Upper Down

Co. Down's Mourne Mountains Brewery supplies the goods today: a random selection of new-to-me beers. That they're mostly stouts is accidental, honest.

Cliff Hanger wants to make it very clear that it's, well, clear. "West Coast Pale Ale" it says in all caps on the front of the can. It's not quite clear, however, with a little murk from a lack of filtration. That yields positive results in the flavour, which is a beautiful mix of zesty jaffa, some slightly harder pith, and dry black tea to finish. The aroma, too, is bright and orangey -- a light mandarin juiciness which isn't especially west-coast but is gorgeous. Unbelievably, it's only 4.2% ABV, and it's amazing how much hop intensity they've packed into that. The body is properly full and satisfying as well. This is seriously sessionable stuff, and while some west-coast fanatics may want it bitterer, I think the balance is bang-on perfect.

A pastry stout follows, with the tiresome name of Marvelous Stout, in wavy Wonka-esque letters. It's unusual for having cacao, vanilla and maple syrup in the recipe but hasn't been brewed to imperial strength, finishing at 6.8% ABV. It's a handsome fellow, a sleek vinyl black with a luxurious thick head of beige foam. Unsurprisingly, it smells sticky and sweet: they haven't skimped on the maple. That lower ABV does give it a certain lightness of touch, which really helps the drinkability. The first flavour out is milk chocolate, so perhaps the Wonka co-option is somewhat justified. Woody maple follows, while the vanilla is little more than a seasoning, doubtless helping to accentuate the other two without turning the flavour gloopy and cloying. Nice. There's even a trace of the base stout, a dry coffee roast, clinging on for dear life under the candy onslaught. This is quite a different take on the pastry sub-genre, and one that would bear repeating.

Strongest of the lot is Wildfire, an imperial stout, aged in unspecified barrels, to 11% ABV. It's dark and dense in the glass, smelling sticky and tarry, like treacle and liquorice. The mouthfeel is quite light, with lots of fizz: I had been hoping for something thicker and gooier, having opened it as a dessert. Still, it's not lacking in flavour, offering a big stout's hazelnut, espresso and dark chocolate, with a very light touch on the barrels, to the point where I assume they previously contained whisky but I wouldn't bet on it. It's a simple and clean sort, wearing its high strength lightly. I found it rounded out well as it warmed, so it best to leave the can out of your fridge for a while before opening it. Not exactly a crescendo, this, but good stuff, in a brisk and dry way.

Quality beer all the way through, here. I don't get to go drinking up north often enough to know how widespread the brewery's beers are, but it seems to be an operation that's well worth supporting.

Roll out the Barrel

That pub I go to celebrated its 7th birthday recently, and seems to have hired Third Barrel to bring the party favours. That took the form of a tap takeover, which included a couple of beers that my diligent hounding of the brewery had hitherto missed.

New out was Wish You Were Here, an IPA of 5.7% ABV with no further information provided. It could be anything. It was, it turned out, a very west-coast style job, hopped with freezy Citra and Cascade and fermented with a thiol-boosting yeast. The bright polished-copper appearance was a pleasant surprise, and it really does maximise the hops in play. Dank resin is present in abundance, with added sparks of lime, pine and pith. That bitterness is almost difficult, though luckily there's a softer side too, with fruit chews and strawberries to offset any harshness. The substantial gravity gives it a helpful soft texture, while retaining the crisp west coast bite in the finish. Lovely. Perhaps it's a little on the severe side, but in a world dominated by sweet haze, counterpoints like this are necessary from time to time.

The next beer has been around a while but only gets rolled out on special occasions. This was, apparently, the last ever keg of Le Chic, an imperial stout aged in Chardonnay barrels. It's getting on for two years old, which is fine for an 11% ABV stout, though I was expecting some sort of oxidation or autolysis off-flavours. Nope. It tastes bang fresh, with no signs of age in the flavour. It's a gentle giant, offering smooth milk chocolate and soft caramel, balanced against an old-school bitter hop tang. Also ticked off on the imperial stout checklist are coffee roast and hazelnut. It was a bit of work to find the wine barrel's contribution, and I thought for a moment that the heavy black beer had simply drowned out the white wine. But after a minute or so, a new complexity emerges, tasting to me like ruby port or Madeira. It seems the white wine has been turned red and fortified. This probably would still have been superb without the barrel ageing, though that does lend it a unique and subtle extra character. A reminder that barrels, when used, don't have to be the beer's whole personality.

Belated birthday greetings to UnderDog, and time to get the second batch of Le Chic into the barrels in Bluebell, if it's not already.

There's IPA... and there's IPA

Time for another rapid run through what's new and hoppy in Irish beer.

We begin at Rascals, and a Session IPA they've made for Aldi, taking the brave step of brewing under the 4% ABV mark, where Irish IPAs fear to tread, usually. It's a sunny and clear yellow in the glass, with a fine white froth on top. The aroma is citrus, but on the confectionery side, with lemon drops and drizzle cake evoked. It's not quite so interesting to taste, the lemon element fading to a rub of pith and some highly dilute cordial. It's not watery, though: there's plenty of substance, given the strength. It's just that the hops -- unspecified beyond being "diverse" and "fruity" -- don't really deliver the goods. I got a little stonefruit as it warmed, but nothing distinctive. That may be deliberate. As a beer of which one may drink several in sequence, it works. There won't be any building unpleasant bitterness or cloying tropical-fruit sugar. There's a snap of lemon peel, a squirt of apricot, and then you're done until the next mouthful. Low-strength summer party beers like this are frankly too rare in this country. I would look for them more if people invited me to their parties.

