Achievement unlocked

Well? Did you notice? Every beer appearing on this blog during the month of March was brewed in Ireland. Mind you, the fact that it's still February when I'm writing these words for the final post shows that it's not actually that much of an accomplishment. Most of the beers that Irish breweries produced during March itself will have to wait until next month.

YellowBelly is the subject for this particular bookend. While they've been concentrating heavily on their core range lately, two new bottled specials landed in late February. They weren't cheap: €6 a pop for the 33cl bottles, buying direct from the brewery, but that should pay off in the mixed-fermentation delights on offer.

We begin with Mashtun Millionaires, a tribute to food-themed rappers Scran Cartel. It's a Chardonnay-barrel-aged ale, fermented with Brettanomyces, all things that Yellow Belly is known for doing incredibly well. In the glass it's a deep muddy amber, the apparent density perhaps reflecting its 7.4% ABV. There's a sharp white-wine acidity in the aroma, as well as a grainy burlap dryness. The surprise on sipping is a floral foretaste: all rosewater and lilacs. A sharp funk follows, earthy with animal sweat, and then a sweet ripe grape kick on the finish. It's tough going, the sweetness more than a little cloying. If you like your Brett beers on the dirty side it's perfect, but while it's plenty complex, I found it tough to enjoy.

Something even more extreme follows: In a Galaxy Far, Far Away is a barley wine made with Brett and Lactobacillus in a barrel of unspecified origins. The hungry yeast has bumped up the ABV to 9.5%. This is another ochre-coloured one and offers an aroma both tart and bready. My first impression is of something more mellow and mature than the previous. I'm guessing the barrel was wine again because a medium-dry white is the first flavour effect. In there too is a berry tartness -- kir, anyone? -- and then the dusty rotten-wood funk from the Brett. The texture is thin and I think on balance that's a good thing: I'm not a fan of strong and chewy Bretted beers. A bit more sparkle would be good though; the flatness here makes it seem a little sad. Taken as a whole, it a good'un. The originating barley wine is all but indiscernible, but the way it's been replaced by grape wine characteristics is fun.

A second bottle of each has gone into the stash to find out what happens. I'm hoping one smooths itself out and that the other doesn't do anything stupid. Coming up on Stash Killer! Eventually.

An IPA kick

Time for another cross-sectional look at the IPA and IPA-adjacent offerings from Irish breweries over the past few months. 

I'm easing myself in with the first couple, starting without any alcohol. Early Start, by Pearse Lyons for Aldi, has been around for a while and has been getting plaudits from a number of directions so I thought it was about time I tried it. The head formation and retention impressed me immediately -- it really felt like I was holding a proper glass of beer. Under it, the body is a slightly sickly looking murky orange. Props to the aroma: a spicy, peppery dank with hints of lemon and floral bouquet, reminding me of American-style pale ales when brewed by UK breweries and served on cask. That's a compliment. The spice and the citrus comes straight through to the foretaste, and I thought for a second this was going to be properly convincing, but there is, ironically, an early finish. The taste evaporates into a watery dead end, hollow with a vestigial metallic, aspirin, bitterness. It tastes, I guess, like a very weak beer. There are no horrible flaws, there is plenty of hop character, and it's actively refreshing. But it's only good by the standards of non-alcoholic IPA, not the real thing.

Still not quite the real thing, a pale ale is next: Magic Mist, new from The White Hag. This is a substantial 5% ABV, completely opaque though also surprisingly pale: a very light shade of yellow. The aroma is a lovely mix of peaches, mandarin and mango: fairly tropical but with a gentle pinch of citrus. There's a bit of a switch in the flavour, turning away from real fruit and more towards the ersatz sort: cordials and candy. There's also too much contribution from the fuzz, bringing a gritty, chalky dry bite that interrupts the hops. This is one of those beers to make one wonder what the point of haze is: it definitely doesn't enhance the flavour, nor make the beer "juicy" as claimed on the label. The profile here has potential but overall it's a near miss for me.

A final pale ale, hOPTICAL, comes from O Brother and uses Kiwi hops Nelson Sauvin and Motueka. While very murky indeed, there's limited interference from the gunk in the flavour. There's a lovely mix of Motueka's slightly medicinal herbal grass thing with Nelson's softer fruit. Both bring plenty of bitterness so it's not one of those sickly-vanilla hazy jobs, nor cursed with garlic daftness. The only thing holding back its quaffability is the thick texture. It's easy to imagine one is drinking something much stronger than 5.5% ABV, and I'm not sure if that's a plus point or not. I liked it, though. You get the big bang of hops which is O Brother's signature move, yet it's not overdone and the individual flavours are available to be enjoyed separately. At €4.60 it was maybe a bit spendy for a pale ale, but that's exotic hops for ya.

We enter the IPA zone with a jump to 6% ABV and a banishing of all haze. This is Hard Day At Sea, on the Two Sides label, brewed as usual at Third Barrel. "West Coast" they say, and deliver an almost perfectly clear golden glassful. I don't resent the faint misting still visible. The hops aren't specified, which I kinda like as it removes any expectations. It's husky on the aroma: sesame seed and a little sweaty grapefruit rind. You in there, Cascade? The malt is the first thing to make itself felt in the flavour: it's heavier than the ABV implies, with golden syrup and marmalade qualities. Then we get that grapefruit and lemon rind west-coast kick, with the base malt just about dense enough to carry the bitterness. The sesame/caraway thing returns a little in the finish, but otherwise this is a very well executed example of contemporary west coast IPA. There's all the punch you could want, balanced by big malt, and at a pleasingly modest strength. Buy two if you see it; you'll want a second.

