While my back was turned

September was a busy month for me; lots of travelling and drinking; not so much poring over notebooks and writing beer reviews. The Irish brewers didn't take a rest though, so here's a rundown of what came my way from the locals over the last six weeks or so.

Some epic style trolling from Hope, to begin, with their Little Rasputin "session imperial stout", causing eyes to roll at just 2.8% ABV. Honestly I expected mine to roll too when I got a pint of it at UnderDog but I was very pleasantly surprised. In my head it was going to be thin, watery and harshly roasted but it's surprisingly rich and full-bodied, with a layer of smooth velvety milk chocolate and a dark cherry and blackberry complexity. It doesn't taste like an imperial stout but does pass as a standard-strength one, and a very good example at that.

My most-missed Galway Bay beer of years past was 303, a tart pale ale they released in 2016 and which won my Golden Pint award for that year's best beer. So my ears pricked up when I heard that there was a new Galway Bay dry-hopped Berliner wiesse called 808. At 3.6% ABV the strength is similar, though at €6 a pint, the price is sadly not. It's a pale and hazy yellow and presents a fresh and spritzy lemon-and-lime aroma. The lemon side carries the emphasis on tasting: a concentrated sweetness, like Lemsip or undiluted cordial. For balance there's a dry wheaty rasp and of course the sourness: not a gum-peeling sharpness, just a lightly tart buzz offsetting any stickiness before it can take hold. I don't know that it's as good as I remember 303 being, but it is a superb sunny-day refresher. I'd be quite happy to see it staying on tap for a while.

Up the other end of the ABV scale, Galway Bay released a double IPA in collaboration with To Øl called One Man Wolfpack. The can isn't explicit about the sub-style but it's very much in the New England fashion: pale, murky, full-bodied and sweet. That said, there's a very nice balance of peppery hop spice and lemon/lime bitterness, which helps put a welcome sharp edge on a foretaste all mangoes and milkshakes. A dry chamomile tea effect finishes it off. I figured you'd need a complex blend of hops to achieve this but it's done with just two: Idaho 7 and Idaho Gem. I liked this. It manages to avoid the hot and sickly traps into which too many of this sort fall. Thick but easy-drinking is no simple feat.

The third in Hopfully's Baniwa Chilli series is a Summer DDH Session IPA. Big hops and chilli peppers: seems an odd pairing. The beer is 4.3% ABV and a murky orange colour. The aroma is quite subtle but after a few nosefuls I was able to pick out pithy citrus and a plasticky burn from the chilli. On the first sip it's smooth and sweet, rushing with juicy satsuma and sweet vanilla candy, but quickly behind this is the jagged poke from the chilli spice. That side of it is a dry spice, like powdered paprika, and adds a different sort of mouthwatering quality to the picture. The overall effect is strange but not unpleasant. Fruit and spice don't meld or complement each other: each is separate and distinct. The result is like drinking two different beers, both of them rather good. The chilli taste is strong and lasting enough for me to advise against using this as an actual session beer, but one is fun.

Following that, Hopfully came out with a lighter-yet IPA: Love For Sale, this one at 3% ABV. It's similarly hazy but there's a translucency, indicating a lack of substance. Sure enough the mouthfeel is thin and the hops, though plentiful, are harshly bitter, turning from a boiled-cabbage acridity to full-on burnt plastic. The New England yeast is probably meant to soften it and round out those errant hops, but all it does is add an out-of-place sickly vanilla note. While I got used to the bitterness, that sickly-sweet thing remained all the way though. If this "New England Micro IPA" was an experiment I deem it conclusive and not worth repeating.

Hyperactive O Brother kept their train rolling with Beware, Humans! a rye IPA with a nod to Belgium. It's 6.2% and quite a deep amber colour. I confess that at first I could pick up nothing I'd associate with either Belgium or rye. There's more of a west-coast vibe here: a sharp bitterness which is a little bit grapefruit and a little onion too. As it warms it does get a somewhat more estery, and therefore Belgian. There's toffee and a bit of brown apple. Still the hops are in charge. The sharp bitterness (oh! is some of that rye?) is nicely stimulating in an era when soft and dreggy IPAs dominate the taps. Hooray, I guess.

Vices of Levity was much more in my wheelhouse, being a dry hopped Berliner weisse: just 4% ABV and absolutely snapping with tangy tartness backed by mouthwatering mandarin juice. It's one of those beers I had to hold myself back from simply necking before I had written anything. And that would have been a shame because there's a complexity here beyond what you normally find in these: an earthy dry gunpowder spice, almost like you'd get from a lambic. A smack of bitter orange peel finishes it off. I'm utterly charmed and delighted by this. It's possibly the first beer from O Brother since they went into overdrive that I'll be really sad to see gone.

