Enough already

When Boak & Bailey kindly awarded me their 2020 Golden Pint for best beer blogger, the citation mentioned my "business-as-usual, non-plague-related content". So shall it be with my own Golden Pint nominations. I'll try and keep the phew-what-a-year, hashtag-unprecedented clichés to a minimum as I go through the categories below. That said, when picking a sipper to assist with my musings I couldn't go past Whiplash's recent offering Let.It.End.

The brewery describes it as a "futuristic stout", and if their prediction is correct, stouts of the future will be made with maple syrup and... French toast? Huh? It's a dense dark brown in the glass, and is that an eggy yellow hint to the head? The French toast thing has thrown me somewhat. As befits 11% ABV, and more, it is extremely dense: one of those beers where pulling it from glass to mouth takes a concerted effort. Although coffee isn't an ingredient there's a very strong coffee component in the flavour, with all the gritty, bitter and concentrated roast of a ristretto. Maple syrup, another ingredient, follows that to bring a contrasting sweetness, one which is just as concentrated and intense. I wouldn't describe this as complex: it's really just two extreme flavours butting up against each other. It's sticky and slow going, though the pay-off is a gradually growing warmth, which was the part I enjoyed most. Otherwise, it was just too much for me. Luckily I had plenty to distract myself with while sipping through it, what with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2020

Best Irish Cask Beer: DOT Barrel Aged Imperial Saison
I'm not aware of this beaut making it out into the world in any other form. Maybe it was the tail end of something. Anyway, I caught this late at the Franciscan Well winter festival in February and was very glad not to have missed it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Galway Bay Märzen To the Fire
Seems like a simple sort of plan: brew your own clone of world classic Schlenkerla Märzen and stick it on draught in your chain of pubs. I know just enough about brewing to appreciate how tall an order that is, but this one nailed it. Drinking my first pint of it at The Black Sheep on 20th February I was looking forward to many more throughout the year. Just as well, then, that it translated perfectly to cans.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Porterhouse Around the Clock
This field is getting smaller, though is probably now the purview of high-end cork-and-cage or waxed-capped bottles. The Porterhouse's new imperial stout is the latter, but don't hold that against it. Judicious use of barrel-ageing courtesy of the brewery's sister distillery has created a luxurious yet balanced masterpiece.

Best Irish Canned Beer: DOT Barrel Aged Session IPA
More barrels, but a very different offer to the last one. This was an exclusive to Redmond's of Ranelagh back in the late summer. Under 4% ABV but brimming with honey, dessert wine and white pepper complexities. If Redmond's still has any in the fridges, grab it.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Jopen Maria Magdalena
The little bit of travelling I did at the start of the year landed me this bargain black IPA. Its mix of citrus zest and tarry bitterness is everything the style should be.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hop City 8th Sin
Another dark one, this time a Canadian dark lager, from the makers of Moosehead. My expectations were low, but I discovered something akin to a superb Czech dark lager, a style we see very little of in these parts. This one is readily available in Irish off licences and is not to be overlooked.

Best Collaboration Brew: DOT / Brú Well-Rounded Individual
There was no shortage of barrel-aged loveliness from DOT this year, and this one on which Brú collaborated delivered the mellow maturity of barrelling at its best.

Best Overall Beer: Porterhouse Around the Clock
Of the seven contenders, the one which comes with a memory of being instantly wowed from the first sip was The Porterhouse's new imperial stout.

Best Branding: Hopfully
The Brazilian gypsy brewers moved operations to Metalman in Waterford this year and gave their branding a makeover. They had always been very artistic in their presentation, and the new style with clean and classy background colours makes their cans stand out even more. There were some lovely beers inside those cans too.

Best Pump Clip: O Brother: Bat Country
A recent one, but still a deserving winner. And while I didn't actually see it clipped to a pump, I did drink the beer via a draught growler and the badge was on display on the menu screens at UnderDog when I bought it, so it counts. Adam West and Hunter S. Thompson getting pulled over by the cops is, for me, a perfect mash-up of pop-culture and literary silliness.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Galway Hooker Cherry
Another serious take on a daft idea. I didn't know Popeye needed a gritty reboot, but here we are. Shout out also to Whiplash's Jupiters, which made me smile every time I took a can out of the fridge. What are those two up to?

Best Irish Brewery: DOT
Nobody has been quite so busy this year as the barrel wizard of Dolphin's Barn. Going beer shopping was the main reason I left the house at all, and DOT's exclusives with various off licences had me biking all over the city. I'm ending 2020 with a vast array of DOT ticks under my belt and a couple more cans still waiting to be opened in the New Year. In this season of goodwill I'll ignore the samey IPAs and concentrate on all the barrel-aged blended class that DOT has provided. If you want in on the ground level, you can find details of their barrel adoption programme in the link above.

Best Overseas Brewery: Oskar Blues
I owe at least some nod to our friends in the States here, having enjoyed several run-throughs of imported cans courtesy of the likes of Cigar City, Ska, Odell and of course Sierra Nevada. Of all of them, I think Oskar Blues had the highest hit-rate of good ones, so while this is largely an award for supply quantity and variety, there is of course a quality element too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2020: Otterbank
Does a brand that's been going for several years taking over an existing premises count as a new brewery opening? I'm saying yes, mostly to make things easier for myself. The first beer has been getting some great press, though it wasn't for me, while the second and third were legitimate hits. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens when Declan really gets into his stride.

