Swede as

Sweden's Brewski is one of those breweries whose beer is imported en masse to Ireland. Their neat, slim, white-label cans are always in my eyeline when I'm browsing in Craft Central. Occasionally, I give in to the tempatation to bring some of them home.

I don't know what's behind the name Oaked Pavel. Is it a pun on "oaked panel"? It's an oaked pilsner, anyway, a style I only really know from DOT Brew's takes on it, which are generally enjoyable. This one is a pale golden colour and lightly hazed, smelling non-woody, of crisply clean lager malt and lightly grassy noble hops. Not a thing wrong with that. At 5.1% ABV it has a decent heft, and the mouthfeel takes full advantage: it's almost chewy. That means there's lots of room for flavour complexity but, alas, it doesn't make so much use of that. It does, in all fairness, stay true to its roots as a Czech-style lager, with the cleanness and malt-forward subtlety that good ones show. The oak, too, is subtle, but perhaps a little too subtle. Obviously, nobody wants a big explosion of splinters and diacetyl, but the wood here presents as a sort of dry sandpaper roughness which isn't enough to ruin the beer but adds nothing positive either. This would have been more enjoyable if delivered unadorned. They'd have needed a different name for it, though.

You can tell I picked three from a huge range of Brewski beers, because we move from pilsner to a favourite adjacent lager style: Schwarzbier. Schwarzer Drachen is 5.3% ABV and properly black, with a generous head of off-white foam. The aroma gives little away, only a mild spice, like red lemonade or ginger ale. The flavour is more interesting, centring on a tarry burnt effect, all charred wood and flinty mineral. The best examples follow this up with the biting green bitterness of noble hops, and this one gets there eventually, but it's a bit slow and subtle; the clean carbonic dryness being the only other feature of the middle. The hops don't hang around long either, leading briskly to a simple dry-roasted finish. This is pretty good, and it's always great to see unfashionable Schwarzbier from a trendy craft brewery (or at least as trendy as they get these days), but it's no classic. They've nailed the dry and crisp lager side, but the fun complexities of hops and dark grain are somewhat absent.

I don't normally pick New England-style IPAs on rounds like this, but look at this label. What is going on there? Not only does Secular Haze have a joy of a graphic, but it's a collaboration with the shop where I bought it. Once poured, it doesn't look anything special, being an opaque middling yellow with a busy head which fades quickly to a thin skim. The flavour is a tropical delight, piling in a fruit salad of pineapple, mango, white grape, apple, pear, mandarin and more. Lychee? That too. It's a pure and innocent sing-song of a flavour, and while the beer is heavy at 6.3% ABV, there's no boozy heat, nor nasty savoury garlic nor overly sweet vanilla. There's enough of a fruit panoply to mean it's far from boring, but it only does one thing. Rhapzody and Riwaka hops are how it does it. I approve. Here's a beer I recommend to haze sceptics who might want to dip their toes back in the water; it's one of the good ones, and I'm as surprised as you are.

As it happened, while I was working through that lot, the brewery was in town for the Dublin Beer Festival and staged a tap takeover at The Christchurch.

There's a Brewski flagship called Mango Feber, a fruited double IPA and the first of their beers I ever drank, back in 2015. It now exists in multiple variants, and the pub had tapped up one of the Session IPA versions, the one at 4.2% ABV (I think; the tap badge differs). Maybe it's unfair of me to have ordered this without being up to speed with the original, but it wasn't a good advert for re-trying it. This hazy yellow affair is extremely watery and the main flavours are dregs and sadness. There is, to be clear, no mango and no hops, just a series of disharmonious twangs on a thin fizzy base. It's like someone sucked all the good bits from the keg, leaving me the unpleasant residue. Maybe this sort of thing flies with the haze-lovers, but if so, they are in serious need of recalibration, or a smack.

