Bavarian big boys

It's bad form that the Traunstein beers have been in circulation here for some time and I haven't yet ticked off the main core lagers. A sunny Sunday afternoon last month provided the opportunity.

I started with the Helles, and as expected there are no surprises here. It's 5.3% ABV and a medium golden colour, perfectly clear of course, and topped with a fine white froth. The body is full and smooth, as Helles should be, and it's very satisfying to take big gulps of it. That gives the flavour a spot-on spongecake richness, and it's maybe a little sweeter than is typical, lacking hop character and with with a layer of fruit esters -- apricot and banana -- making it seem even bigger, rounder, and maybe even somewhat ale-like. That became rather cloying by the end, so I don't think this is a great session candidate, but it got the afternoon going properly. I was in the mood for crispness next.

At 5.1% ABV, the Bayerisches Pils is a bit of a whopper. It's rare to see these over the 5. Still, it looks light and easy-going, a considerably paler shade of yellow than the Helles. I had hoped for a bit of hop aroma but there isn't much, only a faint hint of salad leaves. Sadly, I didn't get the crispness I was after. The high-ish gravity makes this another full-bodied chewing lager, and while it's nowhere near as heavy and sweet as the previous one, it's not the angular, precision-engineered German pilsner I wanted. I can see why the brewery sought to make it clear that this is specifically a Bavarian pils, free of hardline Prussian influence. There's a little basil and spinach in the foretaste -- the minimum level for a German pils -- and a dry grassy aftertaste, but otherwise this is quite a malt-forward beer. There are no fruit esters and it doesn't cloy, so if you're up for a session when round Castle Traunstein, this is the beer to stick with.

Both beers convey a sense of luxury, being almost dessert-like in their richness. You need to be in a Big Lager mindset to enjoy them. My only real beef is that these two aren't sufficiently different from each other. That pils in particular needs dried out and hopped up.

Urban renewal

Blimey. It's been a year since I last called by Urban Brewing. Shameful altogether. As a brewpub with no core range, beers turn over regularly, but there are themes, and regular re-ups of styles they've done before.

For example, I know of no other brewery so fond of lemon verbena. I had never heard of the herb until I saw a sack of it on the brewing gallery at Urban some years ago. Recently, they had a Lemon Verbena Argentinian Ale on the menu. I'm guessing the geographical allusion is simply a reference to where lemon verbena comes from, because the hops are plain old Cascade. It's 4.8% ABV and a deep shade of gold, smelling both of lemons and savoury herbs, as one might expect. Oddly, it's only the leafy herbal side that manifests in the flavour, given an earthy mineral tang by the Cascade. The vegetal bitterness masks any citric freshness, which is disappointing, and makes the flavour a little too harsh. The best feature of this beer is its burpy reflux which brings up basil and rosemary notes with a twist of fresh black pepper. And I think that may be the most disgusting positive tasting note I've ever written, but it's true. I'm not sure that lemon verbena is the killer beer ingredient Urban seems to think it is.

Tropical Sour is an entirely new concept for this brewery, as far as I'm aware. This arrived an unattractive dun colour though with a colourful aroma of mango, guava and similarly Lilt-like stereotypical tropical fruits. To taste, it's not sour, exactly, but it is crisp, clean and refreshing, helped by the ice-cold serving. 4.9% ABV gives it a heft, and you wouldn't mistake it for a lighter, more sessionable, beer. There's an edge here; a serious chord thrumming behind the jauntier fruit melody. I would have liked it more but for an unpleasant bleachy tang in the background, and I can't tell whether that's part of the spec which didn't suit my palate or an error somewhere in the one-storey distance between production and serving. I can accept a lack of polish in a short-run brewpub beer but I wouldn't be happy if I found this in a retail offering out in the wild. That twang seems to be how it does sourness, and I don't approve. Sour should be sharp and clean, and this is a bit mucky, the different elements not quite fitting together. If they're going to do this one again, refinement is necessary.

There was a Belgian Wit Bier on the menu back in 2017 when it first opened, and now there's a new one, the ABV dropped from 5.4% to 5%. This iteration is brightly golden with a fine froth on top and a strong coriander aroma, suggesting they've fully leaned into the style specs and not tried to do anything "creative". I approve. The flavour is quite plain, however. The herbs wait to the finish before emerging, and it's orange peel a-go-go for the foretaste. That's fine, I guess. The body is thin and the finish abrupt, and I don't think that should be the case given the strength: witbier cliché alert, but Hoegaarden does the same thing at the same spec, but better. Regardless, this is a bright and summery example of the style, and I hope that people who didn't sit indoors at the bar writing notes enjoyed it by the pint on the sunny terrace: that's what this beer is ideally suited for. I can't believe I'm saying this, but the strength would benefit from dialling down further.

Urban has had a bunch of saisons over the years, but only one called simply Saison, and now here's another. It's strikingly clear, looking like a lovely lager. The aroma is a perfect Dupont-esque blend of crisp grain husk and farmy white pepper spicing, eschewing the fruitier aspects of saison, and I'm absolutely fine with that. So it goes with the flavour: dry and possibly a little dusty, without seeming stale or any way not fresh. There's a zip to it, an easy-going spiced cracker effect which is highly enjoyable. Saisons from breweries who don't specialise can be hot and flabby, but this one shows an amazing cleanness and accessibility for the frankly stonking 6.3% ABV. It drinks a couple of points below that and runs the risk of being a public order problem. I found it slaking my thirst efficiently, as though I were a Belgian farm worker, while also having to cycle home carefully through Dublin traffic. Saison is very much a movable feast, and lots of breweries try their hands at it, with variable results. I can't say this is the best ever, but it is a superb example of what I understand the style to be. Urban tends not to re-do recipes exactly, but this one deserves a wider audience. Perhaps parent company O'Hara's has space for one in their line-up.

The final beer is quite the contrast: American Hazy IPA. It's last because it's strongest at 6.8% ABV, verging on what qualifies as "double", here in the land of session pints. They've hit the unfortunate essentials of the style, with a dreggy appearance and an aroma of garlic, vanilla and booze. It's heavy and acrid, the bitterness not of fresh hops but of yeasty scoopings from the bottom of the keg. It tastes how it looks, unfortunately. There's that plasterboard grittiness, and there's that unnecessary heat, and there's that inappropriate hot garlic sauce, and there's that excessive vanilla sweetness. I can't believe that people who were into hops decided that hoppy beer should taste like this. There's so much interference from the beer not being properly finished that I can't believe anyone would enjoy drinking it, and that goes for any number  of dreg-forward hazy IPAs out there. Lads. Fix this. 

A beer that demonstrates the problems with contemporary IPA is probably a good place to finish.

Silly season

Sour beer with unusual ingredients is one of my regular hobby horses. Nothing's too outré to dissolve in a properly acidic beer solution for me. So when a whole set of this sort of beers arrived in from Hungarian brewer Horizont, I grabbed three of them.