Pub/Bar of the Year: 57 the Headline
The resilience shown by Geoff and Máire in an impossibly tough year was nothing short of astounding. When the pubs were shut, The Headline became one of my go-to off licences and kept me well supplied with new beers. And for the brief time during the summer that indoor dining was possible, a couple of dinners here provided a welcome feel of normality.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2020: Crew
What kind of lunatics open a new brewpub in a year like this? Crew in Limerick did, and paying a visit is high on my list of priorities when that becomes an option.

Beer Festival of the Year: Franciscan Well Cask & Winter Ales
I made it to one beer festival this year -- go me! So Franciscan Well kinda wins this by default. I did have a nice time, though. A special mention goes to The White Hag for organising two highly enjoyable online events.

Supermarket of the Year: Aldi
When I started working from home, Rheinbacher quickly became my daily staple. The fortnightly restock at Aldi Terenure became part of that routine. Thanks for keeping the cans consistently in stock, folks.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Mace SCR
In the depths of the first lockdown I had to make a few emergency trips to the office, my route taking me past this unassuming cornershop. It was such a relief to be able to stop, stock up on new beers and continue on my way. Molloy's on Francis Street also provided stellar service of this kind.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
This isn't a category I would usually trouble myself with much, but in 2020 the market for beer delivery expanded hugely. The service from Craft Central was consistently brilliant, and what really swung it for me was the click-and-collect option which was instrumental in letting me stay on top of new Irish beer releases. 

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Brussels Beer City by Eoghan Walsh
As usual there was only one contender for this, but it's a worthy winner -- a fascinating delve into the chequered history of Brussels brewing, from medieval lambic to the now-vanquished industrial lager giants, to the city's modern beer renaissance.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Shut Up About Barclay Perkins
The unsinkable Ronald Pattinson kept the lights on all year, every day bringing something new about stout or war or sugar or all three, with a bonus sprinkling of naughty vicars.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @RuariOToole
It was very much the year for weird and grim humour, and Ruari's Twitter provided plenty of it. Much appreciated, my man. Dudes rock!

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Whiplash
They're Instagrammier than I would like, but the information on their beers was always there when I looked for it.


I think that's quite enough of 2020, don't you? We start anew with hope in our hearts and mRNA in our veins, shortly.

Celebrating darkness

Following July's Boxtravaganza virtual festival, The White Hag followed up last month with an online festival of stout and oysters. I bought one of the packs, separated out the beers that were new to me and, eventually, drank and reviewed them. Here's what I found.

I'll begin with White Hag's own contributions to the selection, starting on a stickered variant of their Cauldron of Plenty oatmeal porter, brewed with Brazilian Serra do Cigano coffee. The coffee is very apparent in the aroma, not roasty or oily, but like a luxury chocolate biscuit: rich and buttery. You get more of a straight coffee effect from the flavour, though still lots of chocolate: a mocha or macchiato, with a caramel wafer biscuit on the side. There's a hint of fruit too: strawberry jam or maraschino cherry adds a fun complexity. The mouthfeel is slight so the flavour doesn't last long: normally beers like this luxuriate on the palate a bit longer; this one finishes quickly and unobtrusively. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not. It seems like they've avoided making something cloying, but at the same time it's unavoidably thin, and that causes a dissonance against the decadent foretaste. On balance, it gets a pass. Drink it slowly, let it sit on the palate a while, and you'll have a good time.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Pastry Stout seems to be in vogue this winter: there are a few floating around from Irish breweries, including this one in White Hag's The Dark Druid series. Cacao, cinnamon, chillies, lactose and vanilla all feature, for anyone not familiar with the concept. It smells first like cheap and artificial hot chocolate powder, the nasty sort you got in the 1980s which probably no longer exists and which never had anything to do with real chocolate. There's a little extra vanilla and cinnamon if you inhale deeply enough. I like the texture, it's creamy: warming and wintery. And the spice kick is very pleasant, bringing a different sort of happy warmth. The rest of it I'm not so sure about. Vanilla combined with lactose is extremely sweet, and it gets a little cloying after a few mouthfuls. The chocolate stays artificial and delivers more of a plasticky twang than actual chocolate flavour. I sat on the fence for most of the glass before deciding that, all things considered, I liked it. I'm a sucker for chilli and this offers a pleasingly hefty dose.

The fifth Dark Druid is Black Forest Pastry Stout. The brewery may have given up proof-reading their labels because, although the blurb says it's made with cherries, cream and chocolate, the ingredients listing is the same as the Mexican one above. The chocolate is very present in the aroma, as is a strange cyanide or solvent thing which I hope is only the cherries. That resolves into something altogether more cherry-like on tasting, though there's an artificiality about it, more Cherry Coke than Black Forest gateau. I like Cherry Coke so I don't mind, and actively enjoyed this beer all the way through. There's plenty of creamy substance but it's not cloying. The novelty flavours, while weird and wild, are mannerly too: in harmony with one another and not too loud. I think this fully meets the specs of something badged as a Black Forest Pastry Stout: you know what to expect, and it delivers. Can't say fairer than.

First of the guest beers in the bundle is a Welsh icon, but one I've never tasted before: Tiny Rebel's "marshmallow porter" Stay Puft. I've never known marshmallow flavour to improve a beer, which has a lot to do with why I've never tried this. Thank you, White Hag, for holding my nose and forcing it down me. The aroma is off-puttingly bitter, which was a surprise. It smells dark and herbal, like Fisherman's Friends or Fernet Stock liqueur.  And that's how it tastes too. The marshmallow effect arrives late, just a sticky pink tang on the roof of the mouth. Before that it's a mix of aniseed, cola nut and dry acrid tar vapours. Tiny Rebel has landed itself in trouble previously for its branding being allegedly attractive to children. This very grown-up beer is sure to put any of them off if they ever got as far as opening it. This particular grown-up, meanwhile, is unsure if he likes it or not. I appreciate the boldness, the extremeness, and the way it's not a sugary mess. At the same time, however, it's hard work to drink and impossible to relax with. I have no plans to repeat the experience and doubt I'll be rushing to try any of the variants.

