Full immersion

I was back in England for yet more family business a couple of weeks ago. This time the destination was the most genteel city of Bath. It's not exactly known for its quality beer offer, but I think I made out OK, and had no trouble finding decent pubs and decent beer. Indeed, I didn't put much effort into it, which is why you don't have to tell me about places I don't mention.

Stop one was not an Austenesque tearoom but an Indian restaurant: Bikanos, across the river in Widcombe. I had a pint of Cobra, meh, and then noticed they had a draught beer not on the menu, so presumably the illuminated keg font is new. Eazy is a Camden Town beer I'd never seen before. The name appears to be a squirmingly awkward pun on "hazy", because it's a hazy IPA. 5% ABV seems a little on the high side for what England regards as easy drinking. They've more or less got the flavour basics down: an inoffensive blend of ripe mandarin and a rub of garlic, the latter to complement your naan. Its mainstream credentials are shown in the barely-hazy copper colour, fairly typical of hazy IPA made by breweries with no enthusiasm for something they've decided to brew in vast quantities. Where it excels, however, is in the texture. It's beautifully soft and unfizzy, adding to the flavour's richness and suiting the food particularly well. I don't know if restaurants are its main stomping ground, but I can see why they would be. These days, Camden Town tends to make broadly reliable accessible beers, and here's another one. Where next?

My lodgings were at The Black Fox, a sparsely-furnished, broadly maritime-feeling pub at the edge of the old centre. They like to stick with local beers and I had a cask pint of It's Gonna Be May from Bath's own Electric Bear. This is another hazy one, though properly easy at just 3.8% ABV. The texture is nicely smooth, making for a very sinkable pint. There was something very strange going on with the hopping: a coconut and fruit sweetness that hits hard in the foretaste and lasts all the way through. Turns out it's done using Sabro with Azacca, which makes sense. It works. This is undemanding, like the beer before it, but has bags more character. I don't know how far from Bath Electric Bear gets, but I'll be watching out for them. Modern twists on traditional British brewing don't always work, but on this evidence they seem to know what they're doing.

Not far up the street from here is Bath Brew House, which I visited last time I was in town, almost a decade ago. It hasn't changed much: still a bit of a drinking barn with a roomy beer garden out back. But their heart's in the right place as regards the beer they brew.

Seeking refreshment, I started on Valkyrie, their take on Kölsch, kegged. I wasn't expecting much from this but was wowed, right out of the traps. It's mostly clear and a slightly dark shade of golden, the recipe leaning heavily into Vienna malt, I'm told. While it's perfectly clean (and not all brewpub lagers are) it's not crisp, wearing instead a subtle yet delicious cookie-like sweetness. This matches an almost creamy low-carbonation texture. I found it to be a great session starter, but equally there's enough to keep one interested here for another pint or two straight after. Just watch out for that 5% ABV, English lightweights.

After that, I thought I would try my luck with another kegged one: Avena, BBH's stout. This is 6.2% ABV so I opted for a half, and was glad I did. In the glass it's a dirty brown colour, and without nitrogen the head looks quite forlorn. The badge doesn't advertise it as a milk stout, but it appears to be one: intensely sweet with the added tang of salt one gets from milk chocolate, building to an unpleasantly sweaty tang by the end of just the half pint. In its favour, it's not heavy so it doesn't get cloying, but it was still tough drinking for me. A little drying out with some balancing roast would have helped it a lot.

Over to the cask taps, then. Senator is a table beer, which is not something I've seen on cask before, I think. At 3.2% ABV it's not massively different from several mainstream bitters, I suppose. It's a hazy pale yellow and does have an excellently full body, given that very modest strength. Lemon cookies open the flavour, building in bitterness as it goes, and properly sharp in a stimulating, mouth-watering, way by the end. I got both crispness and chewiness from it, making it an excellent all-rounder: full-flavoured and not at all compromised.

Last time I hadn't noticed just how much of a rugby town Bath was, but it very much is. Bath Brew House made a special bitter for the 2024 Six Nations. They called it Victory. LOL. It's 4.3% ABV and amber-coloured. Brown bitter, then? Technically yes, but they've made a great job of it, packing in fresh and leafy green English hops, set on a superbly refreshing dry and tannic base. A tiny bit of peppery spice finishes it with a flourish. It's another very moreish beer, on the plain and unchallenging side, but utterly delicious in that way good bitter does so well.

A big ol' IPA to finish the session here: Hercules, labouring away at 6% ABV. This one doesn't seem to be in the English style, having big and bitter citrus notes up front, leading to harder resin and pine later on. It's a west-coast Hercules then. The zest keeps it drinkable and the malt side is restrained, not bothering with balance, and not really needing to. There's a certain spiciness which I would say is more English, but otherwise it's American all the way, and beautifully done. Here we have yet another fantastic drinking beer, though one with a hint of danger too.

Stout aside, I could have very happily started from the top once more for another round of everything, but it was time to move on.

That brought us to another pub we'd been in before, Bath's famous The Raven. I chose a porter from the wickets, named Captain Pigwash (yum yum), brewed by Potbelly in Northamptonshire. It's a bit of a sticky affair: a full 5% ABV with loads of roast plus a smoky, rather phenolic, twang. At times it felt like drinking a barbecue marinade more than a beer. I got through my pint in due course, but it's not one you can rush. I think I prefer my cask porters to be more easy-going than this, not that I'm in any position to be fussy about such things.

