timothy Taylor's Best in York a decade ago.

Anyway, one new tick while I was here: a half of Tinderbox IPA from Fell Brewery in Cumbria. "Classic West-Coast Style" says the pumpclip, without specifying which west coast. It is 6.3% ABV, though, so maybe that's a clue. It's a beautiful northern-bitter shade of clear gold. The aroma mixes a gentle citrus with crisp biscuit while the flavour begins on fruity chew sweet then turns waxy, in a very definitely northern TT-Landlord sort of way. It's not a hyperloop to San Diego but it's a bloody nice IPA, clean flavoured, with a definite punch coming from the strength but by no means hot or soupy. A great session-finisher.

I was back for a quick one on the Friday: Ilkley Summer, a 4% ABV golden ale. It's bang-on for the style, maybe a little more bitter than normal: another one that's unmistakably northern. But there's bubblegum and wafer biscuit too. A little more fruit character would have summer-ised it further, but no complaints. Such stuff as sessions are built on. Not that I had time for any of that sort thing.

Pushing on, next stop was Stew & Oyster at Call's Landing, a nice little riverside place, built for eaters and jumping weekend crowds, but perfectly pleasant on a Wednesday.

I learned something from the name of the Kirkstall lime beer on tap. Turns out a Verdita is a mix of juices and spices designed for drinking with tequila. This one is a more innocent 4% ABV and brewed with lime (obvious), mint (I'd believe it), pineapple (OK), and coriander (what?). But the lack of distinctive cocktail flavours means it all integrates very nicely into a single thirst-quenching summery piece, part lemonade, part straight Berliner weisse. It's fun, it's silly, and perfect if that's what you're in the mood for.

A nightcap, then, at BrewDog. I thought Beatnik Sticky Toffee was a guest beer but it turns out BrewDog makes it themselves. It's a 9% ABV imperial stout and actually not as sweet as the name suggests. Yes it's sweet, and yes there's toffee, but it doesn't tip over into that metallic treacle sweetness that too many of these do. Pastry stout with nuanced flavours gets a pass from me, and there's even a hint of ginger at the back to dry it out and  -- God forbid! -- balance it. A sticky beer that is only slightly sticky. I'll take that.

Next day, Tapped was handy, so I nipped in there once, despite not having had a good experience with their beer last time. Second chance, thy name is Zlato. It looked a little bit dull and hazy, not the usual pin-bright pilsner colour, nor the colourful opaqueness of an unfiltered example. And it doesn't taste right. There's a vinegary twang and a hard plasticky bitterness. I'm guessing it's been brewed in that harsh north-German way which I'm not a fan of at the best of times, but even even I don't think it's a well-made example. So that's Tapped cancelled.

Finally, for this post, I dropped in to Whitelock's after work on the Friday. The crowd had packed into the alley outside to enjoy the sunshine, leaving the saloon relatively free. Picking randomly from the casked selection I went for Glass Light, a pale ale with Azacca hops from Bad Seed Brewery. This'll be a pint of summer, I thought. It wasn't really. While it is a perfect gold colour with just a slight coppery tint, and does have a touch of Azacca's tropical chew-sweet in the flavour, it's otherwise dusty and dry. A rubbery twang adds unpleasantly to the harshness. Thankfully it's smooth yet light-bodied, making it quite easy to drink, despite the terrible taste.

I switched to keg for my last half, the Unfined IPA brewed by Kirkstall as the Whitelock's house beer. Despite the name it's very clear. The ABV is 6% and it's suitably thick: boggy with dank hop resins and overlaid with a heavy lemon and lime bitterness. This means it's wanting for zing, but maybe that's not always necessary. What we have here is a decent, chewy, slow-and-steady-wins-the-race west coast IPA; one with an uncompromising character all its own.

The only other place I went for a drink on this trip was Little Leeds Beerhouse, and I'll cover that when I get around to reviewing the beers I took away from it.

Crooked goes straight

I've come to associate the Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project with interesting and innovative sour constructions so I wasn't sure what to make of it producing a straight-up pils. It's called Von Pilsner and is 5% ABV. The colour is that shade of pale yellow which is almost tinted with green, topped by a tight bright white head. It smells middle-eastern: enticing bitter herbs and overtones of sharp citrus. Though there was lots of fizz as it poured, the texture is beautifully smooth, with no carbonic edge at all. I took the "keller pilsner" designation as marketing nonsense, but I can see what they're getting at with it: this does taste, or at least feel, like it poured from a barrel in a cellar somewhere. The flavour is rather more American, leaning heavily on those lemons. They're quite candied ones too: the bitterness is definitely lower than I like in a pils. Still, this is a very enjoyable beer, and one I would definitely have enjoyed another of, after I quaffed the first.

