End of the year content filling

Thank you to Alan for the title. And so, once again, it's time to take stock of the year in beer just gone, using an increasingly irrelevant template, last revised in 2013. Changing it now would be akin to re-making Dinner For One in colour HD -- completely missing the point. As usual, deliberations are aided by something from the fridge which is hopefully a bit special.

This year it's a Chardonnay barrel aged wild sour ale from Wide Street, called Réserve Spéciale. It's had two years in the casks and poured a bright golden, almost completely clear. The aroma certainly shows off the wine, and very much that Chablis Burgundy dry fruitiness. The oak is perfectly integrated into this, just like with good wine itself, and there's no tacked-on vanilla or butteriness. At only 5.4% ABV it's light-bodied and crisp, refreshing even, its flavour opening with an immediate kick of Golden Delicious apples, tart gooseberries, soft kiwi and real white grape. More typical oak vanilla arrives late, but doesn't last long, and it finishes on a light saltpetre spicing of which I would have liked more. The fruit is almost at the level of a grape ale, and I commend this in particular to my fellow lovers of that style. In the 75cl bottle it makes for an excellent special occasion beer, and ideal for proselytising the wonders of wild fermentation and barrel ageing. But there's only one special occasion on my agenda today. Time to get on with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2024

Best Irish Cask Beer: Hopkins & Hopkins Sitric
It's a beautiful pale ale, no question, but this award is in part for what it represents: it was the first beer to show up on the revived cask handpump at The Porterhouse on Parliament Street, and it has been a regular there ever since, though occasionally time-sharing with Lough Gill's beers. Neither The Porterhouse nor H&H needed to do this; it's totally out of keeping with trends in Irish pubs and beer, and I've never seen anyone but me order it. But it is massively appreciated by this drinker and adds a wonderful bit of diversity to a beer market that can feel a little samey betimes. A Golden Pint is the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Otterbank Oíche Mhaith
It's probably a lot more common bottled than draught, and the keg which went on sale at UnderDog in February was doubtless a rarity. Nevertheless it counts, and I don't see any reason why 9.4% ABV vatted porters can't be sold on draught in Irish pubs as a matter of course. Everyone just needs to grow up a bit.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Beoir Chorca Duibhne Leann Láidir
Honestly, the headline beer on this post is a contender, and I'm only having my second glass of it now. But on mature reflection, West Kerry's barrel aged rye porter was the Irish bottled beer that best delivered the goods for me this year. That was back in June, so finding it may be difficult at this stage, though I bet it didn't sell quickly and that there are still bottles to be had.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Third Barrel Hello Yes
Maybe it's because I'm quite jaded about IPAs in general, and that's what most canned Irish beers are these days, but it was a struggle to find a stand-out winner in this category. The one I picked is an authentic-tasting Czech style pilsner, though you'll have to wait until next week for my review. Take my word for it, however: cans of this one are still readily available and well worth picking up.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Uiltje Pomme Pressure
I'd say I drank close to a thousand different beers in 2024, though only a handful of them taught me anything new. This dark barley wine aged in Calvados barrels had a very special flavour profile and one that has stuck in my memory as distinctive and delicious. That's enough to mark it out for an award.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Den Herberg Geus Genereus
After a sizeable hiatus, the Toer de Geuze happened for me again this year, and included plenty of beers and breweries I knew little about. The specification of this complex geuze caught my eye from the brewery's temporary festival bar and delivered absolutely all of the implied complexity. Up top, I said that I would have liked more spice in the Wide Street beer. This one had spice enough for both.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
In the summer I went to Bulgaria, and while the beer I found there often wasn't the best, there were some stand-out moments. Those produced by a group of heavy metal fans on the edge of the Black Sea (possible beer/album name?) were among the most memorable, in a positive way. Metalworks is a barley wine with figs, dates and spices, but pulls off the trick of tasting balanced and integrated while still being a playful novelty beer. They compensated for the frustratingly tiny can with a huge and brilliant flavour. 

Best Collaboration Brew: Sofia Electric / Põhjala Väga Suur
And I'm as surprised as you are to find another Bulgarian beer at the races this year. In fact, this was originally picked for best overseas bottle, but with an absence of other suitable collaboration beers among the year's highlights, it made more sense to slot it in here. It's another complex barrel-aged barley wine which has been skilfully blended to create a unique drinking experience. Bulgarian brandy barrels get filed along with Calvados as ones to look out for. 

Best Overall Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
I look at the eight champion beers and try to think of the one that made the strongest impression on me; the one I can still taste and react to, just by reading its name, and that's the Metalheads of Burgas this year.

Best Branding: Kestemont
Back to the Toer de Geuze, and a visit to a brewery I'd never been to before, nor tried any of their beers. Kestemont has only been going since 2022 and doesn't try to pretend to be a vintage institution making old-timey beers. The branding is clean and modern, though also conjuring a more primitive age, for example the woodcut-like dashing hare on their Oude Geuze.

Best Pump Clip: Fat Cat House Ale
I remarked at the time that the house bitter at The Fat Cat in Sheffield is better than it needs to be, and the artwork on the clip is also a cut above. I don't know if it's based on a real cat or, if so, if said cat actually wears a monocle. I just enjoyed his stoic reaction to the shite Yorkshire weather, as seemingly rendered by Frank Miller. 

Best Bottle/Can Label: Lacada Out On A Shout
Lacada cans are always beautifully designed, but the one that stood out for me this year was a beer I've never had, a pale ale produced as a fund-raiser for the RNLI and making wonderful use of the beneficiary's particular turn of phrase. There's something about how it brings the reality of lifeboat work to the prospective beer purchaser that made it instantly memorable to me. Maybe I'll get to drink it at some point.

Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay
While the company's pub end took something of a battering through 2024, the work done by the folks on the production side has been excellent. They've cornered the market in Irish-brewed Catharina sours and also rocked the dark and strong styles with Baltic porter, pastry stout, doppelbock and imperial porter of superb quality. And the schedule has been delightfully relentless, with new beers for me to try at The Black Sheep every few weeks. Throw in some excellent lager, which they did, and that's nearly everything I want a brewery to do.

Best Overseas Brewery: Dok
I had some fantastic beers at this Ghent brewpub when I visited last month, particularly the cherry and grape ale, and the black IPA. They narrowly missed out on the individual beer prizes so I'm happy to award this one for their output collectively. Their whole approach is cheerfully upbeat, and the creativity is matched by the quality of their beers. 