The ABVs accelerate ever upwards, with 6.2% the next stop and Whiplash Ratio the IPA. It's another proper-haze-craze pale yellow and with a handsome, cask-like, loose-bubbled head. It smells pithily bitter with a worrying seam of alkaline chalk in there too. The texture is chewy and dense with more than a little alcohol burn. Only 6.2%? I was expecting citrus in the flavour but it's more savoury than that: breadcrusts, garlic and spinach. There's something resembling a zesty bitterness at the front but it gets squashed by the murk before it can unfold, turning to a hard waxy effect. I found it all a bit rough and serious, reminding me most of all of a sample of something very unfinished taken from the fermenter. The brewery's official description includes pineapple and bubblegum but it tasted a long way from such frivolous joys to me.

On to Call of Juicy next, the latest in Wicklow Wolf's Endangered Species series. This one is 6.5% ABV and hopped with Citra, Sultana and Strata. It's another pale and murky job, smelling not so much juicy as fetid, like rotting tropical fruit. It's very thick and quite bitter with it, almost acrid. The promised juice only arrives at the end: satsuma and mandarin. Before that it's lime rind, carvery cabbage and vanilla. The hard bite in the finish, I suspect, is from the yeasty murk, something I shouldn't be able to taste. Very much not for me, this. It has good points, but not enough of them.

Something similar from Hopfully follows. Quicksand is the same sub-style, the same strength and more or less the same colour, maybe a little darker. The hops include Azacca and Amarillo so I'm expecting a bit more sweetness, though Citra also features. The aroma is worryingly savoury, with Mediterranean hints of garlic and sesame. There's certainly no burst of fruit on tasting, and it's the garlic which is most prominent. Other than that the foretaste is quite plain, and there's only a faint tang of orange candy in the finish. Very underwhelming, overall.

We go back to Whiplash at the 7% ABV mark, for Breaking Glass. This one is cloudy again, a bright orange yellow shade. It smells nicely juicy, of fresh-squeezed jaffa with just a hint of more serious citrus behind. The texture is beautifully smooth, in that New England style we expect from Whiplash but which they never bother to tell us about on the can (they should). The flavour is quite muted, given the strength. I find myself brought on a gentle journey through peach, coconut, mandarin and mango, with merely a seasoning of tart lime jelly. It's all rather jolly, but at this strength and this price, I had hoped for more. Haze fans will like it; haze sceptics can probably learn from its clean hoppiness. Me? I enjoyed the complex simplicity -- it is a good beer, no question -- but part of me wanted more oomph, more kick. I complain about Whiplash churning out an endless supply of 8% ABV hazy IPAs so feel silly for wanting this to be one of those.

It's over a year since 12 Acres last graced these pages. They're back with a double New England IPA called A Bit Further. This is only modestly double, being 7.8% ABV. It's hazy without going fully opaque and a deep shade of sunset orange. Speaking of orange, mandarin and jaffa feature in the aroma, though more the skin than pulp or juice: a promise of bitterness comes with the fruit. The body is very full and there's a considerable kick of alcohol, so it's no lightweight, despite that ABV. The flavour brings the orange flesh promised in the aroma, with a nice balance of sweetness against acidity -- it's not one of your vanilla-laden NEIPAs. The finish is quite quick for such a big beer and there's a tiny buzz of garlic in with the booze on the end. This is pretty decent overall, though maybe better suited to those who like their IPAs hot and heavy, rather than the strict hop purists.

Like anyone with an ounce of taste, I'm a big fan of Kinnegar's rye IPA Rustbucket, as well as its dark offshoot Black Bucket. They're both big, assertively bitter beers so I was a little apprehensive on opening the new doubled version: Shuttle Bucket. Mind you, the appearance would make anyone relax. It's a gorgeous amber shade and perfectly limpid-clear, topped by a generous just-off-white head. I didn't get much aroma at first, though further down the glass, once I could get my schnozz in, there was crisp rye bread and a grassy dankness. I don't think they've upped the hops sufficiently to match the gravity here. While it's big and sticky, with oodles of rich golden syrup and treacle -- every inch of 8% ABV -- the hopping is quite muted, with no more than a pinch of bitterness, and nothing I could pin directly on hops as against the bittering effects of rye. If you like your double IPAs heavy and malt-forward, in that California c.2010 sort of way, this'll bring you back. It left me wanting more citrus, more spice, more topnotes in general, however. Rustbucket remains a beer often expanded upon but never bettered.

And finally, dropping just last week: Big Feelings from Galway Bay. This one is 8.5% and single-hopped, or at least headline-hopped, with Citra. It's a slightly hazy amber in the glass and has quite a muted aroma: no big citrus or booze vapours, only gentle marmalade and toast. Obviously there's no such thing as English-style double IPA -- the very idea! -- but if there were, it might smell like this. The malt also carries the flag in the flavour. There's a smooth, golden syrup and oat cookies base, leading to still-sweet lime jelly, and only gradually growing in bitterness to the pithy finish. The density is palpable, but it's not hot nor heavy, just warming enough. This is one of those beers that's likely to annoy the extremophiles, but I liked the accessibility and ease of drinking.

Very much a mixed bag here, with considerable negative effects from all that haze. Those two west-coasters were my picks of the bunch.

Farmhouse rock

Time was, the wild-fermented beers were untouchably grown-up. Sour, funky, achingly dry -- they were strictly for the adult palate. Since then they've become just another platform for novelty recipes. I guess the tradition of serving Berliner weisse with syrup is at the root of this, and why "pastry sour" is now gurning in at us through the Overton window. Here's some of what's going on at the moment.

