My Fidelity

Fidelity 2019, the first of its name, took place in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin last month. It was the first of its kind in Ireland too: an all-inclusive beer festival, in the manner of Mikkeller Beer Celebration or Beavertown Extravaganza. Around three dozen breweries were represented -- a handful from Ireland and a broad international selection -- each pouring two beers per six-hour session. I figured the early one would be sufficient for my purposes. It'll take me two posts to get through everything I sampled.

I began with one from the organising brewer, Whiplash, in a suitable style: pilsner. Blue Ghosts was brewed by White Frontier in Switzerland and is 5.2% ABV. It's a perfect golden colour with a pleasingly soft texture. The flavour is big but not extreme: a red cabbage bittersweet effect, leaning towards that plasticky flavour I dislike in noble-hopped beers, but not hitting it full on, thankfully. It's not the best pils I've ever had, but it's well-made and classy. Going to central European to brew it was worthwhile.

Hops next. Lots of them. DEYA's Saturated in Citra writes a big cheque with that name. It's a pale and hazy double IPA of 8% ABV, with an almost pink tint to the orange colour. A lovely dankness in the aroma starts us off. The flavour is quite sweet to begin with, offering lemon chew sweets, made to make your mouth water. After this the bitter resins swing in, building quickly to become a burn by the finish. Each sip offers a full tour of the delicious aspects of the Citra hop, so it definitely delivers on the name. It's maybe a little hot to get a double thumbs-up from me, but it is very good: a raucous and rollicking hop party.

A few short minutes in, the first beer to generate a bit of buzz in my earshot was To Øl's collaboration with Whiplash, I Dare You, so I had that next. It's a smoked barley wine, or "rauchwine" as they've daftly decided to badge it: 11.3% ABV and a swampy looking red-brown. The aroma was beautiful: a super-clean Bamberg bacon effect, preparing me for something similar in the flavour. Alas it was not to be. The texture is the first thing to hit: a sticky, syrupy feel, which shouldn't be surprising given the specs. The treacle flavour is entirely in keeping with it being a barley wine but the smoke acridity hides any warming smoothness it might otherwise provide. I guess they're trying to yoke together the delicious savoury effect of a German smoked lager with the luxurious hug-in-a-glass of barley wine, but this attempt has missed the mark on that, I think. I'd be up for trying another go at it, however.

Retreat to the IPA, then, and a 6.4% ABV one called Pure Fog, from Burnt Mill brewery in Suffolk. More Citra here, plus Mosaic and Idaho-7. I suppose I should have guessed from the name it was going to be the New England sort, pouring a pale and opaque yellow colour and bringing creamy custard vanilla notes to the front of the flavour. Thankfully that's immediately offset by an intense citrus kick; the pithy buzz of grapefruit and satsuma, the bitterness giving way to delicious juice soon after. I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. It is, above all, a fun beer: bitter enough to deliver grown-up IPA flavours but with the cheeky youthful juiciness as well. It's hard not to like.

The poor sod that had to follow that was Collective Arts's Hazy State session IPA. It is possible to brew these at 4.4% ABV (as this is) and not have them turn out wan and watery, but Collective Arts haven't managed it here. The worst thing that happens when brewers try to do a New Englandy session IPA, or its close cousin, a table beer, is that they end up with a thin soup of sharp dregs and harsh hop bitterness, and that's pretty much what this is. There's maybe a hint of vanilla in there but not enough to soften the beer and make it palatable.

And that became two bad experiences in a row when I went to J. Wakefield next. The beer sounded properly interesting: a sour one made with dragonfruit and passionfruit, called DFPF. It looked amazing: a luminous maroon, topped with pink foam. It totally went to pieces on tasting, however. The sourness is too extreme: a harsh acid burn that only a masochist would enjoy. Beer pH isn't like IBUs or Scoville units: the human palate doesn't adjust to crave more intensity; overly sour beer, like overly salty food, is just ruined. The fruit is entirely absent too, and I'd say it takes a lot of interference to block loudmouthed ol' passionfruit. Instead there's a weird savoury red onion tang. Anyone looking for a colourfully flavoured Florida weisse was in for a disappointment here.