That does seem to have been an aberration, and we were back on more familiar territory with Triple Berry Pie. No surprises here: it's named after a dessert, looks like a dessert and tastes like a dessert. They have the temerity to call it "Berliner weisse" but it's as far from Berlin as Stockholm is. It's a deep purple colour and very sweet, loaded up with jammy fruit sugar, while a mild berry tartness is as close to sour as it gets. Where beers like this can tend to be quite gloopy, this goes the opposite way. It's only 4% ABV and quite thin on it: I would have tolerated extra sweetness if it meant more body too. All told, it's a bit of fun and possibly more entertaining to look at than to drink, but you know what you're getting before you order it.

Every tap takeover should have a stronger option as the finisher, and here it was Night Pusher, an imperial stout. No compromises in this 10% ABV job, with its only gimmick being plenty of American hops. The aroma is tarry, rich, and quite appropriately warming. The texture is calorific too, all creamy and soft. Big bitterness in an imperial stout always brings a smile to my face and this one goes all-in. The bitterness starts as dark chocolate, and there are even some mild rosewater topnotes, to give it balance and colour. That gets quickly subsumed by a growing herbal liquorice quality, giving Jägermeister and Fisherman's Friend, before a full-on hard wax finish. Textbook stuff: complex yet unfussy; extreme but balanced. Cans are readily available, and fans of grown-up stout should not be put off by the non-copyright-infringing cartoon raccoon engineer on the label.

Overall, this was something of a mixed bag, which I guess scans for a brewery which produces such a range of different things. They have the ability, but the choice to brew degenerate styles, or pull silly tricks with proper ones, is where they let themselves down. The hit rate is good enough for me to be back for more, at least.

Order on the chaos

Zichovec Pivovar is one of those European breweries with a vast array of beers on sale in my neck of the woods, so I get to pick what looks interesting from their range. Here are three that caught my eye.

For starters, Sea Buckthorn and Ginger Gose. I'm not generally convinced by sea buckthorn as a beer ingredient; I don't think it does much. Ginger, though? And salt and juniper? Irresistible. I had no idea what it would look like, so was surprised to see it pouring opaque and orange from the half-litre can, like a glass of breakfast juice. There's a herbal bath-bomb spice to the aroma, as well as a suggestion of sourness. Only 4.6% ABV means it's light, and my word it's refreshing. What was meant to be a first sip cleared the top third of the glassful. Neither spice nor salt are domineering, but they're both present, and perfectly balanced. There's a gentle sparkle and a light kettle-sour tang on the end. Imagine Tangfastics or similar sour candy, but without the sugary gumminess, just all the zing. I still don't get what the sea buckthorn is contributing, but the salt and ginger are obvious without being overly loud, and I think I can taste the herbal bitterness of the juniper too. It's the combined effect that takes this beyond gimmick into a genuinely worthwhile recipe for a light summer beer which bears copying. Serve cold and quaff heartily.

Of course I had to include an IPA, and of course it was going to be the west-coast New Zealand-hopped one: Sauvin Attack. This was a day past its best-before when I drank it, but since that's only six months after packaging, I'm not too concerned. There's a little too much haze in this pale gold job, making me question its coastal credentials from the outset. The aroma is intact, though I will admit it may have been better when fresh. There's still plenty of flinty white wine and a softer layer of honeydew and kiwi fruit. 6.5% ABV should mean it's a good bit heavier than the last beer, and it does have extra density, but like the gose, it's maddeningly moreish, begging to be thrown back in one or two gulps. Again it's the balance of flavours that does it, tasting firmly and distinctly of tropical fruit, cool cut grass and a twist of citrus peel, but dovetailed together with a precision which means nothing is too dominant or lost in the mix. The carbonation is exactly enough to bring the flavours to life while avoiding making the beer gassy or sharply carbonic. I might question the style claim a bit. As well as the haze, it's softer and fruitier than west coast IPA should be by rights; the bitterness is dialled back and you can forget any caramel malt. Taxonomic quibbles aside, though, it's utterly delicious and shows off Nelson Sauvin brightly and cleanly, despite being less than completely fresh.