And in a reverse of the norm, herself went with an IPA of 5.1% ABV, called Falcon Punch, supplied by Essex's Brentwood Brewing. The name is from its use of the Falconer's Flight hop blend, which I haven't seen mentioned in a while, plus Mosaic and Citra. Mosaic has won that particular fight and the beer isn't punchy at all. Instead it's soft and peachy, with dessertish meringue pie overtones. Perhaps the Citra builds into more of a bitterness on drinking more than the taster I had. As a hop-forward cask ale it still did an excellent job. Brentwood has had a couple of beers in the Irish branches of Wetherspoon over the years, but this is the first of theirs that impressed me in any way.

From the outside, I liked the look of Sam Weller's pub, nestled in among the winding streets of central Bath, and inside it's nice too, plush and comfortable with boutique hotel lounge vibes. The beer selection was modest, and I picked one from Black Sheep, perhaps one of the Yorkshire brewer's attempts at cool craft beer which landed them insolvent. It was a 4% ABV session IPA called Respire. It's far from all-American in character, however, the zingy citrus sitting next to a very northern waxy bitterness of the sort I associate with Timothy Taylor Landlord or Marble's Pint. It works well, in a best-of-both-worlds kind of way. If you want to treat it as a modern, hopped up, US-influenced pale ale, you can do so quite validly, but it's equally a clean and clear Yorkshire bitter with plenty of characterful punch.

Finally, The Star. This pub was only on my radar because I wanted to check in again with cask Bass, especially with the looming danger of Carlsberg-Marston's getting rid of it. The Star specialises in jugs of Bass served on gravity, and I had a pint, and it was perfectly pleasant, though I don't really get what all the fuss is about with this beer, other than its history. The pub itself is as traditional as can be: a series of tiny rooms, one with a tiny bar counter, tiny stillage and very large jar of pickled eggs. It's all kinds of charming, and on a sunny Saturday when downtown Bath was thronged, is just far enough out to avoid any undesirable passing trade. What would such types know of cask Bass?

It also seems to be connected to Abbey Ales of Bath, and serves their flagship, Bath Bellringer. This is a golden-coloured bitter, shading to amber, and 4.2% ABV. For all that it's lauded throughout the premises, it's a rather plain affair, offering little more than a simple squeeze of lemon essence -- not quite intense enough to be zest -- plus some waxiness and pale grains which lend it an air of pilsner, to my mind. I was unimpressed, and any patrons looking for a simple and decent bitter would be better served with the Bass. Up your game, Abbey.

Before leaving, I had another British take on American IPA, this time from Asahi Fuller's Meantime Dark Star, and called Revelation. It's another goldy-amber one, and a full 5.7% ABV. It needs that to balance out the very heavy and acidic hop resins, sharply bitter at first, then tailing off into a long citric finish. It's a bit of an assault to begin with, but I got used to it quickly, and was fully enjoying the beer by the second mouthful. For all the hefty punch, there's a certain amount of balance on display as well, those hops somewhat calmed by a chewy, golden syrup malt sweetness. It takes skill to make something that's this big but not difficult to drink at the same time. A revelation, you might say, if you wanted to end your blog post on a trite note.

Ahead of this trip I'm not sure I would have considered Bath as a weekend destination by itself, having been quite satisfied with it as a daytrip when based in Bristol. There's lots to explore beyond the famous sights, however. I could have punched in another day or two, having barely scratched the surface of what ciders it has to offer, for example. That's for next time.

Party in my mouth

Today marks nineteen years since this blog got underway, and my al fresco celebration beer is the new special edition from Rye River: Piñata Party. It's a daring recipe, created in collaboration with Cervecería Morenos in México City, and is a sour ale with pineapple, lime, chilli and smoke. How does that play out?

It looks innocent enough, a light and hazy shade of yellow, suggesting a beer built for summer. The relatively modest 5% ABV suggests so too. The intense sweetness of tinned pineapple is the only thing I get from the aroma, so everything so far points to this being nothing fancier than pineapple juice. It's light-bodied, fizzy and refreshing, so starts off well on the first sip. But then...

I have no objection to smoked pineapple. The seasoned, roasted fruit that comes at the end of a rodizio session is often welcome, though I've usually eaten too much by this stage. Anyway, it's a nice touch. This seems to have been aiming for that in beer form but misses the mark. The smoke is its own thing, right at the front of the flavour, and tastes acrid and fishy. It's a brief blip, however, and the fresh and juicy pineapple lands in immediately behind it, then the base beer: a light and zippy sour ale without pretensions. Finally, the finish adds a pleasant squirt of lime zest to give it more of a cocktail vibe. There's not much chilli, but still it would all have worked beautifully were it not for the ill-advised smoke component.

Smoke as a seasoning is difficult thing to pull off, especially in a pale beer. The rubbery burnt factor on show here is all too common, and I admire Rye River's optimism in thinking it wouldn't affect them. This beer isn't a complete disaster, and I appreciate a fruited sour ale that's actually sour for once. If you're less sensitive to the chlorophenols than I am, you might get on fine with it.

A wine time

There seems to have been a bit of a slowdown in new release beer from Otterbank, though there have been welcome rebrews of old favourites like Gimp Mask and Just the One. The most recent set included just the two which were brand new to me.

Wild Muff owes its puerile name to the yeast, harvested from a forest near the brewery. Based on Chevalier barley, it was fermented out in Sauvignon Blanc casks, left for 27 months to let the yeast ply its trade. The result is a sparkling golden amber beer of 5.8% ABV, looking like something from a Dutch renaissance painting. 

The white wine is apparent from the aroma, mellow and melony, with just a naughty nip of tartness alongside. The texture is light and brisk, and the flavour reminds me of Flanders red in particular: balsamic resins, macerated cherries and a charming matured warmth. At the same time it's definitely a pale beer, with a crispness not dissimilar to geuze.

