Round numbers

Another Monday, another blog post, another round-up of recent Irish pale ale. This one is the blog's 3000th entry. It's best not to think about what that means, and move right along with the reviews.

Spent bread beers were a bit of a thing a few years ago. Wicklow Wolf still has one in annual production and now Lough Gill has added one, getting their crusts from the O'Hehirs bakery chain. Oh! is a pale ale at 4.5% ABV and looks lager-like in the glass: a mostly clear yellow with lots of bubbles and a fine white head. The aroma is crisp and broadly citric but doesn't offer anything especially distinctive or noteworthy. There's a decently slick body -- almost chewy -- but while that would surely be an excellent base for launching some new-world hop fireworks, it's a bit dull on tasting. There's a slightly sweaty savoury aspect, a little bit lemon cookie with a touch of oaty flapjack. "Easy drinking" and "brewed for adventure" says the brewery. They can't have both. I found it rather dull. It's simple and clean, and has a pleasant substance which I'm guessing is the bread doing its work, but it needs a stronger hop charge. I know from other examples that this sort of beer doesn't have to be basic and compromised, so I don't know why Lough Gill has made this one so.

That was followed several weeks later by Hazy Sunshine, about the most on-the-nose name for a summer "tropical IPA". Nectaron, Wai-iti, Waimea and Mosaic are the hops, which certainly sounds like lots of potential for tropicality. The aroma offers a significant degree of fruit salad, but also a harder pith bitterness, suggesting that it won't be sunny the whole way through. It's a heavy affair, tasting denser than even 6.1% ABV might imply, and I found myself wishing I'd served it ice cold rather than the slightly higher setting of my beer fridge. The extra warmth allows a little bit of dry grit into the flavour, just beginning to edge in on the fruit effect from the hops. That bitterness I noticed in the aroma doesn't really materialise in the taste, and instead it's thick and gummy, loaded with concentrated pineapple and mango. A tarter juice and zest effect arrives in the finish, but that's as close to bitter as it gets. I would say it's harmless fun, but the alcohol heat really puts a dampener on any carefree summer vibes it may otherwise have had. This is a serious sort of sunshine. We've become unfortunately accustomed to that around here lately.

I don't get to feature Hopkins & Hopkins on here much: it's a brewery that tends to do only a few things, but does them well. One of its handful of regular outlets is Moss Lane on Pearse Street, where they're pouring a new H&H pale ale called Easy - East. It's a medium orange colour and was served pleasingly cold in the high heat of summer last week. Fresh and juicy mandarin kicks off the aroma and follows through to the flavour, where it's joined by a surprise peppercorn spice and a weighty citrus oil, like a Terry's Chocolate Orange, minus the chocolate. I was reminded in particular of the much-missed Purgatory from the somewhat-missed Franciscan Well brewery. This kind of clean and simple American-style pale ale is far from the bleeding edge of craft beer, and that makes it all the more worthwhile, especially when it's more than a lazy clone of the mainstream.

Over at The Porterhouse they had a rare new one under their own brand, brewed by The White Hag. Cruel Summer is a cold IPA, a style that seems to have gone out of fashion for no good reason. It's a light 4.6% ABV and a very pale yellow, gently hazed. And yet: the dank. It smells pungently weedy with a twist or two of coarse-ground pink peppercorn. The flavour opens on that, brightly and shockingly, but quickly calms down, introducing softer tropical juice and a more orthodox pithy American bitterness. It finishes in a clean and crisp lager fashion, meaning that despite the BIG hop taste, it would work as a session beer. I sometimes fear that I might be getting a bit bored of beer, that maybe they're all actually quite samey and not worth the effort I put in to finding new ones. This was a reminder, a stark one, that beer still has the power to impress and excite. If you're in the vicinity of The Porterhouse or Tapped this summer, do not miss.

From the around-for-ages-but-new-to-me file, Five Lamps IPA. The brand is a pox on Irish beer in general, wrapping itself in the Dublin flag while being brewed by C&C in Clonmel. But at the otherwise lovely Toner's pub, its IPA was the best of a very poor draught selection. It's a sizeable 5% ABV yet still manages to be quite thin and bland. The hops offer no more than a whisper of strawberry and an English metallic tang; and while it's malt-forward, that's not very pronounced either, being lightly caramelised with a bigger kick of dry tannin. It tastes cheap, which isn't terribly surprising since I'm led to believe the range was created to provide Dublin publicans with cheap beer, to compete with the heavily-promoted famous brands. My pint, of course, was not cheap, at €8. It's all about the margins, and this IPA is only marginally enjoyable, so that tracks.

In the same file we find another 5%-er, Rye River's Hazy Bangin' pale ale. This has allegedly been on sale in Tesco for yonks, just not any of the many Tescoes I visit on my travels around Dublin. Then Dunnes got it too and, hallelujah, I was able to buy it in the Stephen's Green Centre while picking up the still-brilliant Grafters brown ale. I don't know if the recipe has much in common with the archetypal Irish west-coast IPA, Big Bangin', of which it's a brand extension. It's certainly not in the west-coast style, what with the haze, and doesn't have the same brightness of hop. Instead there's a medium-sweet zestiness in both aroma and flavour, the former introducing a slightly sticky orange cordial note, while the taste includes some surprise coconut. It's good fun, but I wouldn't call it bangin', exactly. There's a strong caramel malt note which took me a while to place, realising eventually it's something you get from once-hoppy beer that's been sitting too long. My can was four months inside the printed best-before date so I had a reasonable expectation of freshness. I fear, however, this beer may be a delicate creature, not built for the neglect of warm supermarket shelves. As with the IPA the brewery makes for Lidl's Crafty Brewing range, I suspect one must be careful here about freshness. I will seek out a younger edition next time. This one was passable, but no more than that. Even Dunnes has better hopped-up options available. 