Best New Brewery Opening 2024: Smithfield Brewing
I mean, the beers aren't brilliant, being very much designed for mainstream pub-goers at the venues run by the brewery's owners. Rather, this award is for the project: the return of brewing to the old Dublin Brewing Company site in Dublin's north inner city. It looks like they're planning to open for visitors, being centrally located not far off the tourist trail with a bar just inside the entrance. And the old redbrick soap factory they're in is a lovely bit of Dublin's historic industrial architecture. In short, there's a lot of promise, and I hope to see it realised in 2025.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
Ho hum, right? Where else would a thirsty person go for a quality selection, constant turnover, and an opportunity to rub shoulders with the cream of Dublin's beer geekery? UnderDog is the place and that's all there is to it, really.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024: The 108
Strictly speaking this is a change of management rather than a new opening, but enough changed after Galway Bay vacated their Rathgar footprint that I'm counting it as a new opening. While there's a more mainstream appeal to the offer these days, there's still a good choice of quality beers (hello Kinnegar), and getting that out in the D6 boondocks is a rarity to be treasured. I'll throw in a most honourable mention for Bier Draak in Norwich which opened in May this year. It's an extension of the Sir Toby's market stall, but with worthwhile innovations such as a roof and a toilet. The beer list is impeccable.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It's been a while since De Molen's two-day shindig has troubled my Golden Pints, and nothing much has changed with it in a few years now. But it's my call, and I had a wonderful time at this year's gig. I'm sure the great weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact that I missed last year. It's still a bit overcrowded and some breweries are overly fond of making punters queue for timed special releases, but mostly it works brilliantly, the exhibitors are well chosen and the whole thing is a quality affair. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
This year, it's an award for reliability and dependability. Aldi had the turnover of beers, but I bought more in Lidl because they have such solid reliables on the shelves permanently: fridge-fillers like their Crafty Brewing IPA and American Brown Ale, but also modern classics including Little Fawn, Scraggy Bay and Rustbucket. Grabbing a handful for a weekend of unfussy drinking has become a regular habit.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Molloy's
Specifically this goes to the Francis Street branch which has done best at offering me beers that I didn't see anywhere else, and all without having to go outside the canals. Yes, your Martin's and your Redmond's and your Blackrock Cellars have better ranges, but for the convenience/price/selection criteria, Molloy's on Francis Street covers things best.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
And Captain Obvious's Retail Recommendations continue here. Just as UnderDog is the place where gobdaws like me sit in to drink, Craft Central is where we get our cans of whatever was just released or imported. I don't (often) touch the stupidly expensive ultra-rare imports, because haze is haze and they don't make it magically better in Illinois or wherever, but CC has a proper devotion to Irish beer and even stoops to selling Irish breweries' bottled beers on occasion. As well as this award, I present them with the encouragement to do more of that sort of thing.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Devil's in the Draught Lines
We have two books in contention this year, but I think the prize has to go to this wide-ranging, deep-diving and wonderfully person-centred account of women's place in the beer world, past and present, commissioned by CAMRA and written by our own Dr Christina Wade. It's a story that needed told and a document that will stand witness for future writers on the subject.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Belgian Smaak
My runner-up book was Breandán Kearney's Hidden Beers of Belgium, which is genuinely excellent, so I'm very happy to award this equally prestigious Golden Pint to Breandán for his website. Output isn't exactly quickfire but the quality is worth waiting for. Claire Bullen's delving under the skin of Brouwerij Boon, and Breandán's own telling of the Eylenbosch/Boerenerf saga, were literally my two favourite pieces of beer journalism I read this year.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @articnead
I think Simon would have been quite happy for us to include Bluesky under the remit of this award now, and although I'm doing that, and Sinead does have an account on The Nice Place, this is still mostly a Twitter thing for probably the last time. Our winner does a marvellous mix of nordie snark, righteous outrage and old-school good-time bants, often within the same 280 characters, and generally gives proper vintage-era Twitter vibes, the way Bluesky is supposed to but doesn't. I very much doubt she reads this, so you can pass on the good news for me, Sean. Thanks.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Ballykilcavan
And also in the fractured social media space, we have Ballykay shining a light of positivity, interesting happenings, more righteous outrage, and fleeces, into the swirling maelstrom that is today's beer internet. More Irish breweries should be telling us what they're up to and what's on their mind via a held up phone in a working brewhouse. Casting a new Cleo the spaniel will be a tough task, however.


Is that it? Have we only 25 categories? Cuh! I could have gone on all year. Congratulations to all 2024's deserving winners, and shame on you who got nothing: you've seen the bar, now get planning how you'll raise it. Me, I'm still very slowly getting through the tail end of 2024's Irish beer releases. You can expect opinions about them arriving here well into January. No rush with whatever you breweries have in store for us in 2025.

Whippy Twixtmas!

What an adventure in Whiplash beer we have today! This veritable avalanche of beer arrived in quick succession over the past month or so, behoving me to start getting cans open and notes written soon as. Here we go then.

To begin, a pale ale which quietly and subversively describes itself on the can as "breakfast beer". 'Tis the season and all that. Open Water is a pale ale of 4.2% ABV, brewed with the unlikely collaboration of Japanese metal band Crystal Lake. Unusually for Whiplash, the can doesn't tell us what varieties of hops and malts were used. I am, however, wondering if it's the second runnings of something, as it's the wan opaque yellow of a table beer and has a very thin mouthfeel. Still, it's been given the full hop treatment, and smells of raw hop pellets, greasy with vegetal lupulin. The flavour is rather mellower, with the intense citrus fading to more palatable lemonade, with a large dollop of vanilla: all very sweet at the beginning and right through the centre, delivering no more than a playful pinch of lime zest at the end. It's as easy-going as they say; unchallenging, but still characterful. My only real criticism is that, for a can of light and uncomplicated beer, €5 is a lot.

Lager time next, and I make Midnight Mischief Whiplash's second Märzen, after 2021's The Mash & the Fury. The colour is a gorgeous dark amber, although the head crackled away to nothing in a way no German brewer would stand for. It looks weighty and wholesome, and the aroma adds to this, suggesting woody maple syrup and the crispy bits of roasted meat: real primal winter stuff. The flavour has a bit more polish to it, though the poor heading is perhaps explained by a too-light carbonation. Concentrated malt with a smaller side of roasted crispness form the centre of the flavour, seasoned with a thin layer of greenly noble hops, adding a hint of wilted spinach or finely chopped cabbage to the overall performance. There's a slight echo of the horrible American-style Oktoberfest beers, but it's much better balanced than any of them I've tried. Yes it's sweet and quite heavy, as expected at 5.9% ABV, but it's pristinely clean as well, leaving no nasty residues of hops, malt or alcohol. Just a bit more fizz and it could be a mid-Atlantic-style classic.

