A sliding scale

With its abstract art, sweet fruit beers, pastry stouts and endless IPAs, Lough Gill has grown into a brewery unashamed to chase international beer trends. Well, there has to be at least one per country, like an airline or a bar with a Frank Zappa quote on the menu. Here are three examples of their recent output.

First up is You're Not Welcome, 5.3% ABV and brewed with mango and blueberry, but looking the greyish pink of blended strawberries, and smelling similar: sweet but with a tartly acidic edge. I was hoping it might be properly sour to taste but the lactose puts paid to that from the first sip. We move from freshly mulched strawberries to cheap raspberry ripple ice cream: sugar, artificial vanilla flavouring and pink fruit goo. It's a long way from any real fruit, never mind the fancy ones named. There is at least enough of a tang on the finish that it doesn't get sickly, and I think there's a welcome bite of hop bitterness too. That said, with this flavour profile, I probably would have preferred it to be full-on viscous soup. As is, it tastes like an earnest attempt at a serious fruit beer which turned out a bit silly. There are worse complaints to have, I guess.

Punishment is one of several things I'm a glutton for, so cracked straight on with an even stronger version of something similar. Wound Runner is, most importantly, 7.2% ABV. At least it looks, broadly, like a real beer, being a hazy orange colour. No pigment is provided by the peach, pineapple and passionfruit it's brewed with. Passionfruit, of course, is the up and down of the aroma, giving it a crisp and cold palate-cleansing sorbet effect. It's definitely cleaner and sharper than the previous, with no sign of all the extra booze. The lactose is sufficiently understated to let it taste properly tropical, and less like a 1980s budget dessert. It was lashing rain outside when I drank it and it provided a welcome beam of warm sunlight. While it's none of your fancy mixed-fermentation fruit beer, it's as good as the basic lactose-based model gets.

And then a hazy IPA to finish. Blue Blue Sky is hopped with Cashmere and two names I don't recognise: Luminosa and Pacific Sunrise. The latter is a Kiwi, and boy does this beer smell like New Zealand product, all high-octane kerosene and tangy white grape skin. I didn't think the world needed a more intense version of Nelson Sauvin but it may have got one. The flavour has that fossil-fuel oily thing, yet also manages to add juicy guava and apricot plus a very American pine-resin dankness. For me, those three elements are quite separate, yet meld into each other in a completely harmonious way. It's a hoptical illusion and I love it. I think the key here is freshness: I bought it and drank it within a couple of weeks of canning, and everything about it is brighter and more colourful as a result. I'm sure the sizeable 6.3% ABV is a factor in how intense the hopping is, and yet it drinks like a much lighter beer. Everything here is just as it should be, and there's no room for even a sniff of an off flavour. When it comes to hazy IPA, it takes a lot to impress me, and Lough Gill has done it with this. At the end of the glass I felt like giving it a standing ovation.

The fruit beers are par for the course, and fine for the fans. That IPA, however, should be drank by everyone. It's on tap at UnderDog this week, as it happens.

Autumn is the new Spring

I didn't notice that Morning Dew was a spring seasonal when I picked it up from Blackrock Cellar. I see little enough WhiteField beer that I didn't even realise they had a seasonal series, but apparently they do.

It's a saison, purportedy in the French style, 6% ABV and utilising rye and spelt in the grist. Lesson one is don't pour it into a glass with any kind of headkeeper etching. I'm used to saison being bubbly but this took a full twenty minutes to pour satisfactorily. I'm guessing the French tend not to use half litre bottles for it. Once there, it's a hazy sunset colour, on the darker orange end of the saison spectrum.

Past the humongous all-angles head, there are very classic farmhouse brewing aromas of straw, dry grain and hard pears. The flavour leans into the fruity aspect, adding lychee, white peach and even a little pineapple. A very obvious alcohol heat intensifies this, and I think it's better consumed quite cold, which would also help with the foaming. The dry grain-and-hay side gets a little left out, showing up only briefly in the flavour.

If you don't mind the warmer, fruitier sort of saison, this one is for you. It delivers lots of Belgian-like esters but retains just enough crunch to taste like a proper saison rather than a golden ale. Personally I'd like a bit more of that dryness (and less fizz), but I would still be happy to see this coming back for another round next spring. Or autumn.

Causes for celebration

It's still high summer in my notes backlog. Here's a few cans Rascals sent out over the last season.

