Wheatless

Erdinger is a weissbier brewery. For many in these parts, I'm sure, it's the only weissbier brewery. They've had a very decent Helles on the books for some years --  Fischer's -- but have always kept the brand separate, pretending it doesn't come from the same vast plant in the Munich suburbs. For some reason now they've decided to alter that arrangement, releasing a lager under the Erdinger brand for the first time, that I've noticed anyway.

Erdinger Helles is suspiciously the exact same strength as Fischer's Hell: 5.1% ABV. It's a handsome rich golden colour in the glass, though the head faded a little more quickly than is polite. Cake, biscuits and grass are the aroma, fully in compliance with the style's requirements, while the mouthfeel is full and almost chewy. This is a filling beer; properly wholesome, though still clean and precise. The flavour offers some fun floral topnotes on honey and white bread. It's pretty damn good, just like Fischer's is/was. If this is a straight rebrand, I'll happily take the excuse to buy it and drink it again. Frankly, Erdinger are no great shakes at making standard weissbier so why not flip the brand to excellent lager?

With this comes a lemonaded version: Erdinger Radler. It's already quite sweet, so would that clash with the sugary soft drink? Not really, as it turned out. The beer side of the equation is deeply buried under the classy cloudy lemonade, one that tastes like real lemons and is properly bitter. I don't know that the beer is really adding much to the picture, other than whatever buzz you get from 2.6% ABV. The sugar is more likely to have you buzzing than the alcohol. Still, opened on a warm summer's afternoon, this hit the spot just right -- sharp, refreshing and energising. Can't say fairer than that.

Is this the beginning of a whole new era for the Erdinger brand? Is hazy IPA and pastry stout only a matter of time? Stay tuned: anything can happen!

Going to town on the hops

It's blog post three of my Dublin taproom catch-up and this time it's a Saturday afternoon at Urban Brewing. The financial district is quiet at weekends so there was plenty of elbow room in the outside space, plus attentive service as we worked through the menu, half by half.

Round one brought Urban Brewing Mexican Lager, and I was particularly interested to see how it compared to Open Gate's version from last week. Not well, unfortunately. They seem to have opted for Corona as the template, and while it's attractively clear and pale golden, it's very thin and plain, unable to hide a vinegary tang that wonky brewpub lager sometimes shows. There's a somewhat redeeming hint of biscuit as it warms, but really nothing to give it proper character. Maybe they were aiming for those who prefer their summer lager to be tasteless, but I think such people would like an international brand label on it too.

I was much more interested in what arrived with it: a murky glass of gloop posing as NZIPA. The brewery says this is all Nelson Sauvin, added at 18g/L and -- insider tip -- when a g/L figure is mentioned, that always means "a lot". The aroma is all-out dank and grassy, smelling fresh but also heavily saturated. I get lots of spice in the flavour, black pepper intensifying to incense. That's not an effect I associate with Nelson but I loved it regardless. The haze doesn't get the chance to spoil it in any way: no grit, no gunk, just bright and clean hops. Here is the sort of playfully uncompromising beer that in-house breweries can do so well if they pull the stops out.

It's back to lager for the next round and Vienna Lager is sometimes used as a synonym for Mexican Lager, so seeing both styles on from the same small-batch brewery was odd but intriguing. Sadly the intrigue ends there. This is better than the Mexican, but not by much. It's a little fuller-bodied and there's a mildly fruity flavour which could count as character, but really it's not much more interesting than the other one. Urban seems to be having a bit of an off-season as regards lager.

But not so for the murk. Here's Tropical Pale, and just like the lagers are close siblings, this is very much on the same lines as the NZIPA. The hops have been absolutely stuffed into it and the result is beautifully dank and resinous. That of course means it's not even slightly tropical tasting, but that doesn't matter. A hard and bitter flavour gives it loud west-coast IPA vibes, particularly impressive when the ABV is only 4.7%. Once again it's clean and brash and utterly delicious.

I wasn't expecting to be impressed by the Weisse Bier. I rarely am, no matter who makes one. This 5%-er takes the banana part of the spec and runs with it, and keeps running. That begins with a huge banana candy aroma, and then doubles down on the sweet esters in the flavour, banana becoming banoffee. It's quite lightly textured, which helps prevent it turning too cloying, and while it looked a bit flat on arrival there's plenty of sparkle despite big bubbles in the head. Half a pint was no chore but I'm not sure I'd have been on for a bigger measure.