It's into double figures with DOT's Imperial Liquorice Milk Stout Blend at 10.3% ABV. We're not allowed know what has been blended to produce it. The liquorice is very prominent in the aroma, in quite a medicinal, herbal way, rather than candy. The candy comes on tasting. It is powerfully sweet, with fluffy white marshmallow being the first effect I got. There's only a hint of liquorice in the flavour, and it's more dry than bitter, bringing a sense of highly tannic, extremely sugared, milky tea. Liquorice and lactose are not flavours one finds together in other products and this beer demonstrates why that is. While there's a decent imperial stout at its base, the novelty factor doesn't improve matters any.

Our finisher is Lambrate's Tiramisù Imperial Stout, stronger again at 11.5% ABV. I'm sceptical about the possibility of making stout taste like tiramisu, having had plenty of unconvincing ones over the years, but if anyone can be trusted to get it right it's the Italians. The can goes into great detail about how they made it: 4% lactose, 1% cocoa beans, 0.5% coffee and 0.05% vanilla flavouring -- nonna's own recipe, I'm sure. The coffee smells like more than half a per cent of it: rich and mocha-sweet. Then the flavour concentrates that into Tia Maria to begin with, before the chocolate side emerges half way through. There's a boozy kick on the end which again says liqueur more than cake to me. My favourite feature, and the one which does lend it some sense of tiramisu, is the creaminess: it genuinely does taste and feel a little like mascarpone. Whatever about its success as a simulacrum, it's a gorgeous beer, one which makes excellent use of its novelty ingredients while remaining every bit a cuddly warming stout. In last week's run-up to Christmas it left me feeling quite festive indeed.

The lesson from this lot, if there is one, is that pastry stout is a very broad church, with some sublime examples and plenty of total clunkers. I wish I could say what the secret to getting it right is, because I'd be sure to tell every brewer I know.

And with that conclusion I hit Publish, and then discovered there was another beer from the box that I had completely forgotten about. Praise be! It's not a pastry stout.

Mills & Hills is a collaboration by Fyne Ales with input from imperial stout wizards De Molen. It's 10.5% ABV and pours extremely viscous, taking its time forming a head and not really putting much effort into it. The aroma is a bitter mix of coffee and tar, indicating from the start that this is very much a beer for grown-up palates. The flavour is a little sweeter than the aroma suggests, however. I get a certain cherry-chocolate effect in the middle, and a sprinkling of muscovado. Then it's back to bitterness again for the finish: a pinch of fresh tobacco lingers as the rest fades. It's a gorgeous beer, hitting exactly the correct points for imperial stout the way I like it: big and bitter, yet smooth and warming. More breweries should have this sort of thing in their core range. I'm glad White Hag does.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 12: Leftovers

Merry Christmas! As is now traditional on this the second year of it, my Twelve Brewers sequence ends with the beers I met along the way but couldn't squeeze into another post. Once again I've managed twelve different beers from twelve different breweries

White Hag kicks us off, with third in its Róc series of lagers. The previous two, a pils and a helles, didn't present the styles they way I like them, so I was a little apprehensive about something called a Hoppy Lager. The can prepares one to expect something in a new-world style and it's pretty apparent on pouring that this is what, in the good old days (2014 or so), would be called an India Pale Lager. It's 4.5% ABV and a hazy golden colour with a strong aroma of tropical and stone-fruit. The flavour abolutely goes to town on the sunny tropicals: guava, mango and lychee leap out immediately. A pristine clean base gives them ample room to dance about, and they're followed by a spritz of citrus: sweet mandarin and a lemony bite. This is beautifully done, if a little unseasonal.

At the Molloy's off licence chain they've teamed up with Trouble for this year's Christmas pale ale, called Brewdolph. It's a spritzy chap of 4.6% ABV, the aroma mixing bitter and sweet, like a sugar-dusted grapefruit. Galaxy and Talus are the hops. In the flavour I get the caraway savoury effect I associate most with Mosaic, though there's also plenty of fresh lemon following it, again the citrus acidity paired with sweeter juice. Although it's slightly hazy and yellow there's no New England fluff: this is clean and crisp all the way down. It may seem a strange choice of style for the depths of winter but I for one do appreciate something clean and quenching to balance my diet this time of year. Brewdolph, like the Róc above, fits that bill perfectly.

Black's of Kinsale, which normally puts out its new beers in cans, has reverted to bottles for its latest Tropical IPA. I assume this is a variant of the Totally Tropical it released over the summer, though the fruits have changed: this one made with pineapple, mango and passionfruit. It's still an even 5% ABV. The aroma is quite sickly, a strong and syrupy fizzy drink thing. Lilt on steroids. Another tropical crop came through immediately in the foretaste: coconut; all oily and quite savoury. There's an almost tangy metal bitterness waiting behind this with a little pepper: both derived, I'm guessing, from how concentrated the concentrate is. It opens out after a minute or two, turning to actual fruit but tasting no less like a soda pop. This has a bit of a cheek calling itself an IPA: there's no sign of the Citra and Cascade the brewer added. While certainly no halfhearted attempt at novelty, I thought it was overdone on flavourings and difficult to enjoy as a result.