After a triple IPA earlier this year Larkin's put the brakes on a little with Lighten Up, a double IPA at a still substantial 9.5% ABV. It's a bright orange colour, hazy without going full on murky. There's a lip-smacking mix of hop fruit and clean booze burn: mango, pineapple and apricot, shaken up with a generous shot of vodka. The texture is suitably heavy, and there's a warmth, but it's not hot or any way syrupy. The finish brings a very modern buzz of garlic once the tropicals have faded away. This is perfectly to style without being gimmicky or slavishly following today's unfortunate custard-and-diesel fashion.

The social media lovebombing campaign by Brennan's Brewery landed me a free handful of bottles of their first release: Original. "A family brewery, brewing with tradition" says the label, aptly putting the statement in quotes because Brennan's is no such thing, having come into existence last year and getting Dundalk Bay to make the beer. With two fingers to the style police, the label describes Original as a "velvety dark brown beer" and leaves it to you to decide whether that means porter, mild, schwarzbier or something else to you.

It's a cola red colour with a smoky brown head which faded quickly. The flavour is definitely old fashioned: a hearty mix of drinking chocolate, breadcrusts and blackberry jam. These are rich and full but they stop just short of the point where they would turn busy and cloying, making for a very smooth and satisfying drinking experience. The carbonation is low, which also helps with that, and I completely forgive the poor head retention. This is a rock solid beer and I can taste elements of all the above mentioned styles in it. That said, it bears its closest resemblance to the likes of '90s classics O'Hara's Stout and Porterhouse Plain. For a new release it's thoroughly unfashionable and very much not designed with beer geeks in mind. Instead, this is a beer drinker's beer, and I wish it luck on the difficult Irish market.

Priory's summer release was a little late arriving, appearing in early September. Frocken Hell is a pale ale named after its special ingredient, locally foraged frockens, aka bilberries. It looked a pale gold when pouring but in a bulbous snifter glass there's definitely a purple-red tinge. The aroma is subtle with no hop character but a promise of juicy raisins. Then the flavour was unexpected. Here come the hops, big and bitter, scorching the palate harshly from the start. The flavour behind them is purest coconut, the calling card of Sorachi Ace hops, used here in combination with Magnum and Cascade. Only 32 IBUs says the label, advertising just how unhelpful a metric that is. This doesn't leave much room for the poor little frockens, relegated to providing a mild red wine sweetness at the tail end of proceedings. Once I got over the initial shock I settled into this. It's very much a beer for the Sorachi fans, those who care little for nuance. I'm happy to count myself among them.

Clare brewery Western Herd sent me a bottle of their Coast Road, one I was pleased to accept as their beer is seldom seen in Dublin. This is a Mosaic dry-hopped IPA and 5.5% ABV. It's a bit rough, to be honest: a somewhat soupy amber colour, its flavour beset with sharp yeast dregs. Mosaic works best on a crisp and clean base and I will once again push forward White Hag Little Fawn as an example of how to make the most of this hop. Here there's a quite harsh lime-shred bitterness and a certain vomity gastric sour quality. Clean-flavoured it ain't, and definitely not "tropical", per the label. There are certain beers which lend themselves well to this sort of minimum intervention brewing but American-style IPA isn't one. Looking back over old notes, I've had consistently good Western Herd experiences on draught but less luck with their bottles, and they're far from the only Irish brewery seemingly let down by their packaging. This one has its charms but there's too much just not technically right about it.

Amazingly it's taken this long for a beer to be named after Ireland's current favourite word: Notions. Brehon Brewhouse were first to claim it, with a saison. It's a big one at 5.8% ABV, a still consommé brown-amber colour, heavy and thick on the palate. Most of the flavours that make saison saison are present: a pepper spice, heady banana fruit and a savoury herbal bitterness. A bonus Christmassy marzipan effect rises as it warms. What it lacks is the clean and dry cracker snap which makes the style refreshing. It's a sipping saison, and a bit mucky with it. There's a certain rustic charm in the mud, however.

20 Gills is a lager from Lough Gill which has been around for a while on draught in pubs local to the brewery, finally getting its small-pack début when the smart new cans were launched. It looked worryingly like an American light lager as it poured: a pale limpid yellow topped with a crackling white head which quickly faded to nothing. My fears were wiped away with the first sip, for though is is indeed a light lager -- only 4.2% ABV after all -- it includes the high-end features of a quality German pilsner. There's a bready substance from the malt -- rounded, not thin. This supports a subtle and delicious light hop effect, dusting the palate with white pepper and fresh basil. While unmistakably noble, there's none of the harsh plastic or boiled veg thing I object to when a recipe goes overboard with the German hops. The presence of oats on the ingredients list suggests it wouldn't get by in Germany, but this fan of crisp and balanced German pilsners loved it.

The latest Rye River seasonal is a double dry-hopped IPA called The Knot. Citra, Nelson and Ekuanot are said hops, giving it a spicy and bitter aroma, all bergamot and aftershave. For a modest 6% ABV the texture is remarkably thick, presumably down to the greasy hop resins. And boy do they bring the flavour: sharp grapefruit and lime, like IPAs used to have; a more modern streak of sweet juicy pineapple and passionfruit; and an equally modern buzz of garlic oil. It's a fun combination, though somewhat let down by a different sort of savoury bitterness from the yeast murk, counteracting too much of the tropical side. Overall it's good, though a bit of a clean-up would have improved it further.

