September pairs 1: Whiplash

Autumn has arrived, and the annual Dublin Beer Festival at the RDS will be upon us soon. Ahead of that, I have a series of short posts on recently released Irish beers, all of which have trickled through in pairs. We begin with Whiplash, and a couple of pints in their Dublin pub, Fidelity.

They've done a grodziskie, which is certainly a rarity for these parts. Final Credits (no idea why) is 3.5% ABV, and an equally-innocent clear dark gold colour. So the big opening smoke hit was a shock. This is not a subtle beer, nor a tasty and fun little curiosity from world brewing. This is a serious commitment to the smoke. It tastes of bonfires and blast furnaces; engines and factories. Smoky, but not in the savoury way of pork and fish. It is at least light-bodied, which goes some way to soften the impact, and once you're used to the acridity, I can see how it could even be seen as refreshing. But that's at least pint two, or possibly generation two of this being the ingrained local beer style. I give props to the brewery for giving one a go, but I couldn't get into this one. It's for grodziskie extremophiles only.

Whiplash brews Oddity, and the latest from the Barcelona client brewer is The Dreamer. In a move that's sadly typical for Whiplash, they claim this is west coast, though my suspicions were aroused as soon as the tap started pouring. The look is hazy; translucent, not opaque, but that's no excuse. We are NOT on the west coast here, boys and girls. The poorly-rendered subterfuge continues with a flavour which is downright juicy. Opening on fresh-squeezed, after a moment it sweetens to orangeade, leaning to hard candy and aromatic citrus oil, and only then reluctantly drifting towards the hard pith and resin of the west coast. It doesn't go all the way there, however. It's maybe a bit slight for 6.6% ABV, and while it's certainly enjoyable, well-made, and properly flavoursome, the style fidelity (lol) is poor. Exercise caution.

More IPA tomorrow, from a brewery that turns them out as prolifically as Whiplash.

Rehydrate

Look, I'm absolutely not against the concept of non-alcoholic beers. It's just that most of the specific ones I've drank have been so wide of the mark that I can't imagine an occasion when I would chose one over drinking nothing. There have been a handful of exceptions, virtually none of which have been in the lager, pale ale or wheat beer styles, which is unfortunately what the breweries keep turning out.

And yet I persist. Today's beers are three from reputable Irish producers which are commonly available. So much so that leaving them off Ireland's top-rated beer review blog would have been remiss. And so I hold my nose, figuratively speaking, and make a start.

Fierce Mild is a standalone non-alcoholic brewer, based in Dundalk. This Extra Pale Ale is the flagship, though a lager was added to the range recently. Let's see how we get on with this first. It immediately does itself no favours with the appearance: both murky and watery looking, with a crackly low-effort head, like your worst witbier nightmare. The aroma is metallic -- aspirin -- which is a common flaw is this kind of beer, but everyone else doing it is no excuse. The effect is ameliorated a little with some freshly lemony hops. Further marks come off for the texture, which is thin and watery, but at least it's refreshing, aided by a busy fizz which I found cleansing rather than intrusive. Not that there's much to cleanse, however. Neither aspirin nor lemons show up in the foretaste, though the latter arrives in the finish and becomes the beer's main character. That would almost have made it palatable, were it not for the creeping aspirin behind it. Ugh. This nearly becomes almost worthwhile, but misses it at the very end, leaving an unpleasant and unwelcome metal deposit on the palate that's tragically typical. I thought maybe the non-alcoholic specialists might have got the formula right, but they turn out to be no better than everyone else. Better get on with everyone else, so.

Galway Bay's flagship IPA has been around almost since the brewery's beginnings, and extensively reformulated over the years. I don't know if the recipe for Full Sail Zero is intended to resemble the current form. The visuals are a little better than the above: it's a marginally warmer shade of golden, though still murky and with no head after the first few seconds. It smells unpleasantly vegetal, like overboiled cabbage or spinach, which I guess is a small step sideways from metallic. It's not watery, and has a surprisingly decent body, but I honestly couldn't tell whether the flavour was either very slight or completely non-existent, and what I could taste was the residual effect of the previous beer. There's maybe a very faint echo of grapefruitish American hops, which would scan for it being a version of Full Sail, but it's extremely bland. It may feel like a beer, and even looks like one, and I guess it gets points for lacking off flavours. Lacking any flavour is a poor show, however, and this does little to raise my opinion of non-alcoholic beer.