The promise of more adorable hops makes India Pale Lager the finisher. This is the weakest one of the session at 4.5% ABV but yet again it's resins all the way. Here it's a kind of oily citronella effect in the aroma followed by a bright and fresh citrus foretaste. I'm guessing the aim of IPL is to deliver zingy pale-ale hopping on a lager-crisp body, and if so this one gets the formula exactly right. If the aim is to make something that's calm and easy-drinking, then no: this remains an absolute riot of west-coast hop joy and frankly would be impossible to enjoy simply as a lager. No matter. A cleanly aggressive hop-bomb in a sessionable package is as good place to end as any.

This brief session reminded me of what a great asset to the city Urban Brewing is, and how much I missed my regular ticking sessions at the bar. I will be making more of an effort to pop along in future.

Tiny maverick operator

Larkin's has done another rebrand and this time we're going with bespectacled anthropomorphic animals. OK then.

New in the line-up is a session IPA called Tiny. It's not all that tiny by these standards, an even 4% ABV. In the glass it's pale and lightly hazy, smelling pleasantly of fresh mango and mandarin. It follows that by being sweetly juicy on the palate with all the same fruits. A buzz of sherbety baking-soda minerality finishes it off. There's no real bitterness and quite an abrupt finish, but for what it is, it absolutely works. The base is as light as expected but by no means thin -- thanks again, oats. Writing that took half the glass and for the other I just enjoyed drinking it, for it is very much a drinking beer, one of unfussy good quality. Enjoy Little Fawn but would like it in bigger cans? Hello.

Despite the clarity, Tiny's label claimed it's "east coast" but the subsequent IPA in the series is definitely in the east coast style. This is Maverick, and Larkin's isn't the first Irish brewer to put a goose on the label of a beer called Maverick in a hilarious Top Gun call back. Theirs has a hat though. The beer is 5.3% ABV and properly murky. There's a decent amount of fruit in here, more citrus than tropical however, but there's also a nasty dry poppyseed savoury thing which overrides it. It's a full-bodied and warm, tasting like more than its 5.3% ABV. I perceive a very marked contrast between this and the previous one, in that it's just not as good, and I don't think that's solely because of my preferences -- the hops sing better in Tiny, and that can't be faked.

The next one is a re-brew. Operator was a Larkin's pilsner back in 2019. Now they've repurposed the name for something just called "lager", at 4.75% ABV because those louts need that second decimal place. Larkin's started out as a lager brewery so I expected this to be good, and it looks great: clear and golden and sparkling. The aroma is classically German -- bittersweet, herbal and grassy. The body is rounded and the flavour is peachy with red apple first before reverting back to the classic German attributes, all red cabbage, rocket and basil. Despite the apparent sparkle, the mouthfeel is smooth, making this another full-bodied one. As such, it exudes classy lager vibes -- a bigger character than a sub-5% strength would suggest, almost shading to the bock or Märzen zone -- but lovely smooth and flavourful drinking. If the brewery is going to go resurrecting old lager recipes I loudly request the Baltic porter next.

I wish Larkin's luck with its new look. It's striking and fun and all the things can art is supposed to be. That IPA ought to find its fanbase, it just isn't me today. The other two are much more what I'm after and I'd happily make them regulars if they stick around.

In summery

Two broadly season-appropriate offerings from Odell today, beginning with Sippin' Tropical. This is a variant of their Sippin' Pretty sour beer, one I wasn't terribly impressed by back in 2019. Here they've replaced the açaí, elderberry and whatnot with pineapple, passionfruit and tangerine, which sounds like a much more attractive proposition. It's still just 4.5% ABV too. There's a cleanly tart aroma with a hint of the tangerine but not much fruit otherwise. It gets a little busier on tasting, with all three elements represented, but quite muted overall. I'm especially surprised at the passionfruit not showing off for once. The mild fruit matches a mild tartness making for some quite plain thirst-quenching. This is fine for those summer drinking occasions where it only has to be cold and fizzy, but don't expect much beyond that.

