The struggle

In early October I watched the new beers arrive on the Craft Central website and counted 17 variants on pale ale in the chronological list before there was something else. That something else was Into The Abyss, a Festbier by Whiplash. Sold!

It boasts of decoction, which is a nice piece of beer nerdery, whatever you think of the process itself. 5.8% ABV is a proper feisty Festbier strength, and there's an edge of amber darkness about the colour. It smells rich and wholesome, the cake-like malt complemented by contrasting hop sharpness from Saaz and Perle. As expected, it's chewy, though doesn't lose sight of its fundamental lager crispness. This would still be drinkable in Maßkrug quantities, but only just. The foretaste is a little reticent and it takes a moment for the flavour to develop. I thought there would be more malt sweetness but the biscuit side of the picture is quite restrained. Instead, the hops use the beer's density to build gradually on the palate, starting as a dry papery rasp but intensifying into a more enjoyable green bitterness, as of fresh leafy vegetables. One can view this as both filling and nutritious while also refreshing and gulpable: the sweet spot for the style. Whiplash should brew more lagers.

Elsewhere in south-west Dublin, Rascals held their annual Rocktoberfest. As usual, there was a lager to mark the occasion, although not as usual it was canned as well, which means I got to try it. As far as I can see, previous editions were in an Oktoberfest-appropriate style, whereas this year it's a pilsner. It's a festively strong one, though, at 5.1% ABV. It's pilsner-pale in the glass, perfectly clear, though lacking head retention for the genuine German effect. The aroma has a proper hit of noble hop herbs, all done with Tettananger hops, we're told, and the strength gives it enough of a Festbier weight. It's still a pils though: no bed of pillowy Bavarian malt, but instead an altogether more Prussian starkly crisp grain flavour. That's well suited to the equally-stark hopping, which goes big on bittering and chooses a hard, medicinal, mineral flavour as the centrepiece, mixing flint, wax, earth and boiled green cabbage. I thought I might have got past my aversion to concentrated German hop flavours, but I haven't: as I mentioned recently, they just don't cross my path as often these days. This is a well-made beer, but the choice of flavour hop is unfortunately not to my taste.

Regardless, it's still pleasing that my local breweries are well able to make decent lager. When they want to, that is.

Turning crisp

I last checked in at Open Gate in August, when the autumn beer schedule was being drawn up. I promised you doppelbock. They promised me doppelbock. But alas it was not to be: although the beers are almost entirely confined to the taproom, they're subject to the usual stringent Guinness quality controls, and that batch didn't pass. So what else did the turn of the seasons bring?

Summer was not quite cold in its grave when the brewery summoned winter with a Sichuan Stout. This is built on the export frame at 5.9% ABV, though it's surprisingly sweet -- much as I love this style in general it's best when it's roasty and bitter. Here, the bitterness is no stronger than mainstream dark chocolate. The texture is a little on the thin side too. I let my cold and fizzy pint flatten and warm for a bit but it didn't get a whole lot fuller. Behind the chocolate lies the pepper, and it's tasted more than felt, adding quite a mild piquancy, one with no real burn. I'm sure that's deliberate and sensible, but I reckon if you're going to do daft stunt recipes, you may as well go all-in. The overall result is a fine export stout, but a simple, accessible chocolatey one. I enjoyed it once I stopped thinking about how I would have brewed it differently from Guinness did.

Summer then turned a bit Indian with the arrival of Peach Wit. It looks the part: a deep hazy yellow with a fluffy white head. The peach aroma is pretty powerful, covering anything else that might have been going on with floral peach perfume. And that goes even harder in the flavour, concentrated like an undiluted cordial. There's a bitter side too, which the brewery lists as a feature but to me tastes more like the kind of bug that creeps in when you overdo the fruit syrup. That said, I am assured it's done almost entirely via real, skin on, peaches. The base witbier contributes a pleasant softness which takes some of the edge off. The whole thing takes a bit of getting used to, and you need to be tolerant of gimmick, but I liked the all-in peach-bomb jollity. A half was plenty, however.

I was warned about the Pecan Pie Brown Ale before I'd even ordered it. After that awful hazelnut one from O'Hara's, however, my baseline expectations were low. It arrived looking a bit pale and sickly. The aroma does a great job of capturing real pecans, mixing the syrupy sweet side with a harder woody dry kick. The flavour is... a journey. Problem one is the beer is too thin. That introduces a harshness in the foretaste, where the nut crunch loses its sweetness and turns to cardboard or plywood. It doesn’t last long, however, and we're back to lovely dessertish pecans by the end. That finish runs for ages, still wafting maple vapours onto the palate long after the beer is gone. Something of a curate's egg, this. I don't think it quite works overall, but the aroma and aftertaste show that there's promise in the concept.

