Untapped

I love brewpubs but when a  new one opens in Ireland I generally don't expect to be able to try their beer as they tend to be in out-of-the-way areas, reserved for the motoring classes. So it was with the Slieve Bloom brewery at the Slieve Bloom Inn in Kinnitty, Co. Offaly, brewing since 2018. But I guess it's because of the New Dispensation that they got the canners in and shipped at least some of those up to my neighbourhood. Hooray for the New Dispensation! I picked up two of their beers at the Mace on South Circular Road.

A red ale is first, called Pikeman, named for the locals who forged and wielded anachronistic and ineffective weapons in the 1798 rebellion. It's a warm, deep red colour, with a touch of murk to suggest it's a living beer rather than filtered and sterile. There's a slight sharpness to the aroma, berries and balsamic, but the flavour is more settled. It hits all of the good points of Irish red ale, including the dry-roast background, a cake and caramel malt base, and then top notes of summer fruit. The fade-out is dry and tannic, like a mug of hefty black tea. It's all done at 4.6% ABV which is modest for the complexity here. It doesn't pull any tricks or gimmicks but does deliver exactly what Irish red ale ought to, in an impressively assertive way. Though built for country-pub drinking, a can at home was perfectly enjoyable.

The second is called Rising Moon, a "berry IPA" at 5% ABV. The label tells us that blueberries are the ones in question. It's not blue, it's a medium amber. There's not much going on in the aroma, just a very vague pale-ale biscuits and citrus. The flavour isn't much more assertive: it begins on crisp lemon cookies, with an almost lager-like vibe. I waited for the blueberry but that failed to emerge. Instead, there's an unpleasant rubbery bitterness late on. I'm guessing this is down to the fruit addition, and if so it was a bad idea. This nearly works as an easy-going brewpub IPA, but that tang really spoils the simplicity. I'm not sure that blueberry IPA is a viable concept in the first place, but even if it is, this is not an example of it done well.

There's promise in the Slieve Bloom offerings, but I think they'll work best in the pub. Putting them in cans in specialist off licences pits them against other breweries who are playing the game on a different level.