I needed redemption; something that would be reliably good. Hello Mikkeller! Is that a Spontan- I see? Spontanpentadruple Blueberry, it turned out, proving that there is literally no numerical limit to silly beer names. This is a frankly unnecessary 9.6% ABV and is the dark purple colour of beetroot juice. There's an unsubtle jammy aroma, and the flavour is mostly all jam too, with just a vaguely unpleasant acid burn behind. While not a bad beer, it's really not up to the normal classy standards of the Spontan series.

To continue the colour theme, a grape ale next. There were no Italian brewers present so Sweden's Beerbliotek had to fill in. I loved the name: Shirazzle Dazzle. The process is interesting too, starting with a very basic wort and minimal hopping, then adding grapes and letting the wild yeast on their skin take care of the fermentation. That led me to expect it to be sour, but it's not really. It is dry, with subtle tannins from the grapes and a crisp, savoury rye-bread character. More fruit flavour would have improved it, but I enjoyed how softly spoken it was, in a room full of loud music and louder beers. The method is promising, and with perhaps some judicious use of barrel ageing could create wonderful things.

Three fruit beers in a row meant it was time for another IPA, this one called Twin Glow, from Left Handed Giant. The aroma -- an unusual one, which I've written down as "coconut" but recall was more complex than that -- had me looking up which hops they've used. Turns out it's Amarillo and a new US variety, Sabro (formerly HBC 438) which has its origins in the wild Neomexicanus family. That coconut continues in the flavour, and I really wish I'd spent more time describing it properly. The beer has a pleasant soft texture and just a little bit of a booze burn, at 6.3% ABV. Balanced and very decent overall.

Stigbergets provided the next IPA, called Population III. This is one of those ones that looks like orange juice. It's 7% ABV but smells unreasonably hot, giving off diesel-like fumes. There's a heat on the palate too, followed by a flash of tasty and succulent stonefruit, before a harsh sting of yeast dregs covers that over. There's enough of a positive flavour for this to stay in my good books, just, but it's yet another one of those modern hazy IPAs that just isn't fully up to scratch. There's too much murk interfering with the hops here, and that's far from unusual.

The end of part one is approaching so let's fire the afterburners and try some more strong stuff. A double IPA next: Double Mosaic Daydream from New York's Other Half. This one is 8.5% ABV and a bright shade of orangey yellow. It wasn't an instant win: Mosaic's unfortunate caraway tendency is pronounced but not dominant, and that took some of the shine off for me. There's a bit of a diesel burn here too. But, in the plus column, there's a fresh zing of lime and indulgently juicy guava. Tropical fun brings with it tropical heat in this; a beer where one must concentrate on the good aspects and try to ignore the bad ones.

Finally for today, my standout beer of the festival: Anything & Everything & Nothing At All. Where to start? It's an imperial stout given 18 months of ageing in vessels described as "cinnamon vanilla whiskey barrels". Now, I don't know what "cinnamon vanilla whiskey" is. I don't know why you'd wreck a whiskey and then waste barrel space maturing it, but there you go. What I do know is that the barrels did a fantastic job on this beer. The cinnamon is present, but in a subtle, ghostly way: hovering in the background of the sweet coffee/chocolate stout, for both the aroma and taste. 16% ABV means it's plenty warming, but superbly mellow with that; just boozy enough. A burst of raisin-like ruby port or Málaga wine finishes it off. And all of these elements are beautifully integrated, flowing together and bouncing off each other in a whirling dance of flavours, yet not forced or busy or any way difficult. Were it not for the ABV and the two and a half hours still to go, I'd have had more of this.

What went on during those final 150 minutes will be in the next post, for as long as I can still read my writing.