Arriving at the same time was El Dorado SMASH, a pale ale which suffers a bit from a similar thinness. It's less of a problem here, though. The beer is light and refreshing, zinging with zesty lemon, plus a modest swoosh of pine resin. It doesn't last long, however, fading to watery fizz after a few moments. That would be OK if it were a deliberately light beer, but seems off for this one's 5% ABV. It works, but it's far from spectacular. Still, I'm happy that Open Gate's hopped-up pale ales aren't the sad banana-laden messes they used to be. I'll take the win and move on.

Out next was Midnight Saison, subsequently renamed Oregano Bay. I've had so many great black saisons over the years, it's a shame they're not more commonplace. This one is 5.5% ABV and the base is one of the fruitier examples, giving me a slice of banana in with its dry straw and tickle of roast. There's a gimmick, however: the addition (per the name) of oregano and bay leaf, and that's not subtle. If you don't like your beer tasting like the rub for a nice piece of fish, this might be best avoided. I liked the big herb of it, however, which mixes oily winterish savoury notes -- sage and rosemary, for me, even though they're not used -- with the base beer's sweeter fruit side. I've made it sound busy, but all the contrasting flavours integrate well with each other and the beer, by the pint, is thirst-quenching, as saison ought to be. Excellent work.

I have long lauded Open Gate's prowess with lagers, though recent efforts haven't quite lived up to the early glories. There's a return to form, however, with First Draught, a Helles they put out in October. The slight haze was a little concerning but it shouldn't have been. This is a masterpiece of balance, crisp as you like and pilsner-dry rather than Helles cakey, which is my preference. The hop flavour is pure nobility, but delicate with it, offering salad leaves and a slightly harder spinach bite. At 4.5% ABV it's light, and quite fizzy too. This makes it highly refreshing and very well suited to session drinking. I might have badged it as more of a Kellerbier, myself, but such distinctions are immaterial in these parts. Quality is what counts.

That was followed swiftly by The Final Act, in the rare and retro style of American Wheat. I seem to remember these being clear, since they don't use a weissbier yeast. This doesn't either, but is the same hazy sunset orange of many a weizen. The yeast is neutral, however, and that allows for a massive blast of C-hops. Almost too much, in fact. It's the raw green acidity of biting a pellet, an effect that starts slowly but builds gradually. In a world where big hops has come to mean tropical and stonefruit, this is an educational throwback to what "American" used to signify when applied to beer. Behind the hops, there's a clean lager-like crispness with a hint of grain husk and breadcrust. The wheat element contributes a certain softness to the texture, helping balance the hard bittering. I liked it. If the aim was to do hard and uncompromising American hops, it worked, and better than many a contemporary remake of west coast IPA. IBU chasers, take note.

I'm going to draw a line under this post here, though the next raft of Open Gate beers will be landing in very soon. Mexican hot chocolate stout and sour rhubarb may be making an appearance, if they pass QA.

What sweet music

Last year, Wicklow Wolf released a black IPA for Halloween called Devil's Glen. It seems they hadn't exhausted their supply of spooky Wicklow placenames, nor glow-in-the-dark label ink, because this year they're back with more of the same. Slaughter Hill is again 6.66% ABV, though they give us no further information on what it's brewed with. It's on point for the style, however, beginning on a pungently bitter and roast-forward aroma, suggesting burning tyres, mulchy leaf mould and damp wool. Lovely. The flavour is more straightforward: the dry dark grain of a porter hits vegetal hops, for two kinds of bitterness in every mouthful. That's softened slightly by lighter notes of flowers and medicinal herbs. It's heavy and warming too; more wintery than autumnal, but still finishes cleanly. I would have liked more and bigger of what it does, especially the hopping, but it hits the black IPA spot nicely. I hope we can expect another something similar next year.