First up is Gimme My Ice Tea!, which is brewed with lemon, lime, bergamot and tea, finishing at 4.2% ABV, to create a sense of ice tea in a beer. In the glass it's a cloudy yellow colour and the head is short-lived. The aroma has far more lemon than tea, and is freshly zesty, like a cloudy lemonade or similar high-end soft drink. Low carbonation helps the ice tea effect, though in the flavour it takes a moment to taste past the excessively loud lemon. The bergamot's perfume is first to come through, and there's a slick citric oily quality which is unmistakably lime. Tea though? There's maybe a very mild tea flavour, but none of the dry tannins. I don't really miss it. The beer is intended to be refreshing, and it manages that satisfactorily via the citrus and the sourness. A beer created to mimic ice tea doesn't necessarily have to taste exactly like it. This achieves the effect well, and I doubt anyone could complain it's not as advertised. I have lots of time for the light, clean and zingy sort of summer fruit beers.

The beer in the selection that caught my eye first was Papa Prosciutto & Fungi, with the ham in the name and the mushrooms on the label. It's part of a "Pizza Series" of gose-ish beers from the brewery, and here the ham effect is done with smoked malt and the mushrooms with mushrooms. I went in sceptical, but intrigued. It pours an innocent pale orange shade, which I guess is meant to invoke the tomato element, and while tomato paste is listed as an ingredient, I suspect the colour has more to do with the black beetroot which also appears. The aroma is extremely savoury, with tomato seeds and basil (also listed) to the fore. In the flavour, it's the smoke first, and rather acrid it is too, tasting more like an upwind industrial accident than smoked ham. The sweet basil sits next to it and is quite jarring, and then a strong umami effect finishes it off with a note of anchovy, but which presumably emanates from the mushroom powder. It's a mess. For one thing, there's no sourness; nothing spritzy and fizzy to cleanse the extremely savoury elements, and as such I recommend strongly against drinking this with actual pizza. Or indeed drinking it at all. This is the sort of thing that gives ridiculous novelty beers a bad name. I would love to like it, but that's not on the cards, or anywhere near the cards. If we're ordering again from the Horizont pizza series, no ham or mushroom on mine.

The next one is at least a little more respectful of its base style: a Flanders red called Cherries on Acid. The architects of the archetype, Rodenbach, have been known to add cherries to their reds, so Horizont doing it is fine by me. The beer is an attractively clear dark red, although the head is loose and doesn't last long. Its aroma is fully to style, mixing tart red fruit with a sticky caramel or treacle effect. The latter seems to be the result of slightly too much residual sugar, and there's quite a heavy mouthfeel. Sourness is still in plentiful supply: tangy and spritzy, with the acidic bite of fresh raspberries and blackcurrants. The cherry element is a little muted, however, and I'm not sure I would have guessed any were included, since this style can taste very cherry-flavoured anyway. Balancing the sourness is the dark and brittle caramel I noticed in the aroma. I'm not sure it adds anything positive, but it doesn't interfere with the basics either. At 5.4% ABV, it's only slightly stronger than Rodenbach, but seems beefier and altogether more involved, even if it's not as cleanly tart. I enjoyed it regardless.

A lesson was learned here, mainly about the wisdom of loading a gose up with mushrooms (don't). It was especially interesting how different the three beers were from each other. Tragically, however, the daft recipes didn't work as well as the one which stuck closest to the established way of doing things. It would appear that the type of "creativity" on display here works better in theory than in the glass.

Down on the farm

For years, Kinnegar Brewing carried the strapline "Farmhouse beers from Donegal" -- it's gone from their beers but you can still see it on my pint glass. It was always a bit odd, because "farmhouse style" (howsoever you wish to interpret that) was never really a big thing for the brewery, which has tended to prefer making very clean pale ales and lagers. Its Phunk Pharm wild fermentation facility has been very quiet of late, unless I missed something. The latest additions to the Brewers At Play limited edition series are bringing us back to the farm, however. 

Brewers At Play 46 has landed us something properly playful: a Farmhouse Pale [ale] With Lemon Verbena. And, unusual as that sounds, it's exactly as described. It's a lightly hazy yellow and there's a fun and funky Belgian cut to the aroma and flavour, with a little dry peppery spice, some saison straw and perfumed floral esters. Parallels may be drawn with tripels and strong golden ales, but it's also only 4.5% ABV -- up the Belgian sesh! I honestly wouldn't have identified that there's a novelty herb thrown in as well: the lemon verbena's contribution is perfectly complementary to everything else, adding only a subtle citrus tang, like the dried orange peel in a well-made witbier. Releasing this into the dog days of summer was a genius move. It sits in that same position as witbier, offering just enough exotic novelty to be interesting and enjoyable, while also being crisp, refreshing and extremely drinkable. We don't get enough of this sort of thing in Irish beer generally.

That was followed swiftly by Brewers At Play 47: Raspberry Farmhouse Ale. It's not clear if the recipe is connected to the previous beer, though this one is only 3% ABV. It's a hazy pink emulsion and smells, unsurprisingly, of concentrated raspberries. The first surprise was the texture, which is beautifully full and silky, with none of the wateriness that so often comes with a low strength. The raspberries are present but they don't dominate, and instead there's an off-kilter but fun herbal tang: from the ingredients listing I can see that basil has been included, and that's what's giving this beer its rustic quality. If there's a farmhouse yeast strain involved, then it's not bringing any Belgian qualities to it. It's still an excellent beer, however, and more interestingly complex than your standard sort of summer fruit beer.

The judicious use of herbs is what made these two beers for me. I'd prefer to see more of that kind of experimentation than all the fruit syrup jobs. There's good stuff to be had from the farm, but don't neglect the garden either.

Beyond the middle aisle

It's a discount grocery disaster that Lidl appears to have killed off the excellent Rye-River-brewed brown ale, just as I was getting into the habit of buying it. Lidl still remains best of breed for its regular-production beer range, but arch rival Aldi has the edge when it comes to service to tickers: they keep the short-run beers turning over. Today I'm catching up with three recent manifestations.

Earlier this year I reviewed Cosmic Hops, the newly-arrived pale ale, oddly styled after Beavertown's branding, even though that brewery has very little presence in Ireland beyond the increasingly ubiquitous Neck Oil in pubs. Now there's a second one, called Galactic Haze: still 3.8% ABV though the price has rocketed (lol) from 99c to €1.29. There is still no indication as to where it's brewed but I retain my hunch that it's one of Aldi's contract breweries in the UK, and it may even be sold there under a different name. It just about qualifies as hazy, being the pale and bright yellow of a witbier. There's a fresh lemon scent, though with an oilier depth behind it as well. Intriguing. It's nicely creamy at the front of the palate, but the low gravity is quickly betrayed as it runs to a watery finish within seconds. That means it doesn't carry much flavour, but what's there is very fit for purpose: a simple and clean lemon spritz; unchallenging but tasty and refreshing. It's a more accomplished beer than its predecessor, so if you didn't care for that one, give it a go anyway. And if you need a low-cost crowd-pleasing fridge-filler, it excels at that.

A lack of stated provenance is also an issue with the next two. Aldi is usually better than this. All the labels tell us is that they're from Ireland, somewhere. You know the usual suspects.

Asahi is another odd choice of target for pastiche, but from the silver, black and red branding on Zuki, I guess that's what they're going for. No ingredients list is provided, but I'm guessing it does have rice in it, though that doesn't seem to have affected its heft: 5% ABV, a substantial mouthfeel, and a body that's golden, not yellow. The vibes are very much more German than Japanese, with a strongly grassy aroma and an even more intense weedpatch noble hop flavour. Had I been looking for bland crispness of the Asahi sort, I would be disappointed. Instead, I got a more substantial pilsner experience: hop forward but set on a solidly bready malt base, and with a hint of fruit ester as it warms. Like many an Aldi own-brand lager, it's perfectly passable as long as you didn't expect it to correspond to its branding.