The Eight Degrees Rack 'Em Up series moves along to the Green Ball, a Belgian IPA brewed in collaboration with Siphon. It's an innocent pale orange-gold colour, smelling of squashy over-ripe fruit in a distinctly Belgian way. From that I was expecting something akin to a tripel but the the flavour starts out extremely bitter, bringing it back to the IPA realm. It's an intensely waxy sort of bitterness, making me think English hops or Styrian Goldings but the can helpfully tells us it's Vic Secret, Ekuanot and Loral. Shows what I know. The semi-rotten fruit in the aroma translates to a hot marker-pen phenol quality on tasting, adding a different sort of harshness. It's a difficult beer to make friends with but there is a certain softness and warmth in there, with notes of pear and white plum. For me the aggressive hopping gets in the way of the fruity elements. I don't think they've hit quite the right balance between bitter hopping and Belgian fruitiness.

That's all I have room for today. Some of the busier Irish breweries will be getting posts to themselves in the coming weeks. Stayed tuned!

Take me to Wichita

Lineman isn't exactly a new brewery. Homebrew whizz Mark Lucey bought the Rascals kit in Rathcoole when Rascals moved in to Inchicore and has left it in situ. Everything else is brand new, though, including the brave set of opening beers, designed for a more discerning beer market which I fervently hope exists in Dublin.

Not that the first beer to come my way is inaccessible. Saga -- broadly a pale ale -- might use a souring culture and kveik yeast, but it's only 4.8% ABV and exceedingly drinkable with that. It's quite thickly textured, low on carbonation, and creamy in a New England way, but without the typical attendant flavours. Instead of garlic and vanilla there's juicy peach and apricot, cake and jam sweetness countered with a mild yoghurty tang. It doesn't get much more complex than that, but it's far from boring. The sweetness helps it slip back easily, the tartness cleaning as it goes. Balance!

Beer two is Idle, badged as an RIPA with no explanation of what the R stands for. "Rye" would be typical, and there's a bit of the slightly medicinal bitterness rye can produce in the aroma, but rye isn't listed an as ingredient. Therefore I'm guessing, from the dark garnet colour of the beer, that R is for "red". It's quite fizzy, the busy sparkle getting in the way of any foretaste. When it settles there's a smooth mix of toffee and rosewater, followed by that aniseed and juniper bitterness. This must be hop-derived: big-hitters Chinook, Columbus and Centennial feature. An offputting plastic twang forms the aftertaste. Red IPA is far from my favourite style: it's hard to balance the big hops with the heavy malt, and I think this one ends up too much on the harsh side. Maybe a bit of cleaning up would fix it, but mostly I would take the bitterness right down, let the floral qualities through more, and probably call it an American-style amber ale. Remember those? They were lovely.

It's a grisette to finish this first trilogy. First Light is indeed light at 4.3% ABV. It's a pale shade of yellow and surprisingly clear for a fresh bottle-conditioned beer with only the faintest of haze. The flavour is pretty much spot on for the style: a rye-bread crispness with a light green apple tang. That's more or less all you get, though, not that grisette is supposed to be a riot of interesting flavours. It's clean and refreshing with just enough going on to hold the drinker's interest all the way through.

Overall, I think this is a good start for Lineman. The styles may be atypical but there's nothing way-out or weird in how they've been made. Solid, ungimmicky beers is just what the market needs right now. Long may that continue.

Buy in haste, drink at leisure

Today's beers were impulse purchases, acquired on my way through Wrocław airport back in June. "Browary Sezonowe" is the purported manufacturer, which turns out to be a brand owned by the local arm of Carlsberg though the beer is brewed at the independent Staropolski brewery. I sure there was solid reasoning behind that arrangement.

First opened was Pszeniczne Ciemne. As the name makes perfectly clear, this is a dark wheat beer. It turned out very rough and raw, like low-maintenance homebrew. Pouring caused some congealed gobbets of dead yeast to plop into the glass and there was no Bavarian-style foam on top. The result is a swampy brown soup with no head. On tasting there's a yeast spice mixed with banana esters and a harsh roast barley dryness seasoned with smoke. From the minimalist branding I was expecting something processed and dull, but it's the opposite: characterful, but not in a good way, suggesting a brewer that hasn't quite got its act together. There are no properly nasty off flavours and I did get through drinking it, but was apprehensive about what was next.

It didn't help that this was a 6% ABV "English IPA". It looks fine, though: a medium amber colour and clear because I poured carefully. The aroma is a lemon-curd mix of sweetness and acid, with some banana and ginger thrown in for complexity. The flavour is sharply bitter in a medicinal way: liquorice, moving to yarrow and nettle. This is backed with syrupy toffee and burnt caramel -- heavy, as befits the strength. And yet it's all cleanly executed; the flavours staying distinct with no building heat or other domineering characteristics. It's not easy drinking but it is multifaceted. And while it tastes much more like an English strong ale than an IPA, I rather enjoyed it. It's probably better suited to winter evenings than balmy early autumn, however.