Extra Elevation proved to be reduced Elevation, as the can suffered a slow puncture on the way home and I lost about half the contents. A shame, because it's really good. Elevation pale ale is a favourite, being an ultra-clean and well-balanced, pure-of-heart, American-style pale ale. This brand extension has almost double the ABV at 8.4% and is double-dry hopped. Though slightly darker with the additional gravity, it's still brightly clear and golden. Sharp and pithy grapefruit meets smoothly oily pine, the hop impact enhanced by the stronger malt weight. It's beefy, but extremely drinkable, and didn't suffer from being emergency-served at room temperature. In a recent pale ale round-up, I noted how The White Hag and Rye River were going to fun and interesting places with west coast IPA. Now Wicklow Wolf is too. Anyone who likes their IPA strong, transparent and popping with bitterness would do well to get hold of this one.

They've thrown us a curve ball for dessert. Scoff Limits "caramelised biscuit stout" doesn't mention Biscoff by name, but I think Lotus Bakeries would have them bang to rights on infringing evocation. Its nature is immediately apparent from the intense caramel aroma, the runny sort, with a dash of biscuit crumb too, making it smell like a banoffee pie, minus the banana. It's only 5% ABV and as a result it's not as thick and sticky as I was expecting. In fact, while it's not thin, there's a decent amount of sparkle, making it almost refreshing. The sweetness is all in the taste rather than texture. Milk chocolate and toffee are as predicted, but there's also dark treacle and a pronounced cinnamon spice which absolutely makes the beer, just as it makes the biscuit. This isn't a million miles from last winter's Truffle Shuffle, though I think it's better. You don't need to add chocolate to make a lovely chocolatey stout, is the lesson here. Yes it's a gimmick beer, but thought and skill went into its creation.

Of note is the fact that all three of these one-offs have roots in previous beers from Wicklow Wolf. While I don't like the idea of a brewery limiting its horizons and creative scope, it is a positive sign that some limited edition beers become springboards for further ones later on. We didn't get the regular calendar of Locavore beers this year. Perhaps an annual autumn black IPA and winter sweet stout is the new pattern.

Last ask of the cask task

It's the second and final installment from the October beer festival at JD Wetherspoon. You can read about the first 13 beers here. Will I get all 30 ticked off?

I'm sure the autumnal theme was deliberate, and it was an all-amber affair on my next trip to The South Strand. Conwy had that nailed on with Autumn Red, a 4.5% ABV "ruby" ale. It's on the darker side of red, and a bit murky with that. Centennial hops give the aroma some fresh citrus in with a warm cookie malt effect. The two aspects meld together deliciously in the flavour, for a gooey, spicy fruitcake or hot cross bun impression: dried lemon peel sparking against cinnamon and cardamom, with a thirst-quenching mug of black tea on the side. It's almost a bit busy, but I enjoyed its complexity. It's so rare to find a red ale done so well, and so engaging.

That was a tough act to follow, and I followed it with Barley Moon from Coach House. This is clearer, and several degrees sweeter, beginning on a powerful toffee aroma. The flavour doesn't move on from that. Although it's quite light-bodied at 4.4% ABV, it tastes sticky, of caramel and butterscotch. There's a tiny burnt-roast dryness on the end, which helps give it drinkability, but otherwise it's a one-note beer: not bland, but candy-sweet and with little else going for it. Could be worse, I guess.

This red ale trilogy concluded with Old Blighty from JW Lees. All I'll say about the pumpclip is I expected better from the venerable Manchester brewery, but sure we're all in a hurry these days. It's 3.9% ABV, paler than the previous two, and another murky one. Still, it's inoffensive. The body is thin, but it's one of those beers where that just makes it easily drinkable. A decent amount of flavour helps there, and it's a pleasant mix of red apple and raisin with a cereal bar crispness. It tastes much cleaner than it looks, and while no masterpiece of complexity, it's always welcome to get something tasty and interesting under the 4% ABV mark.

Good news! A rare style. Bad news! It's not one of the good ones. Mad Squirrel's Red Dawn is a pale mild. It used to be 3.7% ABV but of course the brewery busted that down to 3.4% ABV when it became tax efficient to do so. When that happens, and it's happened a lot in Britain, I take it as an indication that the brewery didn't care much about the beer in the first place. Anyway, this is a honey-gold rather than red, and has a very mild summer fruit flavour, meeting lemon candy on a treacle-tart base. So it's not watery in texture, but the flavour is watery. What's there is very muted, and tails off far too quickly. There's a slightly unpleasant soapy twang too, given nowhere to hide. I would love to be hailing this as a masterpiece of understated complexity, but it's too weak and dull for that. Light mild died of boredom: its drinkers' boredom.

