Herbs and spices

Hops are over-rated. Did you know they're not even native to Ireland? Disgraceful that they're even allowed. Today's beers are from two breweries determined to do things a more traditional way.

OK, fine, ginger isn't native to Ireland either. I'm intrigued by Zingibeer on a number of levels. For one, it's that rarely-produced style: proper ginger beer, with minimal malt involved, just sugar, water, yeast and spices. For another it's from Persistence, a brand that hitherto has only produced pintable pub beers in orthodox styles, mainly sold at a cluster of scenester bars in Dublin's south city centre. This is the first bottled offering and very much not what they normally do. No provenance is given so I don't know if this came from their usual host brewery JJ's.

The product is 4% ABV and silver-coloured, pouring with plenty of fizz and an absence of head, which begs for ice-and-a-slice to take the bare look off. There's a pleasing savoury botanical aroma, suggesting rosemary and sage to me. It's predominantly sweet but not excessively so and there's a decent amount of substance to the body: it does feel like a beer, albeit a very highly carbonated one. I think it could have done with more ginger as the spicing is a little muted to my taste, the buzz only really arriving late, with no accompanying burn. Before that, the herbs are busy, creating more of that savoury roast-dinner effect. I'm quite partial to the occasional roast dinner. The sugary aftertaste is where it resembles your more standard ginger ale mixer. It's a bit of fun, and does fill a gap in the market. It's not a beer for pinting through, however. Half a litre on a warm evening was plenty.

Beoir Chorca Duibhne has used botanicals from the brewery garden in All Seasons. This gruit contains gorse, dandelion, dock, primrose, yarrow and, oh... hops. Oh well. It took an age to pour from the 75cl bottle due to the masses of off white foam forming on top of a dark red-brown body. It smells sweet and wholesome,  freshly baked bread combining with oily and nutritious greens. I was expecting a heavy and sweet flavour to go with that but it's surprisingly light and clean; pleasingly so. A crisp fizz and no dark malt character makes it seem almost lager-like. I wasn't able to pick out any specific herb flavours, and I thought gorse's coconut would be the easiest to spot. Instead there's just a general sense of botanicals set against a dry background, a little like a vermouth without the wine character. I wouldn't have minded a little more flavour intensity, but I still really liked this. At only 5.5% ABV it manages to offer an excellent refreshment factor alongside the subtle gruit complexity. Nicely done.

It's easy to complain that everything is a hazy IPA these days, but there has been some very interesting and diverse stuff coming out of Irish breweries lately. I'll be writing about what I've found in due course. Plus a load of hazy IPAs from Whiplash, obvs.