I don't know if any particular beer was in mind for Lotus, 4.5% ABV and badged as an Indian [sic] pale lager by someone who wasn't paying sufficient attention to the nomenclature of beer. There's no hop explosion in the aroma, just a broad fruit candy scent, to inform you that hops were involved. The flavour is very bland and, coupled with a much lighter texture, this might have been a better candidate for the Japanese branding. The hops here are tokenistic: a dusting of probably Cascade that's light enough to be mistaken for Fuggles. In fact, a carbonated English bitter or golden ale is probably a better fit as a style than IPL. In the absence of traditional lager hops, the lager side of the proposition is missing, the whole thing being a little bland, but without being cleansing and crisp. It's hard to be annoyed by a beer that's so simply constructed and sold cheaply; it doesn't have the necessary hop buzz of an India pale anything, however, so I can't really recommend it as anything other than A Cheap Beer. I had hoped for better.

OK, so while Aldi may be doing a good job of keeping the beers coming, the quality end of the offer could do with more attention.

Ritual pints

An early afternoon train out of Connolly meant a couple of pre-boarding pints at The Silver Penny. There were two new ticks for me, with a broadly supernatural theme between them.

I was surprised that Moorhouse's Blonde Witch has never featured here before as it's far from a rare beer, but this appears to be my first time drinking it. It's a dark sort of blonde -- more amber I would say -- and very slightly hazy, even after settling. This is slightly worrying as the sort of beer they serve at the 'Penny, and the way they serve them, tends to be fully bright. I don't think there was anything wrong with it, however. It's a brightly fruity number, full of teenage body spray and chewy candy. Lemon is, I guess, the most naturalistic descriptor, but it's in the sense of lemonade and sherbet. A brief sticky smack of floral honey rounds out the finish, alongside a token but welcome pithy bitterness. It's all rather jolly and, while sweet, imbued with plentiful complexity. It's only 4.4% ABV and would make for an excellent summer sessioner.

Representing the patriarchal side of religion we have Bishop Nick's Divine. It's a brown bitter, more or less, though at 5.1% ABV might be leaning more towards a strong ale. There's a strong blast of hard toffee in the aroma, plus an odd green-apple acidity. It's not a jarring combination, which is just as well because that's all you get in the flavour. The caramel isn't quite as severe as it smelled, and doesn't gum up the palate: the cask format's innate ability to make beers easy to drink is hard at work here. I'm guessing the acidic fruit bite which follows is down to the hops: Fuggles and Goldings mixed with Slovenian varieties Aurora and Celeia. I wouldn't say that hop complexity is a main feature of the beer, but what it does works well. Related, presumably, is a mild sandalwood or cedar spicing which adds an extra touch of class to proceedings. I wouldn't call it sessionable, and I'm sure it's not meant to be, but I recommend finding room for a pint of this in your order of drinking, if you see it.

I'm far from the first to observe that the rotating beers at Wetherspoon can be hit or miss. Some days, however, the gods are smiling.

Special import stout

Foreign interpretations of Irish beer styles, and stout in particular, is something of a research interest of mine. They're not often sold in Ireland, for perhaps obvious reasons, so I was drawn to O'Ness by Prague brewery Sibeeria as much for its novelty value as anything else.

Not that there's anything particularly novel about a 4% ABV stout, packaged carbonated in its half-litre can. That results in a lovely pure-black pint with a wholesome tan-coloured stack of froth on top. The aroma is lightly roasty, with a Guinness-like tang as well, hinting at blackberry and plum. I noticed it poured quite thickly, and indeed the texture is remarkably heavy, making it feel like a much stronger beer.

And that's true of the flavour as well. It's primarily a bitter beer, with the dark fruit element meeting a quite severe herbal sharpness; an apothecary shop of aniseed, thyme, yarrow and bay leaf. There's a dusting of very dark cocoa powder and a sticky tang of molasses, but without any of the sweetness. A dry roasted finish skirts acridity but stays manageably drinkable. It's quite a workout for the palate, but everything hangs together extremely well.

Drinkers used to the sweet dark beers of Czechia, or indeed the creamy blandness of Guinness, will get a surprise from this one. No punches are pulled and it exhibits the assertive grown-up bitterness of an export-strength stout at a barely credible low ABV. I found it impossible to drink fast, and enjoyed lingering over it. There really aren't many Irish brewers making session-strength stout as flavourful as this. If, like me, you're still mourning the death of Wrassler's XXXX, here's a worthy substitute.

Single hopped, in your area

Could it be that pale ale's dominance of the new-release beer schedule in Ireland is waning? Even allowing for the plethora of fruit beers which landed this past summer, there doesn't seem to have been quite as much of the hoppy stuff. I think that's good for diversity. Anyway, here's all the new Irish pale ales that came my way in recent months. 

After a pause of several years, the O'Hara's Hop Adventure series has set sail again, this time crewed by Nelson Sauvin. As with previous iterations, it's a 5% ABV single-hop IPA, and perfectly clear in a welcome retro fashion. The aroma is slight, but does have a little of the vegetal spice which is one of Nelson's calling cards. That's hinted at in the flavour, but a hint is all you get. The base may as well be a blonde ale, being very plain, and then there's a tiny pinch of peppery rocket on a blink-and-you'll-miss-it basis. It could be that the brewery has been somewhat parsimonious with the Nelson, which is unforgivable in a supposed showcase, or maybe heavy-handed pasteurisation is to blame. There's over a year to go on the expiry date and there isn't really much space for the flavour to fade out, so if you're at all interested, get it quick. I'm disappointed, though. There's quite a lot of Nelson Sauvin in new Irish beers at the moment, and all of them show it off better than this one. This was a missed opportunity to create something bold and delicious; instead it's an inoffensive pale ale with little to say for itself.

Another rarity follows: a limited edition can from Dew Drop Brewhouse, the production arm of the Co. Kildare pub of the same name. Normally they stick to competent renditions of classic styles but this one is a hazy pale ale. You may have begun to think of that as a classic style, but with a mere 3.7% ABV, that's a difficult case to make for this beer. It's called Cloud Nine and looks proper: perfectly opaque and a pale shade of yellow, removing any worry about inappropriate oxidation during packaging. The hops -- Citra, Cascade and Amarillo -- absolutely sing in the aroma, with the latter's soft mandarin effect most prominent. It suffers a little from a low gravity, the mouthfeel starting out full and fluffy but fading to wateriness too soon. That in turn means the all-important hop flavour is short-lived, and a bit generic. The colourful mandarin is replaced by a workmanlike lemon or lime zestiness, backed by a surprising amount of dry tannin. The aftertaste is a more typical vanilla sweetness. It's an odd one. I guess it does deliver the New England pale ale features more or less successfully, and if you want them at a very sessionable strength, here they are. But you will have to accept that they're compromised, in both texture and flavour. If it's only a limited edition then maybe the experiment was worth doing in order to find that out. I wouldn't be giving it a place on my regular drinking roster, however.