There are a handful of other beers in the Sezonowe range, but unless you're desperate for swingtop bottles I see no compelling reason to seek them out.

The break-out room

The World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) rolled into Dublin in mid-August. I'm far from a serious fan, but when a world event arrives in town it would be a mistake not to go. So I went. And thoroughly enjoyed it. In and around the panels and whatnot, there was a limited time for beer. It coincided with my itching to take the nearby new JD Wetherspoon -- The Silver Penny -- through its paces before the shine wears off.

My first beer there was Brewster's Aromantica, a golden bitter. It's very dry, in two ways at once. A hop-derived metallic bitterness runs in parallel to husky musty cereal. There's little softness of any kind, neither malt cake or hop fruit. Squinting, I could just about detect some grapefruit pith but that just adds a different sort of severity. It's certainly not what I was expecting from the name. Tough love, I guess.

Dublin Blue Lager has been around for a while now, pitched as a super-cheap (for Dublin) option in pubs I never go to. Synergistically it has become the house lager of The Silver Penny, and now that its production has moved from the Netherlands to Dundalk Bay, represents the pub's only independent Irish beer offering. Dublin Blue's standalone brewery has been under construction for some time now, in the bowels of the Parnell Centre, though I'd be surprised if they switched production of the lager to it when and if it opens.

It's a sweet beer, showing a lot of Czech-style golden syrup, though a bit too much. Where lovely fresh Saaz should be sweeping in and providing luscious grassy balance, there's just a tinny twang. I guess they're going for something that tastes like Budweiser or Coors Light and I, for one, cannot fault them for achieving it. I don't particularly like it, though. The pub's turbo-charged chiller meant that it was at least palateable to begin with, but by half way down it developed a heavy toffee character. Not full-on butterscotch, but still something that good lager shouldn't do. I got through my pint but I won't be putting this on my list of acceptable distress purchases.

Worthy of its place on Pumpclip Parade is Box Steam's Piston Broke, a 4.5% ABV bitter, though the brewery calls it a golden ale. Thankfully the beer is much better than the name, being bright and zingy, mixing sweet juicy bubblegum with a sterner citrus zest, finishing on a spike of hard waxy English bitterness. The flavour is super-clean, each element standing alone but contributing to the overall picture. A significant dose of tannin helps dry it out and results in something thirst-quenching and extremely quaffable. This may not be up there with the greats of English bitter but it does show a lot of the features that makes those beers classics.

I had hitherto been put off trying the Motörhead theme beer, Röad Crew, I think by memories of the terrible Iron Maiden theme beers brought out by Robinsons. This is from fellow northern English brewery Cameron's, another I've never been especially fond of. But here it was, inescapable. I put prejudice aside and ordered a pint. And it's actually not half bad. The badge says "American pale ale" but it's much more an English golden ale, big of body with a bittersweet honey flavour at its core. After a mild waxy finish it all tails off quietly and politely. It's not very rock-n-roll, only that it would be quite easy to drink a lot of it. Worth a go if you see it on cask; I'm not sure it would translate very well to bottle.

Brentwood Brewery has featured in Irish Wetherspoons before, though Brentwood Blonde was new to me. It's a rather dull affair: 3.8% ABV, with a taste of effervescent lemon vitamin tablets if I'm feeling charitable, and laundry detergent if I'm not. That varied during the course of the pint. While it's too dull overall for either feature to be described as dominant, there is an abiding bleachy twang that sets my assessment to negative. 0 for 2, Brentwood. Impress me next time.

Stag from Exmoor is described as a "naturally strong bitter" which implies the brewery isn't in control of the fermentation. I'm sure that's not the case. It's all of 5.2% ABV and a dark copper colour. It doesn't taste especially strong, but then it doesn't taste of a whole lot in general, representing the twiggy-brown-bitter category quite competently. A slight hint of salted caramel; a mildly acrid woody dryness; and that's your lot. Despite the blandness it's too heavy to be easy drinking. Authentically old-fashioned is about the best I can say of it. Doubtless there's a demographic but it's not me.

Keeping it West Country, it's Great Western Brewery next. From a distance I thought the clip artwork had a look of Left Handed Giant about it: Bristol fashion, you might say. This is Moose River in the American Pale Ale style. There's a slight haze to the dark gold colour and I'm assuming that's deliberate as the beer is almost perfectly clean. There's a slight fuzz to the texture but nothing that interferes with its flavour. Said flavour is mildly citric -- lemon sherbet and orange jelly -- softening further into nectarine and peach. For a fairly chewy beer the finish is quick: I would have liked a bitter flourish on the end to assert its American credentials but none was forthcoming. It's good, though. Like a lot of English cask beer purporting to be American-style, it's really just a minor twist on decent bitter. If that's what it takes to sell the stuff I don't mind one bit. It's a hell of a lot better than any American takes on English-style cask beer that I've tried, for sure.