If this was an experiment, it's one well worth repeating. The result is very pleasant drinking and shows all the hallmarks of good Belgian-style sour ale with none of the shortcuts. I suppose that taking over two years to produce means it would really want to.

To follow, Oíche Mhaith is a Burgundy barrel aged mixed fermentation vatted porter (12% ABV) which, at time of writing this introductory sentence, I have not yet tasted. It looks nice -- black with cola-red edging -- and smells a little of vermouth and a lot of balsamic vinegar.

The flavour is rather mellower, I'm happy to say. I assume the vats are made of oak because there's a lot of smooth, assured and matured, vanilla on display here. Spanish wine comes to mind: the correct level of Rioja richness; the ripe-to-bursting grape juice effect meeting more astringent raisin and sparks of black pepper and old leather.

This is pretty much exactly what anyone would want agéd, oakéd porter to be: bold, distinctive, yet worringly drinkable. If you didn't like it, tell me why and I'll explain why you're wrong.

It's a delightful luxury to have so much wine-barrel-aged beer coming out of Irish breweries who know how to do it well (see also Wednesday's post). Long may this niche remain viable.

Wild for the Chardonnay

The quarterly Wicklow Wolf Locavore series has really hit its stride in recent years, with some truly creative and high-end beers. It may be a bit of a gimmick -- all ingredients are acquired locally, mostly on the brewery's own land -- but the commitment to quality comes as standard. That said, the spring release last year was nothing more adventurous than a weissbier, so I was pleased that Locavore Spring 2024 has them back playing with barrels and Brettanomyces again.

To be precise, it's a "Barrel aged farmhouse ale with Brettanomyces", presumably starting life as some class of saison before getting the wild yeast treatment and 16 months in Chardonnay casks. The result is 7.2% ABV and a bright, though murky, golden colour. The best of these have a flavour profile in common with lambic, but this is nothing so wild and sour. The Brett is the more cuddly sort, giving the aroma and flavour big soothing notes of ripe apricot and tinned lychee. There's a certain amount of peppery spice, but not as much as I would like. As it warms, the white wine character emerges, complementing the stonefruit elements, but adding a little alcohol poke, which shouldn't be unexpected, given the strength.

Although it's no masterpiece of mixed-fermentation complexity, it's very nice stuff. I see it working well as an aperitif, in place of white port or cocktails based on dry vermouth. By the end of the glass I had become aware that lazy summer evenings aren't too far away. Get a few of these in for that, and thank me later.

Hops wanted

Some big IPAs from Hopfully today, beginning with ThreeLeaves, their new St Patrick's Day special. This is a cold IPA of 6.3% ABV and brewed in collaboration with Milan's Birrificio WAR. It's a near-perfect clear golden colour and smells sharp and spicy, of pine resin and raw red onion. I'm happy to say that, for once with a cold IPA, the onion does not come through to the flavour. Instead it's all very west-coast, offering lemon zest, grapefruit rind, and then a harder pine resin in the finish. The clean, presumably lagered, base gives the hops a wonderfully clear platform to work their magic from: Chinook, Mosaic, Nectaron and Hallertau Mittelfrüh, for a fun mix of American and Germanic characteristics. There's no heat from the alcohol, but the gravity gives it a lovely smooth texture, making it delightfully quaffable, despite the welly. Maybe the next one will slow me down a bit.

This is Watchdog, a double New England-style IPA. It's 7.5% ABV and very hazy -- densely yellow with a fine foam on top. The hops are a simple fruity combination of Azacca and Amarillo, and that gives it an aroma of orange-flavoured chew sweets. The flavour isn't anything so sweet, and it's almost a little... funky. Maybe the bitterness of the previous beer was still hanging around, but I didn't get any of the anticipated candy from the flavour. Instead, it's a rather hard and waxy taste, with a savoury note of fried cabbage and roasted meat. There's a stern resinous side, and a dry, plasterboard rasp. Only at the very end is there any kind of sweetness: a concentrated orange cordial effect. There's not enough character here overall, and what's there isn't especially enjoyable. Hopfully is usually much better at this sort of thing.

A chance to turn things around is Moodlift, double IPA again, with the strength boosted to 8% ABV. It's explicitly in the west coast style, and while it's the right shade of amber, is a bit hazy as well, which spoils the effect a little. Again, I think they've low-balled the hops, because there's neither zest nor zing in the aroma and flavour. Talus, Chinook and Centennial should have more of a presence than is in evidence here. It smells only slightly of orange oil and tastes of pith and coconut, a little like there's Sorachi Ace in here, but nothing so strong or distinct. Although the body is heavy and chewy, it doesn't host a big malt or hop taste, and is sadly quite plain, all told.

I like a pisco sour cocktail, and I like a sour IPA, so Hopfully looked to be catering very much to my tastes with a sour IPA called Pisco Sour. They've got the visuals spot on: an opaque yellow/orange topped with a very fine white foam. You have to supply your own Angostura bitters, however. The aroma is surprisingly savoury: smoky, like charred embers or lapsang souchong tea. On tasting, that transforms into a very mild tartness; a bite of black lime rind or the aforementioned bitters. Behind it, there's a softer fruit side, more typical of hazy IPA, suggesting peaches and apricot. According to the can it's all done fairly simply, with a mix of Citra and Nelson Sauvin hops plus lime juice. That made me realise that the smoky thing is a more concentrated version of the diesel or kerosene I often get from Nelson, and it's unusual to find Citra taking any kind of a back seat. I would have liked more of its particular brand of lime sharpness, and indeed more sourness. Instead, this is a big softy, with all the fluffy texture which comes with 7.8% ABV but absolutely none of the heat. While fun and different, for sure, I question whether it should be badged as an IPA at all.