Butcombe's Blonde Melissa is next: a 4.6% ABV golden ale. That doesn't sound like a thrilling formula, but it's a very decent take on the style. I want flowers and bubblegum and a little honey, and all of those are delivered in the flavour here. There's a reminder, too, of English golden ale's origins as a warm-fermented lager substitute, with a crisp cracker or poppadom dry side. In fact, this soft and subtle creation would be an excellent accompaniment for Indian-style food. If only Wetherspoon's take on that wasn't microwaveable ready meals.

Late in the run, two of my favourite English breweries of yore arrived side-by-side at The Silver Penny. From Adnams, Broadside Original. No, not that one. Or that one. This is a BRAND NEW version of the original, which seems self-contradictory, but that's not the kind of thing that would hold me back from drinking a 6% ABV English strong ale. It's a sumptuous dark garnet colour and smells equally rich and fruity, full of raisin and ripe black cherry. The flavour is even more intense, turning to tawny port and tiramisu. To avoid it turning sticky, there's a wide band of stout-like roast. It's beautiful. I don't know how it stacks up next to the other Broadsides, but it did remind me a lot of another classic of the genre: Theakston Old Peculier.

And Theakston supplied the beer on next to it: Salted Caramel Porter. I could smell this before it got near my face: sticky chocolate sauce, more than caramel. The flavour is unsurprisingly one-dimensional. If the intention was for it to taste of salted caramel then I don't think it was successful, but it does taste like salted-caramel-flavoured things. That is, a fudgey kind of sweetness, mixing chocolate, condensed milk and baked cookies. There is a tiny kick of salinity on the finish, but that's as close to complex as this gets. I'm sure the recipe was meticulously designed, but the end result taates like someone dumped a load of cake mix into a batch of porter; take it or leave it. For me, the half pint was fun, but that's my limit. 4.2% ABV does not always map to sessionable.

I scored another of the international collaborations with Mango IPA, purportedly from Lion of Singapore but actually brewed at Elgood's. The tropical fruit gunk is laid on thick in the aroma, making it smell like jam or mango chutney. Not unpleasant, but not beer. That drives the perfume flavour off the charts, leaving no room for hops, or anything else beer-related. That's especially unfortunate, because rare varieties Citrulicious, Warrior and Tetra are used, and I'd like to know what they taste like, but this pure gimmick isn't how I'll find out.

I hadn't intended Oakham's Dressed To Impress as a palate-cleanser but that's how it turned out. At 5.8% ABV, this is at the stronger end of the selection, and leans on its American hops, Belma and Chinook, in with modern English variety Harlequin. It's clear and golden, though the excessive head lets the visuals down somewhat. The aroma suggests pine and the flavour seals that deal. You get lots of weighty resinous hop oils: palate-coating and tongue-burning, the volatile vapours drifting up the sinuses while the dense malt warmth heats one's innards. It's quite a workout, and bears considered sipping. There's a bit of complexity among the hop forestry, a slight topnote of Belma's signature strawberry. Mostly, though, it's Chinook, an overlooked flavour hop, for old-school west-coast punchy fun. Oakham's reputation as the hoppy cask experts remains untainted.

And we stay at Oakham for their collaboration effort: Oolong ESB, from a recipe by Chinese brewer Urbrew. This is a brownish red shade and smells caramel-sweet, devoid of gimmicks. It's smooth and simple, definitely not relying on its hops (they all went into the last one) and it's not a million miles from the dreaded twiggy brown, which we have so far avoided. It's not one of them, though. The flavour is subtle rather than bland, and there's an enjoyable tannic dryness that might be the tea, but equally is usually a part of well-made bitter. There's some bonus milk chocolate, red grape and singed toast, adding up to a damn decent take on ESB. I hope the Chinese lad had fun on the brewday, because he didn't achieve much by way of imparting Asian flavours into English beer.

There was yet another red ale, this one from London's Sambrooks, called Afterglow. The festival guide calls it a "modern" red ale. It's hopped entirely with Fuggles. You can draw your own conclusions there. It doesn't smell of much, maybe some super-strong black tea, but that's as characterful as it gets. The flavour is all about the crystal malt, tasting of burnt caramel and hard toffee. I needed a couple of mouthfuls to get the hops, but they're there: the classic earthy note of Fuggle; a sober and serious metallic bite. It's a big 4.7% ABV, so has a decent weight to go with the malt-forward flavour, but I couldn't help thinking of it as an overclocked twiggy bitter, a concept that shouldn't be on anyone's brewing roster.