It's been a while since any Titanic beer came my way. This one is Captain Smiths, described, vaguely, as a ruby ale. Sure enough it's a garnet colour, topped by an off-white head. I was expecting toffee, caramel and all the usual red-ale stuff, but the beer had other ideas. Right from the start there's a cherrylike tartness. I don't know if it's meant to be there -- many's an English ale would be considered "off" with it -- but it works fantastically well with the other flavours. The beer behind it isn't the flabby slab of caramel I feared but a complex Fry's-Turkish-Delight mix of rosewater and cocoa. Add the souring effect, and some more typically English dry tannins, and you get something akin to a Flanders red ale but in a sessionable, low-carbonation, package. The auburn ales they sell in Wetherspoon rarely give me anything to shout about, but this pint rocked.

My Wetherspoon marathon finishes on Wobbly Bob from Phoenix. It seemed to be quite popular among the locals, and I suspect the 6% ABV had a lot to do with that. It's quite an intense experience, heavy on the aniseed, cardamom and assorted other dried goods from the apothecary shop. To balance this intense bitterness there's an intense sweetness too: an edge of burnt caramel. Despite the busyness of the flavours it's quite harmonious, a sugary lozenge dusted with herbs and seasoning. A pint would be hard work, I'd say, but a half really reinvigorates the palate after a sequence of dull offerings.

At the Convention Centre itself there's a house pale ale from Five Lamps named after the building's shape: Tilted Drum. I figured it was a rebadge but 4.6% ABV doesn't ring any bells so I don't know what of. It's the pale amber of a lager and quite soft textured, with a soda effervescence. There's an old-fashioned, Cascade-like piney bite with a whisper of apricot behind it. This is mostly quite dry, and definitely balanced towards that hop bitterness, but it narrowly avoids being harsh. When one is facing the limited choices of an event bar, and desperate for some hop stimulation, this fits the bill rather nicely.

Of course, Urban Brewing is also in the locality, and had a bunch of new releases on tap. Starting low, there's a Micro IPA at 3.2% ABV. It's very pale looking, the wan yellow of an American adjunct lager. There's a sweet and fruity aroma: stewed apples and raisins like a Danish apple pie. Tastewise it's much bitterer, showing a rasp of grapefruit pith and and curl of dry smoke too. A hint of husky grain arises in the finish, providing a token malt balance. The texture is light without being thin or watery. Overall, it's a tasty, spicy sessioner, exactly what the style demands.

Summer brought a Raspberry Wit to the Urban line-up. I was expecting it to be pink, but it looks like a regular wit: a hazy pale orange. The fruit is slow to arrive. Its aroma is dry and grainy while the foretaste is a sweet porridge. After a moment, the real-tasting tart raspberries come through. I guess the intention is to balance the malt but it just piles one extremity on top of another. The end result is a busy confection, thick-tasting without being actually thick. It's not the zippy summer refresher I had been hoping for; too sharp and too sticky.

The new Kveik DIPA is 7.8% ABV and a beautiful deep auburn colour. The texture is barley-wine-thick and the flavour gently floral, a meadowy buzz of lavender and chamomile. There's a base layer of caramelised candy sugar and a dry, almost burnt, rasp finishes it off. Given the strength, the dark colour and the lack of hop, "Kveik Barley Wine" might have been a more appropriate name. It's good, though: a warming sipper which is just complex enough.

Phew! I wasn't expecting this to be quite the multi-volume epic it turned out to be. At least cycling from convention to pub and back several times a day kept my legs well stretched. The Silver Penny is the first of a pair of central Wetherspoons to open and is very convenient for transport and events in Dublin. I can see myself making much further use of it, and look forward to including it in my October Real Ale Festival explorations next month.

O'zapft over there

This year's absence of the raucous Erdinger Oktoberfest from Dublin's George's Dock was mourned by few. Neighbouring brewpub Urban Brewing spotted an opportunity, however, and is staging its own version right now, in the newly acquired "suntrap" outdoor space. Three appropriate beers have been produced for the occasion and the management kindly invited me along to try them. I was particularly intrigued by the inclusion of both a Märzen and a Festbier in the line-up. These distinct styles are too often lumped together in anglophone beer discourse.

L-R: Festbier, Märzen, Weissbier

The difference between them was immediately apparent from the colour. Festbier, as utterly distinct from sticky brown American-style Oktoberfestbier, is a pale gold, as this one was, though the slight haze and short-lived head wouldn't pass muster at Theresienwiese. The cloudiness suggests it may have been hurried out before being quite mature, and there's a slight hot estery buzz which roughens up the flavour. Behind this, however, it's a malt beauty: fluffy white bread, its sweetness deepening to spongecake. The texture is almost chewable, rounded in the mouth and full in the belly. No hopping was perceptible, though a dark breadcrust bite brings a modicum of balance to the finish. Crucially, this 5.6%-er manages to be both hearty and by-the-litre quaffable. The bigger the gulps, the less you notice the banana kick up front.