Brehon, meanwhile, has gone in the more conventional opposite direction, and the first new beer from there to get canned is Just Because, a double IPA. No skimping on the alcohol here: it's 8.5% ABV. In the glass it's a clear copper colour topped by a loose head. The aroma promises a sweetness to match all that alcohol: Lucozade with a spritz of lemon zest. A punchy bitterness opens the flavour: overtones of wax and zinc. Contrasting with that is a golden syrup malt side, while in the middle the only nuance on offer is that zesty citrus -- it's not much, given that a combination of Columbus, Simcoe and Centennial was used. I just noticed that the can also describes the contents as "hazy", suggesting that the author had never actually seen the beer. This is a long way from how double IPAs are constructed these days, and anyone hoping for one of those hot and murky tropical garlic jobs is in for disappointment. I quite enjoyed its cleanness and simplicity, and the fact that it's not simply another passenger on an overcrowded bandwagon. You do you, Brehon.

Something altogether more modern next, from Wicklow Brewery. LocKnut is a kveik-fermented hazy IPA of 5.2% ABV. Witness the thickness! It gloops out of the can like a milkshake, forming a dense head over an opaque deep-orange body. There's a little light citrus in the aroma but it's not generously endowed in that department. And the flavour, again, goes in more for citrus than the promised tropical fruit. There's a light spritz effect, like a sorbet or higher-end cloudy lemonade. Looking more closely, there's maybe a hint of sweeter cantaloupe, but also savoury spring onion; while the finish is pinchingly bitter, not juicy. It's not a bad beer, but I do think it underdelivers. One for haze fiends and kveik nerds only, perhaps.

Loosey Joosey is the next take on "juicy" pale ale, from Bullhouse in collaboration with Hopfully. Another yellow New Englander I thought as I popped it, and then recoiled slightly when it poured out pink. Brewed with plum and cherry says the label helpfully. So that kind of juice. Actual juice. OK. It smells a little jammy, but in a real-fruit way, not concentrated or artificial. There's a nod, I think, to hazy pale ales in the texture. It's fluffy and soft, but instead of driving tropical fruit flavours you get creamy forest fruit desserts: a simplisitc blackberry or raspberry thing at first, but more distinct cherry afterwards. An aspect of good Belgian kriek features here, though it's not a sour beer. I needed a few sips to get my head around what it is, because it's not a pale ale either -- there is no hop character. The closest parallel might be those simple and soft fruited wheat beers that were a by-word for exotic 15 and 20 years ago: one of the good ones that's not too sweet. After the fruit there's a crisp cereal note to give it a balancing dry side. I was surprised to find myself rather enjoying it. Nobody is making beer like this at the moment, and while I wouldn't like to see the market flooded, the odd one is fun. Can we have blueberries next?

DOT is back with another *yaaaawn* non-barrel-aged beer: Believable, described as a DDH IPA, and "crushable" despite being 6.6% ABV. It's murky and pale orange, in a way that I suspect is going out of fashion, but Old Man DOT persists, in a quaint 2017 sort of way. The aroma mixes juicy jaffa with a pepper spice: fun, but I've had it before. The flavour has all the familiar oily orange, spring onion, vanilla, white pepper and plaster. This is strictly for the fans. It's not horrible; it's only as flawed as the style is, but I can't give it a thumbs-up because gritty IPA doesn't do it for me, no matter how fresh or exotic the hops. If you like the way DOT does these, here's another, go nuts, it's Christmas.

So dreary is the branding I had not noticed that Aldi added a new Road Works beer to their range last year. But when I did, about four days ago, I picked one up to try. Like the others, Road Works West Coast IPA is brewed by Alltech's Pearse Lyons Brewery in Dundalk. And it's quaintly clear, a pale amber colour, smelling of caramel candy and grapefruit. "West Coast" here means the way European breweries made American IPA a decade ago, rather than being a clone of, say, Sculpin. It's only 5.9% ABV, for one thing. Not that that's a complaint: it's lovely. A clean and classic American bitterness, dry with lots of hard citrus, meeting a toffee sweetness that balances it while still leaving the hops fully in charge. It's punchy, straightforward, flavoursome and cheap: all things that are very welcome in IPA these days. This is one of those beer types that supposedly high-end breweries have long since abandoned, and this particular example is sure to raise a smile on the face of anyone who got into IPA before all the murk hit.

Quadruple next. Canvas has been giving us The Sunday Cuddle for a while now, but this is the first time I've seen it in real life, and in canned form too. It's 9.4% ABV and dark brown in the glass. The aroma is properly Belgian, bringing a mix of prunes, figs and seasonal pudding in general. It's a little on the thin side, and there's a bit of a sharp acetic tang which is atypical: I expect quadruple to be richer and heavier than this. The main flavour makes up for any shortcomings, however. You get the pudding elements again -- extra raisins and a sprinkling of chocolate -- but also a bitter herbal side too, with aniseed, cardamom and chamomile. Locally-sourced herbs are mentioned in the official description but we're not told what they are. It adds up to a very old-fashioned dessert flavour but it works brilliantly. Along with the light texture, there's not much warmth, but on the plus side, that helps its drinkability. While this one doesn't deliver much by way of cuddles, I still really enjoyed it. 

