The black pool

I wasn't able to make the Craic Beer Community pub crawl in January but did catch up with the beer launched at it a few days later in The Black Sheep. It's that rarest of beasts a dark mild, brewed by Hope and named Horizon. First impression was how pale it is: very definitely ruby or garnet rather than black. It's only 3.8% ABV but I suspect that's more to do with a high finishing gravity than a low starting one because it's very sweet and quite thick. Though lightly carbonated and keg-cold it's still not terribly quaffable. The flavour manifests as milk chocolate of the especially milky sort. Cocoa notes are minimal, as is any bitterness, roast or fruit complexity.

This is not mild done to my taste and comes across more like a milk stout to me. Not to discourage any breweries thinking of formulating one, but could we have a bit of roast? For me?

That brings us to another Dublin-brewed dark beer in a seldom-seen style. A surprise hit of the lockdown era was Barrelhead's HopburgH Helles, brewed and matured in the then-mothballed JW Sweetman brewpub, and sold by the resolutely untrendy half-litre bottle. Matters have moved on since: JWS has changed hands and the new owner has taken the brewery out; Barrelhead has rebranded as Hopkins & Hopkins, and established a brewery of its own, upriver in Smithfield. And now there's a second release: HopburgH Schwarzbier.

It's a favourite style of mine so I'm glad they chose it. Like the Helles it's 5.2% ABV and comes in the same squat bauarbeiterhalbe bottle. It's black as billed, showing cola red around the edges. A persistent off-white head tops it. Full marks for the visuals, then. The aroma is quite sweet, suggesting the caramel of a dunkel rather than schwarzbier roast. To an extent that's present in the flavour too, but here it's joined by the appropriate toasted grain element. It is predominantly dry rather than sweet, so all is well. All told it's not very strongly flavoured, offering just tiny sparks of dark grain, savoury herbs and tangy treacle. That does mean it's very easy drinking, especially with the rounded body and soft carbonation.

This is a highly enjoyable beer, made to the same level of understated quality as the Helles. It's very much built for drinking rather than tasting, however. Buy several.