Instead, I turned to Crooked Stave IPA, another mainstream style. Denver is a long way from New England so I was surprised when this poured a hazy creamsicle yellow. There's a soft texture to go along with that, and it's all very easy-going despite the 6% ABV. The word "tropical" appears on the can and that's often a harbinger of disappointment, but this one really delivers: after the lemonade aroma there's a very realistic flavour combination of mango and passionfruit from the Amarillo, Mosaic and Azacca hops. The balancing bitter veg kick on the end is presumably the work of the Motueka. Only the faintest hint of sesame seed interrupts the hop fun with a savoury note, but it's barely noticeable, and there's no flavour interference from the haze: as it should be yet so rarely is. I bought this casually; an afterthought to fill out a 4-for-€12 in Stephen Street News. I didn't think I was buying such a finely-honed precision instrument. Honestly, I can't remember my last American IPA as good as this.

I don't know if Crooked Stave was ever a trendy brewery; it certainly doesn't seem to get much attention these days. On the strength of these two future classics, that's utterly undeserved.

Needs must

Another random bottle of Italian grape ale courtesy of UnderDog. Mosto from Bella 'Mbriana is a whopping 9.5% ABV, the strongest of these I've found.

Though an innocent golden colour it tastes every bit of that number: syrupy like a super-strength lager with notes of golden syrup and Jolly Rancher. The latter is, I guess, the grapes at work, but they end up tasting more like stewed apples than Campania's finest.

It's not offensive, but it lacks the cleanness, the spritziness and the subtleties of good grape ale. Approach with caution.

The London connection

It was odd seeing some internet opprobrium being meted out to London brewer Partizan when they announced they had created a collaboration series of beers with the Guinness Open Gate Brewery. Craft die-hards taking a pop at the macros and anyone too close to them is not unusual, but I didn't see anyone having a go at another Londoner, 40FT, when it did something similar. Partizan seems to be held to a different standard.

Anyway, that's purely an aside, and the most important thing is to get to the beers. Three collaboration brews were created, two at Open Gate and one at Partizan. The theme of the series was Italian-style aperitifs. The launch evening involved a tap takeover at Open Gate, after which they kindly sent me home with a bottle of all three.

We begin with L'Amara, a saison infused with unspecified Italian botanicals and 5.9% ABV; the only one of this set brewed at Partizan. It's a bright and hazy shade of orange, smelling enticingly of sweet herbs and citrus fruit: all very Mediterranean. The texture is slick, with a touch of bitter balsamic resins, but without the sourness that often comes with. An intensely dry kick finishes it off. I'm sure it's deliberate but this has a lot in common flavourwise with a Campari and soda, though softened by the beer's malt. Although it's a total novelty beer, the complex flavours gel together very well. The orangey notes make it feel more like a pale ale than a saison, but never mind -- style guidelines were never going to apply here. It's a daring recipe but it absolutely works: a superbly refreshing appetite-whetting aperitif.

That's the pale one. Its dark sibling is L'Intensa, brewed in Dublin, which I'm guessing is going for a sweet vermouth vibe. That's good because I'm a fan. It's the appropriate dark red and a whopping 8.2% ABV. The herbal vermouth mix is definitely present -- rosemary and sage to the fore -- but it's definitely still beer. There's a thick dark roasted malt quality, bringing a nuttiness with a touch of cola and finishing on a liquorice bitterness. Again the multitude of tastes mix together well, making it a cocktail in a single pour. Not quite as aperitiffy as the previous one, but still damn good.

In the big bottle is La Brillante, a daring formulation being pilsner aged in Oloroso casks, finishing at 5.6% ABV. The label says to serve in a champagne glass and I could not possibly refuse. It looks slightly darker than a typical pils, and hazier too. The aroma is a weirdly sweet salted caramel thing, which must be the sherry, but dilute. The sherry is realer on tasting: proper oak and juicy white grape. The pils is all but lost, however. When I had this on draught at the brewery it had lots of butterscotch, like a poorly made lager, but that seems to be absent in the bottled version, which is good. The only pils aspect left behind is a pleasant crispness in the finish but that's it, and there's certainly no hops, Saaz or otherwise. It's good, though. If you like sherry and things that taste of sherry.

