Backroom barrels

Ireland's most bijou beer festival returned to the rear of Smiddy's Bar on a glorious day in late April. Combining two previous themes of the event, this was officially the Mullingar Wild Beer & Cask Festival, although willd beer was a little in short supply, with Third Barrel shoring up that bulwark by serving a couple of its well-established (and delicious) Brett beers.

On the cask side, Rough Brothers of Derry was a new addition. I encountered their IPA at the CAMRA festival in Belfast last November. I said it was clean and simple but unexciting, and that's very much the case for their Northern Pale Ale as well. This is only 4.5% ABV, but I'm fully aware that other cask brewers can do a lot, flavourwise, within that parameter. This offers a clean and crisp base, like a cream cracker or water biscuit, and then an extremely mild hop bitterness which threatens to become actually citric but never quite manages it. My guess is they're going for something retro with these. They have the simplicity and inoffensive drinkability of beers from a time when decent people didn't comment on their flavour, or lack thereof. Maybe there's a market for that, but since the brewery is operating in the speciality beer space, and showing up to events crawling with fussy beer nerds, they ought to be giving us beer that tastes of something more.

Their Co. Antrim neighbours have tried to show them this too. On the wicket between the Rough Brothers flagships was Texture Like Sun, a 3.8% ABV golden ale brewed at Our Brewery with Rough Brothers input. Very little about the spec suggests it'll be more full-flavoured than a pale ale or IPA, but this benefits from Our Brewery's tendency to dispense with style guides and just make things nice. It's not golden, for one thing, being quite a deep shade of amber. And it's another dry and crisp one, so don't expect golden ale's typical honey or soft fruit. Instead, the signature flavour is a spicy kick, suggesting black pepper and rocket leaves to me. For the strength there's very good substance -- thanks, cask -- and enough malt sweetness to balance the dry spicy side. This, too, is a very straightforward and drinkable beer, but the flavour complexity places it leagues ahead of the Rough Brothers' solo efforts for enjoyment.

Although there was plenty of other highly enjoyable beer, my last new tick was Scéal. This pale ale is brewed by Trouble but has mostly been sold under the Spiddal River contract brand at The Skeffington Arms in Galway. I think the format didn't suit it terribly well -- or at least the part of the format that sees a cask beer being set up and tapped on the same afternoon. It was murky looking and a little muddy tasting, the assorted flavours blurring into each other. Still, there's some good stuff in there: sweet Seville orange, some dark chocolate, dry minerals and even a little gunpowder spice. An old-school American bitterness adds bite and prevents it turning mushy and flabby. And even though the flavours aren't exactly cleanly distinct, there's plenty of them, and the overall boldness of the full-colour taste spectrum makes it an excellent beer. Your mileage may vary with the keg version, but I would love to see this on cask again, though cleaned up.

Thanks as always to the brewers, organisers, fellow-attendees and everyone else who made this unlikely event happen. The Irish beer festival circuit is barely more than a few dots these days, so I'm glad this one is still going.