A cheap celebration

The Autumn Real Ale Festival at JD Wetherspoon kicked off last week, with the promise of 40 different special beers on rotation across the branches, and the usual handful of international collaborations to get excited about.

The Silver Penny was early with its festival beers, with several available on the day before the event's official start. On the downside, they no longer do third-pint measures. My first half, then, was Hoptropolis, an IPA of 6% ABV brewed at Hook Norton as a collaboration with Mitch Steele's New Realm in the US. It's on the dark side of golden, heading for amber, though quite clear. Azacca hops feature, and the aroma has its signature Skittles or Starburst effect. There's a tannic bitterness in the flavour, where the proper English ale effect kicks in, and a distinct heat from the alcohol. On the softer side, there's apricot in spades, plus a more nuanced forest fruit character. Though it's a powerhouse by the standards of such beers, the dry finish makes it successfully designed for easy pinting. Careful now.

Czech brewery Joe's Garage brought the recipe for a Bohemian Pale Ale to Shepherd Neame. It's 5% ABV, a pale shade of amber, and was designed as a showcase for Kazbek hops. They've given it an enticing perfume of fresh flowers, which I'm sure is being aided by the malt base. The flavour has a little meadowy lavender, but mainly goes for a mild lemon bitterness -- flesh first, rind in the finish -- sweetened up to cookie levels by that malt. It doesn't taste its strength, being light-bodied. This, coupled with a taste profile that's not too intense, makes it nicely sessionable. Apparently, Joe's Garage specialises in pale ale variants, and I would say that even in lagerland, one this anodyne would turn few heads. As an English bitter with Czech hops it's excellent, however, and cleaner than most of what the host brewery puts out under its own label.

The next international collaboration is Zulu Blonde, from Banks's, with Zululand as the guest brewer. Though billed as a blonde ale, it's another on the darkish side, and only yellow with a light source behind it. The aroma is grainy: a savoury sort of oat cookie character of which I am not a fan. The taste is strangely and unpleasantly chemical, like a cheap 1980s perfume or highly-scented novelty soap. Fuggles, Goldings and Saaz are the guilty parties. It's only 4.5% ABV, and quite thin and watery with that, so at least the taste doesn't stick around. I searched hard for redeeming features, and maybe there's some unobjectionable summer strawberry in here, but the chemical twang swings back in as soon as I look at it square on, ruining the effect. Nobody who enjoys this beer is thinking about it too much.

We drop the Saaz and go darker yet with Ratfink & Ripsnorter from Hogsback. This is another strong one at 5% ABV and a seriously dark ruby. It smells wholesome and wintery, of warm plum pudding and fresh-baked raisin cookies. The flavour doesn't vary much from this, adding only a backing of milk chocolate to the dark fruit, so while you don't get any bonus complexity it's also not a hot solventy mess, which can easily happen to cask beers like this. This is pleasant, balanced, flavoursome but also easy drinking: a proper comfort beer. If I wasn't rushing through halves, I could very happily settle into a pint or two of this. 

Lancaster Harlequin is a very pale one, looking like a cheapie lager. I guess the name is a reference to its use of Jester hops (although a hop called Harlequin does exist), in there with fellow modern British variety Godiva, retro-revival Keyworth, plus some First Gold for good measure. The combination is surprisingly dank, with a hint of greasy resin on the nose and then a flavour that goes full on weedy, being bitter and spicy all at once. It works extremely well. I don't know the hops well enough to pick out what each is doing, and whatever they do individually is nicely integrated into an overall grassy picture. As an English golden ale it successfully achieves the goal of being crisp and refreshing as a pilsner, and as bitter as a good one, while also bringing the casual depth of flavour that's unique to cask ale. You might have to be careful given that it's 5.2% ABV, but I recommend it for cheeky pints in multiple servings.