In parallel at the event, there was a set of Partizan's own beers on the taps. The fantastic Partizan Stout is one I've had before and it still tastes great. Saison is how Partizan made its name, and representing that here was Lemon & Thyme Saison. This is a mere 3.8% ABV, and a very pale yellow -- almost clear with it. Given the fruit-and-herb combination, I shouldn't have been surprised to find it tasting more like a witbier than saison. There's a light and clean lemonade quality, and just a mild oily greenness from the thyme, and that's as complex as it gets. This is nicely thirst quenching but anyone looking for an involved saison experience may look elsewhere.

L-R: Saison, Stock, IPA, Stout

"Session Stock Ale" intrigued, and I'm not sure if it's intended as an historical recreation, or an ironic twist on one. "Pale mild with Brettanomyces" is another way it's described, though isn't mild ale the antithesis of stock? Anyway, it's 5.6% ABV and a hazy orange colour with a matching jaffa aroma. The flavour did not suit me. Harsh aftershave resin comes first, then a rough acrid bitterness, leading to a long finish of sackcloth dryness. I tried to find something pleasant in amongst all this but kept coming out with dry-rotted wood and dusty attics. There's no way I could session this; a third of a pint was very hard work. Maybe it's an acquired taste but I shan't be making the effort.

The last chance for something really good was Ekuanot & Amarillo IPA. There's a massive floral aroma from this: fields of lavender as far as the eye can see. That's enjoyable to begin with but turns very intense on tasting, concentrated by the beer's thick texture, despite a relatively modest 6.5% ABV. Beside the thick perfume there's a gummy meringue sweetness which does nothing to balance it. This is another brave recipe, going all-in with the flavours, but it just didn't suit me.

I spotted one new beer from Open Gate's regular rotation: Dublin Common. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this pale yellow job. I expected a straightforward lager but got a strange mix of savoury herbs, white port and cork oak. It could be my palate was beyond use after all of the high-flavour beers that had gone before. Still, it was refreshing if not really cleansing. One glass and I was gone.

...and returned a couple of weeks later when I was invited to the annual Meatopia barbecue festival. Three special beers had been created with the help of the exhibiting chefs to match with the food. Of course I'll be assessing them on their own terms.

First up, the Jerk Spiced Brown Ale. It certainly sounded intriguing, combining a rare style with odd ingredients. The reality was rather more prosaic. This deep chestnut-red beer has a light touch on the spices, not mustering more than a burst of meadow flowers and a dusting of cedar. And this wasn't because the base beer overwhelmed them -- I would have expected 5.5% ABV to supply plenty of caramel and fudge and other brown ale goodness, but that's on the downlow too. This is one of those beers where you can argue about whether it's "subtle" or "bland". It certainly didn't interfere with the flavours in the tasty jerk lamb it was paired with.

Keeping things weird, next up was a Singaporean... Pilsner? Oo-er. This innocent lager has had oolong, jasmine tea and vanilla added to it. It retained its attractive gold colour and its clean refreshing crispness. Added to this was a pleasant berry sharpness: summery hints of redcurrant and raspberry. That's unexpected, but quite nice too. The hopping is not where I'd expect a pilsner to be, although it's probably wise not to go for hops in a big way in this sort of recipe. It gets fruitier and sweeter as it warms, the vanilla becoming an unwelcome addition. This is another one which takes it easy on the special ingredients and their non-standard flavours, and to be honest I think it would likely be a better beer without them.

To pair with the mussels, Open Gate had created a Maritime Stout with seaweed and whole oysters. This was much more distinctive than the other pair, mixing together the tangy Guinness dryness with a sweetly meaty oyster taste. A briney finish brings it in. The aquatic novelty flavours are loud at first but when you settle in to the beer there's a solid 5.5% ABV stout behind it, showing dark roast coffee and very dark chocolate. I'm not sure I would have guessed the oysters were present, but this does share some flavour characteristics with the excellent Porterhouse Oyster Stout so their influence must add something.

To the main bar, then, to see what has joined the Dublin Common in the regular ever-changing OGB line-up. Sorachi Red is on the left, there: the muddy brown one. It's rather rough and unfinished-tasting, opening on a nasty twang of burnt plastic and showing the pithy side of Sorachi with very little of the softer coconut. Definitely not a patch on the more polished Wicklow Wolf beer of the same name.