Kinnegar starts us off, with Brewers At Play 13: Grapefruit Saison. It's a novelty style with something of a pedigree, produced on and off by lots of brewers over the years. I guess it's the refreshing citrus bite that they reckon will complement the spicy dryness. This example is a little strong at 5.1% and surprisingly dark as well -- properly amber, and hazy, of course. It smells pithy, with the grapefruit dominant over the white-pepper saison aroma. That ABV gives it a thickness which I don't think is in its favour, or at least isn't to my taste, and with a lighter touch the beer would be wonderfully refreshing. The flavour is subtle and balanced, with a bathsalts mix of meadow and minerals, plus an easily missed hint of grapefruit juice right at the very front. This is a warming and filling sort of saison, well suited to the colder part of the year in which they released it. It captures the style's essence well, even if it did leave me hankering after something crisper.

Well I wasn't going to get that from the beer that came next. "Triple fruited pastry sour" goes the description on Lough Gill's Vermin. It's an orangey-pink colour, brewed with raspberry, apricot and mango to a sizeable 6.1% ABV. It does at least smell tart and tangy rather than sweet. The flavour is a mix of both. There's definitely a heavy and jammy side to it -- the sort of jam you get as the fruit filling in a pastry rather than the kind that comes in a pot. Raspberry dominates, as raspberry does. But that raspberry also contributes to the sourness, and there's a definite lactic tang in the blend. It gets sweeter as it warms, and I suspect is best consumed at low temperatures. This is the sort of thing I'd likely enjoy in a taster serving at a beer festival, and would note how it draws on both of its aspects. A full 440ml was tough going, though. The fun becomes work much too quickly.

And then that was followed by another: Work in Progress, which sounded ominous. This is also triple fruited, though with five different types of berry, and is a much lighter 4.3% ABV. It's a bright and bloody beetroot red in the glass, with an aroma of raspberry cordial and chalky fruit candy. It's not a huge amount thinner than the previous one, with still something of a jam or creamy fruit yoghurt feel. It is a lot more complex, though. As well as the raspberry I can pick out the strawberry and blackberry, and possibly even a hint of tartness from the blueberry and redcurrants. Taken all together there's an added piquancy: peppermint, or maybe just plain pepper. Although it's definitely sweet -- pastry first, sour second -- there's a lovely tang on the lips in the finish, and that's the key to its drinkability. I guess if you're going to make beers like this, dialling back the gravity is the most merciful approach.

While there was nothing particularly unpleasant in this set, I would be happier if local breweries spent more time honing the basics of saison, Berliner weisse, gose and whatnot, than jacking them up with eye-catching novelty ingredients. Yes, I'm old. Deal with it.

Two cans of what if

Lineman is a brewery best known for its straight-up right-on interpretations of classic beer styles. It's something I have massive appreciation for, so was a little wary when things took a turn for the experimental recently.

Electric Avenue Number 1 is an IPA and claims to be the first in a series of experiments with the style. It doesn't look like other breweries' experimental IPAs, being a near perfect clear golden colour with an even white head. Cascade and Centennial hops are long past their experimental phase, and Strata isn't exactly daring or weird either. I shouldn't quibble, though, because the beer is lovely. I expected bitter but it's highly perfumed, smelling of exotic jasmine and honeysuckle. The flavour is as clean as the beer looks, mixing incense spice with bubblegum candy, trailing off on blueberry, lychee and nectarine. 6% ABV gives the fruit and flowers plenty of base to work from. It's a sunny and summery sort of IPA, intense and a little heavy, but not difficult. The experiment was a success.

The imperial IPA Rabbit Hole is a different sort of experiment. The blurb says it was an attempt to create a beer with features from three sub-varieties: west coast, east coast and red. It certainly looks red in the glass, with a muddy sort of haze. The red liquorice rope of red IPA is apparent in the aroma, though there's a fresh and sharp side too, almost acrid, and I'm guessing that's the west coast. I get a crisp burntness on the foretaste, which isn't something I'd expect to find in IPA of any stripe. Summer berries -- strawberry and cherry -- come next, and the luscious sweetness is where east coast IPA enters the picture, as much about the soft texture as the actual taste. The finish is a little harsh: boiled spinach and cabbage, shading towards rubber. Thankfully that's brief, and hard candy is the only residual aftertaste. Once again the high ABV -- 8% this time -- serves to accentuate everything. I wouldn't necessarily deem this experiment a huge success. It's very much a red IPA at its core and you need to enjoy that style to enjoy this. The attempt to bring in aspects of other IPAs seems a bit, well, efforty, and more suited to home brewing. The end result is OK, but a little busy and unbalanced.

Was I right to be wary? Let's wait for the second Electric Avenue before passing judgement. Meanwhile, Undertone dark lager and Torrent porter are also out and about at the moment, if you're wanting some safer high quality.

Core values

Beer Hut is a brewery I associate mostly with way-out wacky-craft recipes, often involving the word "milkshake" somewhere in the name. It seems they've been doing a little growing up, or at least shifting to approach a different segment of the market, because they now have what looks suspiciously like a core range of very straight-edge pale ale recipes.

A Session IPA of just 3.9% ABV is where we'll start. The sub-4% market is poorly served in these parts so it's good to see a new one. It does look a little watery in the glass, though: a wan misty yellow with a thin and fading head. The aroma has that mineral/citrus soluble vitamin tablet effect that can often be found in even lower-strength beers when generous hopping is involved. Looks and smells are deceptive, because it's a whole different experience in the mouth. The body is plenty full, with an almost syrup-like texture. "Pillowy" says the can, and I concur. A big and multi-faceted flavour goes along with that, combining lemon candy, aspirin, fresh cabbage and tahini. It's all done with Chinook and Citra and could be accused of being a little harsh, but I enjoyed the punch. It says "Tropical" on the can and there I must dissent: it's far too citric for that. Overall, though, it's very impressive. My only criticism is the tiddly 33cl can, though it's only €2.50 a throw so you can always buy two.