The Märzen is paler than I expected. I was instinctively about to describe it as "amber" but then moved it away from the Festbier and noticed it's actually quite a medium gold; yellow when held to the light. Hazy again, and esters again, but much more muted than in the Festbier. The ABV is lower at 5.3% but the substance is higher. This is almost warming, providing a hug of Vienna and Munich malts. While the Festbier has been stripped down and streamlined for speed, this is a stately lager for taking time over. You want flavour descriptors? (of course you don't) It's bread again, but wholemeal: a brisk brush of grain husk and a kitchen where someone has been using the toaster recently.

And out on the wing there is the Bavarian Weissbier. It's a tough style to impress with and this example doesn't offer anything beyond the classics. Maybe it's the phenolic quality of the beers that went before masking things, but I found this cleaner than most microbrewed examples, yet still rich of texture. At 5.3% ABV it shouldn't have been watery anyway, but it wasn't. Instead it's sleek and smooth, throwing out the clove in a casual and unfussy fashion. Again the hops are a little absent. I like a weizen with a celery bite and you won't find that here. Nevertheless, I'm not a weissbier enthusiast, but this is a very well-made example.

I'm not going to say Urban is offering an authentic Oktoberfest experience: the lagers are not quite there. But if you want to drink a Maß of something bready in the docklands between now and 5th October, they have you covered.

While I was there and the sun was shining I caught up with Urban's summer (very) special, the Mickelada. Where to begin? The official description says it's both an ale and lager and it arrived in a TeKu speckled with salt, pepper and herbs. The crispness and fizz suggest cold fermentation to me, and there's juicy tomato in both the aroma and foretaste. It tails off after that, though a hot-sauce spice gives the gullet a swift once-over. I can see now why they spiced the rim: add in the salty sage and it rounds out beautifully: rich, savoury, and balanced with an assertive piquancy. There's a thinness to the base beer suggesting that it wouldn't really work without the gimmickry, but I liked it, and loved  that a Dublin brewpub is daring to be so silly. Here's something for when you're done with the Reinheitsgebot.

Beer + Wine = Cider

I had no real idea what I was buying when I impulsively threw this bottle into my shopping basket at an LCBO in Toronto. It's called Ilegal, it's from Chile, and it's a blend of beer and Sauvignon blanc wine, refermented in the bottle. Don't expect importation to Ireland soon: I imagine it would be a taxation nightmare. The ABV finishes up at 6.3%.

It poured out looking like a cider: a bright, Golden Delicious yellow, with a busy sparkle leaping out of the glass, but not forming a head. The flavour too reminds me of cider more than anything else. There's an appley crispness, the dry bite accentuated by the carbonation. I got signature Sauvignon blanc fruit in the foretaste — gooseberry, kiwi, Granny Smith — but the back has a snap of crispbread, which I'm assuming is the malt at work.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. The wine side is too sweet and obvious to make it one of those beautifully constructed champagne beers or grape ales, and at the same time it's a little too heavy to offer casual refreshment. In fact I'd say you could recreate it easily enough with a splash of Oyster Bay and any can of mainstream lager, not that I recommend doing that.

Canny move

Back in July, time was running short on my Leeds trip. It's awful when time is running short and there are so many beers still left to drink. Luckily, the Head of Steam where I had my final pint has a canning machine (not an official Crowler, I think, but along those lines) so I got a handful to go.

First out when I arrived home, travel-weary, was Wild Beer's Sleeping Limes. Yes I think I can buy that here; it was an impulse purchase. Crowler issue no. 1: the can wasn't full. Probably no harm for my check-in baggage allowance. It's a pale yellow colour with a short-lived head. Crowler issue no. 2, related to no. 1, is that it's rather flat. It feels like it should have some palate-scrubbing fizz but it doesn't. The flavour is less severe than I thought, the lime contributes lots to the flavour but doesn't bring any tang or bitterness. It's a clean but rather dull lager beneath this with a refreshing salty tang. This is simple fare; inoffensive and not really much more than a lager with a dash of lime cordial.

This is more my shtick: I love a peppery saison, so Peppered Table Saison seemed made for me, on name alone. From the ubiquity of Tooth & Claw beers in the pub, I gathered it was a sub-brand of Head of Steam's owner Cameron's. And I've never been a fan of their stuff. Anyway... Short fill and flat: check. The lack of fizz is as much a disadvantage here as it was in the previous lager. The pepper isn't as bright and clean as I'd like. What you get instead is a quite fruity saison with just a hint of spice. Maybe that's what some people want from this sort of thing, but not me. It's unavoidably watery too, suggesting they've been over-ambitious doing this at 2.8% ABV. It's OK; probably not a great beer in the first place, but the in-pub canning process did it no favours.