Rascals has also had some guests in from New York: Finback, KCBC and Return all collaborating on a beer called Empire Haze. I'd have gone with "Knickerbockers in a Twist", but what do I know? As the name suggests, it's an IPA of the cloudy sort, and is in fact extremely murky, a dense opaque orange shade. It looks like mixed tropical juice and smells a bit like it too, suggesting mango, canteloupe and lychee. The first thing I got from the flavour was spice: paprika and sweet pepper. It looks like the kind of beer which would follow that with a fruit explosion, but it doesn't. The mouthfeel is as chewy as it appears, and I can't help feeling that should deliver a raft of tropical joy. Instead, the 6% ABV gives it a heat, beneath which there's not much more than dry crackers and a thin spread of marmalade. I expected much better from this; much more, certainly. I wonder what the New Yorkers made of the finished product.

Moving on, for a few summers now, The White Hag has had a bar on the Irish Ferries ships bringing holidaymakers to France. Now they've doubled down on their status as the official brewery of summer hols with En Vacances, a collaboration with French brewery AERoFAB. It's a light affair, only 4.2% ABV, and a rather dull and greyish hazy orange. The hopping is a fascinating spicy, incense or aftershave, effect. A sweeter note of strawberry or glacé cherry follows. It's done with Meridian, as a single hop. The flavour doesn't build over time, and there's a crisply clean finish, offset by a little fluff in the mouthfeel, thanks to the haze. I wasn't expecting much from this one but got myself a little bit of hop education and a nice pint. Fair play.

They've also made a beer for Street 66 in Dublin, not the first time this bar has commissioned such, though I think it's the first time they've canned it, saving me the bother of going in for a pint. It's called In the Name of Love and is proudly pink, although nothing on the ingredients list indicates why this is. Who's growing the pink barley? It smells quite plain and grainy, despite claiming to be a hazy pale ale. It's not even very hazy. The flavour has a vague hop tang -- an indistinct citric effect, masked further by overactive carbonation, not the "pillowy body" described on the can. The label also says it should taste of strawberry and gooseberry, and I'm aware of how much the colour of a drink can affect the perception of its taste, but I wasn't fooled: no fruit was forthcoming. Apart from the fab-u-luss appearance, it's a bit of a drab affair. Lots of fizz but no sparkle.

Spot the difference with En Vacances above: Downtime's Knockboy is another distressingly grey job. Downtime is a Cork-based client brewer, though their beer is brewed up here in the Real Capital, by Third Barrel. Knockboy tastes better than it looks, nicely full-bodied for 5.1% ABV, and with a fun mix of weighty dank resins and lighter zesty citrus, giving me mandarin and meringue pie. They've badged it as a "mountain IPA" implying that it's somewhere between east-coast and west-coast, and it really does draw on the positive aspects of both: properly bitter but with a dollop of juice and vanila on the side. The balance between tangy and sweet is exquisite. This beer shows up sporadically but is deserving of permanent status.

Kiwi hops are having a major moment among Irish brewers. Rye River have taken advantage to create Koru, a pale ale of 5% ABV. It's palely hazy and surprisingly light textured, even a little watery. There's no hop impact, the aroma being vaguely tropical while the foretaste is floral and perfumey. I found a slight peppery spice but not much else of interest. Everything tails off into generic fizz after that. For a special edition, and a collaboration with Vocation no less, it doesn't really do anything worthwhile.

Franciscan Well was sort-of in the news recently, with word of its parent multinational pulling out of Ireland and handing its portfolio over to fellow Corkonians, Heineken. It seems Molson Coors will retain ownership of the brewery on Marina Quay, whence came this limited edition beer: Docklands Series Red IPA. Something was immediately up from the aroma, which was oddly and disturbingly vinegar-like. There's a tartness in the flavour too, suggesting balsamic vinegar, infused with raspberry and strawberry. It has been over-bittered, with a harsh resinous acidity, but even that's not the most distressing part. The tannins. My god, the tannins. It is horrifically astringent; tooth-scrapingly, palate-scorchingly so. The combination of these factors make for tough and slow drinking. I'm not a fan of red IPA at the best of times, usually, but Franciscan Well has plumbed new depths of unbalance and unpleasantness with this example.

I feared that the cask pale ale from Hopkins & Hopkins at The Porterhouse would be a temporary arrangement, but it was there consistently until it got replaced by a new beer. This is Dublin Bay IPA, 5.3% ABV and amber coloured. There's kind of a mid-Atlantic vibe here. I suspect the hops are American -- there's a certain amount of tangy grapefruit and lime -- but they've been treated in a very English way, the bulk of the flavour being earthily bitter and very dry. It might even be fair to describe it as somewhat twiggy. The ABV gives it decent heft and it's a pint to take time over as a result. The understated smoothness and gentle complexity put the worthwhile features of cask dispense on display, and while I think I preferred its more hop-forward predecessor, Sitric, this is very decent stuff. If you're doing requests, Rob, how about a porter next?