Next in Rye River's Limited Edition series is a Baltic porter called Brunch. I have to declare a prejudice here, in that I don't think lagers are suited to "craft" "enhancements", and that goes just as much for Baltic porter. While a properly Baltic deep black and 9% ABV, it has been given the benefit of coffee and maple syrup (if you believe the front label that is; the actual ingredients list round the back mentions neither). The aroma is all coffee; the real sort, not the analogue you might get from a porter. It's enticing. The first sip reveals it to be properly smooth and clean, as a Baltic porter should be, and while the coffee remains present it's not overdone. The bittering has been dialled back a little, though I still get that kick of liquorice which, for me, is the style's hallmark. Leaving preciousness about Baltic porter aside, this is a good beer. It has the satisfying fullness you want from a strong dark one, and the crisp precision of a lager. The coffee adds character, but there's no other gimmickry. The advertised maple syrup and raunchmalt may as well not be there, and I don't miss them. This is happy, warming winter drinking.

Lineman's finisher for 2020 is a bourbon-barrel version of their Gigantic imperial stout, called Giganticer. First fill bourbon barrels, the label is keen to tell us. The vanilla bomb fails to detonate in the aroma: it's corky and a bit vinous on the nose. Nothing extreme. And then pow! Huge vanilla kicks in at the front of the flavour, and a solid dose of that sour-mash lime effect, finishing up on a dry oaky woodchip thing. Bourbon gets so busy here I had to work to find the stout. There's... a little hop bitterness and maybe some creamy chocolate if you squint, but this isn't a showcase stout: you would want to enjoy bourbon with/as your beer. I'm sure that was the plan; for me it didn't work as well as the basic model. One to age, maybe?

It seems fitting that we end The Twelve Brewers of Christmas on beer number 12 in Kinnegar's Brewers At Play series. Trivia fans might like to note that the first and second in the series featured in last year's edition of this post. Hazelnut Vanilla Imperial Stout is the brewery's first imperial stout and nutcrackered-up, as the name suggests. It's not very different to how everyone else does these: smelling of nutty chocolate spread and tasting of a mix of Snickers, Tia Maria, Fry's Turkish Delight and chocolate-coated hazelnuts. You get the idea. It's a mere 9% ABV so very much a starting-out imperial stout. Doubtless they'll be ramping it up and whacking it into candyfloss brandy barrels like everyone else in due course. In the meantime, please enjoy the rich cocoa and coffee foretaste, with violet and caramel afters. It's intense, but I liked it. Sticky, sippable, yet not cloying or difficult. Your middle-of-the-boreen sort of novelty imperial stout. I'd like it drier and cleaner, but the brewers are playing and I can't complain about that.

And that's where we hit capacity for 2020's Twelve Brewers. A handful of breweries missed the cut through no fault of their own and I'll be catching up with them in the New Year. One of many things to look forward to in 2021.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 11: Rascals

Circumstances changed the annual release of the Rascals Social Hops Project beer. No jolly night out for the hop growers this year; instead we got a minikeg each of the fruits of our horticultural labours. Social Hops 2020 returns to its roots as a straightforward and sessionable pale ale. It's a slightly hazy autumnal gold and smells crisply grainy: Dublin hops are not known for their aromatic qualities, in fairness. There's a candy and golden syrup base, with a touch of brown breadcrust. The hops are... subtle. An old world bitterness just about manages to balance the sweet side, and there's a slightly oily lemon-skin flavour. A tannic dryness finishes it off. At this stage I haven't had an English brown bitter in quite some time, but this reminded me of that solid, sturdy format. As always, Social Hops is more about the process than the sensory merits of the finished product. I enjoyed my five litres with the appropriate air of georgic smugness.

Something less wholesome to follow: The Candyman, a chocolate salted caramel stout, decked out in the appropriated Wonka-esque branding. Rascals doesn't muck about when it comes to mucking-about beers like this, and the aroma is powerfully sweetshop, packed with chocolate, peanut, coconut and raisins. The first surprise is that it's not thick and sticky, but light to the point of thin. 5.5% isn't an unreasonably low ABV for a pastry stout and I expected more heft from it. Sweet chocolate and caramel are at the centre of the flavour, and quite intense, a bit like how the bitterness turns out overdone in a heavily-hopped but thinly-textured pale ale. The roasted peanut character comes in at the end. It's all a bit efforty. I suspect it's hard to get pastry stouts to work well at this strength; there's a reason that the breweries who made their names on it did so at much higher ABVs. This beer makes a promise of sumptuous luxury which is not delivered upon. 

We conclude with a hazy IPA of 5.2% ABV. Space Hopper is an "interstellar juice bomb" -- sure aren't they all? -- using Galaxy and Enigma. It meets all the New England specs from the get-go: hazy yellowish-orange topped with a tall head, a relatively full mouthfeel, if not quite full-on fluffy, and a strong tropical aroma. Okay, maybe they were serious about the astronomical juiciness factor. To taste, there's more sweet tropical fruit, mango primarily, with a backing of pineapple, passionfruit and guava: all the big-hitters. And nothing from the naughty list: no grit or garlic. That very slight thinness is the only kind-of let-down here. Though the flavour is highly enjoyable, it doesn't last long enough. I drank it indecently quickly, but maybe that's by design. Well played, Rascals.

And with that we're nearly done. See you tomorrow for the big finish. Big.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 10: O Brother

We pay our third and final visit to a Wicklow-based brewery for this year's Twelve Brewers: the ever-so arty O Brother.