The punch gets punchier when we move up to the Pale Ale. This is 4.5% ABV and brewed with Citra, Centennial and Simcoe. It's clearer in the glass albeit still fairly yellow. The citrus side of the American hops goes beyond my tolerance levels here. There's an intense bitterness which tastes almost sour to me, and has the concentrated tang of lemon washing up liquid, building to thick pine sap and fermenting grass. Savoury caraway seed provides a contrast in the finish, but is another feature which doesn't suit me. Again, the sheer amount of flavour they've packed in is nothing short of impressive, and it's completely free of technical flaws, it just didn't sit right on my palate.

An IPA finishes the trilogy and settles the score. "Bright & Juicy" says the can, and there's certainly a lot of fruit in the aroma; sweet and concentrated. This time the Citra is joined by Columbus and Mosaic and the ABV is a still-modest 5.8%. Mosaic's savoury caraway side is manifest in the foretaste, which immediately put the beer in my bad books. There's a decent dollop of mango and cantaloupe in the middle, and some funky dank resins, but then it fades out on an acrid husky dryness. Savoury-sharp and cloying-sweet do not a pleasant combination make, and I found this too hard going to be properly enjoyable.

It's a core range with no compromises, that's for sure. The only points I can ding it on relate to accessibility. It's too intense and extreme, not for the ordinary beer drinker in the street, but for me. My feeling is they could have reached more of a happy medium with these, and there's plenty of scope to tone things down while still steering clear of blandness. The Session IPA is the only one that gets away with being so loud.

As a palate (un)cleanser, something a bit more "craft": an imperial stout with silly add-ons and a daft name. I'll Just Have One... is described as a Biscoff imperial stout. It smells strong and sweet, which is par for the course I guess, with lots of cakey coffee and caramel. I get chocolate in the flavour, though specifically some kind of eastern European confectionery, served pre-wrapped on the side of a coffee that doesn't taste quite right. There's a herbal element in here: cardamom and aniseed. Kola Kubes. Tamarinds. Not that any of this is a criticism. None of the features clash or jar; it's heavy and strong sweet stout and totally unapologetic about that. There's a cookie on the can and if that's not what you signed up for it's your own fault. Part of me thinks Beer Hut should stick to recipes like this, but I'm sure there's room for all of it.

Fresh, bro

Assuming a full year on the best-before, my can of Ominous was five days out of the O Brother packing line when I opened it. It's an IPA, brewed with Citra and Ekuanot, to 6.9% ABV, and hazy as the day is long, as is the brewery's wont. On pouring I was impressed by the tall dome of fine froth on top, though remain unsure whether that's intrinsic to the beer or because I opened it very shortly after biking it home. The freshness is very apparent from the aroma, to the point of seeming too fresh, quite frankly. It smells of leaves and damp, mushed vegetation, though with a tangy fruit sourness as well. That becomes more of a bitterness on tasting: there's a mix here of hard, waxy bitterness fronted with candied orange peel. The texture is thick, which accentuates both sides of the flavour. Overall, I found it... interesting. While I appreciated the intensity, and loved the punchy Citra bittering, I couldn't help feeling that it would be better with some polish: allowed to drop bright and mellow a little. Maybe I should come back to it in a few months if there's any still around.

After dousing my palate in that hop napalm, the only thing for it was to open Flourish double IPA, also less than a week in the can. Despite its youth, it was much clearer and a pale gold, almost resembling an unfiltered lager. There's a savoury note in the aroma, which was a little surprising from the normally quite fruitsome El Dorado, Strata and Idaho 7. I'm happy to report it wasn't full of garlic to taste. The flavour is actually quite calm and restrained, for an 8.3% ABV beast: bittersweet marmalade, and a warming honey effect with floral perfume. The clean burn of the alcohol reminds me more of triple IPA than double -- it's refined, not sticky. This wasn't what I was expecting, and while I would have liked more flavour it makes for a pleasant sipper. This one does not require further maturation, however. I fear it could disintegrate into boozy blandness if left for any amount of time. Couldn't we all?

No stunning revelations for me here, but clear signs of a brewery that takes IPA very seriously and is determined to brew it to the highest international standard.

The silly and the serious

White Hag provides the goods for today's post, a wide-ranging bunch, dividing between the sweet and daft and some serious hop analysis.

Green beer is something that arrived in Ireland with the craft era. Fellow veterans of the Bull & Castle in the late-noughties will remember, fondly I hope, the sprayguns of food colour squirted into half-litre mugs of Blarney Blonde. Actually-green beer does show up from time to time, though none as lurid as this concoction. They've called it Shamrock Shake, a McDonalds menu item of which I have never had the pleasure. I gather mint is involved. This certainly smells minty: somewhere between a mint Aero and a sticky mint liqueur. The ice cream side comes in the texture first: it's thick and creamy, even though it's only 5.5% ABV. Lactose and vanilla both feature in the ingredients and their presence is very obvious. The mint piquancy arrives behind this, and I think helps offset the sweetness a little. I'm particularly interested in the chocolate effect it brings: mint Aeros are still there, as is mint chocolate chip ice cream. I swear I can taste chocolate, but it must just be the chocolate-shaped gap. Overall I rather enjoyed it. Novelty beers of this sort are much more humane when they are allowed to be themselves instead of trying to pass themselves off as an IPA or stout. This is a true-to-style Shamrock Shake ale.

That one was part of White Hag's new Spree Series: deliberately "fun" recipes. The other in the first set is Mochaccino: more lactose and vanilla, here joined by coffee and cocoa, and the ABV goes up to 6.5%. It smells like chocolate wafer biscuits more than a mochaccino, though the creaminess is spot on. It's not as sweet as I was expecting, and the coffee is at the centre of the picture, where it should be. This is no half-arsed coffee flavouring but a concentrated filter-coffee kick, with lots of palate-sticking oils and no small amount of bitterness. The other aspects circle this: milk chocolate, brown sugar and Chantilly cream. I'm not a big fan of this kind of coffee, and in beer form I thought it would benefit from being Irished-up a little, with extra alcohol. Props for that assertive coffee core, but the rest you've tasted before.