There was a rare find from Belfast brewery Hercules in Aldi recently: their Rivets IPA. It looks a bit rough and home-brewy, a murky marmalade shade with poor head retention. No tasting notes are provided on the label, but I was expecting something quite English and malt-driven, so it was a very pleasant surprise to find it's nothing of the sort. While there's a certain amount of crisp biscuit in the base, it's mostly about lively and zesty hops; either New World ones, or the new European varieties bred to mimic them. That makes for refreshing, mouthwatering drinking, with notes of lemon sherbet and posh lemonade. Despite the poor head, there's plenty of sparkle. And it has poke too: a full 5.6% ABV. While it doesn't feel especially heavy, it's not at all thin either. All in all it's a rather jolly fellow, clean tasting and with bags of hoppy character.

I'm told that Dead Centre, like everyone bleedin' else these days, is making use of the brewing facilities at Third Barrel, which is why we're seeing more of their beers in these parts, per May's pale ale round-up. In my glass most recently, at UnderDog, was Plot Twist, a 5.8% ABV New England-style pale ale. This is pale orange and opaque but not a total emulsion. The aroma is sherbet-like, with lots of orange and lemon spritz. From there it goes on to become even more candy-like, tasting first like Skittles or Starburst. A slightly sulphurous spice arrives late. So, we're in sparky and lively territory, not the smooth and juicy end of NEIPA. That means there's also no vanilla, no garlic and no booze heat despite the substantial 5.8% ABV. That's all to the good. Only a very slight wet-cardboard oxidised tang spoiled it a little. This might upset the haze purists, not that anyone should care, and overall it's rather decent. Fair play to all involved.

The latest in Third Barrel's hopefully limited Excruciatingly Bad AI Artwork series is Hu$h Money, an IPA, claiming to be both citrus and tropical, and with a bevvy of high-tech hop products called into service. It's 5.9% ABV, a dense-looking orange colour and does indeed smell tropical, of mango and passionfruit in particular, with just a misting of grapefruit zest too. Enticing. The body is big and smooth, carrying sweet and jammy stonefruit, plus a harder lemon and lime bite. They weren't kidding in that description: tropical and citrus, all at once. The bigly mouthfeel is the only thing that lets it down a little; it has the flavour profile of a beautifully refreshing quaffing beer, but the alcohol heat means it's not quite as bright and fresh-tasting as I'd like. That's a very minor quibble however. This is a quality IPA making excellent use of the high tech ingredients.

Up a notch at 6% ABV, a new hazy IPA from Galway Bay Brewery called Afterglow. Its arrival was enough to tempt me into Bar Rua, a perfectly cromulent part of the chain I rarely take time to visit. The beer turned out to be a rather sickly yellow shade and to have an unfortunate dry and savoury tang, one which is familiar from highly-hopped haze, but which I've hitherto been spared recently. There's more to it than that, happily, though I wouldn't call it either "juicy" nor "tropical" per the tap badge. The sweetness is more syrupy, with fruit salad notes of apple chunk and pear slice. The effect is accentuated by a slick and gummy texture which makes for slow drinking. Overall it's a bit dull and serious where I expected bright, sunny and carefree. Them's the breaks with haze. There's a nice afterburp of pineapple. They should put that on the tap badge instead.

Hitting the haze spec bang in the middle is Secret Handshake 2.0, a re-up of a beer Hopfully made for the  Craft Central off licence last autumn. They've kept the slightly unfashionable orange colour, while the ABV has been raised from 6% to 6.6% and the hops switched to Pacific Sunrise and Strata CGX. It's incredibly juicy, dispensing with any semblance of bitterness. Tangy tangerine and mandarin are the grand centrepiece, with a lacing of lightly sweet vanilla. It fades quite quickly, however, perhaps indecently so for a beer that's some distance from session strength. Similarly, don't expect much by way of aroma. Overall, it's very accessible and easy drinking, which meant I was still desperately searching for more flavour to write about as my glass drained away to empty. If you like the normal way that Hopfully goes about its hazy business then give this one a go. It's not one to convert the sceptics, however.

Rising Wind follows, a terrible name for a beer, but the product is quite decent. This is a hazy IPA by Lough Gill: 6.2% ABV, and hopped with a variety of alphabet soup hop derivatives. The result is rather good, full of aniseed bitterness next to sharp assertive citrus. And while the haze is fully in evidence in the appearance, it leans heavily into the bitterness, which is pleasing. Don't expect any vanilla or candyfloss, just lime, pine and the other elements which tend to belong on the west coast. If hazing it up is what's necessary to sell the west coast flavour profile, and there are no unpleasant side effects, then have at it, I say.

Double IPAs have been a bit thin on the ground for this round-up, but Eight Degrees has provided one: The Crux, their second new beer since the brewery's revival at the beginning of the year. Although the label says "tropical" and "Pacific" it looks resolutely old-school, being crystal clear and amber coloured, with lots of persistent foam. The ABV is a little light by contemporary standards, at 7.7%. It smells like a double IPA from days of yore: caramel first, with grapefruit riding shotgun. That one-two is how the flavour goes as well, ramped up to brittle toffee and waxed lime peel. It's not that long ago that this was the cutting edge of radical beer brewing. Now it's a quaint and gentle old-timer with charming mannerisms which the young folk probably wouldn't appreciate. There isn't really any deeper complexity, but that's absolutely fine: the clean and dry stylings are reward enough. And it does pack all the punch of a big beer, despite that slightly dialled-back ABV. If interesting beer is something you discovered after 2016, here's a lovely example of what used to get us excited in the decade or so before that.