The session rounds off with No Dose, purporting to be a pilsner, from Whiplash, where they know how pilsner is supposed to taste. They say it's unfiltered but it's still fairly clear; dark golden and without any head to speak of, alas. It smells mostly of lemonade, suggesting American hops rather than noble ones, though there's a telltale metallic twang too, which doesn't bode well. That lack of head is a result of low carbonation -- I hope they weren't depending on the weak fermentation process to condition it -- although there's a decent weight to it, with no wateriness. The unsubtle lemon is the main feature of the flavour, and it's a flavour which is not beer adjacent. It's barely lemon-adjacent, actually, tasting more like a very plain white lemonade. That lasts long and turns slightly sticky. We're back in the territory of un-beer-like, but not actually unpleasant to drink, as long as the sweetness doesn't upset you. It's a very poor impression of pilsner however.

I feel I've done something worthy by drinking these. There were no surprises: nothing that made me think that the paler form of non-alcoholic beer works as a beer substitute. That none of them was undrinkably disgusting should perhaps be a cause for celebration. Maybe that's what people mean when they say non-alcoholic beer has got better. It's a pretty low bar, though. I'll give science some time to catch up further before I tackle any more sets of these.

Heat-resistant spoons

Virtually no cask ale means absolutely no warm cask ale: a win for the Dublin pub scene, there. At JD Wetherspoon, the cellar cooling system was well able to deal with anything the summer threw at it.

To wit, at The Silver Penny, Hook Norton Haymaker. I'm guessing this pale ale is named for its strength: a whopping 5% ABV. The dark golden colour helps underline its projected power, likewise an aroma which suggests generous quantities of malt, evoking pastry or cakes with a layer of citrus jam. The flavour uses that malt too, but centres more on the hops. They're English, so I was expecting marmalade and meadows, but there's quite a new-world brightness to this beer in general. I get a white-wine grape effect, conjuring Nelson Sauvin or, from closer to home, Hallertau Blanc. Add some peppercorn spice and a rasp of leathery tannin and it rounds out nicely. It's very tasty. Amber-coloured strong bitter can sometimes feel hot and soupy; this one is clean and zingy, refreshing and sinkable, so perfect for summer drinking. I'm a fan of Hook Norton in general, and this is another of their greats.

Green Jack is less of a known quantity. Beside Haymaker was Gone Fishing, an extra special bitter. As a follow-up act to the preceding classic, it would want to be extra special, but I don't think it is. I actually regret writing about perceived soupiness in dark bitter, because this is one of those. It's a big ol' 5.5% ABV, and ornery with it, propelling toffee and red apple aromas, then tasting hot and chewy. The weird individuals who enjoy the constant supply of Greene King Abbot Ale at Wetherspoon will find little to dislike in this; it very much hits the same beats. I'm not into that, however. The experience was saved by that marvellous Wetherspoon cellar, so while the beer tasted a bit on the hot side, it never achieved full soup because it arrived exactly appropriately chilled for the conditions. I can happily write it off as a beer I didn't care for, rather than an actively bad one. If only those were all €2.60 a pint.

Lost in Mosaic wasn't the beer I went in for, but with a name like that I wasn't going to pass by it. It's by Loch Lomond brewery, 5% ABV, and a pure clear golden with a nicely lasting head through the sparkler. And deliciously cool on a day when outside was like a hairdryer. The name is no idle boast: I'd like to think I would have been able to easily identify the Mosaic hops here, in their tropical/stonefruit glory. Peach and pineapple, mango and apricot, are presented cleanly and juicily. Bitterness is minimal and the malt end serves only to propel the softly fruity hops. I can't help thinking that keg serve might have given this some bonus extra intensity but it's very hard to criticise it as a cask ale. It has freshness, coolness, heft and insane drinkability.

Unbeknownst to me when I wrote the above, I had had a much worse experience with the beer in the same pub in 2019. It's nice to be able to set the record straight.

Lastly, you don't see much White Stout around the place. They had a moment a few years back but maybe the breweries got too many complaints from pubs with inattentive and annoyed customers. Anyway, Suffolk brewery Nethergate has one, 4.5% ABV and clear golden in colour. I got a bit of chocolate in the aroma, but in an odd way, with a hint of cinnamon or gunpowder beside it. It has a convincingly creamy texture, and the flavour leads on milk chocolate, before adding that spice from the aroma, which sticks around to the finish. Perhaps that's supposed to represent roast? I don't really get it. Still, most every other attempt at this illusion has been a sickly mess, and this isn't. It may be unconvincing as a stout but it's jolly decent as a beer, of indeterminate style. The flavours (done with cocoa and vanilla, apparently) hold together well, with nothing jarring or uncomfortable. As a once-off gag, it's amusing, but I doubt it's anyone's regular pint.