Hazer Tag was added to their range two years ago, when I guess it was apparent that this trend wasn't going away. It's a 7% ABV IPA and moderately hazy: a translucent orange rather than yellow emulsion. There's a citrus tang in the aroma, not quite juicy but juice adjacent, and a slightly worrying dry savoury edge as well. The juice asserts itself on tasting, coming with a slightly inappropriate intense sweetness, leaning it away from real oranges and towards cordial territory. Thankfully it doesn't go too far. A balancing bitterness follows; a lemon or lime bite that keeps the sweet side and a heavy mouthfeel from clogging up the palate. Finally the savoury element materialises only briefly in the very finish, flashing fried onions and burnt rubber. Nothing to worry about, however. It's no stunner, and possibly not even up to the stellar standard of Odell's more established beers, but like the one before it, it gets the job done.

These cans cost €2.50 each in Molloy's and as such represent pretty decent value for money. If they're still available one could do a lot worse than stock up on them for whatever casual al fresco drinking is left to us this year.

Return flights

After Rascals, the next stop on my Dublin brewery staycation was Open Gate, now living up to its name and accepting walk-ins. Despite a gap of over two years since my last visit, it's much the same as always, except the flights are down to three beers now, though I got a welcome taster of a fourth on arrival.

So, we begin with a Gin Botanical Lager. Pale, clear and headless it smelled like lemonade with a faint herbal lacing on the citrus. The flavour was a surprise. They've really brought the gin to it, dry as hell and packed with perfumey herbs and fruit, juniper of course, plus savoury basil and rosemary, pomegranate, lemon peel and much more besides. Making it a lager was an excellent idea as after the busy rush of competing tastes it calms down and cleans away promptly, and that's despite a fairly thick and resinous mouthfeel from all the oily botanicals. Above all it is fun, exactly the sort of messing I come to Open Gate for.

While I've long been a cheerleader for Open Gate's lager, the sour beers haven't hit the mark for me in the same way. The latest is Yuzu Citrus Sour, and it's very plain fare. After the previous display it was like moving from colour to black and white. I could barely detect the fruit, and like its predecessors it's not in the least bit sour. What it is, more than anything, is savoury, with a kind of green onion and peppery rocket, plus a weird and jarring hint of vanilla. It's not terrible, but it's not fun. I demand fun, Mr Guinness.

Gin Botanical, Yuzu Citrus, Summer Fruit Porter, Boateng Mango & Lime

A Summer Fruit Porter you say? That's more like it. This 5%-er is pale for a porter, very much red rather than brown or black. A bit like the gin lager it delivers exactly what's promised: lightly dry roast and thirst-quenching fizz from the porter, with a dollop of raspberry and strawberry, concentrated enough to give it a jammy, cordial effect. It's an unorthodox mix but it works, and channels carefree summer vibes in a way that dark beers generally don't. Maybe dialling up the porter side would have improved it: give me a shot of espresso with my raspberryade, but still it works very nicely in an unfussy and understated but still fun way.

My on-arrival sample had to wait while I got through that lot. Boateng Brew Mango & Lime Brett Beer had been launched earlier in the week as part of the brewery's summer programme of music. It's a hazy looking fellow, and the Brettanomyces gets to work immediately in an aroma full of peach and lychee, drowning out the actual fruit. There's a modicum of funk in the flavour, but also a sweet and concentrated lime bitterness giving it a very Caribbean kind of vibe. This is another fun one, though the wild yeast is the only indication that it's a beer at all. It's only 4.8% ABV and I can see it going down well with the cocktail crowd, should any show up to James's Gate in the coming weeks.

Mexican Lager, Garnet American Amber, Cold Brew Coffee Stout

So that was the "Experimental Flight". There's also the "Seasonal Flight" which starts on style of the moment, Mexican Lager. It's a pleasing amber colour and backs that up with a big malt flavour, all golden syrup and oat cookies. For balance, a very Germanic hop bittering, full of cut grass and dried basil, finishing acridly dry and almost harsh. This is much more flavourful than any actual Mexican lager I know. It's a workout for the palate, akin to a bock. A pint would have been hard work but I appreciated the boldness on display in my third.

I was apprehensive about the Garnet American Amber before I ordered it and by God it was ugly when it arrived, a sludgy opaque terracotta shade. It smelled OK, a perfumed floral sort of vibe; rosewater and lavender. The beer is a lot cleaner-tasting than it looks, and lightly textured too, for a big 5.7% ABV. There's a little toffee and chocolate and then a big resin and citrus kick, with the floral side performing an encore in the finish. As such it's a very decent expression of the style but they really should sort out the appearance if they're doing it again.