My working theory is that the brewery comes from a lager culture and probably employs mostly lager-trained brewers, so precision and top-end drinkability come as standard. So the next beer would be a challenge. Though our ABV remains at 6.5%, the gravity leaps from 14° to 18° for 13 Years of Innovation, so I was already expecting it to be sweet before I noticed there's vanilla in it. That's with coconut, black cherry and raspberry, so no surprise that it's purple. That summer fruit combination is front and centre in the aroma, all candy rather than real tart berries. Unsurprisingly, the texture is creaminess, and although it claims to be "double sour" it's barely sour at all. The vanilla isn't quite at ice cream levels, but it's not far off, and serves merely to accentuate the fruit sweetness rather than make the beer taste of actual vanilla. The raspberry presents as pink sauce, of course. You do get cherry, and there's coconut too. And yet... I've drank a fair few beers like this, from the central and eastern part of out fair continent, and this is one of the cleaner, crisper examples. It's sweet, but not sticky with it, and while it doesn't have the amazing drinkability of the other two, it could have been much, much worse, given the spec. That's a win.

They're all wins. I've come out of this sampling session with a new respect for the Zichovec hussle. I will be buying more of their wares before long; fresh ones too, following the recent branding update. It was remiss of me to not include a lager in this lot. That will be corrected next time, if I remember.

Together alone

I'm all in favour of small breweries diverging from the ubiquitous craft styles, but a Rotbier, Rascals? I'm not, generally, a fan of Nuremberg's totemic red lager. This example at the Rascals taproom, Pilot #155, is 5.2% ABV and immediately departs from the Franconian standard by being a gorgeous clear shade of copper. Clean look, clean taste: primarily crisp with a hint of near-Schwarzbier toasted grain. Only then does the caramel and red liquorice creep in, and while that taste profile does not make me jump for joy, it's subtle enough here to be non-problematic. Hooray for non-problematic. This has just the right balance of unusual features versus standard well-made lager. I had a couple of pints on the terrace on a sunny Friday afternoon and I can tell you it is exceptionally well suited to that use case. Down at the Altstadt they could pick up a few tips from this.

York brewery Brew York had not crossed my path before, though they've been in business for ten years. As part of the birthday celebrations it collaborated with Rascals on a New England IPA called Kindred Flame. It's a middle-of-the-road 5.7% ABV and only wanly hazy, going for witbier translucency over beaten-egg emulsion. Both aroma and flavour, to my mind, lean more to the west coast. Azacca, El Dorado, Krush and Mosaic are tropical-candy hops one and all, yet there's a sharp Citra-like bite at the front of the flavour here, all lime peel and lemon zest. It's slightly softer behind this, but soft like lemon meringue pie, rather than juicy mango or pineapple. It's not a bad beer, by any means, but doesn't taste like a high-end hazy IPA for the joyless grumps who idolise Trillium and The Alchemist. You know the sort. I'd like to say it's a best-of-both-worlds situation, but I would prefer if it went one way or the other. This middle space, vanilla-but-citric, is a little lacking in positive attributes. It's fine, but a guest-assisted birthday beer ought to be more impressive.

It seems Rascals is at its creative best when left to noodle on its own pilot kit. Maybe if Brew York came over, they might learn about making interesting beer.

Drinkhana

The market for independent beer may have contracted somewhat, but the breweries can still put on a show. A couple of weeks ago the Dublin Beer Festival returned to the Ring Hall in the RDS's horsey bits for a third year, with an impressive array of beers from local and foreign breweries. There was much new and rare to be discovered, so let's begin.