I managed to find twenty minutes of al fresco beer drinking time and spent it with Pink Lemonade Sour. It's certainly pink, hibiscus doing what hibiscus does. It's hazy with that, and doesn't really form a head for any length of time, neither which is a surprise for this kind of beer. The aroma is that of a soft drink, promising some sort of flavoured processed sugar but being vague on the details. The body is quite light, as expected at 4% ABV, but it's not watery and it carries a decent amount of flavour complexity. It opens sweet, with the summery raspberry and cherry of hibiscus. When the sweetness fades, it becomes a crisp and refreshing job, akin to biting into a cold slice of watermelon. The bite grows into a full sour kick in the final stage, cleansing any of the initial sugar still drifting around. That's a slow-motion account of what happens, but really you can just drink this. And while it might appear to be pitched at those psychopaths who believe they don't like beer, it is very much a beer all the way through.

Celebrating 90 years of the Molloy's drinks business, The Craic Is 90 is 4.2% ABV, pale yellow and hazy, though the brewery doesn't assign it any style beyond "ale". To me, it's a very familiar American-style light pale ale, brimming with zesty lemon though never quite hitting full-throttle grapefruit. The base is thick enough to carry a decent amount of bitter acidity, and the whole thing brings a sense of high-end or homemade lemonade, perfect for relaxing sun-downers. It would theoretically work as a happy, social, party beer too, drinkable into the early hours, by people younger than me.

For the second in the brewery's IPA Outbreak series, a Session IPA of 4.4% ABV, brewed with Citra, Galaxy and Mosaic. It's almost clear too, only slightly foggy yellow in the glass. The Mosaic delivers in the aroma, making it smell deliciously melon-like -- honeydew and cantaloupe -- and very similar to the mighty Little Fawn, my session IPA archetype. The flavour continues that way, which is a bit of a one-note, but a note I like hearing. There's just enough bitterness to balance it, but nothing I would describe as Citra's doing, while the Galaxy almost seems to be asleep on the job. Where it falls down a little is the texture: while it was enjoyable for almost the whole first half, there's a wateriness which creeps in when it gets even slightly warm. It means that the lovely melons wear off faster than they should. I guess they've taken the "session" aspect seriously as it's very drinkable and leaves no aftertaste, but I think it would have benefited from the same sort of malt treatment as the previous beer.

You may need to do your own folkloric research on "Shemozzle": I can only say it's a frequently used word in southern GAA circles, though more for the innocent sort of on-pitch shoving and tugging that they do, rather than my native Ulster where conflict tends not to have cute and beer-appropriate labels applied. Anyway, this is a hazy IPA brewed in collaboration with Sudden Death when they were over for Rascals's festival back in May. It smells a bit hot, all of its 6.4% ABV and more. The savoury side of haze is very much to the fore -- onions, garlic, armpit sweat -- which is unfortunate. They seem to have gone for an accentuated bitterness but without the sharp and piney aspect of the west coast. I don't think the east coast lays any claim to the salty, vegetal bitterness on display here. It doesn't really work. Haze needs fruit, and this has none. It is at least sharp and clean, suggesting perhaps the influence of Sudden Death's German heritage. I'm not a fan, however: too much that is wrong with hazy IPA is on display here. On the slim off-chance that my opinions count for anything, there are lessons to be learned.

Light and simple: that's the way to go for summer beer. Save the sweaty haze for colder days.

No funny stuff

Today's selection is from Sakiškių Alus, a Lithuanian brewery which makes lots of off-kilter beers. Each of this lot was chosen purely on the grounds of its perceived strangeness. It's as good a reason as any.

How do you even approach something called Sour New England Vanilla Marshmallow IPA? Cautiously, I guess. It's orange and only slightly hazy, so doesn't look like a New England IPA and therefore can't be trying too hard to pretend be one. The head disappears quickly. Sourness is the main feature, beginning with a tartly citric aroma which unfolds on tasting into a clean and zesty mandarin and satsuma spritz. This is lightly carbonated and extremely refreshing, seeming less than its 5.5% ABV. Any masochist who actually wanted vanilla or marshmallow from it will be disappointed, but maybe they'll enjoy that. I found a beer that hits the main points of sour IPA rather well, even if it doesn't offer much by way of complexity. I'm glad I choose it.

Something slightly more orthodox follows: Cherry Red, another IPA, also 5.5% ABV, this time with cherry. Our own Hopfully were collaborating brewers on this. It's not really red in the glass, more a brownish amber, and this time there's lots of fizz, piling up the head and slowing down the pour. The flavour is broadly sweet, but don't ask me how much that's down to crystal malt and how much is fruit syrup: neither is particularly distinctive. The flavour is plain at first, a rather dull red ale with no real hop punch or fruit flavour. There is an interesting spiciness, however, which I'm guessing is somehow derived from the cherry. It doesn't keep the beer from being quite boring, but at least it gives it some level of character. I guess I should be happy it's not a sugary mess, but I don't really see the point of it.