The White Hag has been commissioned to make a new pale ale for The Porterhouse: Juicy XPA. While it's certainly extremely pale, and very faintly hazy, I'm always suspicious of that juicy claim when I see it. This one pulls it off quite well, however, and I'd guess that White Hag's signature hop Mosaic is the reason. A big whoosh of chilled pineapple chunks arrives as the aroma and continues deep into the flavour. Despite a significant 5.2% ABV, it's light and refreshing -- I can see why Australia has made this its national style. It turns pithy later on, adding just enough bitterness to balance it without compromising the fundamental tropicality. Nice. There's more than a hint of Little Fawn about this, which is somewhat unnecessary since that's permanently on tap everywhere it's sold, but I'll take the percentage point ABV boost for the 40c discount and say thank you very much. Make this one permanent.

What is permanent, and had hitherto escaped my notice, is Burn the Witch, which White Hag brews for whatever the rump of the P. Mac's chain is called, now that it no longer runs any pubs called P. Mac's. I caught up with it in Blackbird, Rathmines. This is another mildly misted yellow pale ale, and while it still places tropical fruit at the centre of the flavour profile, it's not trying to go full-on juicy. The aroma is an understated and nondescript citrus but the flavour unfolds a tremendously fun bouquet of grapefruit, mango, passionfruit and guava: it's adult Lilt, basically, without the overwhelming sugar. The group has excellent taste in choosing house beers, and I had a pint of Trouble's Vietnow while here just to confirm that for myself. Burn the Witch, at 4.8% ABV, is gentler, more sessionable, but still packed with lovely, clean, new-world complexity. If it's slipped under your radar so far, stop by Blackbird or Cassidy's on Westmoreland Street to try it, even if you're not in their cool kid demographic. Yes, I felt old.

Today's third White Hag beer was created for the Hagstravaganza festival, covered here. Hopstravaganza is an annual release, this one for the brewery's 11th birthday. 6.5% ABV in 2023, 5.8% last year, and now we're down to 5.5%. Times are hard, I guess. It looks light and easy-going, despite the haze, and the cool bitter lemon aroma adds to that. As a collaboration with Yakima Chief hop merchants, it contains all sorts of proprietary hop-derived products, though the base varieties are Citra, Riwaka, Motueka, Columbus and Krush. That's quite a mix of the citric and herbal, and the dank resins are mostly in charge, given a spritz of lime and grapefruit towards the finish. Even allowing for the steadily declining strength year-on-year, this is still thinner than I would expect for the ABV, meaning it's refreshing and thirst-quenching, but lacks any real follow-through in the hop flavour, and also the fluffy mouthfeel that normally comes with haze. I found it enjoyable but unspectacular, with the savoury New Zealand hops working hardest to give it a worthwhile character. Like the O'Hara's beer up top, making a big deal of the hops on the label doesn't necessarily mean hop fireworks in the taste.

The branding of the next one gave me a proper giggle: Grapefruit Peelers, on which Bullhouse leans into its home city's reputation, with a police Land Rover on the label. It's what people think of when they think Belfast, so why nat, like? It's quite densely hazy, with lots of froth on top, and a citrus aroma that's all hop and no syrup. There's a little bit of sweet-sharp grapefruit extract in the foretaste, but otherwise it's quite a straightforward affair with a hazy softness and a gently bitter dessert quality, like a lemon meringue pie. I feel a bit gypped on the lack of novelty, but the balance and approachability on display here is excellent. It's clean and refreshing, and completely devoid of syrup stickiness, swapping it for properly tangy hop zing. All told, this is nicely put together, combining Bullhouse's love of haze with a somewhat more classical bitter side.

Daylight Atheist, new from Lineman, sees the Dublin brewery going all in on the haze, producing a 5.4% ABV pale ale which is about the most extremely dense-looking pale yellow I've seen, presenting like dregs, or something paintbrushes have just been washed in. When handed a beige pint of it in The Porterhouse, I was dubious. A happy surprise, then, to find the beer is delicious. The brewery lists Citra, Mosaic and Riwaka hops, so only one-third Kiwi, but it has a huge New Zealand character. The aroma demonstrates both the ripe tropical fruit and mineral sharpness typical of New Zealand varieties, making the beer smell like a diesel fire at the pineapple farm. There's a stark herbal bitterness at the front of the flavour, all heady damp grass and spicy rocket leaves. The texture is soft and there's a lightly vanilla-flavoured custard finish, which is the only sign of the haze in the flavour, which is good. While the tropical fruit element promised in the aroma is absent from the flavour, it's still beautiful, both in its sheer boldness, and the mix of softness and spice it offers. Something for everyone here, and I recommend it to all the haze-dodgers in particular. Let your guard down for this one.

Bierhaus in Galway is 20 years old and has commissioned a celebratory beer from O Brother, called Fiche, the Irish for twenty. I found it a long way from Galway, at The Harbour in Bray. They claim that this is a West Coast IPA, and it is broadly amber coloured and nicely clear, but the hops are rather low-calibre, with no proper bitterness or resin. There's a tiny lemon spritz in the aroma, and the 5.8% ABV gives it plenty of density and heft. It's just a shame that the taste doesn't deliver a whole lot. I would have thought a birthday beer would have more wallop, especially from O Brother who aren't usually shy with the green. Oh well. It was a satisfying pinter on a warm afternoon, even if it didn't set the world on fire. Happy Birthday to Bierhaus!

Good News! Third Barrel has stopped using bad AI-generated art on its cans. Only joking: it's still cringingly awful. Their latest is a 6% ABV IPA and uses an American hop called Elani, which I don't think I've encountered before, alongside stalwart Citra. There's a medium haze here, just about passing as opaque in a pint glass. The aroma has a spicy fruit effect, like grapefruit rind, with a little pink peppercorn and savoury onion, plus a separate resinous funk. That's intriguing. It's light for the strength; almost a bit watery, but in a refreshing and drinkable way. That lack of body means the flavour isn't as punchy as I thought it would be. Fizz is the first impression, then a basic pithy bitterness, and then the onions. And that's kinda it. There's a light and fairly inoffensive rasp of plaster dust, and a certain unwelcome alcohol heat, but none of the pineapple and peach promised on the label. You need softness for that, and this is pointy. The flavours aren't strong enough to be unpleasant, but at the same time it's all sharpness and not much fun. Good News? Not really.

A mostly-kiwi hop line-up on Lough Gill's Tropic Tempest "juicy IPA" is instantly appealing. Along with the Riwaka, Rakau, Wakatu and Motueka, there's a bonus serving of American El Dorado. It's quite a dark orange shade in the glass, fully hazy, of course, and with lots of lasting foam on top. The aroma is enticingly peachy with some added melon and pineapple, so again a beer with "tropic" in its name might actually taste of tropical fruit. It does! Not really in a juicy way, though: the beer is a little too thick and dense for that. Instead it's a pineapple and mango dessert, one with generous amounts of cream and candy sprinkles. It works, mind. It's quite tasty, in a subtle way. As ever, I'll nod to the roll-call of typical hazy IPA flaws and tell you that none are present. While it's heavy, it's not hot, which is good for 6.3% ABV. And even the candy-and-cake sweet side behaves in a mannerly way. This is no silly, soft-drink-copying, novelty beer: it's an excellent take on hazy IPA, and a reminder that while I dislike the style's continuing dominance, it does have a place.