The festival's final day had me back in The Silver Penny for a pair of finishers, and one I particularly didn't want to miss. Before that, On Duty, by Titanic, presumably named for its low ABV of 3.4%. It's a very pale pale ale but has been generously hopped with an Anglo-American mix of Cascade, Columbus and Challenger. That's given it an harmonious blend of ripe stonefruit and a harder citric poke. They've done well to hide the compromised strength but couldn't prevent it turning a little watery in the finish: that's just physics. This works well as a deliberately low-strength beer and would likely make for a happy session, but as a beer in its own right, there are issues.

And finally, I was glad to just about catch Burning Sky East India Porter. This is another from the strong end of the list, at 6% ABV, and poured densely black with a nicotine-stained head. There's an appropriately grown-up aroma of dark roast coffee and burnt toast, so it was a surprise to find all the chocolate in the flavour. It's not sweet, mind: the chocolate is the high-end high-cocoa sort, but that's pretty much all you get. I had braced for bitterness -- tobacco, cabbage, marjoram and so on -- but it wasn't on offer. It's another psyche-out on the strength too, with no sign of the significant alcohol, although the texture was pleasingly creamy. As a straight porter it's excellent, and those are rare enough, especially on cask, that it still counts as a proper treat. I hope they sold a good chunk of it before it, too, was poured away as waste.

The answer to my initial question, then, is no. My final tally was 26 out of 30, and I must apologise to Nethergate, Brewster's, Castle Eden and Exmoor for not putting in more of an effort. Overall, the quality was good, with plenty more hits than misses. I credit that to the dark autumnal tendency in the line-up, though there were a good few pale 'n' hoppy beauts as well.

The JD Wetherspoon Beer Festival Will Return In... March.

The Festival of Ullage

The annual autumn beer festival took place across the JD Wetherspoon chain earlier this month. The three central Dublin branches kept the special edition beers fairly turning over, serving between two and four of the 30 at a time, changing every couple of days. Given how little interest there is in the cask beers of Dublin Wetherspoons, and especially unfamiliar ones, I dread to think how much of the beer is disposed of before the cask is even a quarter empty.

My shift began, as it often does, at The Silver Penny. Just the two festival specials were on at the beginning, which is unusual for this branch. First up, Coastal Coconut from Salem, the craft-ish Batemans sub-brand. The sleight of hand with this golden ale is that there's no coconut but there is Sorachi Ace and Sabro, hops famed for their coconut flavours. And, indeed, they deliver. The light and pale 4.2% ABV base gives free rein to the hops and the oily, creamy, aromatic coconut effect is the beer's entire deal. There's almost nothing else happening, which is fair enough given the branding, although I did also detect a smidge of pithy bitterness, another standard and positive feature of the hops. A tiny complementary hint of honeycomb arrives in as the beer warms. It's still no masterpiece of complexity and I fear a full pint might have been more work than it's worth. The half was fun, though.

Keeping the alliterative theme going, next was Mauldon's Maple, a copper-coloured bitter with all-English hops -- Challenger and Fuggles. The name suggests sweetness, as does the colouring, so it wasn't a surprise to get a big hit of toffee in the aroma. That's in the flavour too, but where I was expecting sticky unpleasantness, the caramel is nicely balanced with a gentle pinch of burnt-grain roast. After a second or two, the classic English hop profile makes an appearance: a mineral and vegetal bitterness, almost harsh but stopping at merely assertive. This is seasoned with a tannic, almost oaky, dry side, which is the key to adding drinkability to this sort of toffee-forward bitter. This isn't usually my sort of beer at all, so it was great to find one executed so well. Brown bitter ftw!

Over at The South Strand, business began with Elgood's doing their best craft beer dad dance via New World Session, a 4.4% ABV IPA hopped with Chinook, El Dorado and Mosaic. And Bramling Cross: let's not go crazy. It's a straightforward golden colour and the American hops' fruit candy presents nicely in the aroma. Something goes a bit wrong in the flavour, however. I suspect it's the English interloper, which should be adding a blackcurrant tartness, but that goes through as a fragranced disinfectant twang; a harsh and phenolic smoky aspect that I think is part of the beer, rather than incompetent line-cleaning, but who knows. A weighty texture and bubblegum golden-ale sweetness only adds to the yuck factor. If this was an attempt at doing bright hoppy fun in the American way, it hasn't worked out.