A late add at a more modest strength is Patience, a hazy IPA of 5.5% ABV. This is hopped with Chinook, Azacca, Comet and Citra so definitely shouldn't be lacking in hop character. Unfortunately, it is. The aroma is again quite bland with vanilla custard and little more than a distant squeeze of citrus. The flavour, too, is reticent, offering up minimal amounts of zest on an unforgivably thin base. The lack of hop taste leaves room for an unpleasant gritty and savoury side from the haze to creep in and muddy things up. If it were 4% ABV or less it might be understandable, even forgivable, but I know it's possible to give a beer of this strength a much more assertive and enjoyable hop side.

What happened here? The top one was glorious and then it all fell apart after that. I'll allow Hopfully an off day or two, but I hope they won't be making a habit of this.

Haze praise

I've been a fan of the work of Romanian brewery Hop Hooligans in the past, so picked up these three new ones when they passed my way.

Elder Gods is an interesting proposition, being a sour ale of 5% ABV with added elderflower, honey and lemon. That suggests summer drinking to me, and it is a sunny opaque yellow colour in the glass. Neither the aroma nor flavour are especially strong, indicating that real fruit and flowers have been used here, rather than concentrate or syrup. There's a bright and zesty lemon character, and then a bonus sweetness which is just about recognisable as elderflower, plus a spicing that would have me swearing there's ginger involved too, but it's not listed. Nothing about it is sour, though it's not horribly sweet either. While refreshing, it's very plain, and a lot less interesting than the specification led me to believe. Oh well.

Two hazy IPAs follow, beginning with Seaview, hopped with Cryo Mosaic, Azacca and Pacific Sunrise. The half-litre can took a while to pour, piling up lots of fluffy foam. It's inconvenient but I'm not complaining about getting 60ml more than the norm. Under the head it's a pale, beaten-egg yellow. The aroma isn't especially interesting, having the broadly sweet fruit effect of a zillion nondescript murky IPAs. It does go interesting places with the flavour, however. First of all it's clean: no heat, no grit, no garlic. That leaves plenty of room for the fruit attributes, and that's done subtly, like the aroma. There's a soft peachiness on a milkshake vanilla effect. I thought at first that it lacked bitterness: there's certainly no punch up front. It does leave a residual echo of lime in the aftertaste, which I enjoyed. The big surprise is a kind of tannic dryness which complements the smooth mouthfeel beautifully, plus a mild peppery spicing which adds a very unexpected twist. At 6% ABV it should be a sipper, but I found that the combination of silky mouthfeel and balanced, understated flavours, made it very sinkable. A half litre barely lasted a quarter of an hour before I was ready to open the next one.

Mass Production is the same strength and looks broadly similar, though perhaps a little paler and more transparent. The hops this time are Strata, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin and, as you might expect, there's more going on in the aroma from that. Juice is very prominent there, and quite tropical, with pineapple and cantaloupe notes. Again the flavour is subtle for the most part, though with more character in evidence than with the previous one. I credit the Nelson with jazzing the whole thing up, bringing its own kind of mineral spice, plus a dollop of gooseberry, pear and honeydew melon. They've retained the overarching cleanness from the other beer and that really helps the hop flavour come through unimpeded, its sweet vanilla side relegated to a supporting role. I took a bit longer with this one, enjoying exploring the delicate hop features which are tastefully displayed. By the end I wish wishing for a third IPA with even more of a clean hop profile.

My appreciation of Hop Hooligans continues unimpeded. They caught my attention first with brash and banging bitter IPAs, but this shows they're a dab hand at the gentler sort too.

Kor range

Dublin's Asian supermarkets aren't a brilliant source for new and exotic beers to tick, but they're worth checking every once in a while. On a recent visit to Asia Market on Drury Street I uncovered this pair of unfamiliar Korean beers.

We start with Kloud Draft, a pale lager of 4.5% ABV, and about six weeks past its expiry date by the time I opened it. No matter. It's a bog standard eurolager, and has nothing to which a month or two either side of the best-before will make a difference. There are a number of cheap mass-production lager's tropes in evidence, including a syrupy body, a plasticky hop twang, a grainy mustiness and a scattering of potentially headache-inducing esters. Not a recommendation from me, and I'm not even going to compare it to Hite or Cass or any of the other familiar mainstream Korean lagers. There's nothing here beyond the exotic novelty factor, and if that's not something you're chasing, drink a Spaten or a Budvar instead.

The next one is a little more intriguing. It's from Jeju Beer Company, "in partnership with" Brooklyn Brewery, though definitely brewed in Korea, with I guess some craft credentials. Jeju Wit Ale is a little dark for a witbier, being the orange of a pale ale instead of cloudy yellow. The ingredients are absolutely Belgian standard: wheat, coriander, orange peel. They express themselves politely and decently in the aroma, with a pleasant introductory mix of fruit and spice. There's an emphasis on the mouth-watering juicy side in the flavour, with tart, shred-studded marmalade and fresh kumquat or satsuma zest. It finishes quickly, giving it an almost lager-like aspect which is beautifully clean and works well as a thirst-quencher. At 5.3% ABV it probably shouldn't be quite so easy-going and accessible, but I really enjoyed its sunny disposition and could see myself, ill-advisedly, chugging several in a row. As Asian beers available in Ireland go, it's one of the best. I hope it's getting out to the restaurants and noraebang venues in town, where it would be a lifesaver among the shitty pale lager options.