A note to the development team for the Spree Series: "fun" doesn't have to mean saturated in lactose.

The serious side is represented by two more in the Union single hop series. I was particularly looking forward to SMASH IPA Mosaic, Mosaic being one of my favourite hops, especially as deployed in The White Hag's own Little Fawn. This has a lot of the same going on -- big and ripe tropical fruit: mango, passionfruit and cantaloupe; juicy, but not in the fuzzy modern way. It's stronger than Little Fawn at 5.5%, and bitterer too. I get a little lemon and lime rind and zest, balancing and complementing the sweet side. That's your lot as regards complexity, but that's not a complaint. This is sublime: making the best possible use of the hop, showing off only its good side, with none of the nasty savoury aspect that seeps through in other beers. Any fellow Little Fawn fans who fancy something along similar lines with just a little more poke, get on this.

It was a smart move to pair the Mosaic with a sharply contrasting hop. SMASH IPA Sabro brings no fruit beyond the hardest bitter pith, with lots of coconut, an acidic bite of green cabbage and even a little acrid plastic. It's a workout and I love it. Sabro being Sabro starts at the very beginning of the aroma and maintains an angry consistency right into the long, long finish. Expecting something on these lines I deliberately placed this one second and it proved to be a good idea. If you are already in the Sabro-hating camp (I know you're out there) avoid this one unless you want your prejudices fully confirmed. For the pro-Sabro like me, and any who might have liked Sorachi Ace back when that was popular and aren't on the Sabro train yet: this is a perfect jumping-on point. Choo choo!

The Unions are deliciously educational while the Sprees are weird and confusing. Both have their place in beer but I'll take the clean Mosaic and Sabro for preference any day.

A riot of colour

Limerick's Treaty City Brewery seems to have found a new gear in recent months. Their output of seasonal specials has seen a big increase at a time when others have been putting the brakes on somewhat. Now they've also taken the opportunity to refresh the core range with three bright and distinctive cans, and were kind enough to ship me a set.

Outcast is the first of the new bunch, a very pale session IPA of 3.8% ABV, hopped with Columbus, El Dorado and Idaho-7, in generous proportions, according to the label. I liked the appearance, particularly the way the head looked like it had been freshly poured from a pub tap. The promised juice, or at least an orange squash effect, is right there from the start in the aroma. It's light without being watery, and quite heftily bitter: pithy; maybe even a little waxy. The sweet orange is still present too, tasting like a juicy segment of the fruit rather than actual juice. Where it falls down a little is the murk. There's an unpleasant dirty grittiness, particularly in the finish, which the hops can't quite overcome. This is nearly very good but will have to settle for an OK.

The one survivor from the original range is the pale ale, Harris. It's still 5% ABV, amber in colour, and hopped in retro fashion with Cascade alone. The earthy side of the hop comes out in the aroma, alongside caramel from the big malt base. Just as the appearance is pin-bright, the flavour is completely clean. Interestingly, crystal malt doesn't feature on the ingredients list, but it has that toffee quality which crystal normally brings. On top there's a pinch of lemon and a sprinkling of cedarwood spice. It shows that this is a recipe well-honed over many iterations. The flavour intensity isn't much higher than the previous beer, and I think the alcohol boost warrants a bit more than is delivered here. Again, though, it's fine, and even delightfully old-fashioned. I don't know of any other similar Irish beer on the market at the moment.

The former Shannon River IPA has been superseded by Invasion, coming in slightly stronger at 6% ABV. Once again it's single hopped, this time with Centennial. In the glass it's a clean and clear golden shade, with a wholesome biscuity aroma, which I'm crediting to the Vienna malt. The mouthfeel is nicely full, but far from overdone or sticky, reminding me more of a bock lager than an IPA, which I'm perfectly happy with. Hop character takes centre stage in the flavour, bringing a straightforward sort of bitterness with elements of lemon and pine. It's very much in the west-coast style, and while not madly complex is likely to provide balm for the palate of anyone fed up with haze. Perfect core beer material.

In with this set was one of their specials from last year, Savage Beour milk stout. The brewery has been rightly called out for the sexist imagery deployed on the can and has done a woeful job on social media trying to defend it. I've certainly been disinclined to buy any of their beers while that remains the response.

Turning my attention to the contents, it doesn't smell sweet or milky, but quite dry, with a lot of toasty burnt roast. The flavour is similarly serious, with coffee and high-cocoa dark chocolate to the fore. There's a background complexity going on as well, a little floral, with a hint of coconut too. This isn't the rich and sweet stout I was expecting but I appreciated its balanced restraint.

That's it from me on Treaty City for now. There'll be more if and when they get round to fixing their branding.

Giving out Yards

The Pivot presents: Yard & Crafts, a new online beer shop based out of Brickyard, Dublin 16's finest beer pub. Two exclusives from DOT ensured I had an order in on launch day, delivered promptly and intact.

I was sold a pup with Turn The Lights Off, a barrel-aged sour ale with pineapple. The website promised me it was in a glow-in-the-dark bottle -- something I prize highly in beer -- but the bottle did not glow. With little chance of a refund on that basis, I turned to the liquid inside. It also doesn't shine, pouring a muddy brown and completely flat in the glass. The aroma is sweet and tannic, like cold sugary tea. It really wasn't walking the walk for a €16 bottle so far. The flavour went a long way towards redeeming that. The advertised pineapple is very pleasant and very fresh. I served it cold, and with the light body it became much more refreshing than any 8.2% ABV beer has a right to be. The sourness is pitched at pineapple levels too: just enough to accentuate the sweetness and offset the alcohol. High attenuation brings a balancing dryness, with more tannins for extra refreshment. Overall it's a summery sort of punch, made for sharing in the outdoor sunshine; enjoyable, but don't expect anything too serious.