Finally, something not from the Open Gate. Guinness Cold Brew Coffee beer has been launched on the US and UK markets but so far is only available in Ireland here at headquarters. It looks like a normal stout, like an innocent stout, black with a head that was turning a wholesome yellow by the time I got to it. Yeah it's nitro but the aroma is gorgeous, freshly brewed coffee, the sort of scent they waft out of cafés to entice punters in. It's only 4% ABV and that pays off, in a bad way, in the very thin texture: any sense that this is a stout stout immediately disintegrates. The base beer is presumably Guinness but there's very little trace of it under the coffee. It is at least real-tasting coffee, of the oily bean sort, with a spoonful of brown sugar and a modicum of lactic creaminess. That's about it, though. It's simple, gimmicky and not really an improvement on basic Guinness, or a proper coffee beer. The Brits and Yanks can keep it.

Still, that was a fun couple of rounds and the Open Gate creatives are doing sterling work. I will definitely be wandering back in when other new beers take my fancy.

Disclosure: My visit to Open Gate Brewery was not at the invitation of Diageo and all of the beers were paid for from my own pocket, except that free one they gave me when I sat down.

Space case

With Metalman stepping aside, the niche for physics-themed beers has been taken by new operation Outer Place. Beers two and three from them arrived in July.

Interstellar is a 5% ABV pale ale, hopped with a no-nonsense combo of Strata and Cascade, resulting in an enticingly juicy aroma, one strong enough to entice me from across the table as I write this. A closer sniff brings it into focus: pineapple and coconut with a hint of something drier and more breadcrust-like in the background. That pushes to the front of the flavour, a kind of caraway or poppyseed savoury character that I really don't care for. Behind, there's perfectly pleasant peach and, yes, pineapple -- sweet and fluffy in the New England way -- and then the faintest of orange juice tangs adding a little bitterness to complete the picture. There's nothing strange or startling here; you've doubtless tasted many a beer like it and if haze is your thing there's much to enjoy from yet another one. I quibble with that savoury foretaste, though fully admit it may be unique to my palate. Either way, this won't be a regular fridge filler for me.

They're three for three with haze and hops, concluding today's pair with Particle Shower, an IPA. We're up to 6.5% ABV with Galaxy and Mosaic as the hops. It's pineapple-juice yellow and smells bitter despite the haze, full-on west coast grapefruit. Hooray. There's more of a sweetness in the flavour, the grapefruit mostly mellowed to tangerine though retaining a little of an acidic edge. The alcohol gives it substance without going to extremes and it's certainly not hot or messy. It's not exactly clean either, however, with some earthy grit from the haze and more savoury qualities, this time garlic. While interesting and multi-faceted there's no real brilliance on show; it's just another hazy IPA, albeit one with more of a bitter edge than most.

I'm not sure if the Outer Place project is aiming to create beers of the sort the owner likes, or that will sell, but either way I'm going to get bored quite quickly if they're all like this. Some originality in beer four would be very welcome.

Up all night

We don't get new beers from The Porterhouse very often. Since the last big rebrand a couple of years ago the only thing of note was their Around the Clock winter imperial stout, so it was a pleasant surprise to find another imperial one arriving mid-year: SLVRSKIN, a 13% ABV job with added coffee and aged in bourbon barrels. The description mentions that it gets a 24-hour boil so I suspect that the base recipe here is Around the Clock itself, or a close relation. No harm.

It pours as thickly as one might expect, a dense black colour with a dark tan topping. There's a lot of bourbon in the aroma, as well as a slightly off-putting autolytic umami tang. The predominant flavour is alcohol, showing all the heat of a spirit or fortified wine without really bringing much flavour complexity with it. Chocolate and coffee are mere traces, and there's surprisingly little sign of the bourbon, given how strongly it smells of it. 

A full day of boiling followed by 9 months of maturation means this wasn't a simple process to create but the effort hasn't really paid off, in my opinion. The fundamentals of imperial stout are missing, though I couldn't say whether that's the fault of the base recipe, the extra enhancements, or my palate. Either way, it was a disappointing experience. The beer improves a little as it warms but never quite makes it all the way to what I wanted it to be.

Source mode

I find myself feeling guilty when I don't sufficiently avail of the good beery resources we have in this town. Post-pandemic there aren't as many as there used to be but that's no excuse not to get out and about. So, when a free Thursday evening popped up on my calendar I took myself to Rascals HQ.