For the sake of weird

Outlandish concoctions, and specifically a lime and elderflower flavoured Berliner weisse, are what first brought Swedish brewer Brewski to my attention, in 2015. When a bunch of their arty cans containing strange beers arrived into Dublin recently, I picked up a set.

It was hard to decide a drinking order for the first three. They're all 4.7% ABV and are those contemporary interpretations of old sour German styles which bear little resemblance to the originals. Salty Lemon seemed like an innocent enough proposition, so that's where I started. I thought it would be a gose but the label says it's a Berliner weisse, and there's more than just lemon in here: also vanilla and liquorice. How does that work? Poorly, you may be surprised to learn. It's a crazy mish-mash of contrasting flavours, beginning with the intense white-chocolate sweetness from the vanilla. That's in the aroma and foretaste, and lingers stickily for ages afterwards. In the middle, when you're actually drinking it, it's all about the sharply zesty lemon, a palate-pinching sourness which I'm guessing is nothing to do with the fermentation and all about the added citrus. Liquorice? Salt? There isn't really room for them under the other two foghorns. I mean, it's interesting, for a sip or two, but gets boring and cloying very quickly.

Matador is another Berliner weisse, and features seemingly saner additions, pineapple and lime. It's certainly a gentler experience without the vanilla, and the fruit here is nicely real-tasting. The pineapple in particular is identical to pineapple juice from a carton and is the centre of the taste. Lime is a mild tang in the finish, with a decent amount of flavour but no sourness or bitterness. The overall effect is a kind of piña colada, minus the coconut flavour, but including the creamy texture. It doesn't taste anything like Berliner weisse and definitely isn't sour, but as a silly novelty fruit beer it's enjoyable and well made.

Last of these hazy pale amber beers is badged as a gose, Grandmother Gose, but you know by now not to expect any coriander, though there is salt, along with mango, lime and two types of chilli pepper. Although I'm sure the fruit was added as a concentrated syrup, it's not sweet, and the chilli's first contribution is to make it dry. There isn't much of a flavour from them, but they do deliver that initial rasp and then a peppery bite on the end. Without the sweetness, the fruit side is quite understated. As with the above, the lime is gentle and unobtrusive, but mango is no pineapple, and contributes nothing but a broad, mixed-tropical squash, and heavily diluted. The ingredients don't gel together as well here as they do in the Matador, but it's still easier going than Salty Lemon despite the chillis. Phew. This is all getting very complicated. Time for a change of scene.

Liquorice is back for Blacpac, an imperial stout of 10.5% ABV which also contains our old friend vanilla. It pours very dense and tarry and has a strongly sweet aroma, the vanilla getting straight to work making it smell like a dessert, specifically a cheesecake. To taste, there's nothing unorthodox at first: it's a big imperial stout, providing a solid amount of creamy coffee and dark chocolate. It turns strange after a second or two as the sweetness builds. Banana milkshake and toffee sauce sneak past the sober roast and hang around as a long sticky finish. I thought the liquorice would have brought some bitterness but I couldn't taste it at all. Is there maybe a lightly metallic tang on the end? I'm not sure. There's not much if there is. This retains just enough bitter coffee roast to avoid descending into cloying nonsense, and is still a proper imperial stout, albeit a very very sweet one. I caution anyone approaching it to be prepared for full-blast banoffee pie over herbal aniseed.

Maybe I'm getting old and boring, but this lot didn't really do it for me. I have a full tolerance for odd ingredients, but the sweetness I find difficult to deal with. Beer doesn't have to taste of beer, but bitter ones should be bitter and sour ones should be sour.

Variety isn't everything

Today it's one of my occasional check-ins with Co. Antrim brewery Lacada, beginning with Shallows, a 4.5% ABV sour ale with cherry and raspberry. No surprise from the pinkness, nor from the minimal amount of sourness on display. That's no more than a grainy cereal husk dryness, overlaid with heavily seeded raspberry jam. Nothing about it says cherry, though it's far from unusual for raspberry in a fruit beer to drown out everything else. I mean, it's a tough set of specs to do something impressive with. There are enough high-strength lactose milkshake wannabes and mixed-fermentation sippers on the market these days to make a standard kettled soured ale look lacklustre and, frankly, a bit pointless. I didn't feel I got much for my fiver from this one. 

For the next two I have Simon to thank for providing tasters. The Sugarloaf is a Helles lager at a somewhat slight 4.5% ABV. They claim a level of authenticity here, using Hallertau and Perle hops, but I think they've either used too much of them or left the gravity too low. It doesn't have the rounded spongecake richness of good Helles and is instead quite dry and grassy in the aroma and a little vegetal and bitter to taste: not bad, but more like a pilsner. The crisp biscuit base is part of that, and the rising volume of celery and green cabbage leaf continues it. I got a twang of brown sugar sweetness in the finish, but it didn't add anything terribly positive. Lager isn't really a Lacada speciality, and this has the feel of one brewed to meet a market demand without any real enthusiasm, a bit like the pink lad above. There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I'm sure there are better examples of Helles from Germany available wherever it's sold.

A stout to finish, the faith-and-begorrah stylings of Shamrock Pinnacle, named for a submarine geological feature off the Antrim coast. It's a stout, of course, broadly in the sessionable Irish style though given a little extra welly with 4.8% ABV. That provides an excellent framework for boosting the stout flavour characteristics, and there's lots of warming roasted richness and punchy cabbage bittering. More subtle elements arrive once the initial hits calm down, and I got brightly floral rosewater and a spiced cola complexity. There seems to be quite a fashion at the moment for Irish and Irish-style stouts, coming from all sorts of breweries here and in the UK. This is definitely one of the better takes, hanging on to the pintable fundamentals but adding some quite marvellous bells and whistles to that. Excellent work.