The orange one at the far end is an intriguing Honey & Fig Ale. There's no question about at least one of the ingredients: the honey flavour is huge and real, balancing its own sweetness with an edge of bitter wax. Definite mead overtones here, which I'm sure was the point. It's questionable whether the fig is discernible in this: I won't say it's not, but I definitely wouldn't have named it without knowing in advance. Not exactly easy drinking, but absolutely packed with unique character and enjoyable for that alone.

And last of the set, in the centre, is called Here We Gose Again but it's not gose as she is generally brewed in Craftonia. This is a clean and snappy, unadorned, authentically Leipziggish version. A salty tang, a sour pinch and a clean finish. Extremely drinkable and the sort of light sour beer it would be very easy to settle into. I really wish there was more beer like this around.

An outsider to finish the post. Up on stage, Melissa Cole gave an educational talk on non-alcoholic beers and the different methods used to achieve them. New to me in the line-up was No Worries from Lervig. This is a very pale yellow colour and is one of the ones where they've avoided wateriness by making it super thick and creamy. There's a sharp lemon aroma and a metallic bitterness, but then a strange buttery quality, presumably related to the body. As these things go, it's so-so: plenty of character but not really to my taste. More gose please.

A big thanks to Padraig and the Open Gate team for the invitation.

Sip with one eye open

Just before it folded, Stone Berlin turned out a pilsner in collaboration with American beat combo Metallica. It's called Enter Night and is an unreasonably strong 5.7% ABV. I can't say I was mad keen to try it, but then I had an idea. Dunnes Stores has a plethora of German beers you don't see anywhere else. I picked a cheap pilsner from among them, Germania by an Eichbaum subsidiary in Rhineland-Palatinate. It's a middle-of-the-road 4.8% ABV. Stone-Metallica cost €3.99; Dunnes took €1.15 off me for the other one. Is the price difference justified? Set 'em up blind!

They look fairly similar, both clear yellow with a decent sized head. Beer 1 has a mild haze while 2 is pure and clear. 1 smells bready with a slight lemon washing up liquid sharpness while 2 is all malt: a wholesome porridgey richness. They're very different but neither is bland or nasty. 1 has a coconut foretaste, suggesting Sorachi Ace. It turns a little plasticky late on, which is unpleasant but entirely in keeping with how plenty of German pilsners are created. Not to my taste, but not flawed. 2, meanwhile, doubles down on that malt, the sweet grain offset, but not really balanced, by an unsubtle green bitterness which indicates hop extract to me.

I'm not a big fan of either, and I absolutely cannot taste how one is a multiple of the price of the other. The Dunnes one, whichever it is, is showing plenty of character for a cheapie. The Stone one, conversely, is not justifying the price tag: neither of these is better than a decent pale lager of the sort you can buy for buttons in Germany and not a massive amount here.

Guessing game time: I'd say 1, with the extra hop character and unfiltered fuzz, is the Stone one, while 2 is Dunnes being unnecessarily characterful. And I'm right!

I don't think I've learned anything other than €4 is too much to pay for a premium-branded pilsner, while you don't get much for your money down in the €1.15 bracket. I knew this already. As you were.

Offaly hazy

Poor oul Kings County Brewers Collective had better get used to the midlands references for as long as their product is in Ireland. Brooklyn also has the alter ego "Kings County", hence the name of this New York outfit. I paid handsomely for one of their tall cans of IPA at Stephen Street News.

Superhero Sidekicks is 6.9% ABV, includes oats in the recipe, and is hopped with Idaho 7, Cascade, Centennial and Mosaic: nothing wrong with any of that. It pours a dense and opaque orange, giving off a mix of lime citrus aroma, with hints of savoury caraway and sesame. It's surprisingly thin for the spec, and I expected to be halted on my first pull by thickness and burning. Instead it's light and breezy: spritzy juice for the main part and just a mild and dry chickpea and red onion kick at the end. There's a bit of oaty/yeasty fuzz going on, but not so much that it blocks the hops.

It's not exciting; it's absolutely not worth an €8.29 dip into your pocket; but it's fine to drink. 440mls weren't Offaly long in disappearing.