The second bottle was Sherry Pale, with its yellow spray job. The sparse label tells us it's a "barrel aged imp pale" and 7.8% ABV. The word "sherry" had me expecting big oxidation, but of course that's not going to be the case with a sherry-barrel beer, necessarily. And indeed it's a mellow and fruit-driven affair, showing notes of white grape and lychee. A dry spice complexity slips in behind this, bringing nutmeg and gunpowder tea. The final aspect is a floral topping of rosewater and jasmine. None of it is extreme, and while it's sweet, it's not cloying. It's also almost totally flat, and I can't help feeling that a little sparkle would have made it more interesting. A possible use case is as a lighter alternative to a botrytised dessert wine.

Both are excellent examples of DOT's highly creative output, though I'd have been as happy to get them in smaller cans. I'm not doing much by way of ceremonious presentation at the moment, and maybe these are better saved until that returns to our beer-drinking lives.

What they do to stout

It's a golden age for drinkers who like their stout with a little something extra in it. Everyone seems to be at it, and none more so than Wicklow Wolf. Their enthusiasm has even leached across to other breweries, as we'll see with today's pair of review candidates. 

Back in 2018, before Wicklow Wolf became the beast it is today, they brewed a coffee porter for their local roastery Java Republic. It was a triumph, and I was pleased to see the band back together for the latest in the hacked Apex series. Apex Espresso is based on their excellent core-range extra stout, with 6.5% ABV. An oily roast aroma starts us off: concentrated and sweet, reminding me of beans burning on Sambuca. It's gentler to taste. The coffee is largely in the finish, oily again and creating a long and slick aftertaste. Up front it's mostly classic Apex, big on roast of the grain variety with a pronounced green vegetal hopping. There's a creamy lactic side as well. As usual I don't think the "enhancing" of Apex enhanced it particularly, but nor did it ruin it. This is another high-end collaboration between the brewer and the coffee merchant.

The collaboration continues at Lough Gill, this time with Wicklow Wolf as the guest. The result is an "imperial pastry stout" with salted caramel and Oreos called, with more of a straight face than it deserves, Ocean of Storms. It smells of all the pastry: jam donuts, custard tarts and, yes, gooey chocolate biscuits. The palate gets treated to an extreme sugar rush, largely chocolate, but with a mushed mass of other candy, perfume and syrup goings-on. This is the other extreme from Apex Espresso: overdone, overblown, and while not actively horrible, hard going for this drinker at least. You need to be in the mood for something very silly, and the branding is inappropriately serious. I'm sure there's an audience for this, and it's convincingly Omnipollish, but it tired me out before I was a quarter of the way through.

As a grumpy old geezer, I prefer my big stouts, by and large, without the add-ons. Ocean of Storms is a headline example of how it goes wrong. I don't mind the occasional bit of mucking about à la Apex Espresso, and I'll readily accept chilli as an alternative or additional addition. That's about the height of it, though. If you want my advice on how to jazz up your stout, try hops.

Bitter in Bluebell

I have four different brands out of Third Barrel for you today, instead of the usual three. Eight beers and a whole heap of hops.

By Third Barrel for Two Sides is Think Hoppy Thoughts, a Citra pale ale of a modest 4.3% ABV. Nothing modest about the aroma, mind: I got a jet of zest and dank up the nostrils as soon as I pulled the tab. This was almost two months in the can when I opened it but still smelled banging fresh. It's yellow and soupy-looking in the glass, and though there are oats in the grist, the body is as light as you might expect given the strength. I'd say there's some New Englanding going on here, for although the mouthfeel isn't fluffy, the flavour is sweet from the get-go: not what I expect when Citra gets top billing. It's a kind of lemon-curd sugar and zest, with a little savoury spring onion on the finish. This is assertive without being intrusive, and very much designed for session drinking. It makes me hanker after easy-going conversation pints in the pub. Some day...

A double IPA that might just work in the same context is Why Can't IBU, it being a mere 7.5% ABV. It's a very fuzzy murky yellow shade and is another one with a busy aroma, this time pineapple and apricot. Despite the modest strength there's a sizeable alcohol kick; an actual burn on the palate. The flavour stays distinct around this: mandarin, peach and mango. And of course it has that big a fluffy New England texture and a mild pinch of sweetening vanilla. Overall it's a better sort of hazeboi, avoiding the usual wrong turns, punchy but accessible. Yes, I would take a pint.

Third Circle, next, brings us a session IPA called Technicolors, promising tropicality with its Enigma and Bravo hops. The aroma is quite sweet, suggesting fruit candy more than actual fruit. I didn't get a whole lot of either in the flavour; maybe a little candy in the finish, but up front it's all bitterness: hard, concentrated citrus and a slick piney resin. It's one of those supposedly session IPAs where it isn't the strength (it's only 4.1% ABV) but the slightly harsh hopping which might prevent you from opening a second and subsequent can. Fans of the west-coast vernacular may appreciate it. Although it's not clear, it is clean and the hop flavours are very distinct. I enjoyed the robust hopping but was ready to move on to something else by the end.