From an American take to a Czech one, via Denmark: English Dream, a pilsner brewed at Batemans in collaboration with Mikkeller. It looks almost identical to the previous: clear and clean and golden, as befits the style, though the low-key sparkle from being served on cask definitely does not. It really doesn't resemble proper pilsner, and only part of that is the absence of noble hops. Harlequin, Target and East Kent Goldings? What were they thinking? The hop side, despite involving three varieties, isn't a big part of the flavour, and at the centre there's a gummy, sticky, blonde ale mix of brioche and bubblegum. Nobody would be fooled into thinking they're drinking pilsner. This is an up and down English blonde ale. If the aim was some sort of magic trick, it has failed to convince this part of the audience. Call it an English golden ale and it's fine. Don't go trying to appropriate pilsner if you can't do it properly, however.

It was a Scottish double early doors at Keavan's Port, starting on Flying South from Loch Lomond. It's rare to see a sub-4% ABV beer at JDW these days, but this was 3.7%, and although badged as hazy, wasn't, presenting instead as clear and white-gold pale. The aroma's combination of tropical fruit and herbs is unmistakably Kiwi, and that follows through to a bright and fresh flavour, delivering a fruit salad of mango, mandarin and kiwifruit with a backing of bitterer forest floor resins and pepper spice. The taste is impressive, and so is the texture, which is full and smooth. I guess whatever they did to make it hazy didn't take for the appearance but gave the mouthfeel that round soft fluffiness. If the Salem beer was a bold flavoured beer that could be difficult to drink in quantity, here's one just as characterful but with massive sinkability. Top work, and probably my favourite of the festival overall.

Its compatriot was Autumn Nuts by Cairngorm, declaring as a "copper ale" at 4.8% ABV. It is indeed copper coloured, and smells quite sickly, of concentrated caramel, butterscotch and stewed tea. The flavour is thankfully not as severe, and there's a decent dry bite with a kick of hop bittering to help balance all the caramel malt; Cascade and Perle keeping the score level. It is heavy, though, warranting sipping rather than quaffing. After the initial sugar shock I warmed to it. The use of an American hop variety was an inspired choice, with a grapefruit complexity emerging late in the finish and taking the beer away from twiggy red ale and into comforting American-style amber. And maybe it's the name, but I get a hint of hazelnut and pecan as well. This is enjoyably cosy overall, ideally suited to those drawing-in late autumn evenings.

Back around to the 'Penny, and Pinball Wizard. It's an oatmeal stout brewed at Adnams with UPP Liquids of Oregon, which is possibly the worst name for a brewery I've ever encountered. This is 5.5% ABV and nearly fully black, though showing reddish-brown murk at the edges of the pint. I don't know if it's an oatmeal thing, a cask thing or an English thing, but there's a familiar sweetness to this, giving it a feel of mild or old ale, more than stout. There's an enjoyable damson and blackberry jam effect which I associate in particular with Theakston Old Peculier. A hint of milk chocolate is as stouty as it gets. No roast and no hop bitterness means that this, while wholesome and basically good fun, fails to press the buttons for Proper Stout. Yeah, I'm fussy. Deal with it, UPP Liquids.

The festival contribution from Buckinghamshire's Rebellion is Knucker, billed as red and hoppy. It looks well: a clear dark mahogany shade, and there's a distinct bite of American grapefruit hops in the aroma. The flavour leads on that too, meaning the dark malt aspect is somewhat left behind. There's a certain sweetness, but not caramelised. Instead the hopping makes it taste of raspberry and plum. It's boldly flavoured, nicely weighty for 4.2% ABV, and I enjoyed it though was a little disappointed it missed the mark of being in the American amber style. You won't often find me commenting that a beer at this festival needs less hops, but here we are.

Next to it at Keavan's was another of the international collaborations: Varvar was invited from Kyiv to brew a Session Golden Ale at Hook Norton. This is my first time trying the national beer style of Ukraine, and it's a loose definition of "session" for England, as it's a full 5% ABV, making it one of the strongest beers in the festival range. It's certainly golden, and I thought it rather plain at first, showing a lagerish grainy character but not much else. Three sips in, however, it unfolded somewhat, delivering floral honey and light lemon zest. This is set on a beautifully soft texture meaning it fulfills its session remit perfectly, regardless of the strength. If there hadn't been more to try I would have very happily settled into a few pints of this bad boy. Ukrainian golden ale, it turns out, isn't hugely different to English golden ale, but seems to have a bit more hoppy pizzazz and definitely isn't just an attempt to make lager with ale techniques.