The festive holly leaf on the can of Nice Mover suggests this is a Christmas release, though that isn't indicated anywhere else on it. This is a very pale and densely yellow IPA, looking like a lightweight but is a full 6.8% ABV. El Dorado, Azacca and Motueka are the hops, and the latter's herbal bitterness is the central feature of the beer's aroma. It's very soft textured, and despite the mucky appearance is clean-flavoured too. There isn't much bitterness, and instead it's the fruit-candy effect from both of the other two hops which predominates. After the initial Starburst, there's a slightly more serious coconut and a dash of vanilla. It slips back easily, finishing with no aftertaste to speak of, and no alcohol burn. That silky mouthfeel is probably its best feature. The flavour, while perfectly pleasant, is understated, and it risks an accusation of blandness. That still makes it among the better of the hazy IPAs around at the moment.

Shortly after that was released, something very similar arrived. In Circles is also 6.8% ABV and also brewed with Azacca, though here joined by Citra and Strata. It's a similarly opaque yellowish orange, with an aroma that really benefits from the Citra: zesty lemons building to oily lime rind. The other two hops are fruity ones, and they take over in the flavour, adding colourful summer berries and non-specific stonefruit, relegating the bitterness to a supporting role. That's enjoyable, although there are some of the more common features of hazy IPA here, the ones that were missing in Nice Mover. Boozy heat infuses the whole thing, and there's an unnecessary sweet vanilla note which curdles next to the Citra acidity. If the previous beer can be dinged for blandness, this one gets dinged for being samey. There's not really anything wrong with it, but I don't see the point of releasing such similar spec'd beers so close together. It's because they sell, isn't it? 

You've gotta have a hazy double IPA in any Whiplash selection, and that spot is filled today by no fewer than three of them. Soon Never Comes, first, is a bit stronger than they usually do these, at 8.5% ABV. It's an all-American hop combination of Cascade, Mosaic and Idaho 7 and it's a little more orange than yellow, but still full-on opaque and murky. The aroma is stereotypically vanilla-laden, with a worrying buzz of savoury garlic alongside. The flavour is calmer, and I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's reasonable to expect something in this style, at this strength, from this brewery, to have bags of character, but they've gone weirdly smooth and easy-going with this. There's a slight grittiness up front and then a gently tropical mango and pineapple sweet side. The thickness and heat are about the only typical features. This is by no means problematic, just (again) a little bit boring. We put up with a lot of retrograde features in our IPAs here in the age of haze. In exchange, they should at least engage our full attention.

For the Christmas season they released another one: Thick Stew, the name being a bit on the nose for a murky double IPA. It's all good-natured self-deprecation, however, as this isn't stew-like, nor even particularly thick. They've kept the ABV down to 8% and it feels lighter even than that. Eclipse and Amarillo feature on the hop bill, though I think it's the El Dorado which has the upper hand. That gives it a sweet orange cordial aroma and plenty of juice in the flavour. And while that's bright, fresh and clean, it's also a bit one-dimensional: no other complexities emerge, even when the beer is left to warm up. A pinch of bitterness would really help this guy out, but still I was content with what I'd been given. It's decent, unfancy stuff: sweet, but not overly so, and doing an amazing job of hiding the still-substantial amount of alcohol. I wondered what made it Christmassy, other than the tree on the label, and I guess it's the mandarin orange it gifts you with, even though you didn't ask for one.

The third DIPA is called Simple Maths, with an ABV of 8.2%, and we have Simcoe, Strata and Idaho 7 providing the entertainment. Even by the standard of the beers in this post it's murky: a sort of earwax beige and completely opaque. The aroma is earthy and gritty, with a dreggy hop-leaf acidity, which is not a good start. The earthy side is present to an extent in the flavour, but I'm glad to say it doesn't dominate. More prominently there's a fresh zestiness and some lighter honeydew melon or lychee. That's not to say it's easy going: this tastes and feels every inch of that ABV, and 44cl took me a while to chomp through, my belly's interior getting warmer with each swallow. Overall I enjoyed it, but I think it would benefit from being cleaned up, losing a chunk of the murk and grit to let the hops through: a tale as old as hazy IPA itself.

We finish on three imperial stouts that Whiplash has designated its "festive dog series". Dog one is Dingus, 11.4% ABV and brewed with maple syrup and cinnamon, sounding not dissimilar to Let.It.End, the French toast stout they did back in 2020. It's similarly thick and sweet, the powerful chocolate sauce effect also calling to mind annual classic Fatal Deviation. Drawing a mouthful is an effort, and the wash of flavours which rushes in includes pink marshmallow, raspberry ice cream sauce, burnt caramel, filter coffee, Nutella and just maybe a woody hint of maple. There's no cinnamon, though, and I suspect a subtle, or not-so-subtle, spicing has been buried under the sheer weight of residual sugar. This almost tastes more like an ingredient than a finished beer: it's so dense and concentrated I was wondering what it's meant to be diluted with. Milk, perhaps, or Baileys. Is it nice, though? I'm going to say yes, but it's hard work. Anyone with an aversion to ultrasweet beer should probably give it a swerve. And thus was the tone set for the remaining pooches.

Lightest of the trio is Dongus, and maybe it's because it's only 10.5% ABV, or maybe it's the lack of maple syrup, but it poured a lot less viscous than the previous one, forming a proper tan-coloured stout head, too. There is coffee in it, and that's immediately present in the aroma as a warm waft of steamy coffee shop on a cold day, with a sniff of hazelnut syrup on the side. The nut element is very pronounced in the flavour, its immediate foretaste giving me peanut shell, marzipan and walnut oil. There's a syrupy roast beyond this, but nothing that specifically says coffee: it's the sort of coffee taste that can be achieved with dark malts, hops and fermentation alone. Anyone looking to Dongus for a comedy novelty beer will be left unamused. I think I would have been happier with a bolder, more literal, coffee flavour, but this is still an excellent imperial stout: packing a punch but wearing its strength lightly.

Last of the set is Chongus, brewed with no added ingredients, so just a straight-up imperial stout of 10.8% ABV. It does seem almost as thick as Dingus, glooping sloppily into the glass, dense and tarry. It smells tarry and syrupy too, not of candied novelty, but very grown-up coffee and prunes. The flavour is sweet, in a similar way to Dingus but nowhere near as extreme. You get chocolate sauce, raisin bran, strong espresso and a sweeter note of raspberry jam or red liquorice. It's enjoyable as an after-dinner sipper, and very much free of novelty silliness. I preferred the strong coffee of the previous one, but this is still pretty good, delivering all the things you could want from a heavy imperial stout.

I'd love to say that Whiplash is a brewery with something for everyone, but this showing, which is quite representative of its output, indicates that you need to be into particular things to get your money's worth out of it. While I'm glad it's here, turning out international-grade beers, I'm also glad that it's part of a varied Irish beer ecosystem, where not everyone makes the same kind of things again and again. It only seems that way sometimes.

Pudding

Nobody is reading beer blogs on Christmas Day so it doesn't really matter what I put here. How about I throw you some weird Norwegian stuff that no sane person would ever buy?