I don't normally have cause for complaint about the service at The Black Sheep, but landing me with a pint of Forbidden Cats when the advertised measure is 33cl was an unwelcome surprise. My 50c Beoir token took some of the edge off the yikesworthy €8.40 pint price, but I was experiencing a bitter taste before I even sat down with this IPA. "Oat cream" they say, which is presumably why it's extremely murky and pale. While it looks like dregs, it smells bright and fresh, of mango, passionfruit and ripe mandarin segments. Yum. At first I thought the tropical cleanness carried right through to the flavour, and it almost does: the beginning and middle are soft and fleshy pineapple and guava, but towards the finish the murky grit asserts itself, bringing both chalky plasterboard and a burn of allium acidity. This grows, so that by sip three the harshness is occupying the palate and smothering the sunny fruit. That said, I got used to it, finishing the pint with an impression of yet another mediocre garlicked-up hot haze job. I'm sure it does what its brewers want it to, but not me.

I was back at The Black Sheep for the latest from Brehon. Stronger again at 6.8% ABV but clearly advertised as by-the-pint, and only(!) €7.30 for that. It's in that not-quite-a-style "Mountain IPA", and with appropriate Monaghan humour is called Drumlins. It looked New Englandy to me: not opaque, but thoroughly misted and yellow. The aroma pulls us zestily west, and there's a crisp texture to it, so definitely not the pillowy fluff of the east. The flavour put paid to my initial scepticism: this really is a half-way point. There are lots of west coast elements, and a strong lime bitterness in particular, plus some sharper grapefruit. Yet this sits next to, and contrasts with, the softer vanilla sweet side of New England. It's a combination nobody asked for, but I give the brewery full marks for creating a true hybrid. I'm not fully sure that the flavours work together especially well -- at risk of being both harsh and sticky -- but it's a fascinating exercise and one I don't think even the American originators of Mountain IPA have executed as convincingly.

Whiplash's new IPA is the same strength, and called Full Body Yawn. Your hops today will be Motueka, Citra and BRU-1, with a substantial haze and a slightly darker than expected orange colour. The aroma is sweet and citrus, like lemonade or drizzle cake, and it's surprisingly light of body, with a dangerous lack of alcohol heat. On the downside, the hops don't perform so well in the flavour. There's a contrast of murky vanilla sweetness and a harsher herbal bitterness (thanks Motueka), but no central fruit flavour, something that would round it out nicely. Am I complaining again that today's Whiplash beers are lacking high-end hop wallop? I fear so. This one's blend of custard with thyme is certainly distinctive, but not terribly enjoyable. It's a full body shudder from me.

It's customary to round off these round-ups with a double IPA, but we've been short of those lately. Luckily, Whiplash has stepped into the breach with Gold Is Up, an 8.2% ABV job, single hopped with Superdelic. It's quite the emulsion, yellow-orange with a dusty grey element, topped with a loose-bubbled white head. Maybe there are people who find beers like this visually appealing, but I'm not one of them. I don't buy beers to look at them, however, and the aroma here is very promising: oily and resinous; spicy and vegetal, with a little hard-candy fruit. The texture is beautifully smooth and again with little sign of all that alcohol. We're definitely in New Zealand for the flavour, which has a noble and grassy Germanic quality, allied with a sweet vanilla side in keeping with its New England sensibilities. Given the appearance, I was actually surprised that there's no unpleasant plasterboard grittiness, because it looks like one of those sorts of beers. Instead, it's nicely balanced, with a lot of classy old-world lager character for something that is very much not one. As with the above, it offers no wallop of hops, but I think I'm coming to appreciate the more subtle and nuanced approach that Whiplash seems to be taking these days. If ever a style needed to calm the hell down, it's hazy double IPA, and this one does. An example that you can relax into is very welcome as I approach my dotage.

Reading back, that's quite a run of New Zealand hop varieties from the eleven breweries represented here, and I really like the spicy herbal and mineral flavours they bring. Just don't skimp on the Nelson, yeah?

There goes the summer

Here's an official end to the summer, and an official end to all the fruit beers that Irish breweries have been turning out in recent months. Although, given the idiosyncrasies of Irish beer seasonality, I could well still be writing about them until Christmas.

To the sunny terrace of The Taphouse in Ranelagh first. What brought me through the doors was a new one from Third Barrel called Stripey Paint. It's a watermelon-flavoured gose, they tell us, and despite the slightly dirty glass, it looked well: sparkling clear and golden. Effort was needed to identify the gose aspect because the watermelon syrup, which doesn't really taste like watermelon, absolutely dominates it. That makes it sickly sweet, the effect like some kind of sugar-coated hard candy. It's there at the beginning and runs all the way through, gumming up the palate by the end. Urgh. There's only a very faint hint of salinity to remind us of the purported style, which also serves to help clean things up a little. Coupled with the light 4% ABV and fizz, it somehow managed to work as the thirst-quencher I needed when the temperature hit 26°C. On the downside, I was stuck tasting the fake-fruit gunk for the rest of the afternoon.

Rye River's summer seasonal was a strawberry-flavoured lager called Once Upon a Time in Wexico, referencing Co. Wexford, famous for its strawberries. The ABV of 4.5% matches the brewery's flagship Helles, so I'm guessing nothing more involved has happened than the blending of that with some strawberry flavouring. If they formulated a new "Mexican-style" lager specifically for it, I don't see the point. There's a strong aroma of tinned strawberries, concentrated to the point where I doubt any real fruit was involved. That's somewhat muted in the flavour, or at least nowhere near as honkingly strong, but it's the only distinctive feature the beer has. Otherwise, there's a passable crisp fizz, but I got little to no malt or hops. If all you want is a beer that smells of strawberries, then this answers the need, and I'm sure it went down a storm at many an event bar during festival season. Where I drank it, it had the misfortune to be sharing a line-up with guilty pleasure Früli, which does beer plus strawberries in a far superior way. Once Upon a Time is enough for this recipe.

A rather less genteel dessert beer came from Rascals earlier in the summer: their Fruit Sundae Gelato Sour, responsibility for which is shared with Bådin of Norway. Despite the ice cream parlour stripes on the label, this is a serious affair, at all of 6% ABV. It doesn't look like a dessert, being a dull shade of earthy ochre. The aroma is light and zesty, however, and it's here that the souring culture is most perceptible. It's lactose rather than Lactobacillus that drives the flavour, and indeed the smooth and heavy texture. Vanilla forms the base of the profile, to which is added a mish-mash of fruit concentrates (four are named on the ingredients) with strawberry and blackberry being the most apparent. And that's it. While the mouthfeel reflects the high ABV, the flavour complexity doesn't. The weight also means it doesn't work as a summer refresher, and is more of a pudding substitute. This is simple and inoffensive stuff, so long as oodles of lactose and rivers of fruit gunk don't bother you.

That's me ready for the cooler days and darker evenings, then.

Wit switch

The summer seasonal from WhiteField is a wheat beer called Midnight Sun. The Tipperary brewery is steadfast in its dislike of novelty, and anything on the "craft" side of the industry, so I would be reasonably confident I've drank a beer made to this recipe before, back in the days of White Gypsy, or Messrs Maguire before that. Still, it's how it is today that counts.