They've been busy with their pilot series of brewery-only beers, having reached the lofty heights of Pilot #61, a Basil & Raspberry Saison. I'm sure I've had both in a saison before but not together. There's no reason it won't work. The result is a coppery pink colour and quite strong at 5.8% ABV. Served deliciously cold, that makes it dangerously refreshing and I had to restrain myself on the first few mouthfuls. Interestingly, neither of the added ingredients comes through in an especially novelty way: the base is a real saison; peaches and straw, white pepper and melon. There's a slight fruit-smoothie sweetness in both the aroma and the finish to represent the raspberry, but I think the basil has been subsumed into its general saisonosity. As such, I'm not sure the flavourings added much -- it's a perfectly good dry saison and still would be without them.

Left: v.2, Right: v.3

Some Teutonic hop-tinkering next. Pilots #58 and #59 are respectively tagged as versions 2 and 3 of the "house IPA", which I assumed means Wunderbar, hopped with Mandarina Bavaria and Hallertau Blanc. A barman telling tales out of school says that Wunderbar is due a recipe change and it may be one of these.  First surprise from the new kids is that they're different colours: v.2 a paler shade of amber than v.3.

v.2 is fairly quiet on the aroma but gives out a fabulously fresh and pure mandarin pithiness in the foretaste. It rounds out after a moment into oily orange peel and a hint of cedarwood spicing, before a quick and super-clean finish that's almost lagerlike. And all done with Hüll Melon, we're told.

After that, I found v.3 rather plainer. They've let the Americans into the brewhouse and added Amarillo and Ekuanot to the Mandarina. I think that's a regressive step. There's still a pleasing pith but it's a pinch not a punch. There's something else too, a herbal, medicinal quality that might be eucalyptus on a good day but TCP on a bad one. It didn't sit well with me, and the idea that perfectly-decent Wunderbar may soon be this fills me with dread. It's not a bad beer by any means, but  switching back to v.2 was like switching to a high definition picture.

I loved that I, along with every other punter, was able to participate unofficially in this bit of backroom recipe twiddling. This. Is. What. Taprooms. Are. For.

Seemingly a core part of the Rascals taproom line-up, but shamefully new to me, is Nitro Stout. The name needs work. It's an orthodox 4.4% ABV, properly black with a cream off-white head, albeit one which didn't dome over the top of the rim. But while the macro nitro stouts are all about that presentation, this one is flavour forward. There's a downright bold kick of high-end milk chocolate in the foretaste, all silky Galaxy bars and Flakes in a canoe under a waterfall (ask your parents). After a second, a balancing dry grass and spinach brings a bit of the old school to it, but the finish and aftertaste is back to chocolate again. Although it's not complex or fancy, I loved the boldness of it, and was reminded a lot of Leann Folláin, if it came in a more sessionable package. This isn't the sort of hopped-up hazed-out yoof-oriented beer that Rascals is built around, and perhaps that's why they haven't dignified it with a name yet, but it's jolly decent and is well able to go toe-to-toe with the Porterhouse/O'Hara's/BRÚ establishment of actually-good Irish stout.

A postscript at home. Low Rider is a micro-IPA, a recent style whose merit I've yet to be fully convinced of. A graduate of the Rascals pilot programme, it's 2.8% ABV yet cost a substantial four euro twenty-five for a can. Yeah, yeah: inflation and that, but still. It had better be good. It's very pale in the glass though smells fresh and full-on, bursting with lime and assorted stonefruit. Clever use of oats boosts the mouthfeel so it doesn't feel any way watery, often a fatal flaw in beers like this. That said, the low strength does mean the flavour is a little muted and lacks a proper big finish. It's good while it lasts, however: west-coast grapefruit bitterness matched against juicier tropical notes. This is micro IPA done very well, though I'm still unconvinced about the price tag. It would be a short session on such spendy fare.

Rascals was stop one on a revisit of Dublin's prolific drink-in breweries. The series will continue shortly.

