September was a busy month for me; lots of travelling and drinking; not so much poring over notebooks and writing beer reviews. The Irish brewers didn't take a rest though, so here's a rundown of what came my way from the locals over the last six weeks or so.Some epic style trolling from Hope, to begin, with their Little Rasputin "session imperial stout", causing eyes to roll at just 2.8% ABV. Honestly I expected mine to roll too when I got a pint of it at UnderDog but I was very pleasantly surprised. In my head it was going to be thin, watery and harshly roasted but it's surprisingly rich and full-bodied, with a layer of smooth velvety milk chocolate and a dark cherry and blackberry complexity. It doesn't taste like an imperial stout but does pass as a standard-strength one, and a very good example at that.
My most-missed Galway Bay beer of years past was 303, a tart pale ale they released in 2016 and which won my Golden Pint award for that year's best beer. So my ears pricked up when I heard that there was a new Galway Bay dry-hopped Berliner wiesse called 808. At 3.6% ABV the strength is similar, though at €6 a pint, the price is sadly not. It's a pale and hazy yellow and presents a fresh and spritzy lemon-and-lime aroma. The lemon side carries the emphasis on tasting: a concentrated sweetness, like Lemsip or undiluted cordial. For balance there's a dry wheaty rasp and of course the sourness: not a gum-peeling sharpness, just a lightly tart buzz offsetting any stickiness before it can take hold. I don't know that it's as good as I remember 303 being, but it is a superb sunny-day refresher. I'd be quite happy to see it staying on tap for a while.
Up the other end of the ABV scale, Galway Bay released a double IPA in collaboration with To Øl called One Man Wolfpack. The can isn't explicit about the sub-style but it's very much in the New England fashion: pale, murky, full-bodied and sweet. That said, there's a very nice balance of peppery hop spice and lemon/lime bitterness, which helps put a welcome sharp edge on a foretaste all mangoes and milkshakes. A dry chamomile tea effect finishes it off. I figured you'd need a complex blend of hops to achieve this but it's done with just two: Idaho 7 and Idaho Gem. I liked this. It manages to avoid the hot and sickly traps into which too many of this sort fall. Thick but easy-drinking is no simple feat.
The third in Hopfully's Baniwa Chilli series is a Summer DDH Session IPA. Big hops and chilli peppers: seems an odd pairing. The beer is 4.3% ABV and a murky orange colour. The aroma is quite subtle but after a few nosefuls I was able to pick out pithy citrus and a plasticky burn from the chilli. On the first sip it's smooth and sweet, rushing with juicy satsuma and sweet vanilla candy, but quickly behind this is the jagged poke from the chilli spice. That side of it is a dry spice, like powdered paprika, and adds a different sort of mouthwatering quality to the picture. The overall effect is strange but not unpleasant. Fruit and spice don't meld or complement each other: each is separate and distinct. The result is like drinking two different beers, both of them rather good. The chilli taste is strong and lasting enough for me to advise against using this as an actual session beer, but one is fun.
Following that, Hopfully came out with a lighter-yet IPA: Love For Sale, this one at 3% ABV. It's similarly hazy but there's a translucency, indicating a lack of substance. Sure enough the mouthfeel is thin and the hops, though plentiful, are harshly bitter, turning from a boiled-cabbage acridity to full-on burnt plastic. The New England yeast is probably meant to soften it and round out those errant hops, but all it does is add an out-of-place sickly vanilla note. While I got used to the bitterness, that sickly-sweet thing remained all the way though. If this "New England Micro IPA" was an experiment I deem it conclusive and not worth repeating.
Hyperactive O Brother kept their train rolling with Beware, Humans! a rye IPA with a nod to Belgium. It's 6.2% and quite a deep amber colour. I confess that at first I could pick up nothing I'd associate with either Belgium or rye. There's more of a west-coast vibe here: a sharp bitterness which is a little bit grapefruit and a little onion too. As it warms it does get a somewhat more estery, and therefore Belgian. There's toffee and a bit of brown apple. Still the hops are in charge. The sharp bitterness (oh! is some of that rye?) is nicely stimulating in an era when soft and dreggy IPAs dominate the taps. Hooray, I guess.
Vices of Levity was much more in my wheelhouse, being a dry hopped Berliner weisse: just 4% ABV and absolutely snapping with tangy tartness backed by mouthwatering mandarin juice. It's one of those beers I had to hold myself back from simply necking before I had written anything. And that would have been a shame because there's a complexity here beyond what you normally find in these: an earthy dry gunpowder spice, almost like you'd get from a lambic. A smack of bitter orange peel finishes it off. I'm utterly charmed and delighted by this. It's possibly the first beer from O Brother since they went into overdrive that I'll be really sad to see gone.