If only one double IPA is a cause for sadness, having one new triple IPA is a cause for celebration. Irish breweries really don't bother much with the more extreme end of the IPA spectrum, and honestly that's probably for the best. But there's no telling that to the originator of Irish DIPA, Galway Bay Brewery. The new triple IPA -- their first -- is called Young Cardinals. Riwaka, Pacific Sunrise and Citra Lupomax is the hop line-up, which sounds like a workout, regardless of the 10% ABV. Oats and spelt are in the grain bill and it gloops slowly into the glass, forming a thick puck of white foam over a sheer pale orange emulsion. The aroma gives little away, but I think the Riwaka is putting a bit of effort in, creating a sharp, but faint, herbal buzz. The oats are not shy in the texture, and there's an almost porridgey thickness. Not much heat, though, which is surprising: for a high-octane hazeboi it's remarkably clean. That should leave room for lots of lovely hop complexity but I'm sorry to report it's really just the Riwaka again, sending eucalyptus and damp grass. There's a certain amount of lighter stonefruit, though only as an afterthought, and I would never have guessed there's Citra in here. Summing up, it's a big and soupy affair, not a palate burner but also lacking proper hop zing. I think the heavy haze might have been a mistake. A clean and neutral yeast could have given us more on the hop front.

16 beers is probably enough for one session. It's safe to say that, while I was slightly concerned about Irish breweries being slow off the mark with new beers at the beginning of 2024, at just past the half-way point they're clearly at full tilt.

The parent trap

Co-option of local vernacular is one of the best things about microbrewing, a fun way to learn about other cultures and to give a shout-out to one's own, via the medium of an endless parade of samey hazy IPAs. Today's pair is from Bullhouse in Belfast, and the branding couldn't be more Belfast if they'd put two yellow cranes on the cans and filled them with concentrated scorching sarcasm.

According to the label, Yer Ma, is "big and juicy". It's 8% ABV and an opaque shade of orange. The aroma goes a bit beyond juicy, into sweet orange cordial. In the flavour, that's confined to the aftertaste, though what goes before it isn't great. The first impression is heat: a slightly solvent-like blue-flame burn. A bitter and herbal savoury quality fills out the middle before the sticky fruit returns: cordial, but maybe a little nuanced peach and pineapple too, if you look closely. I'm aware that asking for cleanness from a hazy double IPA can sound like I don't understand the style, but it is possible and plenty of breweries can do it, even in Ireland. This tastes like an effort from seven or eight years ago when Irish breweries were still getting the hang of the new beer-world order. I found Yer Ma to be overly hefty and a bit unpleasantly dangerous.

Much like your actual ma, I hoped for better things from Yer Da. "Big and bitter" says the label, so west coast, then? There are oats in the grist, so perhaps not purely so. Once again the ABV is 8%, and it is a little clearer than the previous, though a similar orange colour. The aroma isn't sweet, but nor is it anything else, really, suggesting citrus without actually delivering much. It's all rather dialled-down and quiet, in fact, tasting of jaffa orange rind or marmalade shred, on a dry cracker or breadcrust malt base. I would never have guessed the strength because it's not sending heat or any other types of flavour intensity. Yer Da is a bit boring. I had expected something much more assertive, and was all set for lashings of pine and grapefruit. None of it materialised. It's clean and inoffensive, but who wants inoffensive from a double IPA of any stripe?

I'll admit, they got me. I loved the names, and there was no way I could possibly have bought only one of these beers: as a pair they're inseparable. Made for each other. I was happy to be done with them, however. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.

Psst!

Dampfbier. Now there's a beer style you don't see very often, at least in the commercial sphere. Many a home brewer is drawn to the idea of using a cool-fermenting yeast in a warm-fermenting environment, because fridges are expensive and take up space. But it's not one of the old German styles that the contemporary craft beer movement has adopted and abused. How gose and Berliner weisse must envy it.

I found one, Borbecker Helles Dampfbier, on the shelves of De Bierkoning in Amsterdam, so I bought it, just for the rarity value. The typically taciturn German label gives nothing away about what one is to expect from a dampfbier, other than it is venerable. Ingredients are listed and it's just water, malt and hops. I suspect they're not really going for the geek market.

In the glass it's a bright and clear pale gold, looking like a standard Helles lager. Nothing in the aroma tells me any different, though there's a snap of the plastic hop-extract element that tends to spoil mainstream German lager. Surely Herr Borbecker uses the real stuff?

Hops don't feature much in the flavour. It's a big and chewy fellow, despite an extremely modest 4.8% ABV. And while there's no wheat, I get the fruity weissbier esters, suggesting that indeed warm fermenting has been happening, whatever the predilections of the yeast strain used. Madeira cake, blancmange and nougat all feature in the middle, with a touch of courgette around the edges, finishing on a slightly harder grass or cabbage bitterness. While it's very obviously A German Beer, it is subtly different, conforming to none of the familiar flavour profiles.

This is a bit of an insight into what German beer might have been in a slightly different timeline, which is fun. The brewery is in Essen, between Dortmund and Düsseldorf. I'm well overdue a visit to that part of the world.

edit: And after all that, a helpful commentator points out below that it's just a lager using the brand of an old brewery which once had a steam engine. They're an unromantic bunch, your Germans.

Best of British

The days of hyped-up English beers seem to have passed. There are certainly plenty of breweries who have excellent reputations, but those are at least as likely to be decades old than new start-ups. Maybe everything exciting in beer has been done. I doubt it though.

As a veteran of the hype era, I still get a frisson when beer from The Kernel passes my way. So it was downright thrilling when UnderDog held a tap takeover of their wares last month. The list was unfortunately quite light on the dark beers, but I made do.