For me, the beginning was O'Hara's and Le Chéile, a lager. I was interested to see "Brewed in Dundalk" on the tap badge. O'Hara's has taken ownership of the former Pearse Lyons brewery and is running it in parallel with Bagenalstown, as predominantly a lager brewery. This New Zealand-hopped pilsner bodes well for the plans, showcasing the Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka beautifully, from a powerful mown-grass aroma, to a flavour packed out with peppery spice and dank resins. 6% ABV gives it plenty of heft, though without any malt sweetness interfering with the hop explosion. Magnificent stuff, and well capable of giving the high-end west-coast IPAs a run for their money.

In sharp contrast, O'Hara's also brought a new Hazelnut Brown Ale, 5% ABV and served nitrogenated. This was somewhat less successful, being a gloopy, sticky affair, loaded up with cloying hazelnut syrup. It has very little to offer beyond the intense sweetness, and while it does taste of nut, it's very much processed and candified. It goes without saying that the nitrogen helps none of this, though it does mean there's little by way of aroma, which is probably a mercy. It compares particularly badly with the pilsner that preceded it, but even without that, I don't think it would have been to my taste.

More lager was needed. I didn't realise that Lough Gill releases an annual Octoberfest beer, and this was my first time encountering it. It's good. There's nothing off-kilter about this pale golden 5.5% ABV job. It has superb balance between the slightly souped-up chewy malt base and fresh salad-leaf hopping with a spinach level of green bittering. The süffig drinkability is helped by a lightly tannic iced-tea note in the finish, keeping the experience supremely clean. This seems like a beer that has been honed; it takes effort and skill to make a lager so casually delicious.

Rye & Coopers is a newly arrived contract brewer, seemingly making in-roads into lots of normal, non-specialist, pubs in Dublin. Good luck to them with that. That has mostly been with a lager, but there's a second beer too, called Gypsy Tongues. Initial marks off for the dreadful AI-generated tap badge, and for the reluctance to name Brehon Brewhouse as the place of production. But the beer is decent, as one would expect from Brehon. It's a straightforward hazy pale ale of 4.5% ABV, leading on vanilla, following through with tropical fruit and exiting on a mild tang of bitterness for balance. There's nothing unusual or exciting here, but absolutely no off-flavours or upsetting surprises. If the intention is to have some by-the-pint fruity haze for the pub, then they've gone about it in exactly the right way.

I didn't go especially all-in on the big beers, but wasn't going to pass by Saturnalia, an old ale from Eight Degrees. It's genuinely old too, having started as a barley wine a couple of years ago, then left to mature. The result is 12% ABV and a gorgeously smooth luxury dessert of a beer, exuding vanilla, butter and a scattering of plump raisins. The undisguised booze gives it a heavy Pedro Ximínez vinous quality, the sweet side balanced by a considerable dose of tannin. It all works harmoniously well together, doubtless due to the extra time it's had in the tank. Sadly, this all goes to Italy. It's a shame that a few nip bottles aren't left behind for Irish drinkers.

It was a pleasant surprise to find a veritable rake of new beers from Trouble Brewing. I began with Easy, a 4% ABV pale ale served on cask. It's a hazy one; light and pithy, with medium dank and a hint of garlic. The brewery does not want us to think of it as a junior version of its flagship Ambush, but I couldn't shake that impression. This has a lot in common with Gypsy Tongues above, being simple and accessible, and well built for session drinking, especially in smooth cask form.

The next one is also intended to be easy: a 4.2% ABV German-style pilsner called Alibi. They say it's unfiltered yet it's flawlessly clear, with almost the greenish tone I associate with Jever. It's not quite as full-on as that hop monster, but isn't far off it, tasting strongly of lawn clippings but not going overboard with it. There's a significant crisp edge as well, giving it a mineral-water character, which complements the hops well. Maybe a little more malt flavour would have made it more interesting, but at the same time, this beer is all about the drinkability, and it's a very quaffable affair altogether. It's not complex, but has just enough to hold one's interest as it slakes one's thirst.