Cheap, cool pints of cask ale, dark corners and functional air conditioning has made Dublin's JD Wetherspoons something of an oasis for me in recent months. I'm sure they'll go back to being that bit less attractive now the weather has turned.

Belgium, why not?

I've barely set foot in Belgium this year, though that will be changing later in the autumn. To tide me over, a couple of Flemish randomers I picked up in Redmond's of Ranelagh.

Has the Americans' fascination with Belgian pils passed? Is it safe to come out now? The first beer today is a pilsner according to the small print, although the name, Verhaeghe Export, suggests a different lager style. I doubt it matters to anyone outside Germany. It's 4.9% ABV and an absolutely gorgeous dark golden colour in the glass, bubbling merrily to a generous white head. It put me in a good mood just looking at it.

That Belgian-pils raspy metallic dryness is there in the flavour, but allied with some other features which help offset the unpleasantness. A big one is hops: waxy, grassy and noble, like they've gone for a Czech vibe and pushed things a little further than is comfortable. I liked its cheekiness. And then there's what I first thought was a warm Belgian fruitiness -- something that's particularly prominent in the aroma -- but once Czechia was in mind I realised it's diacetyl: an Urquell level of butteriness. Again, that's not going to be for everyone, but, like with Urquell, it's the combination that saves it. I had expected bland, but this is rather charming by the 33cl bottle. Lager fans looking for something a wee bit out of the ordinary, take note.

Verhaeghe is better known for Duchesse de Bourgogne, while the next brewery, De Halve Maan, is better known for the Brugse Zot series. It also brews Blanche de Bruges, of which one sees a lot in Bruges, and the second beer is a brand extension on that: Rosé de Bruges. It is, I guess, the same witbier, but with added extract of unspecified red fruit. It doesn't look horribly artificial, having a slightly dull greyish cast to the pink colour, which I take as a positive sign that it isn't simply done with food colouring. The aroma is lightly sweet but very floral, like Parma Violets or Love Hearts candy.

It has a lovely soft and fluffy texture, less fizzy than I'd have thought typical of a witbier. The flavour is pink, but not excessively so. It's sweet, and a little jammy, but doesn't have the clanging artificiality that plagues so many beers like this. While no masterpiece of nuance or Belgian complexity -- it still tastes like an explosion in The Body Shop c.1990 -- it's both flavourful and easy-going. It's a jolly beer and you would need to be quite the dry shite to actively dislike it.

That's two rather pleasant surprises, then. I hadn't been expecting much from either of these, fearing blandness, tinny tangs and syrupy gunk. They're certainly adjacent to all that, but avoid it competently. Belgian beer: just when you think you know how it works.

Hopzapoppin'

The pale ales, they drop slowly. Here's a handful of recent-ish releases from Ireland's breweries.

"It Ain't Easy" opined Hopfully on an IPA label in 2022. They've changed their tune since they moved from running a brewery back to getting someone else to do that for them, and Easy IPA is their latest. Unusually, there's no information on the can about what it's made from. It looks dreadful: a brackish muddy yellow with barely an effort at a head, like something decanted from a slops tray. Nevertheless, it smells superb, with a bright, clean and zesty kick of citrus. The flavour narrows that down to grapefruit, specifically, with all the acid tartness associated. It's only 4.3% ABV so there's not much complexity beyond that, but it's fun while it lasts, and it lasts for a decent stretch. If left to warm, it does present a degree of dreggyness, but the C-hop onslaught helps mask the worst of it. This is no masterpiece of brewing finesse, nor especially easy-drinking for the strength, but as an unsophisticated slap of bad-ass lupulin, I found it rather enjoyable.

DOT is next, with the latest in their Teeling Distillery giftshop specials. Brewers In Arms is a cold IPA -- the official beer style of the ongoing climate collapse -- and is a particularly light example at just 4.6% ABV. There's a slight haze to the pale golden colour, but more in the realm of unfiltered lager than murky IPA. It's dry-hopped, but we're not told what with. It's a good one, though, the aroma presenting a summer fruit basket of luscious peach and ripe strawberries. The can says it's crisp and the can don't lie: there's a refreshing dry bite right up front, inviting rapid gulping, which wouldn't be at all appropriate for the €6 price tag. After it, the flavour brings a contrasting sweetly floral perfume, which is odd, but pleasant. The oddness may be down to vanillins from barrel-ageing, although the can makes no mention of the beer being barrel-aged. Let's assume it is; all of this Teeling series are, and I'm too old for the system to change. It's good. You really do get the benefits of a refreshing summer lager with some clean and cheery hop fruit. If it's a no-to-light touch on the oak, that's still appropriate. This made for pleasant al fresco drinking on a summer's evening, and could best be improved only by more ready availability and a larger serve size.