More recently, Third Circle released India Inked black lager, a beer style not normally known for its high hops. This one puts them front and centre in the description, specifically the New Zealand variety Pacifica. It's a little on the thick side for a lager, with a creamy porter-like mouthfeel. I assume the 5% ABV has something to do with that. It definitely wouldn't pass as a schwarzbier, though no such claim is made. The aroma is a mix of sweet roast with a leafy greenness, which is very pleasant. Those hops get properly busy in the flavour, leading on gooseberry, kiwifruit and oily avocado. What bitterness there is is provided by the dark roasted grain, though it brings a smooth layer of milk chocolate as well. The finish is fresh and floral: lavender and rosewater. It's a gorgeous combination, complex without seeming busy. It may not be in typical black lager style but I'd still like to see lots more beers like this.

The "something else" after Technicolors was The Juice by Stone Barrel, whose name leaves one in no doubt what to expect. In the glass it's a very pale yellow colour, with almost a greenish tint. The head is loose and short-lived. Creamy vanilla jumps out of the aroma immediately, though doesn't go on to dominate the flavour. That begins with a dry mix of chalk and celery, leading on to the promised juice: a mouthwatering mandarin and mango middle. Sweetness builds to eventually bring us to vanilla in the finish, but none of it lasts very long. There's an almost watery feel, and while I prefer that to a hot cloying  mess, it's a bit disappointing for an IPA at 6% ABV. This is accessible, non-extreme, but not very exciting either. Anyone already bored of the haze craze would do well to steer clear as it doesn't do anything interesting with the format.

Then arriving at the same time as the double IPA from Two Sides reviewed above was Stone Barrel's Shout!, also 7.5% ABV and also an opaque shade of yellow. The hops are listed for us this time: Mosaic, Citra and Sabro. It's bitterer than the other, helped in no small part by the unmistakable Sabro element, adding a pithiness in contrast to the New England rounded feel. The aroma is an unspecified zest, and while the flavour has plenty of that, there's a sweeter side too: fruit candy like Skittles make an appearance and lighten the mood. The bittering gives this more of a west-coast feel than many a contemporary "DDH DIPA" though it still plays for team haze: don't expect anything too clean and sharp. For my part, I thought it was fine, but it lacks poke: given the name and the style, I was expecting something less meek and balanced. Not a complaint I make very often.

And so we come to Third Barrel, and let's start dark with Painted Black, a (hooray!) black IPA of (hooray!) 7% ABV. It was a bit of a fuss to pour, with lots of foam piling up in the glass. Black IPA, before it became a retro novelty, got a lot of stick for not being a real or proper style. A big part of why I disagree with that is the uniquely BIPA cabbage character the good ones have. This has it in spades, right from the aroma: spicy, tarry, vegetal. That follows straight through to the flavour: a long-lasting acidic veg kick, but also big on roast, but also bursting with citrus. It's beautiful and, crucially, unique to this style. Though it might be a tiny bit on the brown side, this is a black IPA's black IPA, delivering exactly what's it's supposed to. The strength gives the body a roundness that helps carry the wallop from its hops and dark malt. Sip, enjoy, and rage that every brewery doesn't have a black IPA of this calibre in its core line-up.

We top out on a Third Barrel double IPA on, presumably, a pandemic theme, called This Isn't Forever. No half measures with the haze here: it looks like 440mls of beaten egg. No half measures with the hops either: Citra and Vic Secret bring the noise. The latter makes it smell of aniseed, but both of them make it bitter. I thought Technicolors laid that on strong but this is several levels up. I guess the 8% ABV lends it extra scope. The result is a hard beeswax and bitumen opener, relenting only slightly to let lime rind and ripe green spinach come through. The only nod to your usual haze is the fluffy texture, which sort-of offsets the harshness a little, in a weird way. As with the companion session IPA, I had a soft spot for the uncompromising punchiness, but by the end I was done with IPA for a while.

I doubt Third Barrel is, however.

Bread of heaven

To Longford today, and a couple of beers from Longford Town's St Mel's.

The first is a new hazy IPA called My Twist. It looks like hazy IPA from a brewery that either hasn't got the hang of it, or doesn't care how the hype breweries do it, because it's orange and translucent rather than yellow and opaque. Hüll Melon, Azacca and Amarillo hops should bring plenty of fruitiness but it smells quite dry, with an acrid aspirin bitterness. A light body is promised, and indeed delivered: no big New England fluff here, and it feels much less than its substantial 5.2% ABV. The flavours on that are clean, but quite understated. There's a pinch of limey citrus and some sweet oat cookies, but nothing really jumps out as distinctive. I found it thirst-quenching, easy-going and enjoyable. And if it enrages a few insufferable hazebros along the way, that's all to the good as well.

St. Mel's is the latest brewery to have a go at using leftover bread in its grists. There have been plenty of great examples of this, going back to the first I ever tried: Brussels Beer Project's excellent Babylone IPA. This one, SymbioBeer Project No. 1, is a Belgian-style golden ale of 8.1% ABV so natuurlijk I poured it into a Duvel glass. It didn't look like Duvel, however, being a much deeper amber shade -- barely golden at all. There are lots of sweet esters in the aroma; headachey, like clove rock or marker pens. And that's the centrepiece of the flavour too, hot above all, but sweet too: hard sugary candy mixing with cinnamon and clove, plus some slightly nasty solvent as well. The clean digestible quality of real Belgian golden ales is missing from this completely. Those brewers, famously, create the effect by using fully fermentable sugars, so it shouldn't be surprising, perhaps, that bread as an adjunct doesn't give the same results. 75cl of this was tough going. I humbly suggest giving IPA a go for No. 2 in the series.

There seems to be a new air of experimentation on the go at St. Mel's. I'm all for it, even if the beers don't always suit me.

So it's come to this

The non-alcoholic beer boom brings a new local brand to the shelves. So.Beer is part of a range of health drinks from a company called The Naked Collective, contract brewing at Larkin's, initially. At the helm is Niall Phelan, whom beer-watchers will remember as a co-founder of Rye River and sometime head of BrewDog's Irish operation. The company is generously providing vouchers for free four-packs until the end of this month, so I picked up one of each to give them a spin.