The back label specifies that it's a witbier and includes coriander and orange peel (although neither is listed on the ingredients). While it's hazy, and has a lovely thick and lasting head, it's quite a bit darker than any Belgian version I know, and it's a smidge lighter in alcohol as well, at 4.5% ABV. The aroma is very banana, and that's right up front in the flavour, so first impressions are those of a German weissbier more than a wit. A toffee sweetness adds complexity to the basic banana, and the texture is full and almost oily. Again, these make me think of Bavaria ahead of Belgium. I made a concerted effort at trying to discern any of the herb or citrus but neither was forthcoming. 

Good witbier is zesty and refreshing; the best ones add a bonus spicy complexity. This had none of that. It's not a bad beer, but if this were a homebrew competition I would be adding a note that it's been entered in the wrong category.

Industrial microbrewing

They've fairly been cranking the beers out at Diageo's tourist-focussed 10 hectolitre microbrewery in the St James's Gate complex, and I've been quite a regular visitor in recent months, though almost always the sole local customer. I don't mind. I like the cosmopolitan buzz the place has, and the overheard conversations from people who aren't beer enthusiasts, but have come to Guinness because it's one of the things you do in Dublin.

Now, ya boy loves a sour IPA and makes no secret of it, so a new one at Open Gate had me straight up there to try it out. The recent project to give their beers interesting local names seems to have been discarded, as they've called this one Sour IPA. It's the slightly hazy spun gold that I expect of the style but smells bizarrely sweet, of luridly-hued sugared gummies, suggesting ersatz lime, raspberry and cola. I wanted crispness but feared sticky sugar. The fake-fruit thing remains in the flavour, turning to a clearer, more one-dimensional strawberry jelly. Thankfully, the texture is sufficiently light so it's not cloying, but it is weird, and overly sweet, and not at all sour. What gives? How did they do it? Why did they do it? As usual, no further information is forthcoming. A strange beast indeed, and not in a good way, leaving me feel baited and switched in my continuing quest for sour IPA.

Diageo also recently... hosted? sponsored? ...an event called Lovely Days, which necessitated a Lovely Haze IPA. It's the medium-hazy, slightly translucent sort, and very much session strength at 4.2% ABV. The aroma is outrageously peachy, with some extra-sticky passionfruit vapours too. If that's all hops and malt, it's impressive. Unsurprisingly, that continues in the flavour. The internet suggests it's done entirely with Cashmere hops, and who am I to argue with that? Regardless, it's much brighter and bolder than Open Gate's IPAs tend to be, piling in the unctuous and jammy sweet apricot notes, finishing on a bittersweet kick of mandarin peel and lime shred marmalade. It doesn't feel session strength, being dense and chewy, and here I'll note that while the point-of-sale material listed it as 4.2% ABV, whoever does the online menu reckons it's 5.7%. On sensory grounds alone, I would side with the higher figure. But, again, there's no way to be sure. Regardless, it's an enjoyable beer and I fervently hope that their future IPAs will project a similar degree of hop intensity.

They've decided, quite rightly, that summer calls for dark styles too, and dropped a Summer Porter in early July. They've done this kind of thing before -- a porter with strawberries -- back in 2022. This time they've lowered the ABV to 4% from 5%, and they were serving it carbonated rather than nitrogenated. As such, it's a light and fizzy affair. While it finishes on a dry note of toasted grain, prior to this it's on the sweet side, with a degree of sticky tackiness on display. Maybe the strawberry had something to do with that, although there was very little strawberry in evidence, only a vague pink sweetness in the middle which could have been any summer fruit. In its favour, there was also a kind of Baltic-porter-like liquorice, adding a more serious heft, so anyone expecting a light and sunny beer won't find it here. I enjoyed my pint of it -- a draught carbonated black beer is a rarity to be cherished. They can make them all year round, as far as I'm concerned.

Back on the events roster, the Liberties Festival also happened, and was graced by a special Open Gate Beer. It's called Batch Bread Red, from which I assumed it's part of the trend of breweries using spent bread in their grist as an anti-food-waste virtue signal, but there's nothing in the accompanying marketing material to say it is. Regardless, I was expecting conventional, and it isn't. For one thing, it's nitrogenated, which is normally a disaster for bitters and red ales, turning them gloopy and cloying. It didn't here because the beer is loaded with hops. The variety has not been disclosed, but it adds a powerful lemon flavour, concentrated into limoncello or some heavily citric bath product. The texture makes it feel dessertish, adding an ice-cream creaminess. A bite of bitter perfume finishes it with a little balance. Mostly, though, this is one of those one-dimensional beers with a beautiful single dimension. It's not at all to-style for a red ale, and the description mentioning that brown malt and honey were ingredients is entirely moot. I nearly didn't order it because, meh, red ale. Once again, however, the need to tick every beer I see has saved the day.

It's always good to see a new lager on the roster, and the latest is a Vienna -- even better. The name, Mr Brew-niverse, not so great. That's really my only criticism, however. They've gone on the pale side, like highly polished copper, resisting the urge to pile in dark caramel or melanoidins, to make it more Vienna-ish. This example has just enough sweetness, mostly confined to the finish, so is only slightly cake-like. It's more like bread, really: perhaps a rich treacly brown, with a crisp roasted bite for the crust. Properly noble hops form the centrepiece, bringing fresh grass to begin, then a slightly more assertive bitterness, suggesting spinach or fresh green cabbage. While it's cleanly fizzy, it's not excessively so, hitting the sweet spot of being interesting while also quaffable. At Open Gate I'm a sipper and a sampler and a scribbler. This beer could have me coming to just sit outside and drink.

And bringing us up to date (ish), another murky pale ale, this one called Hazy Old Town, because the brewer responsible is from Salford. I tried it during the recent heatwave, and gave it immediate bonus points for the ice cold serving temperature: the first third of my half was just to cool me down. It didn't develop much of an aroma at any point, but the hop flavour arrives fresh and leafy, with a sizeable amount of citric bitterness. That's short-lived, unfortunately, and it reverts readily to familiar garlic and vanilla. Not too much of them, thankfully, as it's only 4.3% ABV and maintains a lightness of touch. It's fine and, as with the one covered above, is an improvement on Open Gate's general track record with pale ale and haze. It seems they've cracked it, and better late than never.

The next one has a bit of an identity crisis, being a Pink Gin Ale, made with Champagne yeast. Three drinks in one? I reckon I can handle that. It's pink all right; actually properly rosé: clear and transparent at the edges. The aroma is a sherbet-like cherry and raspberry effect, better suited to a sweetshop than a fancy bar. The description mentions the gin botanicals but nothing about berries, so that's confusing. The base is light and crisp, more so than you'd expect from the 5.7% ABV, meaning the yeast has fermented everything thoroughly. The syrupy beer remains as the unsubtle centrepiece of the flavour, however. You need to go on a bit of a sensory quest to discern the botanicals, but there is a certain herbal spice at the back of one's throat, saying juniper in particular, but also leafy green coriander. A dry finish is advertised and delivered. It's the pinkness which lets this recipe down, dominating what was likely an otherwise complex and interesting base beer. Special props to the Champagne yeast: it would have been a sticky mess without that.