Second-fiddle sour

Anywhere else, Petrus would be a highlight of the local beer scene. In Belgium, during this Golden Age of Geuze, a sour beer specialist that doesn't have a lambic appellation is always going to be on the second rung. I guess that's why Petrus, brewed by De Brabandere in west Flanders, is pitched squarely at the export market, where lambic is hard to find and/or outrageously expensive. It perhaps also explains the, er, creativity in some of the beer styles. A selection of them landed on the beer taps of Dublin back in the spring.

The first I met was Sour Passionfruit, at Against the Grain. It's a cheery bright gold colour despite the serious 7.3% ABV. The flavour is a full-on riot from the get-go. It incorporates all the sweet tropical fruit and all the puckering sourness yet somehow manages to balance the noise and give us a tune. The underlying quality of the base beer (their flagship Aged Pale) shines through: a matured mineral spice, seasoning and accentuating the mouthwatering quality of the fruit. The aftertaste is the only part where the syrup has too much control; otherwise it's very nearly as good as a fruited geuze, if a little heavy on the booze.

A month or so later, it was off to UnderDog, where Petrus's distributor, Grand Cru, had organised a tap takeover. I began with the Aged Red, a companion to the Aged Pale flagship, though with an ABV soaring to 8.5%. It's an attractive smouldering deep ruby colour, but that's as good as it got. The flavour is joltingly sweet, beginning on acceptable cherry sherbet but turning quickly to sickly cough sweets. A tacked-on sour twang lies cowering in the background, sharp and gastric. It had mellowed, or had mellowed me, by the half-way point, but it's still too loud and rough to be enjoyable.

Let's go back to basics, then, and take another look at Aged Pale, this time from a single maturation vessel: Foeder 102. I got a suspicious buzz of appley cider from this first, followed by a much more pleasant white pepper spice. A waxy bitterness is next, similar to what you'd find in the more coarse lambics, certainly lacking the smoothness you usually get in a well-aged example. Still, it has impressive layers of flavours and I'd judge it a cut above the sharply acidic non-single-foeder version. Worth trading up if you have the choice.

The one beside it is definitely a Belgian's idea of what an American would want from a Belgian beer, going by the name Cherry Chocolate Nitro Quad. It's 9.5% ABV and a very dark red-brown colour. The aroma mixes strong and bitter stout with artificial cherry concentrate, and the flavour reflects that. The dark fruit of the quadrupel style is absent, perhaps because of the nitrogenation. Maybe the brewery thought that a secondary addition of cherry flavour would compensate for that, but it doesn't. At least it's smooth, despite the bitterness, and there's very little sign of all that alcohol. That makes it fine to drink, but really not very subtle or complex.

It seems to me that the Petrus marque is a bit of a one-trick pony. They got the Aged Pale right but haven't offered me anything else in that league. Mind you, I have a very similar opinion of that other non-lambic sour producer, Rodenbach. Maybe not every brand needs an extension.

The Buxton Archive

I've had these Buxton beers in my fridge a stupidly long time, since a distant tasting event at Redmond's and the BrewDog Beer Geek Awards of blessed memory before that. Let's get 'em quaffed.

We'll begin with a light 3.2% ABV table beer called In The Zawn. It had sat long enough to pour clear, at least at first -- a few dregs sneaking in late and casting a haze in the limpid yellow liquid. There's a kind of soda effervescence and a zesty lemon buzz which probably used to be brighter and busier when the beer was fresher. What's left behind is lightly bitter and rather plain. There's a gentle saison earthiness too. I think I'd prefer something a little drier and less dessertish than this, but it's fine, with plenty going on considering the strength.

Grinlow is a session IPA , though a hefty one at 4.6% ABV. The aroma was still bright and zesty despite extensive ageing: a fresh waft of lemon curd. The flavour is very sweet, the citrus turning tropical, with a big hit of mango, pineapple and lime. For a superannuated session IPA, five months past the best-before, there's very little bitterness. I'd have expected the hop front notes to have faded leaving just harsher remains but no: this is still young and sunny. I enjoyed it a lot and would like to believe it's indestructible and timeless, but it could be I just missed out on drinking a much better beer some time last year. Either way, a big thumbs up for Grinlow.

