Large as life

Unlike many an organisation, Ireland's beer consumers' group, Beoir, did not flip to an online way of doing events during the pandemic. This is largely because I, as the chairman, spend quite enough time on Zoom and Teams and whatnot in my real life without having to do it for fun as well. So meetings went into stasis until, in early September, they were revived for the first AGM since 2019. I picked Crew in Limerick as the venue because I had been dying to visit, the brewpub on Thomas Street having opened its doors in early 2020 and weathered everything that happened since.

It's a lovely little space, no bigger than a café but housing a fully operational brewkit with beers served from tanks behind the bar next to it. Pleasingly, almost all the draught beer is produced in-house with seven on the go when we visited, plus one carefully chosen guest.

To begin, a saison, called Saison of the Witch. It's a light example at 4.8% ABV, and I noticed that all the beers have been designed with by-the-pint pub drinking in mind. This is a no-frills classic example of its style, balancing earthy and spicy farmhouse flavours against a soft peach and a little citrus rind. The carbonation was high, again in keeping with how saison should be, and that's the only thing stopping it from being a proper session beer. It served as a nice reminder that commercial beer made in very small batches doesn't have to go for daring gimmicks.

Lemon Verbena Gose, though? That's a little more gimmicky. They wouldn't approve in Leipzig. Nevertheless it absolutely works, providing a different sort of herbal effect from what you would normally get from traditional gose's coriander. It's sweeter, and contrasts nicely with the savoury salt and mild sourness. This one is only 4.6% ABV and has a lovely soft texture, so a session on it would be highly possible.

The wild selection couldn't all be successes, however, and I was a little disappointed by the Peach Berliner Weisse. This is thin and plain, lacking the substance to boost both its mineral sourness and the sweet peach nectar side, the flavour fading to nothing far too quickly. That might be forgivable were it under 4% ABV, but it's a full 5%, where I would expect much more going on. Something needs tweaked here to give it more character.

On, then, to the hoppy side. I started with the pale ale called Jason Waterfalls. This delivered all the good stuff from the west coast -- grapefruit and pine in particular -- in a neat 5.1% ABV package. One could easily believe it's considerably stronger. The resins are almost funky in their concentration, and yet it remains clean and very drinkable. Even with a west coast revival in full swing, this still managed to bring back happy memories of how American IPA once was.

In a neat contrast, there was also Polly, described as a tropical pale ale, and the strongest of the day at 6% ABV. The description is 100% accurate as it's incredibly tropical, beginning with the intense Starburst mixed-fruit aroma. The texture is thick, but not overly done, providing enough of a base to carry lots of mango and passionfruit flavour, with a little pinch of coconut on the end. I'm not sure if it's all done with hops -- they don't mention any additional flavourings -- but if so it's very impressive. They'll get no grief from the trades descriptions people over this one. 

I didn't get the blackboard finished before it was time to leave but fortunately they do crowlers so I was able to take the last two away. That began with It Takes A Village, a straight-up hazy IPA of 5.6% ABV hopped with Idaho 7. It's the pale side of hazy, which I normally take to be a good thing, and properly soft textured. Stonefruit and passionfruit arrive in the aroma and continue in the flavour, joined by a vanilla sweetness. There's a faint garlic buzz in the finish, but not too much. This is a very decent take on the style with excellent complexity in a modestly-strong package. Great pub fare, even on a train.

The finisher is Don't Tell Michael, a hoppy wheat beer. I got major weissbier ester vibes here, with both banana and clove from the outset. It doesn't take long for the hops to kick in, bringing a selection of tropical and citrus fruits, bitter like lime yet sweet like pineapple. The combination puts this squarely in the hopfenweisse category, and it's a best-of-both-worlds job, with strong attributes of German weizen as well as American IPA. At 5.7% ABV the strength is somewhere between the two: a different sort of balance. Chimera beers don't always work but they've made a very good fist of this one.

That's everything they had pouring on Saturday 3rd September 2022. The turnover of new beers is rapid so I'm sure most if not all of them are now gone. But I'm confident there'll still be plenty of good pouring on whatever day you get round to visiting. You can catch owners Jono and Emma on a recent episode of The Beer Ladies podcast talking about the ethos behind Crew. It's inspiring stuff.