The surrealists at Amundsen are responsible for this lot, and first out is a "pastry sour" called Root Beer Float, presumably intended to taste like that American dessert. I've never had one, so I can't judge it on accuracy. It looks well, though: a dark purple with lots of bright pink froth. The aroma, perhaps unsurprisingly, is intensely sweet, reminding me of those cake-like concoctions on which Omnipollo forged its reputation a decade or so ago. It doesn't smell like any particular sweet thing, however, just general sweetness. The flavour is the same and I did my best to pick it apart. Cherry and blueberry are listed in the ingredients, and there's a certain tartness from the latter, and a donut-filling effect from the former. In the middle there's what I'm guessing is supposed to be the root beer's sarsaparilla, herbal and spicy, but in reality it's a harsh, chemical note: jarring and making the whole thing difficult drinking. The gummy fruit flavours, intensified by lactose, create a lasting after-effect. I think you really need to be a diehard fan of the pastry sour to get on with this one. It has all the typical features, and ramped up to what I would call Omnipollo levels, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

That left me more than a little apprehensive about the follow-up, a beer in a similar style, called 10th Birthday Cake Celebration which is a "raspberry and passionfruit tart topped with whipped marshmallow and coconut cream". Remember when this blog was about beer? This is one of a series of collaborations, here with English brewer Pastore. It's a pale pink in the glass; opaque with floaty bits, looking like a strawberry smoothie, which the brewery would likely take as positive feedback. It smells of fresh blended fruit too, and the passionfruit is to the fore, as one might expect. Like the last one, this is 6% ABV, but there's no lactose, so it's altogether more light and palatable. The raspberry tastes like real fruit, with the woody crispness of raspberry seed. Second-most prominent is the coconut, adding a gooey suncream effect that's nearly unpleasant, but isn't quite. That leaves a tropical tang of passionfruit to bring up the rear, while the marshmallow is nowhere in sight, I'm happy to say. It's a busy combination, but it works surprisingly well. There's a summery joy about the whole thing that wasn't in the previous one. Silly beer can go either way, and this is one of the good ones. Let's have a decider.

Dessert is a "salted caramel choc chip cookie stout" with the unlikely name of Ashes to Ashes, and containing none of the things listed in the description; the sweetness provided solely by lactose. I'm not sure I believe that, though I would have thought a Norwegian would get the facts right. It is indeed incredibly sweet, although I don't find that as problematic in a 10.5% ABV imperial stout, as against a fruited "sour". There's a bit of coffee roast in the aroma, suggesting the residual sugar doesn't get everything its own way, but from the first sip, it's plain that it does. Milk chocolate meets a drier kind of caramel sweetness, tasting to me almost exactly like a Cadbury Crunchie bar. Don't look for much complexity beyond this, just a pink marshmallow effect on the end. Although it's not alcoholically hot, it's still a beer to take time over, just because the extreme sweetness takes a moment or two to process. You might consider blending it with a lighter dry stout, or splitting the 33cl can. I respect what it is and how it has gone about that, but it's not really the sort of beer for me. Let's call this a draw.

The modern-day beer scene gets a lot of very fair flack for producing vast numbers of daft beer-adjacent sugarbombs like this. It's certainly not what I signed up for when I undertook to drink all the different beers in the world on your behalf. I feel it's important to check in every now and then, but I couldn't see myself spending any significant amount of time in this sticky corner of the beer universe.

Who's bringing the hops?

I couldn't let the odometer flip into another year without clearing the backlog of assorted Irish-brewed pale ales that has been accumulating since late summer. Here's what I've got:  

Electromode from Lineman is a straightforward pale ale in the American style, hopped with Azacca, Simcoe and Columbus. It's pretty hazy, but dark with it: a warm sunset orange. I associate Azacca with chewy fruit candy, and I get that in the aroma. The flavour goes more for juice: naturalistic notes of apricot, satsuma and Golden Delicious apples. Simcoe's harder bitterness represents at the end, giving a more assertive, grown-up, finish. The haze doesn't interfere with any of it: all is clean and clear despite appearances. This is veey much a typical Lineman beer, precision engineered for both complexity and accessibility.

"If I brewed a Pliny clone I'd be happy if it came out like that" said Dave in the pub of Underline, a double IPA by Lineman in collaboration with said pub, UnderDog. It's a little stronger than the California icon at 8.3% ABV, but Dave's not wrong, inasmuch as I remember Pliny. This is very much in the west-coast genre, a paleish clear amber and going big on the dry citrus rind set on a background of lightly caramelised malt. After a moment, a more intense bitterness emerges, of pine resin, leaning towards raw hop leaf but stopping short of harsh. Stopping short of everything, in fact: the finish is clean and there's little sign of all the booze. We're in dangerously drinkable territory here, as perhaps befits a strong beer made for a pub. I commend it to everyone hankering after the double IPAs of yesteryear, or all the youngsters wondering what their grandparents drank in the craft beer bars of 2012.

But back to the more sessionable stuff, and Sunrise In The Clouds, the latest hazy pale ale from Cork's Hopsicle brand, still brewing in Dublin at Third Barrel, as far as I'm aware. Sure why would you change? This one is 4.9% ABV and hazy as you like (or hazier): a dense custard yellow. The name comes from the use of Pacific Sunrise hops, along with Citra and Motueka. That seems like quite a diverse combination but it works really well, starting juicy as advertised before adding balanced herbal and citric bitterness: contrast without conflict. Despite the appearance, there's no mucky dregs anywhere in the taste, and the mouthfeel is as full and soft as any decent hazy pale ale. This is very good, honest, by-the-pint, fun. It's highly unfashionable to find something so on-trend at a sub-5% ABV but it can be done without compromising the experience, and maybe more brewers should give it a go.

Is there something a bit Sierra Nevada going on with Northwest from Lough Gill? It matches that guy's classic 5.6% ABV and is the same deep copper colour. The aroma gives me a little resin, but not to the extent of the original. If that was the intention, the flavour makes it clear that it failed. This is a rather dull affair, offering caramel and a twiggy malt base. What hops you get are earthy, suggesting Cascade, with citrus elements but no fun zest. It's a slog: you have to pile through crystal malt toffee and hard-bitter American hops,  and I don't think it's worth it. Sierra Nevada includes a clean drinkability that's missing here. The sharpness is fun but it doesn't deliver on any other fronts. Perhaps trying to copy a classic isn't a great idea.

They've also bopped out a session IPA called Sesh, a name freed up by the tragic demise of last year's Sesh Beer Project. It does the fundamentals, being 4.2% ABV and clear gold, looking for all the world like a pale lager. And the taste doesn't exactly break the mould, but it gets everything right, going bitter and classical with grapefruit and lime rind. It's clean, refreshing and assertive, and fulfils a bitterness niche that Scraggy Bay, Little Fawn and Ambush have left unoccupied. I wish it well.