Last up is Red Wolf, the Buxton take on Flanders red. My bottle is just under half way through its five-year recommended lifespan. Seems it's been spending that time building up lots of carbon dioxide because I got a vast amount of foam on opening and pouring it, stiff enough to form a beehive hairdo on top of the blood-red body. It smells quite jammy, the tartness of the aroma no more than you'd get from a jar of blackberry conserve. It is more sour on tasting though, with a kick of concentrated black cherry. 6% ABV is strong for the style, and I think it tastes even stronger, the cherry turning to sticky cherry liqueur. There's a coating of chocolate too, for the full Ferrero Mon Chéri effect. A small twang of autolysis sits behind that, adding a brief note of mushroomy umami, but the combination of acidity and fizz scrubs all of this off the palate before things get weird or difficult. I think I prefer the lighter and cleaner iterations of this kind of thing, though I have time for this heavy one. It doesn't go overboard.

I'm sure I've complained here before that we don't see much from Buxton in Dublin. It was good to check in with them, belatedly.

Chinese delinquency

Dave went beer shopping in China for me again. This time he came home with a stout. King Benefit StoutBeer is 3.7% ABV. The Bavarian branding is great, because all Europeans do look the same. It's more of a dark amber than black, pouring completely headless. The aroma is also un-stout-like: intensely sweet, almost exactly like a caramel wafer biscuit.

It tastes as sweet as expected, but doesn't cloy because it's so thin. You get that up-front hit of milk chocolate and caramel, a prickle of fizz, and then a rapid fade-out with just a tiny metallic twang on the end. Take most of the residual sugar out and you'd have the makings of a good schwarzbier, and you wouldn't even have to change the branding.

This isn't completely awful. You do get used to the sweetness and the quick finish is a mercy. I still doubt it's something I'd turn to even if there were no other dark beers available. It's good to know these things in advance.

All the things

These round-ups are never long filling out. Here's all the recent(ish) releases from Irish micros that have come way way since the last one.

New Ireland has returned to the fray with a re-release of its Savage pale ale, and a new saison: Survivor, both now in cans. Survivor is a fizzy beast -- even a pint glass wasn't enough to allow pouring in one go. It lists tea on the ingredients and the blurb mentions bergamot, so I'm guessing Earl Grey. It works great: a bright and spritzy burst of citrus on top of the dry earthy saison flavour. I found it superbly thirst-quenching, though it's an unreasonable 6% ABV. It probably needs that for the satisfyingly full body, mind. The second pour dropped the lees into the glass, increasing the saison grittiness and lessening the fruit proportionally. Both approaches are valid. Great beer, overall.

White Hag are pressing the right buttons with the description of Oscar. First off, they're calling it a "table IPA" calling to mind the magnificent "table saison" they created with Brew By Numbers last summer. And secondly the blurb says it's a scaled down (2.6% ABV) version of the flawless Little Fawn. All signs point to something wonderful. And it smells wonderful too: the same dive-in mandarin and kiwi juiciness that Little Fawn enjoys. It's a leeeetle bit watery at the front, but only for a second. Then stand by as the juice rushes in. It's not the thick smoothie effect of thick New England IPAs, but nor is it thinly-diluted cordial. It's freshly squeezed mango, grapefruit and tangerine with the bits filtered out. The finish is quicker than Little Fawn, and the flavour a little less involved, but considering the drop in ABV this is an amazing piece of work. Four tall cans for €10 in Stephen Street News. Drink it all summer long.

The newest arty pale ale from O Brother is called Bale Out: 5.3% ABV and a hazy pale yellow. It's extremely sweet, beyond fruit and into artificially flavoured fruit candy. Fake banana and fake pineapple are the mainstays; a bit of mallow foam, a bit of jelly chew. There's a creamy texture to go with that, and the faintest green bitterness on the very end, but nothing that approximates balance. I'm not averse to this sort of hazy tropical pale ale -- I'll happily cite Trouble's Ambush as a prime local example -- but this one tips over the edge into not being beer-like enough.

Its companion piece is Plucky No. 8: a double IPA, 9.2% ABV, fermented with kveik. It's an opaque banana yellow and is very sweet, in the contemporary style. Again, bitterness doesn't feature in a big way, and whatever citrus hops they've used give it more creaminess, like lemon curd. There's a certain alcohol heat, but not a burn, and it certainly tastes nothing like the stated ABV. A slight buzz of garlic finishes it off. Fans of custardy New England double IPAs will be all over this: it delivers everything they want. I'm not a huge fan of the genre but I could tell this is a good one. As well as the lack of burn there's no yeasty interference from the murk. Less sweetness and more bitterness would be an improvement for me, but it's very accessible, tasty and enjoyable.