More new haze from Rascals, in the form of Space Cadet. The hops are all Australian -- Galaxy and Luna -- and it's 5.8% ABV. It isn't especially hazy, being pale orange with a definite translucency instead of full-on murk. I don't know Luna, but Galaxy tends to present as oranges to me, and this smells of marmalade and sticky cordial, which absolutely scans. It's quite light-textured, and with a crisp fizz instead of the more typical haze softness. At this stage, I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not that counts as a fault. It's not one of those custard jobs, and you can judge it yourself accordingly. Its taste is subtle and leans into the bitter side, opening with a zesty bite. The label promises mango and passionfruit, and while I rarely eat either, I do know those flavours in beer terms and they're not present here. It's oranges again, a dry bite of caraway, and maybe some peach skin. Late on, the strength becomes apparent, making it taste a smidge flabby rather than soft and juicy. As haze goes, this is not how to do it. As an unfiltered IPA to showcase fun Australian hops, however, it has a lot going for it. I liked the sharp zest and its overall cleanness. It could be divisive, but the general proficiency with which it's brewed is beyond doubt.

Latest in the Rye River Seasonal series is River In The Pines, an IPA brewed in collaboration with Adnams. Despite the name and the deep green label, there's no mention of "west coast" in the description. They've gone with "classic" instead, which could well be a good strategy for customers who don't know all the terminology but have noticed IPAs getting worse. To me, it's a west-coaster for sure, evidenced immediately in the beautiful clear dark amber colouring. They're not kidding about the pine: Centennial and HBC 522 hops give it an earthy damp forest effect that really does remind me of drinking Sierra Nevada's long-discontinued IPA for the first time. Flying Dog's Double Dog provided my Proustian reference point for the flavour, which has a sizeable crystal malt component, unsurprisingly. That means a toffee sweetness up front, but one which doesn't cloy, because of a dry tannic finish and a massive hit of spicy wood resin from the hops. It's a simple formula, but highly enjoyable and criminally underused in contemporary brewing. They've finished the beer at 6.6% ABV, and I can't help wondering if it might be worth raising that gravity a little if they do something like this again. And I really hope they do. It's a beer to bring a tear to the rheumy eye of every old hophead. Top work by everyone involved.

Marking The White Hag's 12th birthday, and released to coincide with the eighth Hagstravanza festival earlier this month, a new IPA: Hopstravaganza 12. They, too, have gone west-coast, but with a different approach from Rye River. This is a paler take: still clear, but minus the caramelised malt, and with some surprise oats instead. The hops are Columbus and unspecified Southern Hemisphere varieties, and they have plenty to say, starting with an impressive aroma of citrus candy and tropical fruit. The flavour takes a moment to get going. The body is appropriately dense for 6% ABV, and the combination of smoothness and fizz is all it delivers for the first moments. After that, the deluge. A wave of pineapple and mango follows, chased by a spicy rocket-leaf bitterness. Oily lime and pine provides the finish. It's not as on-the-nose west-coast as the beer above, and has more of a modern sensibility about it, but it's very enjoyable. I guess you can take your revival two ways: either with all the charming, retro features intact, as Rye River and Adnams did it, or channelling the clarity and bitterness into a contemporary take, as though haze never happened. Either is valid, and both are well worth drinking.

I'm not sure when these round-ups last contained two west-coasters in a row, but I'm here for it. Keep that revival coming. Hallelujah.

Light verse

Three new beers from Heaney Brewery to round the week off.

Correct Me If I'm Wrong, with the brewery's sober logo playfully scrambled on the label, is a "farmhouse ale", which I'm taking to mean a saison. Reading that it's brewed with sichuan pepper made me do an involuntary approving lip-pucker. It pours hazy and golden, with a short-lived head. The aroma is all fruit and no spice, though still attractive, with cool fresh pear and lychee. It's surprisingly thin for 5.9% ABV, and I'm not sure it's conditioned the way it should be, feeling a bit lifeless, especially for a (maybe) saison. The flavour is different again: florally sweet rather than fruity, and the spice is no more than one would get from a light ginger beer. And nothing else happens: after an initial burst of flavour, it fades to nothing, and seems almost watery, which is all wrong for the style and strength. I had thought this would be much more interesting but it's a bit of a damp squib. The brewery may have been over-cautious, seeking to be creative without being weird. Never a good idea and I hope they don't do it again.