IPA of various stripes is the brewery's stock in trade and we begin with Deep Love at a relatively modest 6.9% ABV. It's dense and eggy-looking in the glass but smells inviting: a gentle waft of ripe tropicals. The taste is... familiar. Yellow fruit chews, more realistic mango, a little vanilla and an abrasive chalky minerality in the finish. Very much fan-service for the New England IPA crowd, with nothing even close to real bitterness. There's a substantial heat too, which I think is unjustified: the hop flavours aren't big and bold enough to warrant it. For the record, Azacca, Galaxy and Amarillo are the under-performers here. It's not a bad beer but those fruit-forward hops don't shine, and I blame the haze for that.

The IPA ABV gets a boost with Exploded View, 8% and single-hopped with Simcoe. That's clear from the aroma: a heady mix of lemonade, lime peel and hot fermenting grass cuttings. I thought I was in for a severe experience but the fluffy New England yeast stops that from happening, giving it a soft mouthfeel and turning the citrus zest into meringue pie. There are no sharp edges here, and no heat. Amid peach and white plum there's a slightly savoury side of red onion and garlic. This is Simcoe with manners on it, and while I appreciated the lack of harshness, I confess I missed the bad-boy edge it usually shows. A further point or two off for not marking it as New England style, which it very definitely is. Overall, a mellow sipper offering considerable complexity with just one hop.

Of course they had to go one better on themselves, hence the 10.4% ABV triple IPA Bat Country. It's hopped with Strata and Mosaic and smells beautifully Mosaicky, all melon and passionfruit. Flavourwise it's hot and heavy, as one might expect, but the bright and fruitsome hops are the saving of it. There's a certain jamminess and lots of resins but very little bittering: O Brother's grá for hazy softness is fully represented. A pinch of white onion balances the tropical juice. While not especially complex, it's a relaxing and sippable beer, presenting few challenges to the palate. That's pretty much what I want from a triple IPA, so thumbs up.

Enough IPAs for one post, then. A hefty porter finishes things off on a properly wintery note. One Beating Heart is 7% ABV. Blackest of the black; shiny with a deep tan head, it looks like it promises a good time. The aroma is fairly mild, but gives you all the cocoa you could want from a porter. The flavour is where it really excels. Well, flavour and mouthfeel: the two are inextricably linked. Big and creamy, and a little chewy is how it rolls; cakey, gooey. On that texture rides dark chocolate and liquorice for two kinds of sweetshop bitterness: a rich coffee roast and then a fruity plum pudding thing at the end. It's sumptuous, and one of those strong dark jobs that makes you wonder why breweries even bother with barrel ageing. More biggity-big no-gimmick porters please!

I guess I'll forgive O Brother any amount of murk if they can turn out the likes of One Beating Heart now and again.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 9: Eight Degrees

For 2020, Eight Degrees picked Ireland's munroes as the theme to their special beers. There were six in total, the first three scattered through earlier posts but I've ended up collecting the second half into the below.

Fourth in the series was a Belgian IPA, no less. Remember those? Loral and experimental hop HBC 522 feature in Fort of the Fianna, a mostly-clear golden number, at 5.4% ABV. The aroma is modestly Belgian: honey and spices, rather than fruit and funk. There's a lovely citrus kick in the foretaste, with a rub of lime wedge and some lemon zest, before the smoother Belgian side takes over. Peachy esters arrive in the middle, and then the incense and allspice effect I associate particularly with tripel. The hoppy side could stand to be more pronounced: my preference for Belgian IPA does lean towards the American takes, while this tastes more Belgian. I have to damn it with the faint praise of being enjoyably understated. Part of me feels current extreme beer trends mean I should talk up the calm and balanced ones more, but at the same time I know Belgian IPA can be done better than this.

I thought that, as with last year, the series was concluding on a dark one, this time a 6.5% ABV porter called The Black Road. They've used smoked malt in this, and sure enough there's a faint hint of fiery roast in the aroma, while the flavour tails off on a note of peaty phenols, but otherwise the smoke is very much on the down-low. You'd hardly notice it. For the most part this is a straightforward medium-strong porter, big on dark chocolate, Americano coffee and creamy tiramisu. At first I was disappointed by the lack of novelty but then very happy with how solidly enjoyable it is. This is no-nonsense fun, albeit something I'd prefer to have by the pint or three rather than 440ml. But while we're all treading The Black Road, a can will have to do.

I was wrong about that being the last in series, though. It didn't finish dark but it did finish strong, with an 11.5% ABV sherry-barrel-aged tripel: Devil's Ladder. Back on that Belgian kick. You don't see barrel-aged tripel every day, and certainly not from Irish breweries, so I was expecting something special when the brewery kindly sent it out to me with a bunch of other Christmas goodies. It's a deep orangey gold colour in the glass with a gelatinous haze. The aroma is very vinous, in a sweet and dessertish way: tokaji, shading to mead and into hippocras. That spiced medieval feel is all over the flavour too: the pepper and clove of a real Belgian tripel but with added grape and honey and, to put not too fine a point on it, booze. It stays clean and quite crisp, though. Other supercharged tripels can burn and cloy; this one brings only a gently relaxing warmth. It was a daring experiment, but they've pulled it off, taking a good example of the base style and enhancing it without resorting to gimmickry.

I'm sure the creative theme for 2021's specials is already ready to go. Did someone say 10th anniversary? Ready when you are, Eight Degrees.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 8: Wicklow Wolf

On the winter solstice we are visited by two wolves. Big stout ones.