The latest wild-fermented and barrel-aged special from Wide Street will be reviewed in another post in the near future, but they also recently launched a hazy IPA called The Sequence. It's an ordinary looking affair, promising lots and lots of Citra, Mosaic and Galaxy hops, landing at a medium 5.4% ABV. It looks pretty medium too, a very standard hazy orange, though with a prodigiously huge bouffant of white foam on top. The aroma offers that highly-prized combination of orangey icepop and vanilla ice cream: yes, we're in The Supersplit Zone. The vanilla doesn't come through to the flavour, however, so this isn't one of those fluffy and sweet hazy jobs. Instead, the texture is light and crisp, and while the flavour is very juicy, it's more like high-end orangeade with bits in it, than actual pulpy juice. But that's OK: it gives it a very refreshing character, providing a ray of summer sunshine in the depths of this winter. All three hops are playing their part, but to me this tasted like a showcase for Galaxy in particular. And that's no hardship.

Rascals steps in next, with a collaboration IPA they made with Bullhouse of Belfast, called Dubfast 2.0. I appear to have missed the first iteration. This is 5.8% ABV and the hop-boosting grape by-product Phantasm is employed. It's translucently orange and smells quite savoury, of crisp fried onions and flinty minerals, with a backing of seriously dank funkiness. The sparky, ozone-and-saltpetre effect is to the fore in the flavour -- Nelson Sauvin, of course, here combined with Pacifica -- but because it's not a very heavy beer, that doesn't stick around. It fades quickly, letting a sweet apricot candy effect come through, though again one that's light, breezy and easy-going. The combination of sweetness and zest reminds me of the filling of a Jaffa Cake: this is similarly fruit flavoured but not in any real fruit sense. I liked it. The spicing is the highlight for me, though the zing from the hopping is an entirely complementary bonus feature. It's certainly a step to the side from mainstream hazy IPA and, for me, the Nelson is the making of it. I'm very glad to see that hop is still both available and in fashion. Long may its reign continue.

I missed this year's Hagstravanganza festival at The White Hag brewery, but of course I picked up the official festival beer. Also at 5.8% ABV, Hopstravaganza 10 is, I think, the lightest of the four or five of these they've released. It's badged as a hazy IPA although wears it lightly, being quite translucent and quite a deep orange colour, shading to amber. The aroma doesn't have much to say, only a mild suggestion of pineapple and peach: soft and ripe but not very assertive. The flavour is more full-colour 3-D, lightly spiced at first, with white pepper and nutmeg, then a centrepiece of bright and fresh tropical mango and cantaloupe. That doesn't get too comfortable and is quickly in competition with a harder pithy bitterness which makes for some very well-done balance. Plenty of breweries wouldn't describe this as "hazy" and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't like the more extreme custard-and-garlic iterations. Frankly I think it's better suited to a nice big can than a festival snifter. I'm all about the optimisation.

They have also created a barrel-aged tripel IPA, fermented with Brettanomyces, called Benandonner. It's 9.9% ABV and comes packaged in a half Champagne bottle with cork and cage, from which it fizzed busily on opening, forming a tall, stiff head. Beneath that, it's a deep orange colour with considerable murk, and smells both fruity and funky, like fresh Orval. The flavour goes a similar way, blending sweet floral notes of lilac and lavender with a twist of orange peel and a waft of spicy incense. The finish makes it very clear that it's a strong beer: while the flavour combination is familiar from other hop-forward Brett beers, the alcoholic burn at the end is unusual, and not entirely welcome. Still, it's a triple IPA, so I can't complain when it tastes like one. The complex flavour is interfered with a little by its overactive carbonation, which is unfortunate. I found it quite hard to explore everything going on while the bubbles scratched at my tongue. At €10 the bottle, the price is spicier than the taste, and I'm not sure it's worth it. I did enjoy it, however, and found it delivered everything promised in the specs.

There's usually something a bit more trad in these round-ups, and this time it's the turn of Hope to provide it. Limited Edition No. 34 from them is an Extra Special Bitter. I've drank enough bitter in England over the past year to be able to say they shouldn't look like this: a muddy ochre. I'm immediately thinking of mediocre homebrew, rather than the polished pinnacle of Victorian brewing science. The aroma is sweet and full of caramel and strawberries, very much at the point where English bitter meets Irish red ale, inasmuch as they can be said to be different things. The foretaste concentrates that sweetness into toffee and nougat, but balances it in the finish with a tangy, tongue-pinching, throat-scratching, mineral bitterness, turning to boiled green veg at the very end. It's as full-bodied as you might expect for 5.9% ABV, but as the appearance makes clear, it lacks polish. Being non-filtered does give the taste a welcome signal boost, and as long as you don't mind that slightly amateurish feel, it works well. This is good, wholesome, winter fare, and a perfect antidote to all the juicy haze, if one be needed.

Permanent Holiday is the first contribution from Galway Bay to this round-up. Do I detect a conjuring of the New Zealand lifestyle? That's how it felt to me when I visited. This is an IPA of 6.2% ABV, hopped with Kiwi varieties. It's a dense and eggy yellow in the glass, though smells light and clean, of fresh peach and tinned pineapple. The flavour stays on that tropical theme, layering on the cool pineapple and adding some mango and lychee. This is the more frivolous side of the New Zealand hop character and there's little by way of the minerals or bitterness you sometimes get too, only a very faint fresh-grass buzz, right on the end. The murk, and the strength, give the mouthfeel a thickness but it's still pristinely clean and all about the fruit. More than anything it reminds me of the brewery's own excellent Catharina sour beers, and I can't pay it a higher compliment than that.

The second Galway Bay beer is our only double IPA, another collaboration with Sibeeria of Prague, this one called Whisper Shouts. There's an almost west-coast clarity here; brightly golden, if a little lacking in polish. The aroma is warm (unsurprising for 8% ABV) and a little savoury, with a raw rubbery note meeting sweeter apricot or nectarine. The texture is heavy, and a pull on the glass requires serious effort of the drinking muscles. And I'm sorry to say I'm not sure the exertion is worthwhile. A syrupy texture, which this has in spades, ought to be a platform for fun hop flavours. This one continues the very serious chemical rubber bitterness, adding only a token streak of pith, and a fruit candy sweet side that does nothing to help its drinkability. The hops are a combination I've never seen before: Azacca, Talus and Luminosa, and it doesn't work well. There's something promisingly fruity and joyous around the edges here, but the centre is all heat and acridity. I hope the meetings between these two breweries are enjoyable, because the beers it has produced, so far, haven't been up to Galway Bay's standards of late.