First up, something called Kernel Pils. I'm sure they have lots of beers with this name, but this one was specifically brewed using Nelson Sauvin hops. It's 4.6% ABV and the low strength comes with a light touch on the Nelson, adding very Marlboroughesque melon, gooseberry and white grape, rather than anything sterner. The mouthfeel is wonderfully full, though it also retains a beautiful clean crispness. Overall, it channels the fundamentals of great German pils -- hello Keesmann -- but with a new-world hop used just how a precision-focused German lager brewer would. The hype may be gone but The Kernel is still turning out quality.

Next was the Small Pale Ale, and again I must specify the hops: Columbus and Centennial, in this instance. How very 2010. At 4.2% ABV it's not actually all that small, and most breweries would call such a thing a session IPA. It's rather basic and hazy, and not very interesting for something being sold at eight euro a pint. There's a broadly citric lemon icepop flavour, and it's refreshing and easy drinking, except on the wallet. While it's fine as a beer, I'm not sure it was worth shipping across the Irish Sea.

Something more interesting to finish this set: Brett Pale Ale. This one is 4.4% ABV and hopped with a Transpacific combination of Mosaic and Taiheke. The hops are very much a secondary feature here, however, adding only a small pinch of lime peel to the finish. In front of that it's Brett all the way, here manifesting in male-toiletries mode, all spicy pepper and sandalwood, with a musky perfume and earthy resins. It's a little bit much, but it's still fun and accessible. You never know what you're going to get with Brettanomyces, and I liked what it brought here.

Beer from another once-hyped English brewery was also circulating: Stef brought a can of Cloudwater's Persistance Is Utile, the sixth version of this coffee imperial stout. It smells strongly of peanut and hazelnut but the foretaste is surprisingly floral, all rosewater and lavender. I felt the coffee was a bit lost under this, and while I welcomed the lack of astringency or sharp bitterness, some smooth coffee richness would have been appreciated. 11% ABV is a big alcohol kick, but it is deployed wisely, adding warmth, not heat. It is at least a mellow and mature-tasting beer, not at all the loud and busy stout of an upstart brewery, but the work of one which has honed its craft. 

If the road through hype leads to refined and high quality beers like (most of) this lot, then perhaps it's tolerable. And I'm glad that both of these breweries are still turning out great stuff even when their praises are no longer being sung hourly on social media.

Left cold

Ireland has a number of very small breweries, mostly in quite touristed parts of the country, whose beers don't get very far from their place of production and are rarely if ever seen in Dublin. Today is one such, and I was happy to find these three on the shelves of Redmonds off licence in Ranelagh. They're from the Tom Crean brewery in Kenmare, not to be confused with the now-defunct one-lager Tom Crean brewery that operated briefly in Dingle. This one is the real deal, owned by a descendent of the eponymous Antarctic explorer.

I'm guessing they don't run to cool fermentation, ironically, as the first out of the fridge is a Kölsch, a mainstay of small breweries who have a need for lager but not the wherewithal to make one in the normal way. Killowen Kölsch Lager is 4.2% ABV and I have to say the visuals are piss-poor: a muddy brown, looking nastily oxidised, with no proper head. The aroma is similarly home-brewish, with a yeasty tang and no distinct malt or hops. There's nothing especially nasty in the flavour, at least when it's cold. But nothing particularly good either. It's as rough as it looks, and has a worrying headachey heat which something this light shouldn't. There's a certain rustic wholesomeness about it, and the finish is mercifully clean, but it's not good beer. Visitors to the brewery from Cologne must be horrified if this is what Irish people think their beer is like. 

As any home brewer of my skill level can tell you, one way to hide the wonky aspects of your beer is to load it with hops. I was intrigued to see if they'd done this with Scurvy Dog IPA. It's also 4.2% ABV and also a distressing opaque dun colour. The head is better formed, however. It does have a citric hop aroma, but there's nothing fresh or zingy about it; instead it's a kind of lemon candy tang, somewhat American but with a lot of English-style breadiness in the background. The flavour is definitely homebrew-like: not infected, but compromised, like a pre-hopped kit IPA. There's a rough grittiness and very little by way of real hop taste of any kind, only a vague metallic or aspirin bite. It has a fair bit in common with the previous one, but I hold IPA, and especially session IPA, to a higher standard. The label says it has been known to convert wine drinkers to beer: tall tales being part of the nautical theme, I guess. At the end of this one, I was fully prepared for the grand finale.

It's another 4.2%-er and is a red ale called Expedition Ale. The murk remains, with some disturbingly large lumps, though I have no issues with the head, which is properly bankable. While it still has a strong amateurish vibe, it's one of those homebrews where the brewer got lucky and produced a tasty, if rather odd, beer. No points for stylistic accuracy, but it's not a very good style, so that's not a problem. What I found was a fun mix of aftershave resin and spice meeting strawberry and raspberry summer fruit; a seam of caramel, and a dry roasty finish. Irish red ale is not meant to be so complex but I'm not complaining. Due diligence had me looking for any off notes, and there is a little bit of TCP-like phenol, not a lot, though. And the body is decently full which adds to the enjoyment. I don't know that I would want to chance another bottle of something which strikes me as a bit random, but I genuinely enjoyed it.

One out of three isn't a great record, though. Maybe there's a reason, other than logistics, that these breweries don't sell into more competitive beer markets.