Brasserie Nautile visited Ireland in the spring, and included The White Hag on their itinerary, where they helped brew Salt & Stone, a West Coast IPA. This looks well, having the same pristine golden clarity as the brewery's excellent flagship, Little Fawn. It smells sharp, zesty and classically American, which is in its favour; the mere 5.6% ABV less so. I found it surprisingly soft, not bitter, its flavour more succulent stonefruit than punchy citrus. The peach and lychee subsides after a moment, leaving a sharper bite of fried onion and then, finally, a buzz of grapefruit and lime oil. It's not exactly full-on, delivering the IPA basics but nothing spectacular. That's in spite of, or possibly because of, a highly involved hop charge, featuring Columbus, Chinook, Centennial, Motueka and Simcoe. I reckon they've blurred into each other and there's nothing distinctive about the beer as a result. This is inoffensive and a bit anodyne. It certainly doesn't come across as one of those brave and wacky recipes that brewers like to devise when they get together. I enjoyed its simplicity,  but honestly I think I'd have preferred a Little Fawn from the supermarket. Sure, it's West Coast all the way, but that doesn't automatically make it a great beer.

I can't imagine what the prompt which created Curtain Twitcher's label said, nor can I believe that the horrific result was the best the AI could come up with for Third Barrel Brewing. Suffice it to say that the promise of Nelson Sauvin and Citra attracted me more than the "artwork" did. It's an IPA; hazy, though not billed as such, and quite a dense-looking shade of orange. The brewery knows how to use Nelson, and it's very prominent in the aroma: flinty sparks and squashy pineapple. A more subtle white grape and gooseberry takes over in the flavour, plus a weedy dankness and background note of fruit candy, which I'm guessing comes from the third hop, Lotus. There's lots of complexity, then, none of it especially novel, but if the basic formula works, why go changing it? Most importantly, nothing has gone wrong. Hazy it may be, but it's perfectly clean and lets the hops do all the talking. 6% ABV gives them a solid base to work from, the malt providing texture without interrupting the taste. Quality stuff, and recommended in particular to my follow enjoyers of Nelson Sauvin's mineral spice.

"A whole lot of New Zealand goodness" is the sum total of the description on DOT's Nectaron IPA. This is another kiwi-forward 6%-er, and hazy too, of course. The aroma is cool and crisp, hinting at peaches but their sharply perfumed skin rather than the sticky, juicy flesh. The flavour continues that theme, bringing a slightly jammy peach-preserve sweetness and matching it to dryer crisp pale grain. It's a heavy and viscous take on the tropical end of antipodean hopping. A bit of grass and some basil or thyme rubs up against the soft stonefruit. Overall, it's fine, but no great shakes. The hop flavour is a little muted, subdued, and not as full-on as I'd have liked it. DOT makes beers for Aldi and, for me, this one tasted more like that price bracket than the bigger number I paid for it in the independent trade. 

Grumbling further, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a beer badged as an "oat cream IPA". Corner Club by Galway Bay in collaboration with Swiss brewer Hoppy People is not specifically designated as such, but on the label the brewer boasts "we pushed oats and wheat to the max with this brew, creating the creamiest, juiciest IPA base possible," so I think I know what I'm dealing with. It certainly has the hazy custard appearance of the oat cream brigade. The aroma gives little away, but the presence of Nelson Sauvin is unmistakable, with a subtle waft of grape. On the flavour... there it is. Oat cream IPA always tastes like plasterboard: dry and rough, with an alkaline harshness. There's no juice, no cream, nothing soft, only harshness. I drank this back-to-back with Curtain Twitcher and it's amazing how a beer with similar specs as that -- 6.4% ABV here, with Citra and Riwaka accompanying the Nelson -- can result in something so different and so much less enjoyable. It's not massively offensive, but was rather bland once I got past the drywall rasp. The can art is good and the artist is named, so if you've ever drawn a correlation between that sort of thing, I don't think it works.

Galway Bay also takes us out with the strongest beer of the day: Disco Paradiso, another hazy affair, this one at 7.8% ABV. Sureshot of Manchester is the collaborating brewery, and they go to a lot of effort to explain the process that went into making it. Cold-steeped oats, whirlpool Nelson Sauvin and double dry-hopped with three further prestige varieties, one in HyperBoost® form. If this isn't silky juicy perfection then it's time to cancel the whole haze project. It's on the darker side of eggy yellow, with the greenish cast that very hoppy IPA sometimes takes on. Head formation is perfunctory and unenthusiastic. The aroma is a mix of saturated raw-hop vegetal notes and a friendlier kind of tropical buzz. There is a surprising amount of bitterness in the flavour, the Nelson in particular showing its old-world ancestry with a hard, almost waxy, grass bite. There's little room for tropical niceties underneath that, and it finishes bitter and resinous, albeit with a hint of lighter juice, lurking beneath the surface but largely overpowered and subdued. That's a pity. I appreciate that this is intended as a hop showcase, but it ends up unbalanced and rather harsh. The name and branding suggest a quirky and fun quality that's some distance from the rather serious bitter liquid.

Maybe the hot weather had me grumpy but, Porterhouse aside, there wasn't a lot to like here. If there's a theme, it's that a good dose of Nelson Sauvin can be a pale ale's saviour. Use more of that, just to be on the safe side.