The next beer, Reggae by Otter, was only 3.4% ABV, so why not have a full pint, I thought. My first gulp of same told me immediately that I'd made a mistake. There's a nasty burnt rubber twang on this, suggesting a fault somewhere in the brewing or dispense processes. Normally, I try to taste past that, to find out what beer the brewer intended, but the brewer doesn't appear to have intended much: some light biscuit, cream-ale-like sweetcorn, and the vaguest of meadowy English hops -- Calypso, we're told, presumably in minimal quantities. I'd shrug it off if it had been presented as a golden ale or bitter, but a pale ale? It really doesn't deserve the designation. I didn't even get as far as considering the appropriative branding. It's a yuck all round.

We were back on the strong stuff a few days later, with two similar-looking golden beers. Yard Arm by Hook Norton is a 5% ABV IPA, brewed with a broad mix of English, American and New Zealand hops. There's a lightly zesty aroma for all that, suggesting waxy lemon peel and a spritz of lime. The flavour does have a few layers of complexity, however. There's a foundation of hard, flinty English-hop bitterness which contrasts with fruit candy and fizzy pop from the new-world varieties. A bonus level of distinctly American grapefruit lands in on top, while the dense texture gives the hopping plenty of heft and a long finish that almost scorches the palate with oily bitter resins. It's big, bold and tremendous fun, and one of those lovely lessons in how to do assertive hops well when brewing for cask.

That was a bit of a tough act for Salopian to follow, with their spooky looking 1000 Yard-Stare (the hyphen goes there? OK). For one thing, although similarly pale gold, it didn't look as good as the other, with an unpleasant greyish murk going on. I feared that might bring a less-than-clean taste, and it does: a rough and harsh cereal staleness that really compromises the hops. They're trying to deliver bright and fun notes of roses and bubblegum but are stymied with cardboard and burlap. Shame. The beer isn't honkingly off, but doesn't compare favourably with the similar one on tap next to it. A rare miss from Salopian, too.

A second oatmeal stout comes to the list from Orkney. Their Orca is just 4.2% ABV, although the obsidian black colour with a dark tan head was exciting enough to elicit questions from multiple drinkers between the bar and my seat. It is, indeed, an interesting creature. Like the other one, it's primarily sweet, and there's a lot of wafer and caramel at the front. Here, however, it's balanced by a strongly savoury herbal bitter side, enhanced with a seaside seaweed iodine tang, and a waft of turf smoke. You would never guess the strength: it tastes massive, passing from complex into busy. A full pint was hard slow work, but it's impossible to deny that this is stout without the training wheels. By the half way point I had stopped noticing the toffee, captivated instead by the spinach, charcoal and anchovy craziness, all of it assisted by the slick silkiness of the texture. Something of an acquired taste, it should be part of the entrance exam for anyone who wishes to publicly profess a love for stout. This is how the proper stuff tastes.

We'll stop here at the half way point. There's more to follow on Wednesday.

Fat friars

It's a function of nothing other than my advancing age that I'm bemused to see Northern Monk as part of England's brewing establishment. I remember them as young contract-brewing upstarts, a less-convincing BrewDog, but they're still on the go and don't seem to have been affected unduly by the general downturn in their sort of craft beer. Good for them.

That said, I don't drink much of their beer. For today's post I picked three, all pretty chonky ones, to remind us that this model of brewing comes to us from the USA, where beer strength has little effect on beer price, and bigger is deemed better.

Unusually, I'm starting with a double IPA. It's called Above the Clouds and, as the name implies, is hazy. The can neglects to tell us what the hops are, but I'm sure it's some typical combination, because the whole thing is very typical. You've got your tangy mandarin segments, leading to slightly sharper lime zest; you've got your soft and fluffy texture with a vanilla and pink-marshmallow sweet side; and you've got a touch of savoury, soupy dregs, providing a slightly uncomfortable amount of hot garlic. Although it's heavy and a full 8% ABV, the flavour isn't a long one and doesn't build or cloy. In fact, I sauntered through the 440ml of this in jig time, which is not my usual approach to double IPAs. It's fine; the sort of beer that would have been dead exciting in Northern Monk's early days, but we've all had plenty of them at this stage, and there's certainly no call to be importing this type of thing into Ireland from Leeds.