Baltic amber

Amber lager: it's not a genre of beer that gets a lot of attention in the media. Nevertheless, in the parts of Europe where it's in the mainstream, breweries are plugging away at making it. Today's two are via the Polonez supermarket in Dublin.

From Poland comes Książęce Czerwony, a 4.9% ABV self-described (in English, at least) Vienna lager. The parent brewery is Asahi-owned Tyskie. It's a gorgeous clear amber colour in the glass with a generous but manageable head. The aroma is mostly crisp -- slightly burnt -- biscuit, with a distinctively Germanic hop grassiness. It's even more grassy to taste, almost astringently dry with it, to begin. That's set on a light and clean lager base, ensuring that drinking this is never challenging. There is a balancing sweeter side from the dark malt: not quite full-on caramel but with a note of brown sugar and warm cookie. There's nothing in any way spectacular about it, but it's very good: lots of wholesome, well-balanced flavour in a very straightforward and easy-drinking package. I've mentioned before how much I'd like dark lager to be more commonplace in these parts. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about it. This should be distributed out beyond the speciality imports market.

There's less colour to Valmiermuiža Gaišais, Valmiermuiža being a small Latvian brewery whose beer has inexplicably made it to Dublin. The beer is properly amber, like a piece of amber jewllery. It doesn't look stronger than the last one but is all of 5.2% ABV. It smells much sweeter: no grassy hops here, only a somewhat artificial sugary aroma. The flavour continues that way, though it does have a balancing bitterness to offset the treacle: a slightly harsh mineral bite, on the metallic side. I don't like sticky-sweet lager, and if that's necessary to prevent this being one, I'm OK with it. There's still plenty of syrup and toffee in the flavour, making it chewy and a little difficult. I couldn't chug a series of these like I could with the previous one. Past the half way point, with a few extra degrees of temperature on board, it does start getting a bit difficult. This isn't the amber lager for me, needing a little more dry roast and a little less sweet malt.

Funny how the multinational industrial brewery makes the better beer of this, admittedly, randomly chosen pair from different countries. Make u think tho.

Wild Westmeath

I wasn't counting heads, but the third iteration of the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival seemed a little more subdued, and I somehow doubt that the audience for wild fermented beers from Belgium, Britain and Ireland was being poached by Taylor Swift, who played Dublin the same evening. I don't know. I do hope that it was still worth the organiser's and brewers' time. It was certainly worth my time.

As always, the venue was down the back of Smiddy's Bar, where four Irish breweries had set up stalls, with a separate international selection of taps. I began with Brett & Forget, a Brettanomyces-fermented lager from Dublin's Third Barrel. The titular yeast, it turns out, is an unreliable carbonator, so this came out flat which, for a pale lager, is unfortunate. Still (ha!), there was a quite delicious flavour profile, accentuating the ripely tropical aspects of Brett: big on lychee and pear, with a dusting of coconut. It's hefty stuff, at 6% ABV, but very satisfying drinking. I will definitely be back to this once it's fizzed up, if given the chance.

Otterbank was launching a new core beer, a Bretted pale ale of 4.1% ABV called The Internationale. This is intended to be dry-hopped with rotating varieties, and the first is Kiwi hop Superdelic. It's a light touch on the hopping, and only a faint trace of lemon in the finish suggested it was there. The rest of the flavour is the other side of Brett; the musky, musty, foetid horse-blanket and mulch so familiar from Orval in particular. It's lightened by a sweet and heady floral perfume taste, all violet and honeysuckle. In short, it's far more complex than any core beer has a right to be. It may be low strength but I can't see it working as a session beer. It's one to take in slowly.

Last of the new Irish offerings was a sort-of grape ale from Land & Labour, though one with a near 50-50 ratio of wine and beer, which is unusual for all sorts of reasons. It's called Puro Salamino and the wine component was produced by the brewery from Lambrusco Salamino grapes. 8.5% ABV and dark maroon, it was being served on cask. I was quite taken aback by the flavour, a strongly savoury herbal character, tasting of oily rosemary in particular, though also dill and marjoram. A subtle lacing of cherry and raspberry were the only nods to north-Italian red wine that I found in it, and I can't say any of it tasted much like beer. While it's odd and unsettling, it's delicious too: the sort of thing I expect they served at the better kind of medieval banquet.

Land & Labour also had a canned imperial stout open for tasting. This was Torched, a 10% ABV job brewed by Catalan brewery Garage in collaboration with Land & Labour. It's intended to be a fully unadorned imperial stout, with no additives or ageing. And while I respect that, the result was rather harsh: very heavy, and with a concentrated roasted bitterness that came across ashen and acrid. Wax, tar and liquorice all feature in my notes, scribbling as I rushed to finish it off and find something lighter. Straight-up, old-school imperial stouts don't have to be outright evil. I'm a fan in general, but this one was too much.

Brussels microbrewery L'Ermitage had sent two beers along. I was dubious, and haven't really got along with this brewery's output, finding it on the rough and gritty side of IPA and saison. I hadn't had much of their beer in the wild and barrel-aged area, though, so was willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt.

First out was Cureghem Kriekland, and as the name implies, this is a cherry-flavoured beer. The recipe is quite straightforward: 75% young saison blended with 25% wild-fermented, packed with cherries and barrel aged. It's 6.5% ABV and deep purple in colour. I like the natural-tasting cherry notes but it's no candified fruit beer. There's a very serious earthy and funky side to it, with a slightly unpleasant plastic tang in the background. The fun and spritzy tartness of kriek lambic was never meant to be there, I'm sure, but I missed it all the same, as it has so many other features in common. This wasn't the beer to change my opinion of L'Ermitage.