A black IPA to finish this lot: Ilkley's Mary Hoppins, brewed in collaboration with Five Points. Even with the condition knocked out of it I could tell this was a good one. Only 5.2% ABV but big and creamy of texture. There's a lovely balance of dry roasted grain, cabbagey bitterness and a brighter zingy citrus. The finish is a long summery strawberry and raspberry thing: unexpected but delicious. A paper twang on the end spoils it a little, and makes me very glad I didn't leave it long enough in the can to get oxidised. Would've been better as a pint.

I don't think I can pin all of the blame for the first two beers being lacklustre on the dispense format, but it's certainly not optimal. When there's no other alternative is the only use case I can think of for Mr Crowler. The Head of Steam does a perfectly good line in pre-packaged beers to take away, for example.

Handy Scandis

Today we have a mix of random Scandinavian beers, because why not?

We start with one from Lervig, called Skogen. It's the second of their collaborations with lambic blender Oud Beersel to come my way -- the first having been highly enjoyable. This one is calmer than Black Acid: 6% ABV and a mellow golden colour. Apparently it's brewed with fruit but I couldn't taste any of that in it. Mango, maybe? What dominates instead is the sappy fresh-oak barrel sourness and a very lambic-like dusting of white pepper. Unlike many a highly attenuated sour beer there's a richness in this, rounded like a fruity pipe tobacco. They've done a great job here of building good lambic features into a solid, if unexciting, base beer.

To Sweden next, and a pair from Stigbergets. On the left is a pale ale called New Wave: a modest 5.5%-er and a bright and cheery orange colour; hazy but not opaque. I get a sharp citric bitterness in the aroma, jaffa rind and satsuma pith, but also a softer and sweeter vanilla. I was worried I might have a sugar bomb on my hands. But no: while that side is there, especially in the long juicy finish, there's more than enough balance provided by the spritzy bittering. That does make it very drinkable, neither harsh on the palate nor curdling in the stomach, both things that can go wrong with this sort of modern pale ale. There's also zero yeast bite nor any savoury notes. There might be those who'd accusing it of lacking character, of not being flavourful enough for a high-end pale ale. Not me though. It's a lovely by-the-pinter, of the sort we rarely see from Scandinavian brewing over here.

The ominous dark fellow next to it is Trouble Sleep, an imperial stout of 12% ABV. Look at the darkness of that foam! I was expecting something so dense that it would end up drinking me in. It smells sweet, of salted caramel and café crème. The texture is lighter than expected, and the flavour cleaner and more straightforward. The coffee is there in a big way, tasting concentrated, like a syrup or liqueur. Moreso the latter when the alcohol asserts itself next, warming vapours effusing the palate. An acrid rasp of smoke comes in towards the end, and I caught a touch of the cherry fruit one sometimes finds in coffee. It was at this point I went to find out if there's actual coffee in it, and there is. Hence the name, I guess. Overall it's nicely done, the flavours well integrated with no jarring efforty attempts at being different for the sake of it.

Three very different beers, all perfectly executed. Can't argue with that.

Down from the mountains

A selection of beers from Odell today, none of them brand new releases as far as I know.

Pink Sippin' Pretty is fruited and sour, and for a change is actually sour, though not in an especially complex way. There's a realistic raspberry  and strawberry sweetness. The can says I should expect açaí, guava and elderberry. I guess my tastebuds don't run that exotic. OK, maybe there's a slight tropical buzz in there, but not much. It's only 4.5% ABV and it's not thin and watery, so that's a plus. It's not particularly beery either, however. If you want something lightly tart but mostly alcopoppy, this will do.

I can't believe I haven't had Drumroll before. It's been around for ages but I couldn't find any reference to me drinking it so into the basket it went. It's a pale ale of 5.3% ABV, pale orange with a slight haze. The flavour is a mix of citrus pith and savoury dregs, mostly quite serious and bitter. I even get a hint of smoky phenols. Against this there's a somewhat cloying ice cream sweetness, tasting like vanilla with an element of sticky boiled sweet thrown in too. It's not in any way polished or refined, giving the impression of something dashed off in order to meet a pale ale spec without too much thought. A little more hop bitterness or turning it sweeter with crystal malt would have made it more recognisable, but as-is this is just confusing. Even cleaning the yeast gunk out would help. This is far from Odell's best work.

Mountain Standard I had in its black IPA form a few years back. This is a very very pale IPA of the same name, though the ABV is down to 6.5% from 8.1. There's only a very slight haze rather than full-on murk, and frankly that makes me feel like cheering when I come to American IPA these days. A light lemony spritz forms the aroma while the flavour has some softer, juicier fruit going on: cantaloupe, apricot and lychee. There's a grainy crispness to balance this, but not much by way of bittering. The texture is soft and creamy, with plenty of substance but no alcohol heat. This is a very easy-going beer, quite sessionable tasting despite the strength. No mad complexities, no fancy gimmicks and no off flavours. Just fruity American IPA created in an accessible way.

A Colorado brewery doing its best work in the IPA sphere is hardly news, but here it is anyway.