Let's switch to stout, so. Heaven has featured here before, at a tap takeover in 2020, at UnderDog's first iteration. This is the 2026 vintage and by the looks of things they've simplified it, so now it's your basic chocolate and maple imperial stout, with no barrel ageing. Indeed, it's even a bit light for the style, at just 8.4% ABV. Still, it pours handsomely dark and dense, with a nitro-like pillow of off white foam. The chocolate aroma can be smelled from several rooms away, and when sniffed up close offers the 5D Augustus Gloop Immersive Experience™. Unsurprisingly, it tastes of chocolate. Equally unsurprisingly, it tastes of absolutely nothing else. The caramel of a Mars Bar, the shortbread of a Twix and the peanuts of a Topic are the nearest things to complexity on offer from this liquid selection box. It doesn't suffer from the anaemic ABV either: it's full and gloopy, palate-coating and belly-filling. The only thing I felt it was missing was heat. A bit of snoozy winter warmth would have fitted it better to the chilly evening on which I opened it. There's a parallel to the beer above: it's competently made, but lacks character and individuality: the sort of features that attracted people like me to beers like this in the first place, a couple of decades ago.

Things get sillier with another 8.4% ABV imperial stout, so I'm assuming it's the same base. This is Even S'More Death, adding marshmallow and biscuit to the mix. It foams bigly and took a couple of goes to pour. The aroma is as unsubtle as one might expect, absolutely pumping out the chocolate and sweet strawberry tacked-on flavours. I guess nobody wants proper stout in something like this, so expect no bitterness. I never thought I would say this, but the flavour makes excellent use of the marshmallow. The pink fake-berry foretaste adds something resembling a tartness to a beer that's otherwise darkly sweet malt and frankly unnecessary dessertish chocolate. The different aspects do go to extremes, but they go together, and there's a degree of balance to the loud candyshop character on display here. While still being exactly the kind of beer it presents as, it also avoids any upsetting lack of cohesion. There's just enough roast to pull the chocolate fountain effect back from the brink of unpleasantness. A bit of coffee, for the tiramisu effect, or Amaretto almond, might have improved the overall picture, but I'm guessing those are just different Northern Monk beers. This one, as is, was simply good sticky dessert fun. That has a place.

They all have a place, I guess, and one can't have too many strong stouts, even when they're adulterated with pastry flavours. I assume Northern Monk does plainer ones, and properly bitter IPAs as well. They're just harder to spot in amongst the noise of the imports fridge with all its novelties.

Wies'n season

It's the time of year when German beer is that little bit more visible in the shops and speciality bars. There are the seasonal Oktoberfest variants, of course, but it seems to be an excuse for distributors and retailers to put other sorts in there as well, to fill out the lists and embellish the theme.

At Tapped, they added Faust Sommer Festbier to the draught selection, offering a generous half litre for €7, which isn't bad in Dublin these days. It's a handsome deep golden colour with fine white froth on top. The appearance and its 5.4% ABV had me thinking I was in for a malty one but, perhaps because it's meant for summer, this isn't as sweet as I expected. It's quite light-bodied and the flavour opens on a bite of bitter noble hops, giving celery and salad leaves. The malt side adds enough cookie to balance this without overpowering it, plus a breadcrust element for bonus crispness. The end result is a masterpiece of drinkability. I felt I was doing it a disservice by sitting over it and letting it get warm. Chug and enjoy.

The Altfränkisch Klosterbier from Klosterbrauerei Weissenohe is not a seasonal special -- I'm reasonably sure it's here all year round, but for some reason I've never tried it. This seemed like an opportune moment to squeeze in a review. It's another pretty beer, its auburn colour making it not quite a dark lager, but something different from a pale one. The aroma suggests darkness, leading on a sweet caramel malt aspect, with a light sprinkling of green hop. It's weighty too: chewy and full, much bigger than the previous beer but only 5.1% ABV. Hooray for inefficiency. The flavour places the caramel right in the centre, so while it may not look fully like a dark lager, it tastes like one. There's a vibe of doppelbock about this, and more than a little of the sticky, orange American-style Oktoberfestbier, which may be suitably autumnal but is not in its favour. Behind the residual sugar, the noble hops taste a bit musty, and the combination of sweet and stale makes for difficult drinking. I think this one gets filed with those German lagers which simply aren't to my taste. I don't encounter them as much as I used to, but they're still out there.

It's not just the importers who are treating us to lagers in October. Coming soon, I'll have a look at what a couple of Irish brewers have done recently in this space.