The other two are in more established styles. Whatever You Think Yourself is the most Northern Irish way of telling someone you think their idea is bad, so it's a bit of a worry for it to be the name of a hazy IPA. "tropical yearning, the ghost of a pineapple's ambition" as part of the description gives us the seriousness of tone intended by the beer. It's a pale orange colour and fully opaque, with an aroma which is strongly pithy, not tropical. It's another light one for the strength, this time up at 6% ABV. The pith is loud and proud in the flavour, very similar to the fibrous underskin of a big jaffa. I doubt Seamus would approve of such intense orangeism. Next to this is a rough gritty side; a regular stumbling block for hazy IPA. It doesn't mean the beer is unpleasant, but it does remove any possibility of it being soft, juicy or tropical. Drinking this is a bit of a workout, and I can recommend it only to those who want their hazy IPAs with a big whack of bitterness as the main feature. Personally, Heaney, I'd have given it a whirl in the centrifuge to clean it up, but wh...

Not a great opening pair, then. Surely redemption must come with the export stout? This is the sort of solidly traditional beer style with which Heaney has already proven its worth. I was immediately on guard when Lamp Light poured more of a dark garnet colour than proper black. Still, the aroma is decent, with the same rich fudgey quality as found in modern classics Leann Folláin and Nocturne. The flavour does not lack darkness, I'm happy to say, opening on quite an intense black-toast roastiness. This is balanced, quickly, by a softer milk chocolate character, which is then contrasted in turn by a leafy green hop bitterness, which is the often-forgotten piece of the Proper Stout puzzle. Again, though, it's weirdly thin-bodied for its 6% ABV, and I'm starting to think that may be a Heaney trait. This one, even more than the others, would have benefited from a greater heft; something to chew on. Here, however, that's a mere niggle. This is a damn decent stout, and I was right to think that the brewery would get the fundamentals right. Export stout is one of my favourite beer styles in general and I welcome this example of it. The process maybe needs some fine tuning, but no more than that.

Redemption indeed, then. I can't help thinking that Heaney really should put less work into trying to be a craft-era brewery and stick to playing the hits. Lamp Light would certainly be an excellent addition to its bottled range. Imagine a choice of three top-notch microbrewed Irish export stouts in glass. We wouldn't know ourselves.

Shack a can

What more appropriate drink for a summer midweek than shandy? The Shandy Shack would like us to believe there is no better proposition. "Shandy's a British treasure that gives everyone pleasure" says the unlikely copy on the cans I bought in a northside Dublin supermarket, adding that it was "ripe for a refresh, so we [who?] quit our jobs, built a Shack and started the revival". Err, OK.

I began with Elderflower Lager, described as a pilsner with added elderflower cordial, and is 2.5% ABV. The visuals are excellent: it's a rich golden colour with pristine clarity. If the intention is to make it look like a proper lager then it works. I see oats on the ingredients, which I'm guessing is a texture thing, because it doesn't contribute any haze, nor does much for head retention. So it's not thin, but it goes a little too far the other way, because of course it's sweet, and so it feels syrupy, and that has a knock-on detrimental effect on its ability to refresh. Half way through I added ice, which helped a little. It still mostly tasted of sugar, and not of elderflower. I guess the cordial is already at one remove, and adding the beer makes it even less elderflowery. It's not unpleasant, but I think it fails at its primary function of being light and thirst-quenching. This is something of a theme with me and pre-made shandies, but they should have added more beer.

OK. Reset and go again. There are a number of shandies in the Shandy Shack range, but the only other one I found was Raspberry Lager. It's still 2.5% ABV, and again they've done a superb job with the appearance. I was expecting lurid pink, but instead it's a dead classy russet shade. It does smell of raspberry -- that's a difficult fruit to hide -- but there's a degree of artificiality about it, like raspberryade or sherbet candy. And it is, if anything, even more syrupy than the elderflower one. I made sure to serve it properly fridge-cold and it still gummed up my palate immediately, the fizz struggling to push through the mire and failing to do any refreshment or palate cleansing. Even more than with the aroma, the flavour tastes of fruit-flavoured candy rather than anything real: there's none of the tartness or juice burst of any actual summer berry. This one would need a lot more beer to make it worthwhile.

I realised at the end that I hadn't even been judging these as beers, so distant are they from the concept as commonly understood. Any of the continental citrus radlers will provide a better experience than you get from this pair. They're obviously trying hard, and seeking to look classy, on both the inside and outside of the cans. But their syrupy stickiness is a deal-breaker. Just have, like, a normal beer instead?