They don't describe True Stereo as a west coast IPA, and at 5.1% ABV it's maybe a bit light to genuinely be one, but it certainly leans in that direction. It's clear and golden with lots of hard pithy bitterness from the combination of Simcoe and Centennial hops. And it tastes as clean as it looks, with nothing interfering with the sharp crispness the hops bring. A bit one-dimensional? Maybe. But with clean pale ale like this a rarity these days, that's not a problem. There are much worse dimensions it could be showing us.

Lastly from Trouble, a dunkel lager called Pull the Smiles Inside. It's a bit of a lightweight at just 4.8% ABV but hits the important style points well. It's big-boned and chewy, delivering the requisite flavours of bourbon biscuit, chocolate and roasted grains. That the recipe was created for, and was successful in, a home brewing competition, isn't in the least surprising. I often find the real thing to be a little too hop-forward, detracting from the dark malt fun. This is dunkel done the way I like it, however.

The other brewery bar I spent a bit of time at was Blarney Brewing. We don't see their beer in Dublin and I'm almost never in Cork these days, so it was good to have the opportunity to give some of the beers a once-over.

By pale lager shall ye measure them, and Blarney's flagship is the 4.3% ABV Hydro. It's designed to be clean and easy-drinking pub fare, and is a little lacking in character as a result. I reckon it resembles Czech pale lager most closely, and has a touch of the golden syrup aspect they show. The texture is soft and there's a mineral crispness at the centre, though little malt and virtually no hop. It's refreshing, but very much not pitched at the geek audience.

Squared - Blood Orange is more for the likes of us. This is part of a series of limited edition IPAs and claims to be west coast style, though the addition of fruit syrup is a bit off for that, as is the mere 5.5% ABV. Still, the pale amber colour fits, as does the strongly dank hop aroma and foretaste. It finishes dry and I almost didn't find the orange. It arrives at the very end and is respectful of the hops, not adding any sticky sugariness, as I feared it might. It's more of a seasoning than a tacked-on flavour. It all works rather well, providing good complexity centred on tasty American hops, in a pub-strength package. Nice.

A different limited series uses Blarney's hogshead-sized pilot kit, and on tap here was Moxee!, a session IPA of 4.6% ABV, single-hopped with El Dorado. I wasn't too impressed by this, and I blame the strength. It's thin and fizzy, and lacks any proper hop impact. El Dorado should be presenting a multicoloured fruit candy effect, but there's none of that here. There's clean and pubby, and then there's just bland. I'm afraid this one fell a bit too much on the latter side.

Onwards! Just one beer from Kildare's Dew Drop brewery, a Motueka-hopped IPA called Far Side, because New Zealand, obvs. I don't have much to say about this one either, unfortunately. It's a simple and harmless sort of murk; 5.2% ABV, and although it boasts of being double dry-hopped, that's extra meaningless here, as it doesn't taste especially hop-forward. Garlic is more prominent than any of the herbs or fruit I would expect Motueka to bring. Add a smear of vanilla and you have something very ordinary, done all the time by lots of different breweries. I'm sure it sells but it doesn't make for very interesting drinking.

The Kinnegar stand is where I finished my evening's drinking. They had another new pilsner, called Day Skipper. I'm not sure how this differs from their core-range Donegal Lager, though it's very slightly stronger at 4.7% ABV. And typical of Kinnegar, it's precision-brewed to be clean and balanced, with a harmonious mix of crisp biscuit malt and a gentle noble-hop celery bitterness. It's light-bodied without being thin, and has a soft texture reminiscent of the kind of lager you get from a side-pour tap in Czechia. I don't know where they're sending it after the festival, but I wish it well.

And the last beer is the latest in Kinnegar's regular limited edition series. Brewers At Play 52: Spruce Tip IPA is 6.1% ABV and uses its novel ingredient to good effect. It doesn't interfere with the hopping, but adds a complementary herbal note to an otherwise quite sweet IPA, centred on notes of meadow flowers and ripe strawberry. It's certainly unusual. The big gravity gives it a luscious softness, and while it runs a risk of being overly sweet, the hopping, and pine, are generous enough to add the right level of bitterness to keep it enjoyable, orthodox and gimmick-free.