Hook Norton's own contribution to the list is Autumn Ways, a 4.2% ABV best bitter, or possibly a red ale, depending on which version of the pumpclip you believe. It's certainly red; a very deep ruby, in fact. They've imparted a lot of coffee in the flavour, suggesting that brown malt might be involved. It's not good coffee, being sweet and little powdery, like instant granules. After the initial hit it all tails off quite quickly, turning a bit watery by the end, leaving only a slightly sweaty and unpleasant tang. This needs to be bigger, rounder and richer to succeed at what I think it's trying to do.

I like cherries much more than I do plums. So, Titanic Cherry Porter, then? Definitely. They've certainly laid the cherry on thick, moreso than in Plum Porter, I think. That gives it sweet Belgian kriek vibes from the first sip. And through the subsequent ones. The porter gets a bit lost under the jammy onslaught. There's a substantial tang in the background which is a little bit toasty, but quite metallic as well. What it needs, I think, is a different sort of complementary sweetness; a bit of milk chocolate or mocha to express the porter element in a more complementary way with the fruit. As is, it just misses the mark, seemingly trying to be a serious novelty beer, and that's just not going to work.

A few days later, the refreshed line-up included Rudgate Vanilla Mild. The company is famous for its mild so it seemed a bit strange that they would attempt to enhance it. Like its award-winning stablemate, this is ruby coloured, brown even, though is weaker at only 3.6% ABV. The vanilla essence begins to make its presence felt in the aroma and then goes full tilt in the flavour. Luckily, the very light and almost watery body prevents the sweetness from getting too intense, and the added flavouring is almost complementary to the base of milk chocolate and coffee cake. While it's acceptable as a sweet dessert beer, it doesn't really deliver what I want from a mild. The novelty ingredient is entirely unnecessary.

I enjoyed how dark-orientated the line-up was: I had never noticed such seasonality before. But there have to be pale ones, so here's Maxim Slovenian Pale Ale. "Styrian Goldings", thought I. Yes, and Dana and Eureka, returns the brewery. It's an innocent looking pale yellow, and only 4.3% ABV, but packs one hell of a hop punch, beginning on a strong wax bitterness in the aroma. That's right there in the flavour too, where it's joined by a raw vegetal asparagus kick, plus an intense orange pith of the sort you get from Sorachi Ace and her relatives. I wasn't certain at first, finding the extreme harsh bitterness a bit difficult to take. But, as powerhouse beers often do, it grew on me, and I was properly appreciating the wallop my palate was getting by the end; an extensive tour of the Slovenian hop fields over very bumpy roads. You might want a taster of it first, all the same.

Another international collaboration comes in the form of Dos Perros, an amber ale brewed at Adnams, based on an original by Yazoo in Tennessee. The American beer its based on is a brown ale, and this is certainly brown in colour, very much on the garnet end of the amber spectrum. It's light and smooth, with notes of cork, plum and red grape, seasoned with a generous layer of diacetyl. That's your lot, though: the finish is quick, and there's a surprising lack of depth for something that's all of 4.8% ABV. The signature Adnams tannins are here, but I don't know that they make this particular beer any better.

From Conwy comes Kashmir, a "traditional IPA" not brewed with Cashmere hops but an unspecified mix of British ones. It's a bit hazy on it, a translucent dark orange. Perhaps unusually for a British bitter, the fuzz actually helps it out, adding a roundness and a grainy bite to a hop-dominated profile. Jaffa orange, spritzy grapefruit and a harder oily lime all give it a fun new-world feel, so while it feels a lot lighter than "IPA" as commonly understood these days, it absolutely delivers the requisite hop impact; more than the hazy stuff tends to, anyway. I guess "traditional" here can be read as a synonym of "west coast". Regardless, it's very nicely done: assertive and invigorating. 

The haze in that one came without a warning. Quiet Shadows, a hazy pale ale from Fyne Ales, flagged its haze in advance on the clip, which I neglected to take a photo of. I always like to see Fyne in the festival line-up and this didn't disappoint. Though it's only a little hazy, it has the lovely luxurious silky juiciness that the best of these do. Orange sorbet, clove spice and a harder lime bitterness all feature: something for everyone. Behind these, there's a genuine soft New England juiciness, something that I've rarely if ever encountered in the cask ales from next door, but which proves it absolutely can be done. 