Throwing fruit and herbs into sour beer is much more commonplace. The combination Pomegranate Mint is a new one on me, however. The label also says it's lemony, though there's no lemon in it. It does contain chokeberries, though, because why not? This is another fizzy one, making the pour a bit messy. Underneath the white froth it's a dark orange shade, and quite murky with it. This time the ABV is 4.7% so the lightness is fully appropriate. I looked forward to an invigorating sharpness from the flavour but it turned out a bit dull and flabby. The mint is there, but it's more like chewing gum than the real thing, lacking piquancy. The sourness is also low key, and I couldn't detect any pomegranate. I will award it some credit for not tasting like toothpaste, but it's also not far off it. I think the concept is sound but the execution isn't great: everything should be brighter and fresher-tasting, even allowing for the ten months it had been in the can.

All that didn't inspire confidence when I moved to the Gose with Raspberries. This is the lightest of the lot; only 3.5% ABV. It's pretty good, though. Of course, it's not much like a real gose -- dumping some salt in doesn't change that -- and raspberries are not a natural substitute for coriander. But it's beautifully tart and refreshing. The fruit which gives it its lurid red colour tastes like more than basic raspberry, adding in notes of cherry and actual pomegranate. While it's sweet and juicy at its very core, that's surrounded by a thick layer of sourness, biting in the foretaste and pinching the jaw on the way out, leaving a clean mineral residue, which I guess means the salt is performing its function after all. I don't know if the brewery has other versions of this but I think the recipe could be a good fit for all sorts of other fruit.

Sometimes the crazy recipes work, and sometimes they don't. Guesswork based on the description is pointless.

Farm boys

Thanks to the good offices of Craic Beer Community I got to visit Ballykilcavan during the summer. The Co. Laois brewery is more than just vessels and hoses, it's also a farm, a sustainability project and an ethos -- all the talk is very much walked here. They had just canned a new beer, Cobbler's Castle, which was handed out on arrival. I was too busy with the walking and the listening and the looking to take any notes, so decided I would revisit it as soon as I saw it in shops.

That took longer than expected and it was almost two months before I found it in the wild. It's a 4.8% ABV IPA boasting tropical fruit flavours. Maybe it had them two months previously but it seems to have drifted firmly towards the west coast since. The amber colour is one indicator of that, along with a rich seam of crystal malt giving it a caramel base. The hops on top are quite sharply citric in the grapefruit and lemon peel way. I was expecting this to build in intensity but, as befits the modest strength, it fades away decently quickly. This is session strength IPA in the way it used to be: that slightly resinous feel, familiar from the likes of Porterhouse Hop Head (an avatar of Brendan Dobbin's Yakima Grande), now out of fashion but still missed by the likes of me. It was nice to revisit before returning to the 2020s.

Here comes the haze, then. This is Clancy's Cans #12: Nelson Sauvin IPA, a little on the amber side again but decidedly cloudy. It smells fancy and tropical, all cantaloupe, guava and passionfruit: not casually so, but thick and ripe. The mouthfeel is weighty too, a little more than one might expect from 5.3% ABV. All of that runs the risk of it tasting too sweet, but luckily Nelson has our back. While the fruit is still very much present, there's a solid injection of the hop's flinty mineral bitterness to dry it out sufficiently to ensure balance and drinkability. It's no masterpiece of complexity but it's a good expression of Nelson and should keep its fans happy. I wouldn't have objected to a bit more, mind: it's a special edition, after all.

A very solid pair: par for the course with this brewery. It's well worth a visit if you happen to be down Laois way during the summer months. Details here.

Boutique beers

I finally ran out of excuses and had to go to the Midlands Craft Beer Festival in Moate, Co. Westmeath. Veteran beer blogger turned industry mainstay Simon has been running this gig in his hometown since 2015. The line-up has changed over the years, but good beer and live music in a relaxed al fresco atmosphere has always been the offer. And it's only 90 minutes from Dublin. Why did it take me this long?

Ten companies were represented at the bars and I got round most of them in the five or so hours I was there. The beer that travelled the least distance came from Dead Centre in Athlone. They have a special which is made specifically for the event: Moaterboat. It's a bright pink, raspberry-infused ale of 5.9%, which is strong for this sort of thing. It's very casual drinking, offering simple dessertish fun in lieu of any complexity. Once I stopped looking for any, I enjoyed it. It's a bit like drinking a pavlova.

It seems that Moaterboat's persistent success has meant it spawned a variant for the 2023 event. Passionboat is lighter on its feet at 4.7% ABV, though tasted thicker and fruitier to me: I guess that's in the nature of passionfruit versus raspberries. There's a slightly metallic twang underneath, which I sometimes get from fruit concentrate in quantity. It's not too disturbing, however, and this is another simple and slightly daft beer, one which you have to appreciate on its own jocose level.