Finally for today, Rye River has collaborated with Swedish brewer Poppels to create Round Feet, a 7% ABV IPA. They've taken a gamble on experimental hop HBC 1019 and in my amateur opinion it has very much paid off. The aroma gives a subtle mix of tart lemon juice, sweet mandarin and, oh, is that coconut? On tasting: yes, yes it is. There's a very Sorachi/Sabro quality at the heart of this; dessertish but herbal, and quite delicious. Behind it you get a slightly more conventional new-world peach and pear fruitiness. In all the hop fun I didn't notice the alcohol, which is very well hidden. It's all quite light, and a bit fizzy, helping the hops zing their zingy thing. Nice. Put 1019 on your list of yet-unnamed hops to keep track of.

Some last-minute Christmas shopping ideas for you there, I hope.

Fresh solace

The craft beer goldrush is long over but nobody seems to have told the supermarkets. You can still get a reasonable selection of small-batch beers in most of them, and they keep on commissioning specials and own-label beers from local producers -- see Monday's post for an extreme example. In 2014, Tesco initiated the Solas range, with Rye River winning that particular tender. By 2016, six different Solas beers had been launched, and they were still there until a couple of months ago when the brand was given a refresh. Solas is now IBU and, for now, there are just three in the range. Still brewed at Rye River and in styles that were in the Solas range too, so presumably the recipes haven't changed. Nevertheless, a change of branding is sufficient to prompt a re-appraisal.

The codological labels present IBU as if it's a real brewery, standing for "International Brewers United", although Rye River is named as the place of production. The small print also says the bottles are unpasteurised, which is impressive for a supermarket own-brand.

IBU Czech Pils is quite misty in the glass, another thing warned of on the label. That does take the shine off what would otherwise be a handsome glass of gold. One thing the label doesn't tell us is what the hops are. From the crêpe paper and dry straw aroma, there's something other than just Saaz here, and it smells a little off-puttingly musty, hitting the bit of my senses that finds some noble hopping to be difficult to take. 5% ABV gives it a decent body, and there's a light touch on the carbonation: it doesn't taste or feel like cheap yellow fizz. There's quite a heritage quality to the malt side of the flavour: that rich and wholesome honey and treacle sweetness, though not overdone or any way cloying, finishing neatly and without fuss. Could it be the mash was decocted? I wouldn't be surprised. The hops... are not to my taste. It's that dry and musty quality that I've never got along with. That spoiled the party a little for me, but I can't say this is anything other than a well-made and flavourful beer, and definitely a cut or three above the mass-market dreck that gets sold as lager in these parts. I humbly request a switch to all-Saaz and will say no more on it.

A little surprisingly, the witbier survived the Solas purge, so it's out with the Hoegaarden bucket to receive IBU Belgian White. This isn't much hazier than the pilsner, which doesn't reflect especially well on either of them. As under the old brand, we're left to whistle for the coriander, and orange peel is the only added ingredient. My records show that Solas wit was 5.2% ABV, but we're down to an even 5% here. It's still sufficiently fluffy, although the mouthfeel is probably the best thing about it. I get phantom herbs from somewhere, maybe the yeast, but there's a savoury green tint to both the aroma and flavour. Its flavour has a solid dose of citrus too, although it's a sharper lemon buzz rather than orange, and that's no harm, offering a pleasant contrast to the softly wheaty side. This gets the job done, and I really don't miss the coriander. We're not really in witbier season at the moment, but come the brighter days, this will be an acceptable option. Fair play to Tesco for sticking to a beer style that's unfairly overlooked by the cool kids.

Lightest of the three, IBU Session IPA is 4% ABV. It's brightly golden and only very slightly hazed, with a handsomely tall and fluffy head. We're not told what the hops are, but to expect flavours of "tangerine passion fruit and citrus". The latter comes across strongest in the aroma, which has the almost peppery note of real grapefruit peel, along with some softer orange. The taste doesn't diverge significantly from this, so don't expect a whole lot of tropicals. The citric element more than makes up for it, however, providing jolly bursts of mandarin, lemon candy and jaffa zest: nothing too bitter, but flavoursome and enjoyable. The carbonation is a little on the high side, but it doesn't detract from the overall quality, and there's none of the thinness that a light supermarket session IPA could easily suffer from. But we know Rye River doesn't play that way.

I won't be back for the lager, but the other two mean Tesco has the beginnings of a house beer range to rival Lidl's. It needs a dark beer, though, of course.

Holy order

Mount Saint Bernard is England's only trappist brewery. Until recently it had only produced one, rather decent, beer: a dark ale. While abroad last month, I discovered that they have a second beer under the Tynt Meadow brand, and brought a bottle of it home.

Tynt Meadow Blond is a very light 5% ABV, and pours a darkish honey colour, hazed up but missing a proper head. Belgian blond ales are usually fruity and floral; this is quite a different creature, being dry and fizzy: almost lager-like. Indeed, the hops taste grassy and Germanic, laid on to a northern-pilsner intensity. Equally vibrant is the crisp, snappy pale malt flavour: cream cracker meets floury bap. Both hops and malt are able to present themselves so clearly because it seems the yeast is entirely neutral, bringing none of the abbey-ale esters I lazily assumed would be part of the deal.

While this isn't at all the beer I thought I was going to get, it's very pleasant drinking. I like, too, how much of a contrast it offers to their original beer, definitely not the same thing but without the colouring. Fair play, brothers.

Steady on, Kevin

A plethora of limited edition beers arrived into Aldi for the Christmas run-up this year. The German supermarket seems to have gone around the houses, recruiting Irish breweries to make unique beers just for it. Here are all the ones I got my hands on.

I liked the retro branding on Cascade Ridge, by Lough Gill, calling to mind the American pale ales of the 1980s and 1990s which went on to change the world of beer. This one looks retro in the glass too: a deep coppery amber; clear in a way that has long since gone out of fashion. It smells quite piney, with a edge of toffee, so very much doing what the packaging suggests it will. Although it's all of 5% ABV, it's quite light bodied, and the flavour comes across a little hollow as a result. There's a woody fustiness to it, then a pinch of caramel before it all finishes up impertinently quickly. I guess they're going for something resembling Sierra Nevada pale ale, but they've missed the mark substantially, even for the second-rate draught and canned version. The aftertaste is a savoury, almost sweaty, tang: Cascade hops at their earthiest and most Fuggle-like. It's not a good beer, tasting cheap and compromised, in a way that Lough Gill's work seldom does.

There is a possibility for redemption, however, with the altogether contemporary Simcoe Smash from the same brewery. Aldi tends not to do strong beer, and this is only 4.7% ABV, where I might have expected a point or two more. In the glass it's a beautiful clear gold with a fine white head, and the aroma makes it very clear it's a Simcoe beer: resinous and dank. Again, though, it all turns a bit basic when it goes to tasting, and again the low density is a major problem. It tastes thin, and there's no way around that. Hosted in the watery body is a very simple pine bitterness and no more than a brush of caramel malt. The Simcoe is not smashing it here. Corners have been cut. The end result does little other than hint at the beer it could have been with more hops and, above all, more body. Even as a light and fizzy budget thirst-quencher it leaves me wanting. 