And neither was their grape ale, Le Grand Œuvre. This is again a blend of straight and wild fermented beers, with the addition of Muscaris grapes before three months of barrel ageing. It's 7% ABV and a hazy gold colour, giving me an early warning sign with its vinegary aroma, sitting next to softer and sweeter honey. It's heavily sour on tasting: dry and astringent, with more of the artificial plastic twang I found in the other one. Some zesty lemon cleans things up in the finish, but overall it didn't really work for me, tasting too unsubtle and immature.

Some beer was left over from the 2023 event, so I got a belated chance to drink Little Earth Project's Echoes of Summer. This is a mixed fermentation red ale with redcurrants and four types of berry. A muddy brown colour in the glass, it has the red-wine-like aroma of Flanders red ale. Similarly, the taste has a cherry and strawberry base, plus some sweeter mellow raisin notes. While tart, it shows the maturity lacking in the L'Ermitage beers, though perhaps spending a year ageing in KeyKeg helped with that. There's lots of oak, but smooth and balanced. It may not be exactly a to-style Flanders red, but this has enough in common with the well-made ones to attract the same sort of appreciation from me.

My last new tick before I went off in search of a beer to relax over (Wide Street's Saison de Pyrénées) was Thank You For The Day, a barrel-aged saison dry-hopped with Saaz, from Scatterlings, a side project of the brewer from Two Flints brewery in Windsor. The result is beautiful, with a fresh and light white wine aroma followed by a flavour which mixes juicy white grape with a pinch of citrus zest, sprinkled with coarsely ground black pepper. There's a lot of beautifully balanced complexity here, especially given the ABV is only 5.6%: a reminder that beers of this nature don't have to be >7% ABV to be worthwhile. Thank You, Mr Scatterling.

I said the festival felt smaller, but now it's written down, that's actually a decent afternoon's drinking. None of it was meant for quaffing, and I'm glad I didn't need to rush any of them. I'll have the same again please.

Good Spanish lager

The presence on the Irish beer market of A Coruña's Hijos de Rivera, via their partial stake in O'Hara's, yields the occasional interesting beer. I picked up two recently, in the 1906 series from the Spanish brewery, packaged in jolly, retro, 33cl bottles.

La Milnueve is described as a pale bock but is a cheery limpid amber colour in the glass. It definitely smells like lager, in a very German way, of crisp dry malt and lightly grass-laden hops. Although it's a bit of a whopper at 6.5% it tastes much lighter, being perfectly clean with lots of refreshing tea-like tannins and more of that fresh leafy herb thing. A certain caramel malt substance builds as it goes, but it never gets difficult, and I say that as someone who often doesn't get along with straight bock. Although I'd be reasonably sure it's a new addition to their range, it does taste classically old-fashioned: beer like it used to be, and still should be. 

The dark companion is called Black Coupage, though I don't think it's an actual coupage, just a black lager, claiming dunkel bock identity. It's a substantial 7.2% ABV but again it's sufficiently lager in nature to hide any less-than-clean attributes. Instead, you get aniseed, cola nut and burnt caramel, all fully in keeping with how the Germans do this sort of thing. The mouthfeel becomes more noticeable as it warms: a little treacly while still retaining the clean lager side. It's bob-on for a brewery trying to recreate the Munich thing, except for the 33cl rather than 50cl package.

Were I resident in this part of northern Spain I would be very glad of a brewery that has nailed German brewing styles quite as well as Rivera has here. As an outsider in both countries, however, I think I'd pick the Bavarian versions first. Regardless, these are a welcome addition to the current beer scene. Buy two of each if you want to go German.

Schar'd for life

I mentioned that when I visited Lambiek Fabriek on this year's Toer de Geuze, I took a bottle of theirs away with me. And here it is: Schar-Elle, their Schaarbeekse kriek. I've quite enjoyed these lambics made with heirloom Belgian cherries, and I hoped that the fruit would offset the fact that I tend to not really enjoy Lambiek Fabriek beers in general.

This is 6.2% ABV and a muddy maroon colour. On first tasting it's sharp and more than a little vinegary, which was disappointing but not completely surprising. Luckily, the cherries do a lot to save it. The rich super-cherryness of the Schaarbeekse isn't as sweetly prominent as in other breweries' examples, but it's there, and has a pleasant softening effect on the acidity. The warmer the beer gets, the more pronounced the cherries become, and other complexities emerge too: a funky blue-cheese effect and other tart fruit: blueberries and raspberries.

My preference is for something more matured: fuller-bodied and less sharp, but this is pretty good, and could even age to brilliance. It's a ray of sunshine in the otherwise quite dismal Lambiek Fabriek collection.

A whip round

Today I have a selection of beers from Whiplash. I've been making good use of their Dublin bar, Fidelity, which has made finding some of their more esoteric output easier to find than hunting in shops.

Allta Dark Sour is first, created as a house beer for Dublin restaurant Allta but available elsewhere too, like Fidelity where I found it. It's dark: at the brownish end of garnet; and it's properly sour: the classy balsamic vinegar tang of Flanders red ale. Any more? I thought I detected some sweet bourbon vanilla in the aroma but it turns out it's cognac barrel aged, so that's the oak component. I can't say it tasted like brandy, though. From the dark malt there's a little caramel and a crisp roasted edge, then we're back to the sourness and the typically Flemish cherry and raspberry tartness with sweeter date and tamarind. It's an odd choice for a restauranty foody beer, but maybe they're pitching it as an aperitif. Regardless, it's rather nice, especially when allowed warm up and round out.