And the same can be said for Disco Ain't Dead. Dead Centre created this in 2018, at the height of the short-lived craze for glitter IPA, for it is one such. They're extremely rare in Ireland and this is the first one ever to come my way. I was excited! And then very disappointed when it completely failed to sparkle. You had one job! Since it provided no visual entertainment, I had to make do with tasting it. It's a fairly typical hazy IPA: 6% ABV and sweet, with almost ice-cream levels of vanilla, plus a burn of savoury garlic and a slight rubbery burntness in the finish. I doubt I would have picked up anything remarkable about it without knowing what it was. I will expect better from my next glitter IPA, whenever that appears.

Tagging along with Dead Centre was its client brewer The Format, dormant for several years as owner Mark tried his hand outside the beer business. Thankfully he's back now, and Loungin' was the first new Format beer since the beginning of 2020. It's a hazy session IPA given a fruitsome hop combination of Strata, El Dorado and Centennial. The vanilla was the first thing I noticed, but it's no one-note murk-bomb. There's a pinch of jaffa orange bitterness and then a surprise clove spicing late on. It's smooth and more thickly-textured than one would expect for 4.5% ABV. When he says session IPA he means it, and I would have liked to have spent some more time on this one.

The Midlands were further represented by Wide Street, down from Longford. They were pouring Cuvée Prestige from the tap, an arrangement which owner Seán regarded as sub-optimal. I never got a chance to go back and try the bottled version against it. In general, though, I wasn't overly keen. The proposition looks great: a Brett-fermented saison aged in Chardonnay barrels and with gooseberries. It definitely has a berry tartness, but I thought it went a little too far in this direction, the sour side shading into spirit vinegar territory. There's a heaviness here too; a sense of thick and sweet German white wine, which was a surprise. While this does hit lots of the correct flavour points for a mixed-fermentation saison, it's not in the upper echelons for me. One for ageing in that all-important bottle, perhaps.

Time for some more session IPA. Brehon Brewhouse brought Good Times, another 4.5%-er. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of The Format's offering but it was still pretty good, mixing bright and fresh citric American hops with that typical New England base of smooth, sweet vanilla cream. Fun, easy-drinking, and very appropriately named; no further comment necessary.

Galway Bay are at this game as well. Their new session IPA is called The Good News, and the good news is that it, too, is 4.5% ABV. The visuals were a little off, it looking quite sickly in the glass, thin and yellow. The taste is spot on, however, thanks to what the brewery calls "a criminal amount" of Nelson Sauvin and Motueka. That gives it a delicious white grape juiciness, plus a mild dusting of coconut. This is set on a clean base, with none of the murky grittiness I thought I would get. It works as a down-the-hatch sessioner, if that's what the occasion demands. I liked savouring that classic New Zealand hop flavour, though.

The Bay had another new one for us as well, a Catharina sour, the Brazilian-style fruit beer that surprisingly few Irish breweries to date have tried their hands at. It's called Lagoma and is a collaboration with Rascals. Blood orange, guava and passionfruit give it the strong and unsubtle tropical hit which the style demands, at least initially. The fruit fades after a moment or two, and the finish is a little thin and plain. Normally these have a pulpy richness, delicious but not very beer-like. This one, while good, is more basic and approachable. It's fun in its own way, but doesn't offer much of an education in what makes Catharina sour distinctive.

Back to the IPA, and a cold one from Third Barrel, called Vulture Culture. This is 6% ABV and almost completely clear. The early hop flavours are a delightful juicy mix of stonefruit: apricot and peach in particular. A precision crispness in the texture helps accentuate this. But then it unfortunately reverts to type for cold IPA and delivers a rasp of raw white onion, one that becomes sharper and more pronounced as the beer warms. It's not ruined by any means, and this is a very decent interpretation of cold IPA. If only there were a way to expunge the onion, it could be perfect.

We finish on DOT's beers, beginning on another 6% ABV IPA. DOT has done a fair few like this, and here the distinguishing feature, which will do for a name, is Citra + Mosaic (edit: this may be the same beer they've been selling at other festivals as "Stage Left"). No haze here; it's clear and mostly quite clean. I detected a tiny rub of garlic but that's in second place behind a raft of cantaloupe and guava, the Mosaic doing exactly what's required of it. Yes, IPAs tasted of tropical fruit before anyone thought to make them hazy. Thanks to DOT for this reminder.