That was quite a jolly set, for the most part, and it was particularly pleasing how many good lagers there were to try. Nothing had the beatings of that first one by O'Hara's, however. I hope I'll be seeing it again before long, and that there's more like it to come from the new brewing arrangement in Dundalk.

I'm bonkers, me

Time for a quick check-in with Latvian brewery Ārpus. Craft Central carries a vast array of their cans, and I judiciously picked a handful of ones that looked, shall we say, content-friendly.

I began with something called Banana x Caramel x Pear Smoothie Sour Ale. For some unfathomable reason it was in the leftovers bargain bin section of the website. She's a messy bitch who lives for drama, overspilling the glass on pouring, then settling to a pug-ugly dull opaque beige colour. Of the named features, the caramel is strongest in the aroma, but with an added spice, conjuring Christmassy cinnamon or nutmeg vibes. Its texture goes beyond smooth, into full-on milkshake, and while it's only 4.5% ABV, it has a deep and powerful gravity, rendering it a little challenging to drink.

The flavour is much like the aroma: lots of sweet and slightly burnt caramel and that odd cake-spice element, which I'm guessing must be the pear. It doesn't taste strongly of pears, or bananas, with none of the estery heat I feared. The banana works the way it does in an actual smoothie, contributing more to the texture than taste. There is no fizz. Despite the weirdness and convoluted recipe, it's quite a simple creature, a bit less than the sum of its parts taste-wise, though they've perfected the feel of a smoothie. One for the hardcore fans of this style only, I think. It was inoffensive to me, but if the very notion, and look, of it gives you the horrors, best avoided.

Having dessert before my aperitif is just the sort of crazy guy I am. Never Say Never is a tomato gose. Not only are Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce listed on the ingredients, but celery and lemon too. Also Tajin sauce, which I'm not familiar with, but having looked it up, why the hell not? I thought it was going to pour clear, but that was just the liquid at the top of the can; the guts of it is seriously pulpy tomato gloop, with chunks in it. Only later did I notice the can's instruction to shake before opening. As with the beer above, you need to be in the mood for nonsense.

The aroma is that of a spicy tomato cocktail, which scans. The dry and powdery flaked chilli that goes into Tabasco and, presumably, Tajin sauce is the first thing to manifest: an almost smoky, paprika-like savoury spice. Then it turns monstrously sweet. There's no lactose, but it's thick and sweet enough to feel like another "smoothie sour". The tomato flavour is real and raw, adding an element of bruschetta to the already-busy flavour profile. It all fades quickly, however, leaving only a faint chilli spice and light scorch marks on one's soft palate. I wasn't sure I liked it, but for me, the spice makes it a success. I would like lighter and less chunky, but the savoury/sweet of juicy tomato seasoned with umami and spices is always going to be up my alley.

Who'd have thought that a triple IPA would be the sane and sober one of the set. At least it tastes like beer. QDH Riwaka x Citra Cryo x Mosaic Cryo x Nectaron TIPA is the name they've given it. I needn't tell you what the hops are. It's 10.3% ABV and pale and hazy, topped with a cheery fluffy white head. For all the quadruple dry hopping it smells more of vanilla than hops, and there's a slightly plasticky harsh twang, which I'm blaming on the Riwaka. It's a heavy beast, not in the same league as the two monsters above, but for an IPA, even a hazy triple one, there's a lot of chewing to be done. The hop harshness I detected in the aroma continues in the flavour, with marjoram and fennel bitterness, and where the Mosaic and Nectaron bring tropicality, it includes more bitter pith and skin than juicy flesh. And while it doesn't have the spirit-like burn of most triple IPAs, there's plenty of hot alcohol on display.

