The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 1: Third Barrel

Here we go again! The venerable annual tradition of twelve daily blog posts of all-Irish beer in the run-up to Christmas is now in its second year. The breweries aren't selected on any particular criteria: it's just what I've had in the fridge over the last month or so.

We begin locally (to me), with seven recent releases from Third Barrel and its subsidiary labels.

Pale ale specialist Stone Barrel has released a porter called Spectre. It's a charming, old-fashioned ruby colour, topped with a generous layer of dense foam the colour of a proper pub's ceiling. The classic theme continues in the dark chocolate aroma with just a mild bite of green hops and roasted grain in the background. The texture is fantastically creamy for a beer served carbonated -- another opportunity for me to take a jab at breweries packaging their beer with nitrogen: just make them creamy like this. The flavour more or less follows the aroma, though the chocolate is sweeter and more milky, while the hops are tangy and a little metallic: a contrast rather than a balance. Although it has the feel of quite a big beer, and it is a not-inconsiderable 5.5% ABV, the finish is quick. I would have liked the chocolate to hang around longer, but at the same time it does make it very moreish. I could sink a lot of this. It's porter as it should be.

Those Belgium enthusiasts in the Third Circle corner, meanwhile, have come up with an American-style amber ale. I've a fondness for these over most sweet red styles, but they need to hit the balance between toffee and fresh hops just right. Not My Disco almost manages it. The finish blends the two sides really well and there's a long echo of warming malt and zingy American hops. The foretaste lets it down, however, with a too-extreme combination of acidic bitterness and rasping astringency. The aroma, too, is a little harsh: perhaps dry hopping with Citra was a step beyond what amber ale needs? This is nearly good but a near miss for me. Even during the West Coast Revival™, "American" doesn't have to mean "bitter as hell", and especially not for an amber ale.

On a growler run to UnderDog I picked up Third Barrel's Pilot 02: Chocolate Ice Cream Stout. Have the sturdy lads from Bluebell gone full Omnipollo? Not really. This is a stout first and foremost, with a seam of green old-world hops running through it. The texture is creamy, however, reflecting its big 8% ABV. The chocolate is quite muted and I don't know if chocolate or lactose are ingredients -- there's certainly not much sign of either. There's a coffee side which is another classic stout component, and a drier roast aspect in the finish. This isn't a busy and complex beer, but is simple, drinkable and very enjoyable. I don't know if any of these pilots are intended for scaling up into a regular run, but this one would be worth it.

The next three in the sequence arrived simultaneously, in cans, and continue the theme. All three are dark, 6% ABV and thoroughly pastrified. Pilot 03: Salted Peanut & Chocolate Milk Stout sounds hella gimmicky. I mean, how are you going to get peanut flavour into a beer? Well, they did. From the first sip there's a genuine dry, nutty, fatty, salty, crunch. Peanuts! I'm impressed. Beyond that it's a mix of chocolate sauce and caramel: sweet, but not too heavy, and not over-egged with lactose, or eggs. There's even a pinch of hop bittering. But mostly it's peanuts, in a silly and entertaining way. This will never be any brewery's flagship but it's undeniably fun. Own your gimmick!

Chocolate makes a return in Pilot 04: Holé Molé, along with chipotle chillis. One or other of them kills the head retention. There's no peanut, but otherwise it's quite similar to the previous beer: medium bodied, very chocolatey with a big sweetness. We are told to expect smoke, and I get a certain dry rasp, but there's no chilli kick, which is unfortunate. I swear there's vanilla in here too -- it's very pastry. And as such, it's fine. I expected more fun from the chilli, and a greater richness given the mole reference. What's delivered is rather more basic.

Last of this Pilot trilogy is Pilot 05: Makin' Bacon. Bacon flavours are nothing new in stout (or porter; this is a porter), generally using some combination of smoked malt and maple syrup. Here, the syrup is joined by something called "bacon extract". I don't want to know which side-door of the abattoir Third Barrel gets that from. It doesn't smell of bacon, it smells of burnt caramel and maple cookies. This is the sweetest of the lot, a sugary syrup flavour that just keeps rolling, coating the palate and destroying any possibility of nuance or complexity. There's a roasty dryness which does help balance it, though swings it a little too far towards acrid at the same time. And there's plenty of the sappy, woody side of maple syrup: if you like the Canadian sticky stuff, here's your beer. Just don't expect it to taste much like beer. Or bacon. This one was a step too far for me, completely losing sight of the base porter under all the syrup silliness. If you're going to tackle it, have a palate-cleanser on standby.

Last year there was a Baltic Porter called The Darkness. This year it has evolved into an imperial stout, one aged in whiskey and red wine barrels. The Darkness 2020 smells strangely meaty. Maybe it's a mature, oaky-smoky thing that causes it. That theory is borne out on tasting, where I get a definite curl of dense and sweetly aromatic smoke. Dense is the word: this feels all of its 10% ABV and has a heat to match. A tarry and burnt bitterness contrasts with sweet red grape, and then maybe a little honeycomb from the whiskey. The flavours are all quite separate, suggesting to me this is one for putting aside for a year or five. That's what I'll be doing anyway. There's not a thing wrong with it now, but what it tastes of most is promise.

And speaking of promise: 11 more posts coming your way. Imminently.