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The advent of Kinnegar's new taproom in Letterkenny sees a new series of taproom-only specials called Tap Room Only (TRO). They're available in a selection of pubs across the country, with Bonobo the designated Dublin outlet. First up is a very daring Smoked Pineapple Sour. It's 4.5% ABV and bright yellow, though with lots of floaty bits, presumably pineapple. The aroma is fresh and zesty with an air of the tropics, and there's plenty of real canned pineapple in the flavour, given an extra tang by the souring culture's tartness. It would have been lovely if they'd left it there. Unfortunately there's also the smoke. It's a stale burnt plastic and burnt kippers thing, present from the outset and all the way through to the aftertaste, so impossible to ignore. All praise for the idea, but the execution didn't work. This definitely shouldn't have left the taproom.

On the packaged front, they went super-traditional with a Märzen for their autumn seasonal. Leaf Kicker is 5.9% ABV and rather more amber than these tend to be in Germany. That gives it a density which makes the flavour slow to develop. It begins quite dry with a snap of cracker, gradually growing in biscuity richness to become a properly full malt-driven lager. The hops are toned down, which was a little disappointing but not really a problem. What you get is a rasp of spinach, celery and white pepper, fading to a broad metallic bitterness in the finish, balancing out the high malt level. It's decent fare, and although it's weightier than any Munich Oktoberfestbier, I could still happily drink it by the Maß.

The Brewers At Play series continued upwards to 26 with a raspberry-infused "farmhouse ale". It's very basic fare, tasting predominantly of candy-like raspberry-flavoured syrup. There's a certain dryness to the base, but no flavour complexity that I could describe as "farmhouse", where I'd be looking for rounded peachy esters, crisp straw or wild-yeast funk. If they're there, the syrup has buried them. In its defence this is only 3% ABV and very easy drinking. Perhaps it would have worked better at the height of summer rather than in an admittedly warm autumn.

We move on, yea even unto Brewers At Play 27: Black Lager. Your correspondent does enjoy a good Schwarzbier so was very pleased to see this land. 4.7% ABV is a nicely approachable strength, and it is indeed properly black, only showing as deep deep ruby when held to a light source. There's a mild caramel sweetness in the aroma but it's mostly dry on tasting: nicely roasty and fully lager-crisp. There's a certain Helles-like malt sweetness in the middle and a faint herbal liquorice complexity. Mostly, though, this is an easy-going drinking lager with no fancy twists. Without seeing the colour, I'm not sure I would even have picked out those dark-beer qualities at all. It's nice to see that being "At Play" doesn't have to mean doing silly things. I guess they save that for the TRO series these days. Coffee and seaweed stout is next there.

Maybe it's my fogey old palate, but on this showing Kinnegar looks to be doing a better job of traditional lager styles than fancy farmhouse fruit stuff at the moment.