Witch, please

The Irish beer festival circuit continued winding back up to normality with the fourth Hagstravaganza festival at The White Hag brewery in Ballymote last month. The brewery's welcome expansion means the former car showroom doesn't have anything like the festival floorspace it used to but there's acres of space outside and the bar queues were kept moving at a decent lick all afternoon. Sixty taps from mostly European breweries plus a handful of Americans provided plenty of selection, and there was the bonus addition of a dedicated barrel-aged bar in a room off to the side. Where to start?

With lager, of course. Hawaiian brewer Maui offered a Helles called Bikini Blonde. It's a flawless apple-golden colour, though unattractively headless in the glass. The texture is so soft it almost feels a little flat. 4.8% ABV and a strong grassy bitterness made it seem more like a pils than a Helles to me, though that's not really a criticism. This is a perfectly fine drinking lager, perhaps not worthy of being shipped to Sligo from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but since it was there I had no objections to drinking it as my first of the day.

Italian brewery Vetra had the day's only dark lager, called simply Black, and it's a bit of a whopper at 6.8% ABV. From that it gets a heavy mouthfeel and a little heat, while still perfectly cleanly flavoured, so had some attributes of doppelbock in what was otherwise a perfectly executed schwarzbier. Central to that is a big bag of bitter liquorice with dry roasted grains around the edges. Filling and satisfying more than thirst-quenching, it proved every inch the sipper that the ABV suggests. It would have been nice to take more time with it but time, as always, was ticking along.

We get no Portuguese craft beer in Ireland normally, and it's far too long since I visited, so I made a point of drinking both Portuguese beers on offer from Dois Corvos, beginning with Sétimo Céu ("Seventh Heaven"). This is badged as a triple IPA though at only 9% ABV seemed a little light for that. It's also in the New England style so was fully hazy and a dense-looking orange colour. It introduced itself with a buzz of garlic in the aroma though the flavour is clean and juicy and the alcohol quite well hidden. Sweet orange cordial is at the centre and I got a certain clove-like spiciness as well. The finish is oily and dank, making full use of what must be a lot of hops. Other than a lack of proper TIPA oomph I have little to complain about with this one.

Their other offering was called Still Life With Stout And Other Stuff, an imperial pastry job with hazelnuts and chocolate. I expected sweet but there's a substantial roast coffee bitterness in here, as well as a savoury side which Reuben reckoned was autolytic but I'm not so sure. It didn't do the beer any harm as far as I'm concerned. The best feature of this was the texture: a gorgeous creamy, warming hug in your mouth, thanks in no small part to the 10.5% ABV. Here's another dark beer deserving of much more time than it got on the day.

At this point I decided to nip around to the barrel bar and got a glass of Stingo, provided by Kirkstall, brewed in collaboration with To Øl. It's a strong ale of 8.4% ABV, copper coloured and headless. It's surprisingly light bodied, though fizzy, and carries flavours of melon and lemon on a strongly pithy bitterness. That contrasts with a powerful sweet sherry taste. All told, it's a bit busy and this is one where slowing down was mandatory while I made my way through it. Probably no harm. I see this working better as a finishing beer rather than one at the half way point, however.

A palate cleanser was very much in order and Burgundian brewer 90BPM provided that. The name is pleasingly French: Minitel Rose, a raspberry Berliner weisse of only 3.3% ABV. It's fairly basic stuff: a murky pink emulsion and mildly sour with a dollop or two of raspberry jam. Although it got the cleansing job done I felt it could use something extra to add complexity; maybe citrus or herbs or the like. Regardless, it didn't last long and I was ready for another imperial stout.

That was Fudgesicle from Basqueland. Again there's hazelnuts and chocolate in here, as well as caramel, and the ABV is even bigger than Dois Corvo's at 11.6%. But success is not just about the candy and the gravity as this didn't have anything like the same complexity, being an extremely sweet and sticky booze bomb with very little else to offer. It's amazing how two beers with a similar daft spec can yield such different results.

One last IPA next, Uno 2, from Swedish brewer Stigbergets and collaborating partners Omnipollo. I've said it before, but Omnipollo is a much better brewer when it comes to hop-forward styles as against their messy stouts, though this one didn't float my boat. It's the pale yellow of custard powder and tastes heavily of garlic to begin, before turning increasingly tropical. 8% ABV generates a lot of heat, however, and that does away with any fruit freshness. The result is a very average New England-style double IPA redolent with all the usual flaws.

Back to the other bar where there was an intriguing offer from Kerry brewery Dick Mack's: a Dingle [whiskey] Barrel Aged Saison at 10.5% ABV: not the sort of strength that things labelled as saison usually end up. It's  brown and smells strongly of grainy red apples. Saison's typical pear flavour is what it mostly tastes of, which is fair enough, and it's dry and light textured too. I was expecting lots of spirity heat from the barrels but that's absent and the whiskey merely adds some mellow oaky vanilla tones. It was a brave experiment but it worked, creating something very unusual but tasty with it. I'm glad I took a chance.

Two final tokens were burning a hole in my festival cargo pants so it was time to go all in on the imperial stouts. Penultimately I had Rosinenbomber from BRLO, a 12% ABV job that I quaffed stupidly quickly. It's highly enjoyable though; extremely smooth and rich with lots of espresso and a sharp hop-driven edge of bitterness. No messing here, just big strong stout done very well. I notice that it was a collaboration with Lervig, who provided the goods in a similar context at Fidelty a few weeks earlier.

The last beer came to the station with me, and several stops along the line back to Dublin too. Matière Noire ("Dark Matter") is from Mont Hardi and is a bit of a lightweight in this context: only 10% ABV. Still it was the most complex one of the day, setting fudge and chocolate against a herbal vermouth and chilli spicing. A lot of work went into this, it turns out: cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom and lactose, ageing in bourbon and cognac barrels separately then blended. It's amazing the result tastes like simply an excellent no-frills example. Something for other stout hackers to aspire to.

That wraps up the gig for me. It's a festival cliché but the highlight really was spending the day with friends and catching up with trade folks I hadn't seen since before The Unpleasantness. A big thanks to Bob, The White Hag team and all the staffers for giving us the opportunity.