Dark beers were in short supply, but I get to finish on one from DOT, another of uncertain name. It's a version of the barley wine called Beastly and is a beast indeed at 17.8% ABV. The barrels in which it was subsequently aged previously held oloroso sherry and pot still whiskey. For quite some time, I'd say. This tastes mature, of old leather and marinaded beef, with more than a hint of the date and tamarind of brown sauce, and a peppercorn spicing to match. The texture and heat leave one in no doubt as to the strength. A sample on the way out the door is probably the best serving for it. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I would fancy a full measure of it.

And that's all I drank. Huge thanks, of course, to Simon for putting on a great show; to Don's Bar in Moate for hosting; and to all the brewers who brought beer. While it's quite possible that I was the last beer drinker in Dublin never to have made it along before, if there are more out there, it's well worth making a plan for next year.

Passing clouds

The first Cloudwater tap takeover in Dublin happened in 2016, at The Beer Market, as was. I braved inclement weather to get to it and try some beers from this young fêted Manchester brewery. The fickle hype train rolls on, of course, and Cloudwater is now Just Another Brewery. When they had a tap takeover last month at UnderDog I simply happened to be there in search of something else. It was only polite to try a couple of their beers too.

The list was heavy on pale ales and I choose one representative one: SoCal, charmed by the promise of west-coast clarity. And my pint did indeed arrive clear, so full marks there. I have to taste it as well? OK, here it's not quite what I expected. Instead of spritzy, zesty, grapefruit and lime, I got an altogether sweeter fruit character, a summery blend of red cherries, strawberries and raspberry ripple ice cream, with some bonus floral honey in the end. That's delicious but it doesn't say southern California to me. The sweet side is enhanced by a thick mouthfeel, suggesting more than its 4.8% ABV. A more appropriate dank and vegetal greenness does creep in as it's allowed to warm, which is good, though I feel that west-coast should be more about the punch than the creeping.

One more, but it's a small one: Zitruskitzel, billed as a citrus-flavoured Berliner weisse at 3% ABV. I guess I was hoping that Berliner weisse, as practised by the wider craft brewing world, would return to its authentic roots as a mixed-fermentation style, but there's no sign of that here. And despite the inclusion of exotic produce like kabosu and Shiranui orange it's a very basic sour fruity, tasting of lemon sherbet and little else. It may be the first beer I've tasted which contains passionfruit but doesn't absolutely honk of it. On the plus side, it's not thin despite the low gravity, helped out by a sizeable amount of residual sugar. It's fine; the very essence of sour and fruity fine.

There's not really enough here to reach a judgment on how Cloudwater is doing these days. These were both good beers, but nothing really special. Hype is over-rated anyway.

Up to Scotland and turn left

On my way home from the Netherlands last May, I picked up a bottle of an unfamiliar Einstök beer, the Icelandic Wee Heavy. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that a beer style with its roots in northern climes would find a foothold in Iceland, even if it's as a novelty. They've certainly piled in the novelty ingredients, including smoked barley and angelica root. Slap a tartan label on that and we're good to go.

It's a deep red-brown colour, and bottle-conditioned, so with a layer of dregs on the bottom. It smells very Belgian, a dubbel-like blend of warm fruitcake and spiced wine. There's a lot of fizz, and that gets in the way of the initial impression. Part of the problem is that the body is a little thin, despite 8% ABV. When the carbonation settles, flavours of banana and chocolate are first, before more subtle sparks of clove, cinnamon and an aniseed-like bite which I'm guessing is the angelica. There's no sign of the smoke, that I could find anyway. If it's advertised, I should taste it.

Regardless, knock the condition out of it and here's a fine autumn or winter sipper. I wouldn't say it's a better alternative to the Trappist beers along the same lines, but it's good to find something similar given a unique twist.

Mixing it

There's been a nice selection of styles from Third Barrel lately. Did they miss the memo that everything has to be a hazy IPA now? I mean, who's going to buy this lot?

A good old pilsner to start with, called Stop the Clocks. A hefty dose of Saaz is promised, which is music to my ears. That doesn't manifest as I expected it to, lacking grassy sharpness, which is all part of Saaz's usual charm for me. Instead, it's soft and quite sweet, emphasising the malt in a very authentically Czech-tasting way. It almost veers into being sickly but is saved by the underlying lager cleanness. Overall, it works incredibly well, and while I miss the peppery hop pinch, the luxurious malt smoothness makes up for it.

Mango and pineapple is the tart of the day, at least according to Third Barrel's new sour beer, Tarte Diem. They've added some ginger too, to keep things interesting. It's a standard hazy orange colour and very light-bodied, feeling like even less than its modest 4.5% ABV. A hard mineral tang in the aroma suggests sourness to come, but it never quite materialises. You get lots of sweet juice instead; clean, not sticky, which is good. The ginger doesn't appear until the very finish, adding a bonus classy-lemonade feature. This is jolly decent summer fun and could be worth doing as a seasonal repeat feature, if only there was weather to match.

