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.