It's all rather rough and charmless. The convoluted name implies a multifaceted panoply of hop complexity, but all you get is a splat of hot murk. The beers above may have been silly, but there's an art to their silliness, and a sense of unruly fun. This, in contrast, is serious and difficult, lacking brightness and zing. Half way through I was finding it congealing in my stomach, so it could be one to share, if you have someone similarly masochistic available. Maybe if you're accustomed to drinking this sort of beer, it will work out for you, but I doubt you'll find it does anything better than all the other quadruple dry hopped hazy triple IPAs on the market.

Phew. I need a pilsner after that.

Mephistop-Helles

I can't say that Bavarian brewery Faust has appeared much on my radar, in Germany or beyond. It's always been there in the background but the only one of the beers I've tried was an Eisbock I found in Barry's cellar. Today I have two bottles of more regular fare, acquired in Molloy's off licence in Dublin.

First up, in the pale blue and white livery that's standard for the style, Bayrisch Hell. I swear these didn't used to be all under 5% ABV, but here we are again at 4.8%. What happened to Bavarian luxury? It's brightly gold, perfectly clear, and has a fine head, if not a full and handsome frothy one. It'll do. The low-ish gravity robs it of fullness, and instead this is light and crisp, with lots of fizz and more dry grain husk on the malt side than the spongecake I prefer from Helles. There's an odd fruity ester kick; a little more clove than I deem appropriate, which suggests that the technical side of things may not be quite up to code. I would worry about this getting headachey if consumed in quantity. It's no classic, that's for sure, doing the minimum to pass, but all a bit rough and shaky with it. You may deem it delightfully rustic, I prefer more polish to my Helles.

Faust Pils is a smidge stronger at 4.9% ABV, and has a better head too, although it doesn't last as long as I'd like. Again the appearance is clean golden perfection otherwise. With a pils, I'm on the lookout for hops, and this one does more of a dry rasp than grassy flavour, but that's OK. It turns a little tangy and zinc-like in the finish, and I don't mind that either. This is a simple affair. I'm happy to report there is none of the overly sweet ester character of the Helles, and while it's plain and inoffensive, it doesn't sink so low as to be deemed bland. Enough is happening with the crisp pale grain and typically German hops to grant it a pass as a good example of what it is.

I don't know if pils sells at a premium over Helles where these come from, but it tastes like altogether more effort went into that one.

The SHO must go on

With a dwindling list of Dublin pubs which put their beer offer first, it's important to treasure the ones we have left. I still think of Brickyard as a newcomer to the scene, even though it's been going for a decade now. It is a bit out of my way, however, so it's nice when I have a specific reason to go. One such was on a recent Saturday when there was a showcase of beers from Ukrainian brewery SHO, intended for the Hagstravaganza festival but missing it due to logistics problems. Sligo's loss is my gain, thank you very much.

Five beers were on tap, and I chose the natural starting point of a Helles called Hellь. Pale lagers are a good way to get a sense of any brewery's abilities, and this one gave very positive signs for SHO. It's a light 4.7% ABV but still beautifully full and smooth, with a gentle condition that could have come from a countertop wooden cask. The flavour opens sweetly, almost like candyfloss, but follows it with a balancing salad-leaf greenness, which also forms the aroma. It's flawless: not a beer to set anyone's world on fire, and not really something worth importing at great expense when Spaten is €2.50 a bottle in Aldi, but it performed the task I set for it: telling me what sort of brewery this is, and it looks like a good one.

It's a bit of a shame there was no Ukrainian golden ale in the set. The next pint was also Germanic: a weissbier called UA Weizen. Again it's only 4.7% ABV, so on the weak side, and light with it: short on body while big on fizz. That's valid, but not to my taste. The flavour is basic banana with overtones of butterscotch, none of which lasts long into the finish, mercifully. The interplay of crisp fizz and sweetness is fun for a while, but the sugar wins out and I was finding it a touch saccharine by pint's end. While I wasn't really a fan, this is as technically proficient as the Helles was, it's just a less enjoyable beer style to start with. Time to move on to something more involved.