Fleetwood Black is a standard, pub-grade session stout from client brand Two Sides. 4.5% ABV and served on nitro: pure standard. They've certainly put an individual spin on the genre with quite an intense flavour. It's not quite Wrasslers level but it's not far off, combining dark chocolate, unlit cigar, boiled spinach and well-done toast. As such, it's bloody lovely: sessionable but full of interesting bits and pieces. You may need to like your stout on the bitter side to enjoy it, but if so, here's a welcome alternative to the big W.

The inevitable IPA to bring us out is Ár gCairde Cold IPA, the latest in a collaboration series with various breweries run by Dundalk bar Mo Chara. It's 5.1% ABV, hazy and golden, and smells decidedly sour: a bright and tart lemon-zest whiff. The flavour almost teeters into that sour IPA territory, so refreshing is it, but it's still properly sweet and full-bodied, the hops mixing oily manadarin-peel bitterness with sweeter mandarin flesh. While the citrus buzzes on the palate in the finish, there's a soothing toffee-like malt character which suggests this hasn't been cold-fermented, but whether it has been or not, it does carry well the attributes of proper proper IPA. I bought two cans by mistake. I regret nothing.

Pretty high standard stuff, all-in-all. I'm left without any catty remarks to finish on. Here's hoping for worse beer next time out.

Dropping well

I love finding cans from the tiny Irish country breweries which don't really sell in Dublin much. Dew Drop in Kill, Co. Kildare is one such, and here are two, both of which have been around for over a year. Better late than sober.

First up is Magnum, intended, I guess, as a showcase for the famous German bittering hop of the same name. It's not quite as clear as a German brewery would make it, though is an enticing sunset gold colour, suggesting depth beyond what 4.3% ABV would suggest. The aroma is faintly floral, while the condition is faint too: where I expected lots of busy fizz there's a mere prickle of carbonation. So far, so kellerbier. The flavour reverts to type for the low strength with a bit of a hollow middle, trimmed at the edges by notes of dry grain and drier herbs. The finish, unsurprisingly, is dry, and it's unfortunately not strongly flavoured enough to be properly pilsner-bitter. It fits the clean-and-drinkable pilsner profile, well suited to pub drinking, but shades a little too much into blandness for my liking at home.

Dew Drop is better known for its more traditional styles so I wasn't sure what to expect from Ellipsis, something advertising itself as a "tropical pale ale". It's 5% ABV and a barely-hazy watery yellow colour. The flavour does deliver the tropical, however. There's an almost jammy, dessert level of mango, passionfruit and cantaloupe. While not a lager, it's crisp like one, the sweetness given a balancing spicy paprika kick. Fashion dictates a bigger body than this light lad shows, but I think lighter is better for this sort of thing. Nicely done, Dew Drop.

As usual, it's quality stuff. For a small pub-based operation they seem to have their processes dialled in quite precisely. I hope the people of Kill appreciate what they have here.

Get up offa that thing!

I make this -- Tropical Little Thing -- the seventh Sierra Nevada "Little Thing" beer to come my way. It does at least share a few attributes in common with the original and, arguably, best Hazy Little Thing: it's an IPA and has a similar ABV at 7%. What makes it tropical? The can doesn't say, while the brewery simply suggests it should taste of mango, papaya and passionfruit, without suggesting any of them have been added. Has it all been done with Amarillo, Cascade, El Dorado, Sabro and Sultana hops? That seems ambitious.

It's certainly hazy; almost completely opaque, and a glowing weissbier gold rather than the more typically modern beaten-egg yellow. The aroma does indeed suggest tropical fruit, although not a whole lot of it. This smells interesting: sweet, but calm and balanced too. There's a lot of heft to the body; a filling, almost warming, density. Carried on that is the hop-dominated flavour, and there's no sign of any fruit additives. Of the five named varieties, I hear Sabro the loudest, with its sharp pithiness. That's complemented by a gentler mandarin zest, and maybe a little pineapple and mango arriving late, but I wouldn't say it's the main feature. For such a heavy beer, the finish is very quick, and I would have liked the hops to hang around longer, doing more.

In general, though, it's pretty good. It doesn't quite deliver on the description given, but take it as a standard American hazy IPA from a large brewery and it's perfectly satisfactory. Anyone trying to decide between this and the similarly-described Juicy Little Thing should definitely pick this.

And the Little Things keep coming. Look out for Crisp Little Thing next, if and when it arrives here.