The jong ones

I came back from the Toer de Geuze weekend in May with a bunch of bottles for the cellar and a handful of others to drink in the shorter term. Most of them are quite summery in style so I waited for the August bank holiday weekend to get stuck in.

Blanche Lambicus, in nip bottles, was given out as a parting gift for anyone who endured the Timmerman's tour. The lambic base has been sweetened, flavoured and antioxidant-ised producing something at 4.5% ABV that smells and tastes like lemonade. I could probably push that as far as radler were I feeling charitable -- there is a wheaty malt character at its core -- but the sourness is no more than a squeeze of lemon juice would give you, and you can forget about any oak spicing or other complexities. I quaffed this outside on a sunny day and deemed it not bad for free.

Meanwhile at Lindemans they were giving a big marketing push to their new Summer Berry, so I threw a bottle of that into my box of takeaways. "Freshly picked red berries" says the big writing; 15% strawberry, apple concentrate and elderberries says the small print. It's a mere 3.5% ABV and a deep red colour, looking cloudy and quite natural. The sweetness level is off the charts, beyond syrup and jam, and into some non-euclidean realm of fructose where all standard measurements are useless. Yes, there's something identifiable as strawberry purée, and maybe some maraschino cherry too, but there is nothing that tastes like beer, sour or otherwise in this. Perhaps there's an undocumented arms race among the big lambic producers to create the sweetest possible fruited version. If so, Summer Berry may be in breach of a nonproliferation treaty somewhere. There's no call for this kind of escalation and very little need for this "beer" to exist.

Hanssens had also just released a mixed fruit beer, though one would expect the approach of this micro-artisanal blender to be rather different. It's called VSOR, standing for "Very Special Old Red" and includes strawberry, blackberry and sour cherry. It poured dark red and almost totally flat, deciding only at the last moment to form any bubbles. This was certainly an antidote to the sweet beers that went before: it's extremely sour, right at the front of the palate; almost burning with acidity. But there's nuance too, after a moment. The first complexity is a farmyard funkiness, one which infuses the rest of the taste delightfully. There's a brief hit of oak spicing next, and after it settles in the glass and on the palate, the fruit flavours start to emerge, with the cherry most prominent. Raspberry is there too, bringing a sweetness that goes some way to offset all the sour and funk. It's not an easy beer, being both busy and severe, but once you get used to it it makes for rewarding sipping.

A reminder, then, that for the big lambic brewers, the good stuff is much more an oddity than the norm. And that not every Hanssens fruit one is pure vinegar.

Rather would Hatherwood?

Lidl has given its own-brand Irish beers a smart makeover, and removed the worrying "limited edition" wording from some of the good ones, happily. They've also brought some of their UK counterparts over, and I picked up a set last time I was in. €1.29 a can was the damage. As far as I know these were brewed at Shepherd Neame, though no provenance is given. "Hatherwood" is the wholesome-sounding fake English brewery.

There's nothing wholesome about an awesome craft citrus-infused pale ale. Plunged Orange, at 6% ABV, looks to be stealing the clothes of Elvis Juice, or at least undercutting them. The can goes to the trouble of naming four different hops but I couldn't taste any of them, just a sickly orange syrup. The aroma too is like an orangeade, one of the 1980s ones, created before anyone thought to put actual oranges in. It's easy drinking and doesn't get cloying, but really doesn't taste like beer. I can see this working very well as a fridge-filler for parties. It's inexpensive and inoffensive. Snobby beer swirlers should drink something else: this is plainly not for them, and that's not its fault.

How to pick between the next pair: an IPA at 5.4% ABV and an "American" IPA supercharged to 5.5%? I decided to start at the lower level and work up.

Bitter Iron is a perfect clear amber-gold in the glass. The name does prepare you for what happens in the flavour: a harsh metallic bitterness softened only slightly with a syrupy artificial fruit, like Lucozade. There's a harsh dry scratch at the back of the throat, and it leaves the palate in a cloud of old musty dust. There's maybe a wizened old geezer somewhere in England who accepts that this is what IPA is supposed to taste like, but it's like no English IPA I know. It feels like an effort has has been made to balance old-school IPA bitterness with modern sweet hop fruit but it hasn't worked at all.

Let's see what happens when we go US-style. The colour of Twisted Knot is different -- a coppery amber -- but as well as the strength being similar, the hop bill is similar and the dry metallic aroma is similar too. The flavour differs, however. There's a quite smoky acridity and a roasted bite akin to what you'd find in a dry stout. It's quite a shock from something believing itself an American IPA. Not unpleasant, though. That metallic bitterness becomes a more luxurious liquorice and it's altogether cleaner and more balanced than either of the previous. Once you get used to it being not at all to style, this is rather enjoyable. Close your eyes and pretend it's a black IPA.

There are certainly worse uses for €1.29 than any of this lot, and they showed a lot more character than I had been expecting: no watery blandness, for sure. Depending on one's mood, I think each does have a valid use case.