Garden County sunshine

It's the summer releases from Wicklow Wolf today, beginning with the latest in the seasonal Locavore series of beers made entirely from local ingredients. Locavore Summer 2022 is once again a saison, and 6.5% ABV like last year, but they've swapped the foraged gorse for foraged elderflower, and I think that's a trade-up. The first surprise is that it's completely clear, looking more like a pilsner than anything with farmhouse ancestry. The aroma is pure saison, however, packed with soft apricot and melon, some of which I'm sure is due to the elderflower. That fruit doubles up in the aroma, where the elderflower really kicks in, and the end result is almost tropical tasting. It lacks the dry crispness and earthy rasp typical of Belgian saison, but I don't miss it. While a little too heavy to be a quenching quaffer, this is a lovely sunshine sipper, delivering lots of good saison qualities and, unless you like them palate-scorching, no flaws. I wonder what they'll bung in the kettle next year.

Released at the same time in early July was a hoppy weissbier called Heff Bezos, a clunkier pun than one normally gets on a Wicklow Wolf limited edition. In the glass it looks like a pretty normal weiss, a little on the pale and unhazy side. The aroma is startlingly tropical, then, brimming with pineapple and mango. They've badged it as a hopfenweisse, and often with these there's a clash between the fruity weissbier yeast and the bitter citric new world hops, something the original Schneider/Brooklyn versions overcame by ramping up the alcohol. Here, by going sweetly fruity with the hops they've avoided the clash while keeping the ABV relatively modest at 6.3%. There's still a trace of banana, butane and bubblegum left, mainly in the finish, as a reminder of what this is. You could still easily mistake it for a New England IPA, however, especially when it's cold. I liked it, it's fun and summery, even quite refreshing despite not being session strength. For the first time since the first time, I see the point of hopfenweisse.

I guess summer beers don't have to be 4% ABV. Wicklow Wolf has managed to cram the sunshine into altogether more sippable packages. Two further summer beers are available at The Big Grill festival this weekend and in cans from next week. All going well I'll have reviews on here some time before Christmas.

Peak pastry

For reasons best known to itself, the normally sober and reliable brewery Thornbridge has chosen to try and recreate banoffee pie in imperial stout form. The result is Pardus Banoffee at 8% ABV. It has one of those annoying sneaky labels where you have to read the German to get a full list of ingredients, and that shows lactose to be the only adjunct. Where will the banana and toffee come from?

That it's intended as dessert is immediately apparent from the aroma: it is powerfully sweet, even from a distance, radiating honeycomb and, yes, foam banana sweets. There's nothing natural about the latter so I suspect the ingredients list isn't telling the whole story. The sweetness is dialled back a little in the flavour: it's not as gag-inducingly sickly as I had braced myself for. It is thick, however, seeming denser to me than the ABV suggests. There's no toffee in the taste to speak of, though it does have quite an assertive bitter roast, presumably an echo of the base beer which they were unable to dispel completely. On top of that, and outlasting any other feature, is that artificial banana essence thing, hanging around in a most unwelcome way.

This beer does not taste like banoffee, nor even give an impression of banoffee. It tastes like someone has compromised a perfectly decent imperial milk stout by adding an unnecessary chemical. It's not ruined, but it's definitely not improved. There is a series of these pastrified Pardi, as well as an original straight-up version. The latter I would be very interested in drinking if I can get hold of it.

Normcore

I've long been a fan of Denver's Crooked Stave brewery, specialising as it does in the sort of barrel-aged mixed fermented beer that I like. That it arrives here with a very reasonable pricetag is a bonus. Today is an occasional foray into the Crooked Stave interpretations of more mainstream beer styles. I'm prepared to give them all the benefit of the doubt.

First it's Juicy East, a hazy IPA of 6% ABV featuring Azacca, Citra, Mosaic and Motueka, for what should be a fun mix of hard bitterness and soft juice. It looks like the classy sort of New England IPA, being fully opaque and a pale yellowish orange. It smells quite citric, with a sharp lemon and lime buzz to the fore, but there's a hint of vanilla too. In keeping with that, the texture is creamy and there's a vanilla base to the flavour. The hop fruit builds on this, not quite fleshy and tropical but still sweet and spritzy, with elements of lemonade, pineapple juice and lime cordial. It's no world-shaker -- I've had many a beer very like it -- but it's still a good example of the hazy IPA genre, doing pretty much everything that they're supposed to.