I could be glib and say that this demonstrates how making good dark beer is so much easier than lager or sour, but I think there's a genuine talent at Lacada for stout: Shamrock Pinnacle isn't their first to impress me mightily. It's a shame that, by every brewer's account, it's such a tough sell. I'd love to see more.

Auss!

It was the first sunny day on the patio this year, and in the absence of any actual pils, my utepils for 2024 were two other kinds of German lager. 

Schneider is a weissbier brewery, the top tier, in fact. Everybody knows that. So what happens when they turn their attention to new-fangled lager? Schneider's Bayrisch Hell has apparently been around since 1928, and has a retro-designed label to convince you of this. 4.9% strikes me as a very modern ABV for Helles, however. Is it just me or was over the 5% standard until recently? In the glass it's the proper shade of yellow, though a little hazy. Perhaps the weissbier legacy is making itself felt. The aroma gives little away, and it transpires from the flavour that there's little to be given away. This is very plain fare, lacking the rich sweet side exhibited by the best Helles. Instead it's dry and crisp, more like a pilsner, though without a proper hop kick, not a good one. "Inoffensive" is the best I can say about this. I guess some Schneider customers local to the brewery needed a lager to go with their wessbier order, but I reckon they could have done rather better than this one. Augustiner it ain't.

From Hofbräuhaus Traunstein comes Fürsten Trunk, a festbier. It's an innocent clear gold in the glass, looking light and refreshing, though the label tells us it's a voll 5.7% ABV. And full it is, weighty of body in the proper Oktoberfest way. The flavour is big to match, piling in sticky golden syrup and a salad of green German hops. Though loud and bold, it's all done fully within the specs of proper German lager, of course. I think it could have gone bigger: there's a restraint to the malt body in particular which means it doesn't quite balance the biting hops. It's fine, and well suited to the occasion, but more beef please. This Fest could stand to be a bit less restrained.

They weren't great beers, but the main thing is that outdoor drinking season is underway once more. Get out there when you can.

The Original

Easter weekend saw the return of Ireland's longest-running beer festival, at Franciscan Well in Cork. Having missed last year's due to transport issues, this was the first I'd been to at actual Easter since 2019. It seemed rather more subdued than in the years of the Irish craft beer boom, with just ten visiting breweries plus the venue's own Original 7.

Wicklow Wolf had two unfamiliar beers for me, including a new draft-only Helles, called Hideaway. It's lighter than one would see in Germany, at 4.5% ABV, and has a bit of haze going on. When first poured in the chilly back yard it didn't taste of much, and it went downhill from there. Once the beginnings of warmth arrived it began to develop sweet estery flavours of banana, and then a strangely sharp pine detergent effect. It lacks the gentle, rounded, spongecake or white bread that Helles should provide, and I'm not sure it's a good example of any kind of pale lager. I'll be leaving it alone.

The event also saw the launch of Wicklow Wolf's new collaboration with Kentucky distillery Rabbit Hole. It's called Cavehill and is in the Kentucky common style. Wicklow Wolf had one of these in their original line-up, and I was quite fond of the crisp dark ale. There's no crispness in this bourbon barrel aged one, however, it's big and round and creamy, with a huge vanilla flavour up front. Caramel and chocolate follow it along, and there's a very obvious heat, more than might be expected for 7% ABV, though perhaps it's more pronounced because some of it derives from the whisky. I get what it's trying to be, but it wasn't to my taste. A half was plenty; more would be just too cloying.

There were two regular beers on offer from West Cork Brewing of Baltimore, plus a new one. Cape Clear is named for the nearby island which has become a centre of excellence for the cultivation of lavender, and the beer contains lavender grown on the island. Its base is an 80/- Scottish-style ale, finishing at 4.5% ABV, into which the lavender has been added at flame-out. While Tara the brewer said the amount was only a few hundred grams in the batch, the result is substantial, with a bright and summery floral perfume present in both the aroma and flavour. This matches well with the toffee sweetness from the dark amber base beer, resulting in something characterful and individual, but not overdone or gimmicky. Apart from tasting nice, it's an excellent example of beer making use of local ingredients and becoming part of their story.

My only other dark beer came from Third Barrel, a new Flanders-style red ale called, of course, Stupid Sexy Flanders. Rodenbach's Roeslare Blend of yeast and bugs has done the business beautifully here, and it really presents the cherry and strawberry notes of Rodenbach very well. It is a little sharp at first, delivering a vinegary burn on the first taste, but it settles quickly, becoming a more rounded and classy balsamic tang. A cleansing crispness finishes it off. My only criticism is that it's a little on the strong side at 7% ABV. Good and all as it is, I think it's one to enjoy in small doses.

Another lager to clear the palate next: Citrus Chiller, from Black's of Kinsale. This is a very light affair, being an extremely pale yellow, 4.2% ABV and thinly textured. The flavour doesn't provide anything more intense than some highly dilute lemon barley water, which makes it refreshing, I guess, but very basic. I don't know how the citrus effect was achieved, but it seemed a little artificial to me, with a lingering cordial stickiness as the aftertaste. It has its place, but sipped in a cold beer garden is probably not it. Wait until the mercury is high before tackling one of these.