Staying in Fidelity, a new lager called They Reminisce Over You, in the still-sort-of-fashionable "Italian" style. The board shys away from calling it a pilsner and I'm not sure why that is: it's properly crisp and even a little creamy in the central European way. The hop profile is not what it could be, however, and I didn't get a whole lot of that character. In both flavour and aroma there's a mild summer fruitiness, of honeydew melon and white grape, but almost imperceptible. For the most part this is dry: clear and clean but avoids feeling thin or overfizzed. On a sunny summer evening it worked well as a refresher: 4.5% ABV and served at 3°C, numbers fans. I could have let it warm up to see if more flavour emerged but I doubt that's the brewer's intention.

My mantra of don't muck about with classic German styles has been observed with Don't Call Me Uncle, as straight a dunkel bock as you like. It's crystal clear and a gorgeous shade of cherrywood red. The aroma is a perfectly balanced mix of caramel malt and herbal noble hops, and there are no surprises from that in the flavour. It's 6.5% ABV and full bodied, which means the malt is foremost in the taste: bourbon biscuit, hard toffee and a little burnt breadcrust dryness. The hops take a back seat and, as someone who has occasional difficulties with pungent German hops, I'm glad of that. Here, they're limited to providing only a minor tang of acidity, preventing the sweet profile from getting cloying. It works, in that effortlessly refined German way, which I'm sure is not easy to do. Usually, bock fails to push my buttons but this example is spot on.

The brewery's can labels have become rather less engaging since they changed designer. The new one doesn't even have their name on it. Anyway, this is Desire Lines, a 6.8% ABV IPA, opaque as you like and hopped with Azacca, Galaxy and Motueka. There's a lovely fresh tropicality about the aroma with maybe just a hint of naughty dank in the background. The texture is nicely creamy, with low carbonation for enhanced suppability. I was a little let down by the flavour after that. There's rye in the grain bill, and the main thing I get from the flavour is a savoury, almost smoky, bitterness, which tastes very like rye to me. The fruit side of the hops, suggested by the aroma, doesn't really come through. It's certainly not juicy, though does have a stimulating hard bitterness in the finish. Ultimately I think it's a bit bland. With all the named varieties of ingredient I think I have a right to expect more complexity than was delivered.

Its ABV twin is Embracing Facts, another hazy IPA, this time with Hüll Melon and El Dorado. There's an annoyingly generous head and the standard Whiplash beaten-egg body. The aroma is sweet, fruity and crisp, like Skittles, and again we get that creamy meringue mouthfeel. But also again the flavour disappoints. Here it's standard haze problems: a rough and savoury grittiness, too much heat and a garlic or spring onion effect which drowns out the mix of grape melon and stonefruit which I can just about detect hovering in the background. The fun side of the off-flavours is a spicy nutmeg character, but I wanted fruit, dammit, and it didn't deliver. Whiplash used to be the one reliable brewery when it came to hazy IPA but they seem increasingly to be making ones that aren't to my taste. That's not on.

Let's regroup for a pale ale, one at 5% ABV called Slide. It's hazy, of course, and hopped using Strata and Galaxy. They give the aroma a pleasing mandarin juiciness, which is promising. There's a surprising amount of bitterness in the flavour; a hard resinous quality which isn't unpleasant but isn't what I was expecting either. The orangey fruit side sits behind this, though isn't strong enough to make the beer taste juicy or sweet. Once I had adjusted my expectations, I enjoyed it. They haven't skimped on the hops, and the bitterness builds, tasting almost like raw cones by the end. There's a very slight haze sharpness, but the hops prevent it from doing anything seriously problematic. It's not an easy drinker, but I like its sheer uncompromising wallop. Strap in.

At the same ABV but calling itself an IPA is Note To Self. It also says it's "West Coast" and it's the translucent gold of Sculpin and friends. I had been expecting grapefruit, though the aroma is sweet mandarin, which is lovely, but where's the bitterness? It's not really in the flavour either. There's a certain pithiness, but that's being charitable. Zest is as intense as things get, and there's certainly no resin, all of it finishing quickly with little to no aftertaste. We're in accessible-quencher territory here, rather than Whiplash hop fireworks. It's in a small can and sits comfortably beside the brewery's core offerings Rollover and Body Riddle -- built for the six-pack, or indeed pints at Fidelity. 

Finally, it looks like Chimes, the lovely lime-flavoured pale ale that Whiplash made for Dublin burger chain Bunsen, has been retired and replaced by the more plain-spoken Bunsen Pale Ale. This is 4.8% ABV and, as you might expect, fully hazy. There's a balance of sweet and bitterness, lemon juice meeting soft vanilla. I was served it very cold, in a chilled glass, and it's probably best consumed this way. There's a grittiness which begins to make its presence felt as the beer warms, accompanied by unwelcome oily garlic. But when cold it's clean and zesty, and does an excellent job of scrubbing burger grease off the palate. There's certainly no indication that they've skimped on hops, just because it's not pitched at hardened beer enthusiasts.

It seems Fidelity is definitely the place to go if you want Whiplash beer that isn't a hazy pale ale of some sort, although it does sell lots of them too.