The companion piece is the oxymoronic Juicy West, described on the can as "new west coast style" which I read as "not west coast style". It's less hazy than the last one, but still pretty hazy; a golden colour and again 6% ABV. The hops are a simplified combination of Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic which gives it a savoury and dank aroma. While it smells a bit all over the place the flavour is more coherent, showing an almost German herbal eucalyptus subtly blended with grapefruit, kiwifruit and melon rind. It works, and is very tasty. It's not at all west coast, but neither is it a sweet 'n' juicy New Englander. This hits a sweet spot between the two, as is entirely appropriate for a Denver brewer. Regardless of style minutiae, this is a quality beer well worthy of the Crooked Stave name and reputation.

Two stouts represent the other half of this set, both 6.5% ABV so I'm guessing have the same base with different adjuncts. The first one I opened is Vanilla Milk Stout. It looks nicely dense on pouring, black with a beige head. A pleasing coffee aroma suggests a dryness I wasn't expecting. It's not dry as such, however, but neither is it sickly sweet, something I was fully prepared for. I'm very much on board with balance in modern milk stout, all too rare a feature. The vanilla and dark malt give it a kind of crème brûlée character, with a small shot of espresso on the side. There's even a faint hop bite for some properly old-fashioned stout charm. This is lovely, as much at home as a preprandial as an aperitif. It's weighty but not any way overdone. Again the Crooked Stave class shines through.

Can they top this with a Toasted Coconut Coffee Stout? The head seems a little paler on this, though the rest is just as black. The aroma is definitely sweeter, and although I wouldn't be able to immediately identify it as coconut, that what's responsible. The roast and coffee is still there, but here it's joined by very real and fleshy coconut, not tasting toasted at all. If Mars made an Espresso Bounty, and I'm not saying they don't, this is what it would taste like. As such, I really liked it. It's more fun than the previous one; more of a frolicsome candy bar than a serious beer, while still definitely a stout for grown-ups. The finish is maybe a little quick for something at 6.5% ABV, though there's some nice complexity before it vanishes off the palate; wisps of raspberry and rosewater. It's nearly brilliant, but I'll settle for very good.

I still prefer Crooked Stave's work in the wild beer sphere, although this lot shows that there's an attention to nuance and detail at work in the brewery that serves them well across the spectrum of genres. This is one of those breweries which seldom puts a foot wrong.

That summer in Dublin

In its previous incarnations, Post Card wasn't the most prolific Irish beer brand but since they relaunched via the brewing facilities of Farrington's in Kildare they've kept the new beers coming. The beginning of July saw the launch of two summer specials.

First up is an extra pale ale called Irish Summer I, designed for easy warm-day drinking and it was on such an afternoon that I opened it. It's a bright golden colour with a little haze but not excessive amounts. The flavour is bright too, full of spritzy lemon -- bitter for the most part but with a hint of meringue pie sweetness as well. Said sweetness is derived from the malt base which is nicely full even though the ABV is a very modest 4.8%. After the initial zingy zesty burst, there's quite a long citric aftertaste as well. This is no lightweight and does a great job of filling the brief to be accessible, thirst-quenching, but also absolutely packed with clean new-world hop flavour. Something for everyone.

In a baller move, Irish Summer II is a black IPA: not something I'd have thought of as particularly summery but let's go anyway. At 6.8% ABV this one is not a quaffing beer on the same level as the above. It's a properly black black, though with a few of the unattractive floaty flakes that plagued the brewery's recent Mexican-style lager. The aroma is quite sweet and roasty, seeming all stout to me. Have we been gypped on the hops? To an extent. There's a certain amount of green vegetal bitterness in the flavour, and a slight hint of citrus, but no more than that. More prominent is the milk chocolate and milky coffee provided by the dark malts. While this may not be black IPA exactly as I like it, it's still very enjoyable. Once again the flavour is clean and precise, and there's a lovely smooth texture, exactly as promised by the strength. Without the hops it would be a superb extra stout, and with a handful or two more it would be a great black IPA.

These are both very accomplished beers, and not the sort of thing I would imagine a small in-restaurant brewery would be capable of. I've never been to Farrington's Mill but I like that Post Card is getting their delicious output to us here in the capital.

Arrivederci

I fear we've reached the end of the draught Ca'del Brado goodies at The Black Sheep. My final one was Cerbero Purple, a barrel-aged old ale. It's not the kind of clean, pale and spritzy thing that I usually come to the brewery for but they've earned more than enough credit for me to take a chance.