9 White Deer also pre-empted the summer with a festival special they called Stag Lilt. Allegedly, it's a gose, but it was neither sour nor salty nor herbal, so zero for three on the Leipzig scale. From the name, you can probably guess that they've used some tropical fruit concentrate in the recipe. They don't tell us what, and I genuinely couldn't figure it out from the flavour. Much like with actual Lilt, it's a mish-mash of ersatz fruit characteristics, all on a theme of sweet. I got the same wateriness and artificiality as in the previous beer, though in this one the ABV is a ridiculously high 5.5% according to the festival brochure. Fair play to 9 White Deer for doing something beyond their usuals for the festival, but gose may not be a genre that suits them.

Hazy IPA is still in fashion, and I drank a whole three of them on the day. First up was Lough Gill with a 7%-er called Gaelic Amore. Modern enhanced hop product "Cryo x Phantasm" features, alongside Nelson Sauvin and El Dorado. The beer is brightly hazy, looking like a glass of Sunny Delight, topped with a fine froth. I got Calippo ice pop from the aroma, followed by a flavour which took me on a journey, beginning at soft lemon pie and vanilla, building to a harder grapefruit and lime pith, finishing up on a savoury kick of garlic and a burn of alcohol. Phew. It's quite a textbook New England profile, and I'm sure the enthusiasts will be delighted to see the style created so diligently. I thought it was OK, but unspectacular, and very much something that's readily available from any number of other breweries. I'm a fan of both the named hops and was a little disappointed not to find their individual characteristics on display in this.

We're now on version six of Lineman's Electric Avenue, where the hops are Citra, Mosaic and Ekuanot. This was scary fresh, exhibiting the hard bitterness of raw hop pellets. That made it quite hard work for me, especially late in the day as it was. I liked the boldness of it, and it's another that hop connoisseurs will particularly appreciate, but at the same time I think the bitterness should have been dialled down. I could tell that Mosaic's soft melon notes were present in the background, but they were getting comprehensively drowned out by the obstreperous Citra. It would be churlish to even introduce the word "balance" into the context of this beer -- such a multi-tonal hop symphony has no place for it -- but balance does serve a purpose, and this could have done it a bit better, for my taste anyway.

That leaves just our hosts, Original 7. Their recently-released New England-style IPA is called Juice Bomb and is a much calmer creature. That said, it's no lightweight at 5.8% ABV and there's a proper soft and fluffy texture. You get a squeeze of orange juice, some vanilla essence and a very slight savoury allium note, but none of it goes overboard. I've remarked before that the brewery makes pub beers for pub drinkers, and this does a good job of taking the style and adapting for pint drinking. In contrast with Electric Avenue, you could have a few without feeling overwhelmed by any part of it.

Brand new for the event was Basic Peach, and here comes the fruit syrup again. This purports to be an IPA, hopped with Cashmere and Belma, but the sticky additive dominates it completely, to the point where it creates an impression of drinking neat peach schnapps. Though an innocent clear gold colour, it's a full 6% ABV and quickly coats the palate. Belma, known for its sweet strawberry taste, is probably a good choice of hop for it, but whether any of its character was delivered, or whether the sweetness was solely peach concentrate, is impossible to tell. Still, I can't say I wasn't warned by the name, and it certainly delivers what's promised.

Cheers to all the brewers who brought an interesting an eclectic range of beers, and a particularly big thanks to the organisers who have kept this event alive and kicking for so long. I hope to see you next year, when we might get a warmer day for it.

Citrus two ways

Two more new draught releases from Galway Bay, via the taps at The Black Sheep.

The more exciting one, at least on paper, is Kimigayo, a gose created in collaboration with Exale Brewing in London, containing yuzu and seaweed. It's a clear amber colour and headless after a few seconds. The aroma is sweet and lemony, more like a lemonade than a beer, even a soured fruit one. In fact the sourness doesn't show up for work at all. The citrus gets more concentrated on tasting. I've never eaten a yuzu, but here it tastes like lime, being sharp and a little oily too. The blurb promises umami and smoke from the seaweed but it's hard work to find either, with only a faint savoury quality hanging on in the aftertaste once all the sugar has departed. At only 4.5% ABV this would work as a thirst-quencher on a warm day. The heavy hand with which the yuzu syrup has been added makes it little more than that, however.

Two taps to the left was Lush, Galway Bay's new pale ale, of the "extra" variety. In defiance of fashion it is completely transparent, and indeed very pale, so no quibble with the blurb here. Although the texture is light, as one would expect at 4.3% ABV, they've piled in the resins, lending it a heavy dankness, one unimpeded by malt weight. And yet there's a noteworthy sweet side, giving me crunchy muscovado sugar and crisp candyfloss. I was fascinated by how it's fizzy and spritzy yet the hop oils balance that so it's not abrasive, helping the drinkability. Word is this is destined to become the house session IPA for whatever passes for permanent at Galway Bay. I'll miss Weights & Measures but am content that this characterful number is a worthy replacement.

The papers have reported troubles on the business side of Galway Bay/BRÚ this year. I can't speak to that but can say, from this side of the bar, that the beer end seems healthy.

Kegs and chains

They sure love a chain restaurant in England. They have loads of them, and there's something about a town like Bournemouth -- lots of visitors looking for something familiar, perhaps -- which seems to concentrate them. I did not go there with the intention of exploring exotic English chain restaurants. It just kind of turned out that way.

There is, for example, a Brewhouse & Kitchen, a chain of brewpub-restaurants that felt to me like a modern successor to the Firkins of old, and memorably described by Boak & Bailey as "a bit like business class Wetherspoons." Now there's a demographic to aspire to. I wasn't there to soak up the ambiance, however. I was there to try the beers, brewed on-site on the smart brewkit out front.

