North-west passable

On a recent trip to Blackrock Cellar I picked up a couple of bottles from two of the lesser-seen Donegal breweries. At least I think it's two breweries: they have a brewer in common and I see their bottlecaps are the same. 

Otterbank seems to be doing a bit of a Wide Street, pivoting away from the wild fermentations on which it built its reputation in favour of safer, presumably more saleable, fare. I wouldn't have marked the brewery as a natural home for a weissbier, but that's what Big Tree is. It's appropriately hazy, and an acceptable sunset orange colour, though paler is usually a visual indicator of better quality. As is head retention, and that was very poor here. The beer just doesn't look right in a tall weissbier vase without a thick puck of foam on top. I looked for banana and/or clove in the aroma but got little of either. There's a dry white wine effect instead, suggesting a possibly inappropriate acidity. That carries through into the flavour, which is just a little too sharp for comfort. The grape bite gives way to something close to vinegar, backed by a tang of stale sweat. This is baby's-first-homebrew stuff, or possibly a precursor to some particularly involved mixed fermentation saison type of creation. A classic take on the Bavarian icon it most definitely is not.

Barrel-aged imperial porter should be harder to get wrong. Next is Blás Anagaire from Errigal Brewing: a whopping 11.1% ABV and aged for 13 months in casks from the Crolly distillery. Here's another one where I had to be quick with the camera to capture any head presence, but at least it wasn't a gusher. The aroma of oak is overpowering, making it smell more like a heady dark Iberian fortified wine than a beer: lots of booze, but maybe some gentler chocolate as well. There was a series of surprises in store from the taste, starting on a savoury note of soy-sauce autolysis, then an ashen charred dryness, a rounded vinous fruitiness and a smear of Nutella. The wine factor is constant, and I wonder if Crolly was using sherry barrels for the whiskey that preceded the beer -- their website suggests they're no strangers to both Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez. It's still a bit rough-tasting, lacking the smoothness that comes with maturity. It is unquestionably entertaining, however. This is a beer that forces you to spend time with it, and it's mostly fun, though occasionally problematic, and finishes with a warm glow in the belly. The technical side needs work, I reckon: Lough Gill has shown us what the north-west can do with this genre of beer, and this isn't up to their standard. It's worth another punt, however.

I think there's a bit too much hoping for the best behind both these beers, where I would prefer science and accuracy. It's become something of a theme around half-litre bottles from down the country. The good-on-ya rough-and-ready approach had its day, but I think we're past that now, or at least us insufferable snobs above in Dublin are. Brewers: please cater to our whims, even though you can't make a living from them.