Also hazy, we have Bunny Hop from Purity: not exactly a tail-end-of-the-year sort of name, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It's light and spritzy and, very impressively, is only 3.5% ABV. There's not an ounce of watery thinness in here. Instead you get bags of zest plus a softer melon and peach sweetness. This has that easy-drinking complexity that English cask ale does so uniquely well: you could quaff pint after pint of it, while it absolutely stands up as a sip-and-explore job. I ordered a half and was served a pint, so did both. Recommended, tbh.

And I thought I'd get another half in that round and it too arrived as a full pint. This is Cracklewick, a pleasingly Dickensian name for a dark ale by Shepherd Neame. The pint I got was a murky dark ruby colour and tasted a bit dreggy, so this may be what remained in the bottom of the barrel, though I find it hard to believe that casks in Dublin 1 ever get that far down before being discarded. So, I got a red wine or red grape sweetness up front, plus a hot port-like alcohol, which was a surprise as it's only 4.8% ABV.  There's a disturbing solvent heat, which I didn't care for, as well as a sharp vinegar tang. The latter suggests beer-gone-off to me, but I'd been attendant in the pub long enough to know that this hadn't been on for very long and must have come from the brewery like this. While it's interesting, the pint I drank is not what I want from a dark Kentish ale. The uncertainty around English cask beer is why I'm glad that the pint only cost me €1.25.

Early on a bright and cold Saturday afternoon I headed down the Grand Canal to the lesser-Wetherspoon, The South Strand, not one that normally puts a lot of effort into its cask offering. Conditions were perfect for a warming pint of stout, and they had Inveralmond's Ossian Oatmeal on tap. I was a bit confused when I saw this on the list: Ossian is a golden ale and it seems weird that they would re-use the name. Anyway, this is 4.1% ABV, and bulked out nicely by the oatmeal so it tastes and feels bigger, rounder, and more nutritious. The texture is beautifully smooth and there's a balanced flavour of filter coffee and dark chocolate with a hint of herbal spearmint, wearing its bitterness lightly. Just the job, and an occasion to remind everyone that stout works brilliantly on cask and there should be much more of it.

As fortune would have it, there was another stout on the line-up: Easy, one of the international collaborations, this time Bateman's with Steel & Oak in British Columbia. It looks identically lovely, black with a thin off-white head; none of your domey bollocksology. "Tropical" it says on the badge, and there's a definite suggestion of sweet fruit in the aroma. That gets much louder in the flavour, a full-on tang of grapefruit, alongside a slightly rough roasted bitterness: you would certainly miss the oatmeal. I was left wondering if the texture is actually annoyingly thin, or if that's just by comparison. Overall, it's OK: the inclusion of Amarillo and El Dorado gives it character, but there's a reason these don't often feature in stout. They kind of interrupt the flow here, adding intrusive black IPA vibes, which normally I'd be fine with, but the effect is strong enough to be unsatisfactory. I still give this the cask stout thumbs-up, but at the same time would prefer a simpler proposition.

I finished on a Krafty Kiwi, from Brewsters. New Zealand hops are great, though the ones they've used here -- Pacific Jade and Pacific Gem -- aren't the most assertive. The result is a beer that lacks punch, though I suppose as a 4% ABV sessioner, punch is optional. It's a golden ale, almost completely clear, showing just a very faint haze. There is a certain amount of slightly exotic tropical fruit flesh and zesty citrus in the flavour, but at heart it's quite a plain example of the style, allowing crisp and biscuity malt to do most of the talking. It should therefore be easy drinking, but I found it getting a bit cloying by the half way point: the malt sweetness building on the palate while the fruit turns spiky and acidic. For me this just misses the mark, failing to bring the assertive hop fun and letting the worst aspects of musty malt and harsh hops take control. Oddly, more malt and more hops may be the solution. They usually are.

The festival runs across the estate of pubs until the end of this week. See the app for some version of what they might be serving at any given time.