A passage to Sligo

I thought I would get all my pre-Hagstravaganza White Hag beers closed off in a blog post the Monday before the festival, but circumstances conspired against me, and a couple of days beforehand, Darkness landed in. This isn't the brewery's first foray into straight-up session stout: Black Pig, sold mostly to export, was around before it. But while that was a sweet and chocolatey one, this is bone dry, packed with roasted notes and an almost ashen smokiness. The seriousness continues with a mineral background flavour, part aspirin, part clay. The pointy edges are accentuated by a carbonated serve, running no risk of creaminess. After the initial shock, I found myself rather enjoying it. No-nonsense stouts are thin on the ground and I appreciate a new one, though I've no idea how widespread it will be. Pubs who might be shopping around for a microbrewed stout not owned by an MMA fighter would do well to look this way.

And then it was off to Ballymote once more. Time at Hagstravaganza is always tight, and the bar service sporadically backed-up, so I didn't spend much time strolling around or taking in the atmosphere. Just the beers, please.

I opened my account with Wide Street's Saison Des Pyrénées, a saison given two years of ageing in Jurançon barrels. It's just as well that the brewery executives were on hand to tell me that's a wine. It doesn't taste very wine-like, nor even oaky, lacking the rounded spice that normally brings. Instead it's sharp and tangy, full of the waxy bitterness often found in the stronger sort of geuze. The weighty body fits that mould, even though it's a relatively modest 6% ABV. Still, I liked the heft of it, and the lingering tart residue it leaves behind on the palate. Not that there was time to spend enjoying that.

Ukrainian brewery Pravda were on the board and I was immediately attracted to TomYum, described as a spiced pale ale. There were two things wrong with that: for one, it was red coloured and red tasting, showing lots toffee and fudge, like an American amber. And then there wasn't much spice either. Ginger, chilli, galangal, lime and lemongrass are all supposed to be in there, yet only a cola-like phosphorescent tang in the finish was there to show any spicing. It was fine to drink: I like that sort of hopped and toffee-forward red beer, but it was a big disappointment as regards the promise of the description.

As the forgiving sort, I came back to Pravda much later in the day, for a go of their Syla tripel. This proved a bit of a hot mess, tasting powerfully of banana in particular, and with more of burn than I would expect, even from 8% ABV. One forgets how rare a skill the Belgians have in making something of this spec drinkable. In fairness to this one, there is some good complexity, and I picked out pear, grapefruit and a little peppery spice, but none of them offset the cloying chemical esters which otherwise dogged it. 

Staying on the rarity kick but moving closer to home, two draught-only beers from Beoir Chorca Duibhne which tend not to travel much beyond their west Kerry home. Beoir Rua is a no-frills red, made for pub drinking at 4% ABV. It's properly red and clear, and mostly quite dry. A gentle hint of sweeter strawberry is the one nod to a multidimensional flavour, otherwise it's a clean and crisp drinking beer. It was perhaps a bit lost at an event like this, but palate cleansers have their place.

That was certainly what I had in mind some hours later when I came to Kerry Kölsch. In the great tradition of very small microbreweries, Beoir Chorca Duibhne isn't set up for lager, so they've created this warm-fermented blonde to fill the space. And it works: they've kept the fermentation properly cool so there are no surprise fruity esters here, only a clean minerality of the sort found in Cologne's own signature beers. 4% is the ABV once again and it was fantastically refreshing as I geared up for the final beers of the gig.

There was quite a decent showing of proper lagers too, and I felt a bit guilty for not making time for some Donzoko, since their beer is otherwise unobtainable in these parts. Instead I had one from a different UK lager specialist, Braybrooke, with the inspiring name of Pilsner Lager. It's pretty much textbook, if maybe a tiny bit on the weak side at 4.5% ABV and with quite a severe bitterness. Rich described it has being in the north German style typified by Jever, and I can see that, but the Germans tend to have a herbal flavour to make the bitterness more worthwhile; here it seemed to be done for its own sake rather than being one element in a picture. While this was enjoyable, I think I would get bored of it if faced with a pint.

It also didn't fare well by being consumed next to King Crispy from Oregon brewer Deschutes. Despite the name giving me the absolute ick, the beer is perfection. The best pilsner (and by that I mostly mean Keesmann Herren Pils) has a creamy softness which somehow manages to complement the invigorating noble hops. This has that: a calorific richness to accentuate the pinch of fresh green nettles. And yes, it's crisp too (not "crispy") and 4.8% ABV and all the other things that good pils ought to be. This is a classic case of the Americans taking a European beer style and recreating it absolutely perfectly, and better than most European breweries do it.

Their ability to do this was called in question by some festival-goers with regards to Bagby's take on English bitter. King of the Britons poured yellow, not the oxtail brown which I guess is some drinkers' only experience of the stuff. Bagby has gone northern, and there are vibes of Marble Pint and Boltmaker about this one, with its sharp bitterness. There's a cheeky hint of American grapefruit in it too, adding a certain sense of Jaipur. It all tails off quite quickly, as one would expect for a 4.4% ABV bitter. I'd say this is something of a novelty in Oceanside, California, where I'm guessing the beers have a lot more poke. It does make it a bit of a damp squib over here where such things are more commonplace. But good effort, Bagby. Convincing.