Last up is The Golden Age of Guinness: a grandly titled alleged recreation of a recipe from the 1880s, and as long as you have no further questions, that's exactly what it is. They've designated it as an export stout and it's only 5% ABV, a combo move to make any proper beer historian's knuckles turn white. It's fizzy and chilled, just like it wouldn't have been back in the day, and while it's fairly similar to standard carbonated Guinness, it does have an extra richness -- cocoa, espresso, a hint of smoke? -- and less of the sour lactic tang. Still, the taste wasn't bold enough to clean the residual raspberry from the previous beer off my palate. Nevertheless, my only real criticism is that, for a full-flavoured stout, it's still a bit thin. I would like this bigger flavour on the beefier body of an actual 19th century stout. It was the strongest beer on the taplist on the day, so there was room to do that. Stouts have never been Open Gate's best offerings, and while this doesn't really provide any time-machine thrill, it's decent drinking.

Decent drinking is all I ask from the brewery. I see there's a Märzen on the coming-soon list. Happy autumn!

Sun spots

DOT Brew has its summer clothes on today, beginning on two recent releases, very much not the sort of heavy barrel-aged dark beers on which the brewer has built its reputation, before reverting to type for the finisher.

First up is a Radler which I'm guessing is based on a pale lager, diluted to 2.5% ABV and with orange and lemon listed in the ingredients. The former is most prominent in the aroma, giving me orangeade, or even a more concentrated cordial. I think I'm within my rights to have expected this to be fizzy, but it's a little flat, and thin with it. There's not much sign of the underlying beer, suggesting to me that it is indeed a very simply constructed lager, and that's not unusual for radler. What you get instead is the orange syrup, adding a sickly sweetness to the front, which fades mercifully quickly, but nothing much replaces it. There's a slight citric bitterness toward the end, which I guess is the lemon, tasting more real than the orange, but easily missed. Of course, this is designed for easy-drinking low-alcohol refreshment, and it does perform that role. I think I would prefer a fruit-based soft-drink, however. This isn't any more pleasurable by virtue of being a beer.

DOT is well used to collaborating with distilleries, usually whiskey, and usually Teeling, but the next beer bears the name of Kerry distillery Skellig Six18 and is invoking its gin. Pole Star claims 18 botanicals, but the only unusual ingredients listed are juniper, birch sap and bilberry. Maybe that's enough. It's a typical light sour fruit beer, 4.2% ABV and pouring a pale pink colour with no head. The aroma is slightly yoghurt-like and the texture very thin, as is generally the way with kettle-soured beers, which I'm guessing this is. I found the flavour rather generic, based on an indistinct hedgerow berry effect, where bilberry wouldn't be in my first ten guesses. Then there's the lactic sour tang and that's about it. A slight peppery quality from the juniper? Maybe. This is fine, though unexciting. If it genuinely does contain 18 different botanicals, they're not really pulling their weight. Maybe it was a fun recipe to put together but, from the drinking side, I'm not really feeling the benefit. It's fine, though: another light and fizzy thirst-quencher with a fruity twist.

In the run-up to Christmas last year, via Aldi, DOT put out a joint effort with Two Stacks: a can each of stout and whiskey (canned whiskey being Two Stacks's Whole Thing) in a giftable cardboard tube. We didn't have to wait long for the 2025 edition, which landed in June. The beer, 2025 Stacked, is a barrel-aged imperial stout, though only 7.5% ABV. An 8.2% ABV version was a standalone release back in 2021, and I'm guessing Aldi's price-point needs prompted the cut. Still, it's a dense-looking affair: properly black with a tobacco-stain head. That said, the former-bourbon Two Stacks casks aren't much in evidence in the beer, other than a hint of spirit and honey in the aroma. The flavour is simple and good, offering a serious tarry roasted bitterness set on a full and creamy body that is in full compliance with the requirements of imperial stout. I couldn't find the vanilla and oak spice promised on the tube, but did detect a kind of smoky complexity in the background as it warmed. Trying it in tandem with the whiskey didn't add anything new. The spirit has been aged in DOT's stout barrels but didn't have the same chocolatey air as, for example, the Jameson stout barrel Caskmates. It's good though, with lots of typically Irish honey and a dark seam of Oloroso richness. Putting the two together is a gimmick, but it's fun and, at €12, relatively inexpensive fun.

While it's nice to see DOT branching out stylistically, neither of the light and fruity efforts were any great shakes. Yes, it's hard to impress me with any radler, but the sour one wasn't done to the same distinctively high specification as the strong barrel-aged beers. Is it churlish of me to ask that a client brewer with its own ageing and blending facility might like to try something fun with wild fermentation cultures? I'll ask it anyway.

The next phase

In the first pair of releases since they returned to contract brewing, Hopfully has sought to placate both sides in the pale ale civil war.

One of them is Television, a hazy pale ale, being both very very hazy and very very pale. The hop combination of sweetly fruity Azacca and Strata with more serious Citra has given it a lovely balance between the dessert-like tropical fruits and the more jagged citrus and pine. It shows a dankness that's unusual in a hazy pale ale, as well as spicy herbs and the requisite juice and vanilla. I like how it skirts the edges of the hot garlic effect which can be haze's bane, keeping the boldness and heft but not tasting weird or off. This is another one of those hazy jobs done well, missing any of the bad features and delivering lots of enjoyable fresh hop fun. It's hard to imagine what else to ask of a beer like this.

Its companion piece is a west coast IPA called The Lads. Alas, there's an unacceptable amount of haze in this, lest there be any doubt which side of the war Hopfully is really on. Still, it's a nice amber colour under the murk. The aroma is more muted than I would have expected from Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin and Simcoe: all quite assertive hops in their own right. Although it's stronger than the previous beer, at 5.8% ABV, it's very similar in density, sacrificing west-coast crispness for a chewiness belonging to a far stronger beer. A token effort has been made at the west coast profile, with a hint of crystal malt caramel and a pinch of pine resin, but without the liquid being clean and clear, it's unconvincing. While it's a fine beer to drink, I think the style purists will be disappointed, and it's just not as interesting as the other one, like the brewers' hearts weren't really in it to do the style properly.

It's nice that Hopfully is still around, and very nice that it's still doing haze very well. Perhaps their new host (which should be named on the can but isn't) can teach them about clarity.

Wiccan mix

Hagstravaganza 11, the seventh of its name, took place at The White Hag brewery recently. As usual, a team of guest brewers from Ireland, the UK and Europe brought a wide selection of beers for us to work through, 200ml at a time.

I was looking for a lager to start me off but they were in somewhat short supply, so went for a sour IPA instead, for that post-travel refreshment factor. This was Sour Drop by Lambrate, seemingly a very typical example, being 4.5% ABV and a pale hazy yellow. The aroma is fairly standard too, showing the yoghurt-like tang of a kettle-soured beer. On tasting, however, its all about the hops, making excellent use of the plain base to showcase a firework display of zingy, zesty citrus flavour, with a punchy and invigorating bitterness. The finish is quick, but that only serves to help its thirst-quenching powers. I've been a fan of sour IPAs since my first encounter (hello Eight Degrees!), and while they're not always brilliant, this example was a reminder of why they're worthwhile, especially outdoors on a sunny afternoon.

The drops continued next, with Pressure Drop. Their Pale Fire pale ale is one of those modern British classics, but also a beer I had never tried myself, a bit like Elusive's Oregon Trail, reviewed last week. And a bit like that one, I wasn't a fan. It actually has the same savoury sesame or caraway kick which is one of the peculiarities of my palate when it comes to particular hops, although to a lesser extent here, thanks, I guess, to the beer being only 4.4% ABV. At first I found it dry and a little rough-tasting, followed by a growing pithy bitterness which I felt was a bit overdone in a session-strength ale. I don't doubt its boldness, or that it's exactly what the brewery and its customers want it to be. Too much of it was not to my taste, however. Could it be that the age of soft and fluffy pale ales has ruined my palate for big-boy bitterness?