The first is from Wicklow Wolf's Crossbreeds Series, a collaboration with Lough Gill. It's the second stout with peanuts in this sequence, following Third Barrel's back on day one. There's also cocoa for a purported peanut butter cup effect, and Beanut Putter is the name they've given it. It looked OK on pouring but that big beige head faded to nothing in minutes. The aroma is sweet, and says nuts, chocolate and caramel to me, like a Snickers bar. I should confess at this point I have never eaten a peanut butter cup. Its texture is surprisingly heavy for a mere 8% ABV; it actually took effort to pull it from the glass. As with the Third Barrel one, the peanut flavour is perfectly distinct, arriving on the palate right at the start. Milk chocolate and soft caramel follow, per the aroma, but that's pretty much it. I guess it delivers on what it promises, and is perfectly tasty. There aren't any subtle extra flourishes, but nor is it a sticky mess of silliness. A look-you-in-the-eye honest sort of peanut-butter-cup stout, you might say.

Wicklow Wolf's other regular series is Endangered Species: all the silliness of collaboration but with only one brewery to hold responsible. The latest is called Mad Mex, based on Mexican chocolate cake, another confection I've never actually eaten. The necessary ingredients list for this is quite involved: cocoa, cinnamon, peppers, coffee, vanilla, nutmeg and lactose. Phew! Cinnamon is the one which breaks out most in the aroma, but the flavour is a melange. I don't actually know where to start unpicking it. There's a certain spice side, but it's not sharp or hot, more aftershave or similarly musky male grooming products. The vanilla is next, a blanketing sweetness which doesn't really match with the spice, though the floral side which comes after works fine with it. And then the finish is all of them together, loudly, for ages. I tried to enjoy this but it's just too busy, pulling in too many conflicting directions. One might expect that a 10.5% ABV imperial stout would be able to smother such imperfections in dark warming malt but this one is distressingly thin. It's a bust. If you're going to do cake beer, make it cakey, and this is not cakey enough, so there.

My feel that Wicklow Wolf makes some of Ireland's best stouts remains unshaken by these offerings, but I think I'll be happier once the pastry craze has ended.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 7: Otterbank

I wasn't a big fan of the first release from Otterbank as a standalone brewery. Numbers two and three are here, and in the spirit of the season I'm prepared to give them a fair shout, and at least they're not so strong.

To begin, Stick The Kettle On, a no-boil (geddit?) Brettanomyces-fermented pale ale of 5% ABV. It's a perfect clear gold in the glass with a steady head and an enticing stonefruit aroma. It's a little thin, which I think affects the impact of the flavour, but the flavour is gorgeous. It's a busy sequence of floral tastes; a wholesome meadowy blend of violet, lavender, clover and honeysuckle. The apricot and nectarine come later, bringing a different sort of sweetness. A white pepper spice finishes things off. And even with the lees from the bottom poured in, it's clean and bright, each taste polished and distinct. Half way down I remembered that Brettanomyces was involved. It's not funky, there's no farmyard, but instead it's that peachy Brett flavour, except without the sticky gumminess. It's a lovely beer; accessible but deliciously complex. I'd love to see it in regular production and for sale by the pint.

We move up to 6.5% ABV for What Time Do You Call This?, a saison created from a blend of four-year-old Chardonnnay-barrelled beer and a fresh one. It looks and smells like a gueuze: cloudy yellow with a sharply bricky nitre aroma. The flavour isn't especially sour, however, there's just a pinch of lemon and a little saltpetre. My favourite feature is the busy fizz: a cleansing scrape on the palate, and the reason for the beer's thick and lasting head. I was afraid this would turn a bit cloying but like the previous one it's fantastically clean and easy going. It lacks complexity, however: the flavour hints at the peppery, waxy joy of saison and lambic but doesn't follow through on either. While it's nice, I expected more. As the third beer from a new brewery I think it can be forgiven: everyone else would do well to produce something this good this early.

I'm back on board with Team Otterbank. These two have restored a faith which was wavering after the first beer. While I'd be perfectly happy if they just churned out more batches of these two, I'm intrigued for what comes next.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 6: Ballykilcavan

Ballykilcavan looks to be aiming for all the trendy targets with its Clancy's Cans series. A fruited Berliner weiss was first, and they've followed that with a DDH IPA and a couple of pastry stouts.

Clancy's Cans #2, then, is the aforementioned IPA. It's a bit of a whopper at 7.5% ABV and does not present as expected. I normally assume "DDH", if it means anything, to mean hazy, while this is a pure limpid golden colour. It's thick, hot and bitter in a very west-coast sort of way, with an almost waxy tang adding to the lemon and bergamot flavours. I wasn't surprised to learn that American classics Simcoe, Amarillo and Citra are doing the work. The balancing malt is like golden syrup, and does a good job holding back the hop excesses without turning the beer sweet. This is one of those all too rare big-yet-balanced IPAs; solidly enjoyable and not trying anything fancy or clever. One expects a certain oddness from limited-edition small-batch beers. Maybe the normalness of this one is what makes it odd. Either way, I'll take it.

"Tiramisu Dessert Stout" is what we're dealing with for Clancy's Cans #3. This one is 7.8% ABV, so it's just as well I like my tiramisu with a kick to it. It smells of coffee and chocolate, which is promising, but the follow-through isn't great. For a self-proclaimed "dessert" beer, it's thin, roasty and rather dry. Fine for stout in general, but this sub-style demands a full body which isn't delivered. I liked the roasty bite, and there's a little chocolate, but you're on your own if you're looking for mascarpone or liqueur. So it's not a tiramisu dessert stout; it's an absolutely fine medium-dry extra stout, and should be happy with being that. If nobody else is saying it: maybe Ballykilcavan should have released a nice extra stout without trying to do anything gimmicky.