Haze is usually inevitable, and here it served to introduce me to two breweries I'd never tried before. First up is the Breton brewery AERoFAB, and a collaboration they did with White Hag called Feothan. It's quite a light pale ale, 5% ABV and hopped with Citra and Chinook. The colour is misty rather than murky. Keeping things light was a good idea because, while the flavour does have a central twang of garlic, it's not overwhelming, and is accompanied by a much more pleasant melon note. There's none of the burn or stickiness that heavily hopped haze sometimes presents. This is another one which might work better in calmer surrounds than the bustle of a festival.

There were no such subtleties in the IPA I picked to bring to the train with me. This was I Wish I Could Fly, from the English brewery Sureshot. No Orval jokes, please. It's 6.5% ABV and its combination of Citra, Nelson, Mosaic and Rakau should have given it plenty of character, but I wasn't feeling it, whether that be due to palate fatigue on the day or haze fatigue in general. There's garlic, there's vanilla: if you like those things in beer, you'll like this. I was still sipping my half pint when we reached Longford and nothing more interesting had happened with it along the route.

The beer before this, and a possible contributor to the suspected palate fatigue, was LBR Rauch by Lambrate. You really have to read the small print on the tap badge to tell that this is a doppelbock -- no such information was on the menu board or in the festival programme. Or you could taste it, because it is absolutely a doppelbock to its core, with the added bonus of smoked malt. That isn't always a good thing but they have successfully Schlenkerla'd it, keeping it clean and smooth, the bacon-like smoke flooding the palate from the first sip and departing on a gorgeous grilled rasher bite. It pulls off that very German trick of showing off its 8% ABV with heat and density, yet somehow also being supremely easy to drink. Magnificent work from the Milanese team here.

For the second year running, the main festival bar was complemented by a smaller one in the brewery's hospitality suite, ably staffed by the Brickyard crew and pouring barrel-aged delights and rarities. I stepped in just as the brewer from Green Cheek was opening a bottle of Don't Tell Brian, their *deep breath* banana chocolate coconut vanilla cupcake stout. It's 13.1% ABV and apparently eye-wateringly expensive. It's also eye-wateringly sweet, with the banana strangely to the fore. The secret is lots and lots of real bananas, apparently. Beyond that it's the average sort of hyper-sticky pastry stout, all glazed donuts and pink marshmallows: interesting for the first five seconds and then a horrible chore to drink. Brian is better off not knowing.

To the barrels, then. White Hag had the first one I wanted to try: Maccan, a 12.2% ABV (very) strong ale, aged in Irish whiskey barrels. It's a dark garnet colour and is every bit as warming as the ABV suggests. From the base beer there's both sweet runny caramel and the sticky burnt sort as well, with a hint of summer fruit for nuance -- raspberry in particular. I would normally be looking for the honeyish character from Irish whiskey but this tastes more full-on oak-and-vanilla, like bourbon. It's unsubtle, but it's fun. The only down side was a growing banana aspect that arrived as it warmed. I hope that's not in the bottled version, whenever that appears.

The last new brewery of my day was Oregon's Alesong, and a pale 7.3% ABV number, called Silver Lining, badged simply as a farmhouse ale. That hides quite a convoluted production process, involving old and young beer blended, Brettanomyces, foeders and dry hopping with modern American varieties. It's worth it. I love this type of beer for its smooth and rich white-wine flavours, a bit like Sauternes, and this has that, but there's a brighter, fresher coconut and mango side as well, something that could run the risk of making it seem trashy or gimmicky, but doesn't: it's still class all the way through. Barrel-aged saison does not have the sort of flavour profile that I thought would be worth playing around with, but it seems that it is.

Finally, on a recommendation from Brickyard's Erwin, Hesperus by Epochal. I wasn't terribly impressed by the stout this Glasgow brewery brought to Mullingar this year, but I'm all about second chances. Hesperus is described as a stock ale and is 7.2% ABV. Pale gold and clear, there's quite an assertive sourness before the Brett arrives and starts throwing shapes. Luscious, unctuous peach and pineapple jostle cheerily with peppery spice. It could run the risk of being busy, but everything is smoothed together, complementary and surprisingly drinkable given the strength. If I had a 75cl bottle of this I'm not sure how much I would be willing to share.

It seems like the barrel bar is the place to be. Maybe I'll start there next year. Until then, cheers to all the organisers and crew for another fun day out.