Lough Gill re-upped their Cashmere and Idaho-7 no-boil IPA which was such a success at the Alltech festival back in the spring. This time the ABV is up to 7.1% and it has a name: Craftsman. It's a hazy yellow colour and pushes masses of peach and pineapple flavours right from the start. There's a roughness around the edges, however; a gritty savoury thing and an alcohol heat which shouldn't really be surprising. Although it's good, I think the lower ABV suited the formula better.

By law each of these round-ups must include an Irish brut IPA -- I wouldn't drink them otherwise. Third Barrel's Too Brutylicious is better than most, however. They've achieved a good balance here between hop fruit and dryness, and haven't enzyme'd all the character out of it. It's a pale hazy amber colour and 5.9% ABV. Lots of busy foam piled up as I poured, eventually settling to a respectable lasting head. An orange-skin bitterness is the first part of the flavour to land -- the sort you'd find in an old-school San Diego IPA. The brut-ness scorches across the palate after it, a rough rasp of metal and sandpaper: unnecessary and adding nothing positive. The beer succeeds in spite, not because, of it. It's full bodied but refreshing, and there's enough residual sugar to carry the hopping into a long finish. A light touch on the brut is the way to go with these, for as long as the fashion lasts.

So let's see how Black's get on with their third brut IPA. I'm not sure the second version of Super Dry can be improved upon. Grand Slam was created for the Six Nations back in February. It's 6% ABV, hopped with a power combo of Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe, and a clear golden colour. There's an almost lager-like quality to the dryness: simple and clean, though obviously with American C-hop flavours on top, rather than noble ones. It doesn't taste drained like many of these do, but it's not very exciting either. I enjoyed the bottle quickly but wanted something with a bit more kick after it.

New sour and hoppy beers are sadly thin on the ground so I was all over Ain't No TANG! when Third Circle released it recently. They describe it as a "tart NE pale", and while there's no lactose among the ingredients it does have that milkshakey vanilla aroma amongst the stonefruit hopping. I was expecting sweet and gummy to taste but the sourness really comes to the fore: clean and tangy, the body remarkably light and crisp. The hops are tangerine and honeydew in the finish, which is nice, but annoyingly caraway up front. That would have bothered me more, but for the way the tartness moves the flavours along, with nothing lingering on the palate very long. It's refreshing and enjoyable; great for the summer.

Kelly's Mountain Brewery went out of business late last year. I hadn't realised that there was one last beer from them out there: the poignantly-named Dreamers, an American-style pale ale, draped in funereal purple. I bought and drank it on the day the best-before was up. It was a big gusher, foaming everywhere and taking an indecently long time to get in the glass. When it got there, a dun and hazy reddish, it tasted of strawberries -- still with plenty of hop fruit freshness -- plus a pleasing dry tea quality. It's much more like an English bitter than anything American: happy and wholesome. That effect is helped by a texture which is soft despite the big carbonation. I was rarely a huge fan of this brewery's work, but this is one of their best. Sorry to see them go.

For a whole variety of reasons we don't see many Irish triple IPAs, some of which were explained by Larkin's Brewing owner Cillian when I visited recently: it's a lot of effort to get the desired gravity. And this example, Live Till You Die, has plenty of gravity, finishing up at 10.75% ABV. New England-style IPAs, of which this is one, tend to be quite a bright and pale yellow; this is a darker, brooding ochre. The aroma is less serious: a fun and zippy burst of jaffa and satsuma. The flavour is more restrained, hopwise, and it's the thick malt and big booze which dominate, nudging this towards barley wine territory. The orangey thing is still there, rendered cordial-like. Funny, it's not a flavour I associate with resinous Simcoe, but that's the sole hop used. While this one isn't a riot of hops, it is enjoyable: clean and warming without being hot, though probably better suited to winter than high summer.

And speaking of summer, I got a seriously sunny seasonal vibe from the new ones out of Ballykilcavan, the Laois farm-brewery's first foray into cans. Millhouse is the lighter of them: a session IPA of just 3.5% ABV. It seemed a bit watery and dead on pouring, a wan hazy orange colour and a reluctance to form a head. The aroma is a punchy tangerine sweetness with chew-candy overtones, while the texture is as thin as I feared, providing very little platform for the flavour. There's more of that fruit candy on tasting, tailing off quickly to a hard pithy bitterness with a dusting of sesame and onion. Not great, but at least it doesn't hang around on the palate. The balance is out of kilter here: it somehow manages to be overly sweet while missing a portion or two of malt. It is still drinkable despite this, and is even properly refreshing. Far from the best of its kind, though.