The barrels were wine ones and in with the beer went a 4% dilution of wine must, resulting in a lovely kiss of red grape in the aroma, alongside sparks of spice and a farmhouse funk. The initial flavour is very much about the fruit: juicy grape, sweet raisin and a slice of red apple. After a moment it's possible to detect the warm chocolate of an old ale at 9.8% ABV, although that doesn't get much of a look in before the resinous, gummy Brett manifests, finishing on sparks of geuze-like gunpowder.

I feel they could have made more of the base beer in this. At the same time, I can't complain that they substituted it for bags of pure Ca'del Brado magic. This was just as much of a delight as their previous works. I hope to see them again before too long.

Seasonals in the sun

It's a random medley of Irish beers today, broadly on theme of summer special editions.

Larkin's produced a radler especially for SuperValu in Raheny and I have my old multimedia mucker Brian to thank for shipping it my way. It's nice to see the brewery returning to lager, even if it's one with lemonade in it. The result is called Taste of Raheny and is 3.5% ABV. It's a pleasing golden colour and smells properly crisp, like a pilsner should, plus just a hint of sweet lemon. The flavour is a wee bit disappointing, in that there's not much of it. Hooray for no cloying and sticky fizzy pop, but boo for the absence of the beer character suggested by the aroma. 7-Up-like lemon and lime is about the extent of the taste. I guess the basic requirements are met: it's very easy drinking and quenches a thirst admirably. It left me hankering for more of a beer character, however.

Witbier is an obvious choice for summer seasonals and Two Sides has produced one, via Third Barrel as usual, called One Wit Wonder. It's low-strength at 4.8% ABV and suspiciously orange in colour, so faithfulness to the style marked out by Hoegaarden does not seem to have been a factor. A banana aroma and banana flavour is further evidence of this. First impression, then, is of something that looks, smells and tastes more like a weissbier than a wit. There's a pleasing spice level, which could be construed as Belgian but equally would not be out of place in weissbier, while the only unmistakably witbier element is a pinch of sweet lemonade citrus. I'm quibbling about style, but the fact is that a pint of this on a warm evening was extremely welcome. It's easy drinking despite the esters and has plenty of cleansing carbonation. Job done, no fuss.

Lough Gill has also given us a pun-tastic witbier, in the form of Get Wit It, brewed for Aldi. This one is 5.2% ABV and most definitely yellow rather than orange in colour. The aroma has exactly the right amount of citrus promise mixing with Belgian yeast spice. Alas this doesn't translate very well to the flavour and I found it a bit bland, the husky grain side more prominent than any fruit, herbs or spices. Like the one above, there's an estery quality too, not quite full-on banana but certainly heading in that direction. There's a substantial density to the whole thing as well, something that prevents from being purely an easy-drinking refresher. It's inoffensive, and full marks for that aroma, but the rest doesn't pull its weight. I think brewers underestimate how hard it is to make really good witbier.

Rye River celebrates the dog days, Rhineland style, with Die Hundestage Köter Kölsch, a straight-up recreation of Cologne's native lager style, brewed in collaboration with London brewery Old Street. And straight-up it very much is: impeccably clear and golden, and crisp as the day as long, when the day is very long. There's a very faint fruit element, summery again like raspberry and strawberry, but it's faint and doesn't interfere with the essential lageriness. The German hopping is floral rather than grassy. 5% ABV makes it a little on the strong side for thirst-quenching quaffing, and I think the subtle complexity makes it worth taking a little time over. They've overstated the refreshment power here but that doesn't bother me. I'm happy to sip at leisure whatever the weather.

Something classy for dessert: Tarte Tatin from Otterbank. It's not an explicitly summer beer but it was in the fridge and I wanted to drink it. Blended saisons, mixed with apple juice and fermented with Brettanomyces is the précis, the result being 6% ABV and an opaque shade of orange with lots of busy foam. There's quite a striking sourness in the aroma, though a sticky pie-filling apple sauce element too. Its flavour is calmer and more integrated than all of this suggests. It's very much still a saison at heart, with all the dry crispness and earthy tones which go along with that. The Brett funk and sour culture are a sideshow to this, though a welcome one, adding complexity without trying to dominate the picture. And then the residual apple sweetness brings a different aspect and helps balance it. While it might seem like a novelty beer on paper, this is fully coherent, original and delicious.

We turn into August and autumn will be here soon enough. I still have room for a few more summer cans yet, however.