There's another amber-coloured one in the Rascals's American IPA, bringing us back up to 5% in the ABV stakes. The can promises us classic pine and citrus but, like the Cascade Ridge, it doesn't meet the mark. While this doesn't have the sad staleness of that one, there's not much life about it. The aroma is more English IPA than American: jaffa peel and earthy minerals -- again I'm blaming Cascade's Fuggle origins for this. The flavour is very metallic, scouring the palate with a rough bitterness which is all about the flinty rasp and devoid of pine oils or citrus. There's a muddy, earthen funkiness in the middle, and then a raw acidic bitterness at the end. I found it devoid of charm, challenging and serious, but not bold enough to be entertainingly nasty. More than anything, it reminds me of the sort of hoppy American beers we used to get here, baked into dullness by a long and warm journey across the indifferent Atlantic. It's a little odd that two Irish breweries have produced such similar and unpleasantly retro beers at the same time. I hope Aldi aren't trying to make it A Thing. The right to fresh and zingy hops was a hard-won battle in this country, and hard-won by breweries such as Lough Gill and Rascals. Let's not go back to less enlightened times. Who's next?

DOT! It's one of those light, pale, yet oak-influenced beers of the sort they often make for the Teeling distillery giftshop but less so by themselves. Looks like Aldi is the latest recipient of their exclusivity largesse. Spin Off Series Oak Pale Ale is 4.8% ABV and a translucent gold, looking bright and settled but not quite. There's not much aroma, only a faint hint of white grape. The flavour is similarly... clean, coming across first with a dry and refreshing lager crispness. We get a hint of hop fruit after this, gently tropical, like the scent of ripe mango and pineapple in the next room. Everything finishes there and there's no sign of the oak at all. The carefully phrased label copy makes it obvious that this was done with oak chips in the tank rather than barrel ageing, and as such they needn't have bothered. It's a nice beer, and works well in the thirst-quenching session pale ale category, an oft-fogotten must at this time of year. But if you thought oak meant something oaky, this is not your DOT beer.

O Brother followed up the session IPA they made for Aldi with a stout. It's quite rare for an Irish brewery to introduce an ordinary session-strength stout, especially for a supermarket, but I'm delighted to see it. There's no reason to cede ownership of this space to the big brands. Eachtra is a little peaky looking: deep red-brown, like cola, rather than properly black. Not a thing wrong with the aroma, which has lots of spicy and roasty bonfire notes, smelling of late autumn rather than mid-winter. Soft carbonation gives it a little of the nitro vibes, but the effect is short lived. Perhaps the reason that microbreweries tend to make stronger stouts is that, within the low 4% zone and no nitrogen, it's going to feel watery, and this does. The base flavour is good, though, offering lots of milk chocolate, floral perfume and a dry-toast crispness. The finish is quite abrupt, however, though the chocolate does hang back in the aftertaste. I don't think this quite manages to be a plausible alternative to big-brand stout. Yes, it has a much greater depth of flavour, but the profile belongs in a bigger, fuller beer. To me, this tastes of craft stout done on the cheap, which I am sure is not the intention. Maybe going more on the roast would have worked better. The sweet and rich side this attempts to present really needs a stronger foundation.

That was shortly followed by another session IPA from O Brother: Clann. This one comes in a small can, and is slightly lighter than the previous one, at 3.8% ABV. It's a mostly-clear orange shade, and smells of orange too: zesty marmalade, with a candy coating on the shred. As one might expect, it's light and crisp, but not watery, having enough body to carry the flavour well. The flavour is those hoppy oranges again, here fizzed up into orangeade, of the classy French sort. There's an extra sweetness in the background, adding an element of ice lolly, while the bitterness builds as it goes, creating a buzz of green onion and pine needles by the end. I liked this. It's an excellent party-season beer: easy-going and refreshing, but tasty with it too.

The name Mo Chara is trademarked by The Old Carrick Mill distillery in Co. Monaghan. That's why the lager produced by the Mo Chara pub in Dundalk has been recently renamed as "Mo's Lager". The distillery has finally made use of its intellectual property, launching this porter as part of Aldi's winter range. I don't know where Mo Chara Irish Porter is brewed, but they know their porter. It's a little short in the head stakes, but looks well below that: densely black with barely a tint of red around the edges. The aroma is decently standard, bringing plain but acceptable notes of coffee and chocolate. This unfolds beautifully on tasting, hitting a perfect balance between toasted and herbal bitterness against smooth and nutty chocolate and caramel. There's a mineral tang on the finish -- flinty stone or sparky zinc -- then it fades respectfully off the palate, with the 5% ABV coming across lighter and less intrusive. This is very jolly stuff, and hits the good porter mark squarely in the centre. We don't get many beers like this, and I hope this one sells enough for a re-brew.

So there you have it. I get a general sense that Aldi's drive for cheapness has resulted in several of these beers being somewhat compromised, and far from the best work of the excellent breweries who produced them. Don't miss that porter, though.

The house wins

My wife had arrived in Haarlem a few hours ahead of me and had been beer shopping. There was a bottle of Leffe Winter waiting for me in the room, still welcome despite the amount of Belgian beer I had had in the days previous. This 6.6% ABV job is a clear garnet colour, with an aroma of a little caramel and a lot of hot alcohol, almost at solvent levels. The flavour starts dry, like wholemeal crackers, then adds an intensifying fruitiness which eventually reaches the point of tasting like cheap cream sherry. There's a lot going on, and the texture is too thin to carry all of it. It tastes like it should feel big and warm, like the better and more rounded dark and wintery Belgian ales. At this strength and this level of thinness, it seems like it's all cut corners. Still, it's the thought that counts, right?

The first port of call the following day was the landmark Haarlem brewpub, the Jopenkerk. I was tempted by the promise of oddness in something described as a gin-and-tonic IPA: Disco Inferno, brewed with lime, cucumber, juniper and quinine, to 6.5% ABV. In the glass it's a perfect clear golden colour and has a very ungimmicky west-coast aroma of sticky pine resin and citrus zest. The cumber elbows in to the flavour, infusing the whole experience from start to finish, contrasting with both the citric hops and a heavier, oilier sort of citrus which I'm guessing is the lime. I didn't get the tonic element, though there's a slight pepperiness which I'm guessing is from subtle juniper. Overall it's clean and straightforward fun: still a well-made IPA that doesn't let the novelty get in the way of quality.