The straight gose is called Gozel 2.0 and is a mere 3.7% ABV. This, too, is crisp and fizzy, and a bit plain. It's a clear golden colour, and begins with a dry grain-husk flavour. Tart apple skin follows, plus a vague salinity, but no herbs. I can't give it full marks for style fidelity, then. The growing banana twang as it warms is also a point against. Overall, though, it's light and refreshing, and I think that's all it's meant to be. It's boring, though. I could drink a pint of it, but I'd spend most of that thinking about what I was going to order next. 

As an east-European brewery they had to have a tomato gose, and SHO's is Cosaco Mexicano. As the name implies, there's some chilli in with the red fruit, and it's 5% ABV. I love a Bloody Mary, and this beer does a mighty fine impression of a good one. It's very much savoury-first, with soup-like tomato skin and then zingy pepper spice to lightly scorch the palate and throat. The gose saltiness adds to the savoury effect, as does some dark-soy-like umami. It's an all-round eye-opening stimulant of a beer, with a flavour that's both all over place and also perfectly plotted with well-integrated individual elements. It looks disgusting though, and the carbonation is a tad lower than ideal, but I can forgive all of that. It's high time some of our local breweries took on something like this. It's possible that someone other than me will buy them. Unlikely, yes, but possible.

Tragically, them ones over there seem to enjoy their pastry "sour" beers more than their spicy sour ones, so there had to be a cherry, hibiscus and cinnamon purple emulsion in with this lot. It's called Kysil. These don't normally keep much of a head, so it was a surprise to see one here. It's only 4% ABV but heavy with it, the lactose providing density without turning it sticky. It smells merrily of mince pies and the flavour is not too sweet, giving lots of Bakewell tart fun. So it's a pastry beer which takes the word seriously. While not a masterpiece of the brewer's art, it's a good example of this style: characterful, a bit gimmicky, but in a gently fun way, not unpleasantly overboard with the lactose or fruit syrup.  

I came home with two cans of IPA and began on Nebula Juice, the New England one. The style fidelity continues early doors, with a gently tropical aroma and a mild smear of vanilla. Like all the good hazy IPAs, the sweet and fleshy fruit is tempered with a citric bite, manifesting here as grapefruit spritz. There's a touch of yeasty spice in the finish, threatening to turn dreggy though not quite doing it. The downside is really that it doesn't do anything much, a bit like that gose. There is a point where balance becomes dull, and this lacks distinctive features as much as it lacks off flavours. The finish, in particular, is where it turns a bit watery, and even at only 5.3% ABV that's something of a problem. Full marks for ticking boxes but none for creative flair.

Of course it wasn't a surprise to find that Narcissus west coast IPA very much looks the part, being brightly golden, if not perfectly clear. That belies an aroma where slightly funky dank resin meets a caramel or toffee malt sweet side. The flavour is centred on a pithy citrus which is all the bitter, yet not harsh. There's an unusual fruit flavour complexity, perfumed like bergamot or lychee, finishing on mouthwatering pine spice. I couldn't quite place the variety, but the can helpfully tells us it's Talus (with Citra), and of course it is. The ghostly crystal malt presence from the aroma has dissipated, and the substantial substance (6.4% ABV) all goes towards supporting the hop performance. This time it's full marks for creative flair. It hits the style points as usual, but goes above and beyond.  I haven't encountered a Talus-forward beer in a while, which is a shame because it does wonderful things to clean-based IPAs.

Overall, SHO strikes me as a brewery of seriousness, tackling a variety of beer styles in an orderly, methodical way. My criticisms are largely ones of taste rather than technical prowess. These weren't official imports so I don't know if we'll see them, or other SHO beers in general circulation, but I hope we do. Cheers to Brickyard for giving us a looksee.