I began on the seasonal Kölsch, 5% ABV and appropriately clear and golden. The lovely malt aroma smells like brewing itself, though the flavour is rather plainer. It tastes crisp and a little grainy, meaning it's fully to-spec for anyone who's never drank really good Kölsch. This is in the genre of passable brewpub lager but offers nothing better, or indeed worse, than that.

An American-style pale ale was my next one: Yankee Hack. This is also blonde coloured and quite watery in the mouth, in need of more malt substance. The hops are at least plentiful, bringing zingy orange jelly first, and then a strange bitter spicing which I've recorded as aniseed and white pepper, though your perception may differ on that one. That's fine for a while, but before I had finished my half pint there was a kind of soapy twang emerging. I would not be running back to this one.

There were a few handpulls on the go as well, and herself took a chance on the bitter, Churchill's Fall. It's an unattractive murky amber colour, immediately suggesting a certain lack of cask-conditioned polish. The aroma is sweet and jammy but it doesn't go anywhere interesting with that on tasting. I found it smooth and bland, with more of that soapiness and not a peep out of the hops. More than anything, it reminded me of those execrable nitrogenated red ales from the 1990s. Caskffreys.

I get what they're trying to do here, but the calibre of the beer just isn't up to snuff, much like with most chain brewpubs. These three examples suggest that they're being overambitious in trying to make mass-appeal beers in-house.

At the bottom of the town, near the seafront, there's a development with a wide selection of chain venues in a symbiotic relationship with the Odeon cinema. There's a BrewDog, of course, but I didn't go in. Dinner was courtesy of The Real Greek, which has two beers of its own, brewed by I know not whom.

Alpha Omega Lager turned out to be the better of the pair. There's a solid malt-driven centre here, making me think of Czech pale lager in particular, and working well as a beer for food. Only the finish lets it down a little, arriving too quickly and making me realise that the high quality effect is superficial and that it's likely made very much on the cheap. I still place it on the good side of ordinary, and for the house lager in a chain restaurant it proved better than expected.

Sadly, I can't say the same for Alpha Omega Pale Ale. My first disappointing impression was that it's quite similar to the lager, being very light-bodied and pale. Some mild pine resin sparked a modicum of interest but then faded away to be replaced by a persistent sour zest, like dilute Jif lemon, sharp and astringent, and not at all enjoyable. Again, I'm blaming the accountants for this one: it tastes very cheap. I'm not sure the place really needs a second house beer in addition to the ersatz holiday lager.

From there, we classed it up at Côte, an upmarket sort of generic French bistro. They had upmarket French beer too: Meteor Lager, from France's oldest-established independent brewery. 4.5% ABV and arriving in a 33cl bottle, I suspect this has no pretensions beyond being a Gallic answer to Nastro Azzurro. It's of a much higher quality, however, being both crisply plain for refreshment and having a slightly sweet malt middle which becomes richer and more pronounced as it warms. So here's another chain making a good choice when picking its token lager.

Moving on, there is a craft-oriented beer bar in Bournemouth which isn't part of a chain: All Hail Ale. It claims to be a micropub, and is in a converted shop, but lacks the other common micropub features like cask-only beer, no music and early closing. Still, it's intimate, friendly and overall a nice place to drink.

From the keg selection I chose the charmingly named Post Mortem #2 by Edinburgh brewer Barney's. It's a sour ale aged in Pinot Noir barrels and, though golden, does taste substantially of red Burgundy wine, of ripe plum and fresh juicy red grapes. Added to this is what I suspect is the result of Brettanomyces yeast action: a sweet lychee and apricot effect. It's tangy rather than sour and I got no discernible contribution from the oak barrels; neither spices nor vanilla nor wood sap. There's enough acidity to make it mouthwatering and overall it's tremendous fun. You know, like an autopsy.

And for herself, the Baltic porter from Brass Monkeys down Kent way, called Time & Tide. The ABV checks out, being 8.4% but the flavour isn't quite to style. Chocolate on the aroma is fine, and then the flavour is full of chocolate as well, missing the proper herbal bitterness which should sit alongside. There's a faint metallic tang which I guess is where that's gone, but it's not a big enough feature for my liking. The texture is a bit off too. I don't know if this is really a lager but it doesn't feel like one. I suppose if all you wanted was a beefed-up version of English porter, this will do the job.

So we come to the beery bookends. On arrival at Bournemouth station I stopped in at an Asian supermarket and came out with a bottle of Yanjing U8 which I then drank on the pier. This is only 2.8% ABV and is somewhat under-attenuated with it, but not in a bad way. The residual sweetness gives it a fluffy, full-bodied, candyfloss character which I found quite charming, even satisfying, to drink. I recommend chugging it quite quickly, however, because that does not require much warmth to start turning cloying.

And then the biggest surprise of the weekend came at the Molson Coors-dominated bar at Southampton Airport. The best on offer was Sharp's Atlantic. I've never really got on well with Sharp's, even at the height of their pre-takeover pomp. I fully expected this keg pale ale to be a watery metallic mess. Instead, it has some very well laid-out zesty mandarin notes with an almost New England level of sweet juice. That's balanced by a dry middle which makes it an excellent thirst-quencher, even if it's a little overclocked at 5% ABV. They have bottles of this in my local supermarket which I've never touched. I must find out if it's the same beer inside, because the draught version is a real charmer.

Here endeth the session. You needn't put Bournemouth high on your beer bucket list but, like almost everywhere, there's good and interesting stuff to be found, despite the ongoing demise of good beer and good pubs that we're constantly hearing about.