The following beer proved immediately that this is not the case. Drink While Laughing (great name!) is from White Hag itself, in collaboration with regular festival participant Green Cheek of California. It's another pale ale, and still modestly strong at 5.5% ABV. They say "West Coast" in the description and they really mean it. For one thing, it's a gorgeous clear gold colour, and attention has been paid to the malt side of the recipe, with a lovely big and chewy golden-syrup base. Not that it's sweet; the malt provides a platform for some wonderfully complex yet accessible hop character, starting on the classic grapefruit bite which, instead of building, gives way to a subsequent mandarin softness. This one-two citric hop effect continues all the way through, so while it's quite easy drinking, it still managed to hold my attention. Cans of this are currently in circulation, and I'm very much minded to become more familiar with it. I flag it thus for the attention of all the west-coast whiners out there.

That full-on hop experience necessitated something clean and fizzy to follow. Brewfist -- a blast from my beer-drinking past -- had a lager from their pilot scheme on the board: Italian Pilsner 03. Now, maybe it's not my place to tell a seasoned Italian brewer what an "Italian pilsner" should be like, but this wasn't the beer I expected. Full marks for the visuals: a flawless golden body topped with a perfect fine shaving-foam mousse. The aroma is also that of a top-notch Mitteleuropa pilsner, a pristine grassy note which, if it isn't from Saaz hops, is doing a convincing impression of them. And so it goes with the flavour: spinach and celery on a clean base, perhaps suggesting more German-style than Czech to me, and absolutely delicious, but shouldn't the Italian style have something a bit extra going on with the hops? And shouldn't pilot releases be rather more experimental? I'm probably overthinking it. This is a pilsner from Italy, and an utterly superb one. Version 04 could up the hop quotient a little, but I wouldn't change the fundamentals.

I came back to Brewfist a little later on, when I noticed the strong beers were running out and I didn't want to miss theirs. That was Vecchia Lodi, a 12% ABV barley wine. Style fidelity was in evidence here again, although it's not one of the hopped-up barley wines typified by Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot. Instead, it's sweet all the way through, from a syrupy treacle aroma to a cereal and cake flavour. A tang of grape and cork brings in the "wine" part of the spec, and is perhaps a result of this being a six-year-old vintage. While by no means spectacular, nor showing signs of much development after the extended ageing, it was simple and enjoyable fare; smooth and lacking any overweening alcohol heat or sharp hop edges.

A palate scrub was required again, so I followed this with New Moon, a gose by Manchester's Balance. The brewery specialises in the wild and funky end of things, so it shouldn't be surprising that their gose is a straight-up one, lacking any novelty add-ons. It's 4% ABV, a mostly clear gold colour, and presents flavours of zest and brine, the sour culture doing the work that hops might normally perform, giving the beer acidity and bite. Classic gose is made with coriander as well, and if that's included here, it didn't really make itself known. Still, I had little to complain about as the sticky barley wine residue was washed from my gob.

I stuck with Balance for the next one, a dry-hopped saison called Long Shadows. There was more than a hint of geuze about the aroma of this: an enticing spicy sharpness. The flavour was less impressive, but still good, with a lot more sourness than hops in evidence. The gunpowder spice of the aroma is reduced to a more saison-like white pepper, and there's a residual kick of vinegar, verging on the too-sour. I still enjoyed it, sourness and absent hops notwithstanding. There wasn't a lot of this kind of beer at the gig, so Balance's presence was very welcome. I should have tried their third one too.

At the opposite end of the sour spectrum, there's French brewery Nautile and their "lemon and almond pastry sour", called Sneffels. I'm rarely without apprehension on approach to things like these, but I'd had strong recommendations during the day, and they proved accurate. Although this is 6% ABV and presumably brewed with lactose, it's no sticky mess, and isn't horribly sweet. It's not sour either, but does let the lemon do most of the talking, with a zesty aroma and a lemonade flavour, including a sprig of rosemary for a bonus oily herbal effect. I did not expect clean and refreshing from something of this description, but I welcome it.

Nautile also had a Flanders red on offer, a big one at 9% ABV, called Katsberg. That heft didn't suit some of the drinkers who expressed a preference, but I thought it worked, and covered the style's requirements well. Yes, it's a bigger beer all round, with a denser body and more of a cherry and strawberry sweet side. The sharp and fizzy brisk sourness is not a feature, but I think the heftier spec works almost as well. There was certainly no shortage of complexity in the flavour, with lots of balsamic vinegar and dark chocolate in evidence. Flanders red, especially when produced by a brewery that doesn't specialise in it, can sometimes go too far with the acidity, and you get an unpleasant raw vinegar tang on the end. There's no danger of that in this big sour softie, however. It's unorthodox, but it's made me less of a purist about this style.

And we were spoiled for choice, since White Hag were launching a Flanders red of their own. The name, Oud Foudre No. 1, implies that this isn't the last one of these they'll do. It's another fairly big one, at 6.6% ABV, and picks a different direction from the previous beer, and the style generally. Instead of going all-in for tartness, this is all about the funk, smelling almost like a ripe blue cheese. Not a beer for beginners, then. There's a sweet side represented by exotic dark fruit flavours -- tamarind and date -- plus a peppery spice, giving it a not unwelcome vibe of HP Sauce. It's still plenty sour too, which makes it a little curdling, but it's far too interesting for me to complain about such details. I could have spent the whole evening exploring its strange yet pleasant sensory features. Here's hoping this wasn't beginners' luck.

After all that microbial pyrotechnics, it was something of a comedown to drink a simpler fruited sour ale. Cloudwater's Cherry Gentle Breeze is a mere 4.5% ABV and pink coloured. Although two types of cherry are used, it tasted more like raspberry or redcurrant to me, with that level of tartness, plus a sweeter ripe plum side. That problem tells us that the cherries were added as real fruit, rather than a substance designed to make beers taste like cherries. I approve. This is a simple and well-made affair: smooth and very sinkable, and streets ahead of all the garish syruped-up fruit beers pumped out by lesser breweries. I'm no Cloudwater fanboy, but this was excellent work.

That brings us to end-of-the-festival silliness territory. Before hitting the rails, I took Dave from Wide Street's recommendation of their own Cuvée Spontanée, a geuze clone that was promising on its début in Mullingar last April but has now matured into Boon-like perfection. There was a snifter of barrel-aged Black Boar for the train, but my final tick was Band of Brothers, a triple IPA by Dutch brewer Folkingbrew.

As per, this is custard-yellow and completely opaque, the ABV a full-throated 10%. There's an odd aroma of vanilla mixed with gunpowder, and the spice carries through to the flavour. There, the soft New England vanilla takes precedence, balanced by a slightly harsh and dreggy hop-leaf bitterness, and seasoned by a kind of garlic salt and chilli pepper spice. That doesn't sound especially pleasant, but it all hangs together harmoniously, without any disturbing alcohol heat. I never would have guessed the strength, and it didn't take me long to finish.

But finish I did. It was good to be back in Ballymote after missing last year, though I was reminded, as I always am at Hagstravaganza, that I've never been drinking in nearby Sligo town. That will be changing soon.