Medium roast

Autumnal red and brown is the palette for today's selection, as we face into the depths of winter proper.

Once upon a time, Rye River brewed an own-brand American-style brown ale for Lidl. It was a somewhat overlooked masterpiece, and then just as I was establishing it as regular in my fridge, it disappeared. Not long after, rival supermarket Dunnes added a new beer to its house label, Grafters. Night Shift is an American-style brown ale, brewed by Rye River. Has the original been saved, but moved?

The ABV matches, and it's the same deep garnet shade with a solid, reliable head. The American hops are present from the start of the aroma, with the almost-acrid sharpness of a good black IPA, mixing hot tar and pungent spices. It's smooth and creamy, heavy enough to be satisfying, yet with perfect drinkability. The initial flavour of soft milk chocolate and toffee matches this perfectly, and only in the finish do the spiky, spicy hops reassert themselves, wrapping the experience with a bracing blast of bitterness which adds a whole extra dimension. I'm reasonably sure this is the Lidl recipe. It's worth making a special trip to Dunnes for, and at €2.10 is a steal.

A year or so after Changing Times landed into Dublin's pubs, it's added a fourth beer to the line-up. Following the lager, pale ale and stout, the macro-clone range continues with a red ale. Bleedin Red is 4.2% ABV and a lovely clear dark copper colour.  It's topped with a firm and lasting head which makes it look nitrogenated but the very busy fizz apparent from the first sip tells me otherwise. There's not much by way of aroma, while the flavour leads on a harshly metallic bitterness and finishes on a nasty soapy twang. While it looks all caramelised, there is precious little crystal malt in evidence. The second half of the pint gave me aspirin, rubber, boiled spinach and beetroot, and while I'm certain that's all down to legitimate English hops, pleasant drinking it does not make. Red ale is a hard sell at the best of times, hence the handful of people claiming it's underrepresented on the Irish bar. Sales figures from this one will test if it's really something people want. Me, I think I'd prefer the watery embrace of Smithwick's to this rough character.

Finally, we have Malt Fiction, badged simply as a red ale, produced by BrewDog in Berlin and on sale in these parts at Aldi for €2 the 33cl can. It's quite red and completely clear, with a loose-bubbled head. The aroma has a sweet candy fruit thing, smelling like raspberry and strawberry, with a hint of richer malt behind. 5am Saint came immediately to mind. There's a lovely weight to this, derived from a malt base which manifests in the flavour as cake and biscuits: a little treacle, a little chocolate and lots of toffee. But it's not sickly and is very deftly balanced by the new-world hops, which add the summer fruits of the aroma, along with candied lemon and oily little sparks of pine bitterness. It's rather charming, and a world apart from my slightly dismal experience at the company's Dublin bar recently. I have a lot of time for American amber ale as a style, especially when the brewery doesn't try too hard on the bitterness. This is an excellent example, and if you're under forty and therefore too young to have ever drank one, here's your chance. Hashtag amber ale comeback.

There's definitely some good autumnal drinking available at the supermarkets. I'm not sure I'd bother searching the pubs though, if you're a Dubliner.