The dark beer beside it is a raspberry stout called Raspberry Beeret. Clunky enough pun for you? This is 8% ABV and very densely black. Heavy and serious roast makes up the bulk of the aroma, with a hint of chocolate raspberry creeping into the background. It does more than creep into the flavour. Fundamentally, there is a very good strong stout here, luxuriously creamy and packed with warm rich chocolate. The problem is the raspberry, which tastes chemical and artificial, like it was made in a lab by people who have never tasted a raspberry. That cheapens and nastys the whole picture, and it would be much better without it. Although I'm sure there are plenty of drinkers who wouldn't choose it without the promise of raspberry, alas.

There was enough on the menu to tempt us to a second round. I chose Let's Gose To The Beach, partly out of nostalgia for cringey attempts at gose puns that don't really work. I haven't seen one in a while. It's another cocktail beer, this time channelling a margarita. Other than the salt, which is quite prominent in the flavour, there's not much else margarita-like here. There's zest, but it's more orange than lime, yet not quite as concentratedly orange flavoured as triple sec. I can see what they're getting at, but it doesn't quite fly. Still, as a beer, it's very enjoyable, offering a mix of cleanly sweet and acidic citrus, plus the salt, bringing elements of the core gose spec that too many craft brewers don't bother with. And all in an easy-going 4% ABV package, perfect for day drinking, which is just as well.

That made for quite a contrast to the beer next to it: I'm a Barley Girl, an 11% ABV barley wine. There's a very unsubtle whisky-like heat from the aroma of this dark red affair, with a hint of dark autumnal fruit behind. It's very thick, and tastes as boozy as it smells, starting on bitter prune and grappa overtones. This softens after a moment to more of a Christmas cake effect, though still hitting the palate with a jolt of hard liquor on the side. While all the way through it's every bit as hotly alcoholic as it suggests it's going to be, it's also smooth and sippable, having been appropriately matured.

I was back in church the following Sunday and tried something called Phunk Phenomenel, intrigued by the name. It turned out that this is simply Jopen's flagship American-style IPA Mooie Nel, which I've always found highly enjoyable, with extra grapefruit added. Or at least that's what the brewery says. Where Nel is hazy and orange, this is a clear golden colour, and it's also slightly stronger at 6.8% ABV against Nel's 6.5%. I had been hoping from the name that it would be some way funky, but it's all zesty and juicy instead, and now I know why. Tangerine in the foretaste and pepper afterwards, say my notes, and if you combine those two characteristics, you do indeed get grapefruit. I liked its easy drinkability, avoiding any oily, resinous, hot or sharp notes. This is polished, in both appearance and taste. It could stand to be a bit more punchily bitter, but then quite a few contemporary IPAs could too, so that's not a real complaint. The name is misleading but the beer is very good.

Jopen may be part of the establishment on the Dutch scene these days, but there's still much to enjoy at their central Haarlem citadel.

I paid a brief visit to the town's hybrid Irish/craft bar, The Wolfhound, as they had a new house beer under their Thor's Cauldron brand, Aurum, another IPA. Here's another one that's a lagerish clear gold in appearance, although it's surprisingly sticky with that, all tinned lychee, pineapple and peaches in syrup. The aroma is gentler, but still quite tropical, suggesting cool ripe honeydew melon in particular. A spritz of citrus zest at the tail end of the flavour doesn't quite balance the sweetness, but it helps. As a house beer in a somewhat raucous rockers pub, this is much better than it needs to be, bringing in the juicy elements of hazy beer but with the clean profile of the west coast. I've no idea who brews it, but they're good at IPA.

The Wolfhound wasn't showing the rugby so I had to go to Tierney's to watch Ireland get a beating by the All Blacks. There's a house beer brand here too: The Stolen Bicycle Brewery, though again I don't know where the actual brewing for it is done.

I started on Robbin' Bastard, an IPA of 5% ABV which arrived in a nonic pint glass with a monstrously thick head. Double yuck. This was much more what I expect from a house beer, though the better sort. It's a workmanlike performance of American pale ale, with a classic grapefruit bitterness and dry tannins on the finish. There's a bit of a nod to modernity in the lacing of peach or even mango around the edge of the flavour. That's your lot, though. It doesn't taste cheaply made and there's nothing off about any of it, so presentation aside, it gets a pass.

So yes, I was chancing my arm when I switched to their red ale for the second half. What was I expecting to happen? Thievin' Fecker is a most un-Irish 5% ABV, a brownish red colour, and again presented as a "pint" with an unacceptably huge head. Flavour was difficult to find here, so at least there are marks for stylistic accuracy. There's a dry and grainy roasted element, and more of those dry tannins, better suited here than in the IPA, perhaps. The hops are a mere echo of flowers, but fully tokenistic. Like the malt, for that matter. I don't get what anyone sees in this style. Here's one that's proficiently and accurately made, and is still dull as a wet weekend in Cavan. But if you're hunting genuine-tasting Irish red in Haarlem, or Nijmegan where they also have a pub, Tierney's has you sorted.

The last lap brought us to Café de Gooth on Botermarkt, which claims to have its own brewery but I saw no sign of it on the premises, so I think we're in house beer rather than brewpub territory. There's a cartoon theme to the venue's branding, and they've adopted the cartoon saint Bonniefatius as the mascot for their beer.

St Bonniefatius Bock should by rights have been in the lovely, warming, malt-driven Dutch autumn bock style, and maybe it's meant to be, but it's not. Instead of burnished chestnut, this 6%-er is a murky brown, and tastes murky with it. A dry roast starts the flavour off inoffensively but it degrades quickly into a greasy and thick mess, all hot and estery, like a homebrewed attempt at Belgian abbey ale that went wrong. Throw in some autolytic Bovril beefiness, double down on the dryness until it's acrid, then sprinkle with clove, and you have the complete picture. It's a cavalcade of amateur off-flavours, so we can definitely rule out it being a rebadged industrial beer. This has been lovingly produced on a small brewing kit by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

So naturally I followed it up with the beer advertised as being bright green. Levenselixir, they've named it, referencing, but not too closely, the knock-off Obelix character who is the café mascot. I could certainly use some strengthening magic potion after the previous beer. It's 6.5% ABV and is exactly as luridly green as the posters show it. Before the food colouring went in, I'm guessing it was a very pale pale ale. There's a haze as well, and the aroma is on the cusp of citrus and tropical. The impression switches styles on tasting, from pale ale to witbier, with its soft texture and lemony foretaste followed by a coriander bitterness. The lemon becomes a little more assertive in the flavour towards the finish, almost swinging us back towards pale ale, though I would still be prepared to believe that this is just coloured Hoegaarden, were it not for the whopping 6.5% ABV strength. Still, it doesn't taste at all like it came from the same brewery as the last one.

And so, with more questions than answers, I left the Low Countries once more. Even though I visit a lot, I never fail to find plenty of interest, and so easy to get around too. If you've not had the pleasure, get Belgium and the Netherlands on your beer travel list for 2025.