If the low gravity was the problem then Secret Passion should have that sussed, being a double dry-hopped pale ale of 6.5% ABV, featuring added passionfruit and peach. It's certainly livelier, pouring more thickly, with a fun pink blush to the colour. The aroma is understated: just a whiff of peach concentrate and nothing resembling hops. The texture is as heavy as expected, showing a similar gloopiness as super-strength tramp-lager, with the attendant heat. Fruit syrup is the first flavour to arrive, giving the profile an air of tinned fruit salad. There's a layer of vanilla too, and when added to the creamy texture and the alcoholic liqueur buzz, it ends up as a trifle of a beer. That took me a while to get used to, but I began to enjoy it once I did. A little like the triple IPA above, it's perhaps too warming for the summer and its particular brand of heavy ripe fruit would work well in colder weather. On the down side, for what's supposed to be in a hop-forward style, there's very little hop character.

Another pair of new cans came from Hopfully, now relocated from Dublin to Lough Gill in Sligo. Both are named Better Call Sour. Pomegranate and Basil is the weaker of the two at 5.5% ABV. It's a pleasing pinkish copper colour, and unsurprisingly the savoury basil is front and centre in the aroma. The first sip delivers a distinct but not extreme tartness. The fruit follows this, and though it does genuinely have the dry pinch of real pomegranate, I'm not sure I would have been able to identify it. There's only a flash of it before the basil arrives: not fresh and leafy but tasting cooked and soggy -- I don't think it adds anything positive. Ditch the herb and up the pomegranate would be my recommendation for this. It is interesting, though: twists like this on fruited sour beer are too rare and to be welcomed.

The other fruit/herb combo is Peach and Sage, with the ABV, for some reason, going up to 5.9%. It's a lovely clear bright golden colour with a handsome layer of steady foam on top. Sage is a bit of a beast and tends to dominate anything it's put into. Not so here, though. Yes it's there, adding a sweet meadowy character to the whole thing, but it's not the main act. Once again it's the clean, tooth-stripping sourness that rules. The peach is pretty much absent, however. This could almost pass as a plain Berliner weisse at half the strength. As such, I liked it. A little more fruit character -- peach or whatever -- would be nice, but it's a rock-solid balanced and summery sour beer as is.

This year's second Rye River special edition was launched in late June in the unlikely surrounds of The Bottler's Bank in Rathgar. It's not far out of my way so I dropped in for a sample. This is a very highly hopped India pale lager called Jigsaw. Though only slightly hazy, it's very heavy-textured, with an almost greasy feel, presumably from the bales of Mosaic that were thrown in. The hop's subtle mango and apricot notes are rather overwhelmed by cannabis resins and a vegetal bitterness. It had definitely lost whatever lager-like qualities it once had, but approach it as an American-style pale ale and it's a fantastic example. One to get hold of when it's fresh, though, I'd say.

Everything has been pretty pale so far. Simon brought a bit of darkness to UnderDog on the occasion of the pub's second birthday: Anarres, an imperial stout based on their formidable Utopian. This 11%-er was over a year old and had turned somewhat autolytic in that time, showing notes of Bovril and gravy. Thankfully there was enough other character to prevent that from taking over. Predominantly, it had the palate-sucking dryness of extremely high-cocoa dark chocolate and a hard liquorice bitterness. Drinking this is serious business and it's very much not for the pastry-guzzlers. And all the better for that, frankly. Cheers Simon.

After all that, some non-alcoholic refreshment to finish. Wicklow Wolf have rejigged the recent Moonlight 1% ABV Coffee Ale into Moonlight Hoppy Ale, halving the alcohol and turning it a bright pale orange. Lactose is the secret weapon against alcohol-free sweetness. It smells powdery: citric like sherbet and bitter like aspirin. And it's still thin, the lactose doing not much more than adding a flavour and feel of old-school yellow vanilla ice cream. Thankfully the bitterness is restrained in the flavour, with only a tiny hint of that aspirin, and there's even a proper hop resin acidity. I found it unconvincing as a beer substitute but it would still do in a pinch when you want hops but not booze.

A valid choice, but not for me.