First out is the plain So.Beer Lager. It looks convincing: a bright and clear gold with a proper continental head. The aroma is sweet and quite worty, more like the wonky old-fashioned non-alcoholic beers of yesteryear than any modern iteration. The texture is light like a light lager, but has enough body to feel like beer; it's not watery, but is refreshing. The carbonation is gentle and tingly, which helps that. Its flavour is... slight. Malt sweetness is still at the centre, and there's a very faint lemon zest in the finish, which I'm guessing is hop-derived, but is much lower than I'd like, even in a plain lager. I found it impossible to convince myself I was drinking beer. As a malt-based soft drink it's passable. It's thirst-quenching and pleasant-tasting, as beer is, so it can be considered a substitute of sorts, but it didn't satisfy my need for a beer.

Unsurprisingly, it was a case of the same only moreso with So.Beer Hint of Grapefruit. Immediately on opening there was a blast of that fizzy grapefruit drink you had on holiday that time but haven't been able to find since. A deep sniff reveals something on the spectrum between Lemon Fanta and Lilt. The unfermented malt powder thing remains ever-present in the flavour, with the grapefruit strongest in the finish. The foretaste is very weak, however, and the whole taste is underwhelming. I preferred the plain one. Still, it's without technical fault and genuinely refreshing.

To be brutally honest, I think both of these would have been better off without the malt, presenting as water-and-hops or water-and-fruit soft drinks. Both listed bread yeast as the means of fermentation, which is not something I'd seen before, and I'm not sure it works. My recommendation is to leave beery thoughts behind when you're drinking them and you'll have a better time.

Out of the West

Presumably to teach me a lesson for my sarcastic tweets concerning the launch of their latest imperial stouts, Galway Bay Brewery very kindly shipped me a set of them just before Christmas. I mean, I assumed it was a mistake and kept them packed and ready for collection until February, but when it looked like the recall notice wasn't coming, I slid the lid off the box.

As well as the three stouts, which I'll get to, there was an interloping bottle of barrel-aged barley wine: Boulevardier. This 13% ABV monster was created in collaboration with Wrocław's Browar Stu Mostów and has spent two years in bourbon and vermouth barrels. A Boulevardier is a cocktail, I had to be told. I'm the wrong person to assess whether it is accurately represented as beer here. It's very nice, though, and 100% beery, not spirituous or cocktailish. The main flavour is malt: treacly brown bread and plum pudding, with a sticky-toffee sauce texture to match. Chocolate of the sort you'd find in good porter or stout is central also. There's a certain wine-and-herb complexity around this, which I'm guessing is the vermouth, and some of bourbon's vanilla, but not too much. In fact it's all very mellow and well-integrated. Despite being mostly quite sweet, there's a lovely dry finish, which is where it resembles a vermouth cocktail most. Overall, it's a beauty, and excellent nightcap material. But I was only getting started.

What caused the stir over the new Two Hundred Fathoms is that it's been a while. Previously an annual release in February, they skipped 2019 while they were moving breweries, then rescheduled the 2020 launch to the end of the year: arguably a more sensible time to be putting out a fancy box set of barrel aged imperial stouts. The 2020 vintage is the usual 10% ABV. The flavour unfolds gradually, beginning with sweet honeycomb, then Fisherman's Friend, strong filter coffee, herbal liqueur, hard caramels coated in chocolate, and pungent French cigarettes. It's a very 20th century sort of combination; the sort of thing you'd drink during a war, at a café in a devastated city: hard, uncompromising, and thought provoking. I prefer something a bit straighter in my imperial stouts, like a proper kick of green bitter hops. This offers something different from that, and very different from what whiskey casks normally impart. The raw and rough seaside-in-winter kept me interested for the whole half litre, and intrigued me regarding what was to come next.

With Two Hundred Fathoms being such a complex beauty, and its ageing potential well-established, I was more than a little sceptical of the brewery's decision to pastrify their stocks of the 2018 vintage. But they did, in two different ways. Reckoning it would be the more subtle of the pair, I first opened the Calendar Coffee: Teamwork Espresso edition. My photography was too slow to catch the head on this but it was an impressively dark shade of brown, for the few fizzling seconds it existed. The beer, its alcohol boosted to 12%, smells vinous and boozy: it has definitely been aged. The coffee is surprisingly subtle, and is actually well within the bounds of what you would expect from dark malt alone. That side of the picture is relaxed enough to allow the mature plum and raisin notes come through. The end result is a mix of strong and roast-forward coffee with softer and warming Pedro Ximinez sherry. I liked it a lot. This is a whole different perspective on the base beer, and allowing the brewery to do the ageing seems like a very good idea.

The second of the set is with Madagascan Vanilla Beans & Toasted Coconut. The visuals are all the same, as is the ABV. However, this one tastes hotter, with a headachey mix of cough syrup and cream sherry. Once again the flavours are well integrated -- I couldn't pick out vanilla or coconut specifically -- but it's not an improvement on either of the less involved versions. The bitter herb effect is there still, but seems to have become harsher, not mellower, nor softer with the added flavours. A half litre of this was the hardest work of the set. It has its own complexity, and it's definitely not a daft novelty beer, but I found it a tough one to enjoy. This is where I thought, again, that leaving it alone to age without bells and whistles was a better idea.

I'm told this is the beginning of a new annual release cycle for Galway Bay. Later this year we'll see the 2021 vintage accompanied by more flavoured versions of the 2020, as well as a different box of unenhanced vintages. Much as I enjoyed the coffee one, it's the latter I'm looking forward to most. Big thanks to the brewery for sending me these.