Regardless, we push on to Clancy's Cans #4, a "walnut whip stout", with vanilla and walnuts. That hasn't affected the head retention -- it's lovely and creamy looking, and the texture follows that up, aided by 7.4% ABV. There's a nice balance between the sweet and bitter sides: milk chocolate and custard bumps up against a dry and bitter roast. Brown sugar and mocha linger on the lips after swallowing. If the description "classic pastry stout" means anything, this beer is it. While inarguably dessertish, it's a proper extra stout to its core. As such, it's a delight to drink. I can't say it tastes much like walnut, but there's enough going on for that not to be a problem.

I guess Clancy is going to keep canning into 2021. The brewery seems to be having fun with them, and I'll gladly go along for the ride.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 5: Wide Street

Wide Street has started going all arty with its cans. I don't know if I approve. I liked the earlier, uniform approach -- it showed a brewery that was about the beer. But I'm not here to review packaging. Funky Friday is described in no more in-depth terms than "wild pale ale". I thought "wild" referred to the yeast strains involved, but the beer proved tempestuous too, soaking the table and floor upon opening. It's a hazy yellow shade inside, much calmer once poured. The aroma is a crisp and spritzy mix of lemon sherbet and pickled onion. That's weirder than the actual flavour which turned out clean and only lightly funky. The lemon is still there, complementing the barnyard element beautifully. A woody spice calls young lambic to mind. From the Belgian flavour lexicon there's melon, lychee, apple, peppercorns and clove. It's also cool-fermented, giving it an even smoothness, with an undemanding finish. This is relaxing and sessionable while also complex enough to be interesting. After-work pints of this would be sublime, but a can offered the next best thing.

Monksland is a stout made with Belgian yeast and is over a euro cheaper. I don't know how beer pricing works. The can didn't gush either, making it even better value. It smells like a proper, unfancy stout, going big on roast. Same on tasting: dry and really quite ashen -- not unpleasant, but requiring some getting used to. The Belgian side is there too: fruity esters, and prunes in particular, like you might find in a bruin or dubbel. It's an interesting interplay, with each mouthful starting full and luscious before drying rapidly, becoming cigarette smoke by the end. It's an unsettling experience, not a bad one, but again something to which one needs to adjust. On balance this was harder work than I was after. You get your Belgian and your stout, but that burnt aspect wasn't part of the deal.

"Brewed in a traditional Berliner Weisse style" it says on the final can, and Wide Street is one of the few breweries I would trust for that to be accurate. Seems a bit odd, then, that they've made it a Peach Berliner. Peaches aren't exactly traditional, are they? Anyway, it's 4.6% ABV and a pale hazy yellow in the glass, with a few unsettling specks floating on the surface. The Brett side is apparent from the get-go: a farmyardy funk pervades it. That's overshadowed somewhat by a vinegar tang, one which matches the thin mouthfeel. It burns a little. And peaches? There are no peaches. It's good that there's no silly sugary sweetness, but I expected some quantity of fruit. Overall, this doesn't quite work for me. I appreciate the authenticity, but there's a reason most breweries don't make them like this. While far from actively unpleasant, the vinegar thing left me wincing a little with each sip.

This brewery is still a bit of a coin-toss for me. When they get things right it's a sublime experience, but that's not a guarantee. I'm happy to take my chances.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 4: Hope

Seasonal deckchair dude is back for a new Hope seasonal. They've gone for a Red IPA as the Winter 2020 release. I was hoping for something ruby-clear but it's a bit muddy in the glass. The aroma is bright and fresh, letting the hops (unspecified American and Australian ones) take the lead, with minimal input from the dark malt. The flavour too is hop forward, but not bitter. There's an, ironically, quite sunny, summery feel to it: mango, pineapple and kiwi. Only in the finish does the caramel and toast side emerge. I'm not usually a fan of red IPA, but this one pulls the same trick of the best black IPAs: tasting it blind you wouldn't know its colour. I'll ding it on seasonal character but that's the worst I can say. This is a lovely beer.

Around the same time, we got the 21st in the Limited Edition series: a Double IPA. For no reason I thought this would be hazy, but it's not. They've gone properly West Coast, with a bright deep-gold colour and a slightly rough dry bitterness. The flavour starts at pithy grapefruit and deepens into a waxen sharpness. On the lighter side there are hints of strawberry and plum. 8.9% ABV isn't extreme but still gives it plenty of poke, and there's a rounded warmth alongside the dryness. Overall, it's a very decent show. I never thought I would miss old-fashioned US-style double IPAs but I find myself getting misty-eyed with nostalgia whenever I encounter one these days.

That was followed, logically enough, by Limited Edition 22, a more seasonally-appropriate Oak Aged Stout. This is based on a 7.5% ABV foreign extra stout, a style the brewery has done superbly in the past. It's been given a sackful of brandy-barrel oak chips for additional winter warmth. It looks handsome in the glass -- the tan-coloured head all creamy and thick, peeping over the rim. Oak features in the aroma, but not strongly, and there's a pleasing amount of freshly roasted coffee too. The creamy effect continues in the texture, lovely and rounded; ideal for sipping. I think I served it a little too cold as there wasn't as much flavour as I expected at first. Letting it warm up, I found bitterness to begin, the assertive sort entirely appropriate to a stout like this but too often omitted. Then there's vanilla, espresso and a kind of corky dryness. There's no brandy at all, but this one doesn't need any such novelty factor. It started out as a tasty old-fashioned stout and nothing in the production process has changed that, I'm happy to say.

Trust Hope to take beer styles I'm not terribly fond of and make versions which have me doubting my prejudices.