After a triple IPA earlier this year Larkin's put the brakes on a little with Lighten Up, a double IPA at a still substantial 9.5% ABV. It's a bright orange colour, hazy without going full on murky. There's a lip-smacking mix of hop fruit and clean booze burn: mango, pineapple and apricot, shaken up with a generous shot of vodka. The texture is suitably heavy, and there's a warmth, but it's not hot or any way syrupy. The finish brings a very modern buzz of garlic once the tropicals have faded away. This is perfectly to style without being gimmicky or slavishly following today's unfortunate custard-and-diesel fashion.
The social media lovebombing campaign by Brennan's Brewery landed me a free handful of bottles of their first release: Original. "A family brewery, brewing with tradition" says the label, aptly putting the statement in quotes because Brennan's is no such thing, having come into existence last year and getting Dundalk Bay to make the beer. With two fingers to the style police, the label describes Original as a "velvety dark brown beer" and leaves it to you to decide whether that means porter, mild, schwarzbier or something else to you.It's a cola red colour with a smoky brown head which faded quickly. The flavour is definitely old fashioned: a hearty mix of drinking chocolate, breadcrusts and blackberry jam. These are rich and full but they stop just short of the point where they would turn busy and cloying, making for a very smooth and satisfying drinking experience. The carbonation is low, which also helps with that, and I completely forgive the poor head retention. This is a rock solid beer and I can taste elements of all the above mentioned styles in it. That said, it bears its closest resemblance to the likes of '90s classics O'Hara's Stout and Porterhouse Plain. For a new release it's thoroughly unfashionable and very much not designed with beer geeks in mind. Instead, this is a beer drinker's beer, and I wish it luck on the difficult Irish market.
Priory's summer release was a little late arriving, appearing in early September. Frocken Hell is a pale ale named after its special ingredient, locally foraged frockens, aka bilberries. It looked a pale gold when pouring but in a bulbous snifter glass there's definitely a purple-red tinge. The aroma is subtle with no hop character but a promise of juicy raisins. Then the flavour was unexpected. Here come the hops, big and bitter, scorching the palate harshly from the start. The flavour behind them is purest coconut, the calling card of Sorachi Ace hops, used here in combination with Magnum and Cascade. Only 32 IBUs says the label, advertising just how unhelpful a metric that is. This doesn't leave much room for the poor little frockens, relegated to providing a mild red wine sweetness at the tail end of proceedings. Once I got over the initial shock I settled into this. It's very much a beer for the Sorachi fans, those who care little for nuance. I'm happy to count myself among them.
Clare brewery Western Herd sent me a bottle of their Coast Road, one I was pleased to accept as their beer is seldom seen in Dublin. This is a Mosaic dry-hopped IPA and 5.5% ABV. It's a bit rough, to be honest: a somewhat soupy amber colour, its flavour beset with sharp yeast dregs. Mosaic works best on a crisp and clean base and I will once again push forward White Hag Little Fawn as an example of how to make the most of this hop. Here there's a quite harsh lime-shred bitterness and a certain vomity gastric sour quality. Clean-flavoured it ain't, and definitely not "tropical", per the label. There are certain beers which lend themselves well to this sort of minimum intervention brewing but American-style IPA isn't one. Looking back over old notes, I've had consistently good Western Herd experiences on draught but less luck with their bottles, and they're far from the only Irish brewery seemingly let down by their packaging. This one has its charms but there's too much just not technically right about it.
Amazingly it's taken this long for a beer to be named after Ireland's current favourite word: Notions. Brehon Brewhouse were first to claim it, with a saison. It's a big one at 5.8% ABV, a still consommé brown-amber colour, heavy and thick on the palate. Most of the flavours that make saison saison are present: a pepper spice, heady banana fruit and a savoury herbal bitterness. A bonus Christmassy marzipan effect rises as it warms. What it lacks is the clean and dry cracker snap which makes the style refreshing. It's a sipping saison, and a bit mucky with it. There's a certain rustic charm in the mud, however.
20 Gills is a lager from Lough Gill which has been around for a while on draught in pubs local to the brewery, finally getting its small-pack début when the smart new cans were launched. It looked worryingly like an American light lager as it poured: a pale limpid yellow topped with a crackling white head which quickly faded to nothing. My fears were wiped away with the first sip, for though is is indeed a light lager -- only 4.2% ABV after all -- it includes the high-end features of a quality German pilsner. There's a bready substance from the malt -- rounded, not thin. This supports a subtle and delicious light hop effect, dusting the palate with white pepper and fresh basil. While unmistakably noble, there's none of the harsh plastic or boiled veg thing I object to when a recipe goes overboard with the German hops. The presence of oats on the ingredients list suggests it wouldn't get by in Germany, but this fan of crisp and balanced German pilsners loved it.
The latest Rye River seasonal is a double dry-hopped IPA called The Knot. Citra, Nelson and Ekuanot are said hops, giving it a spicy and bitter aroma, all bergamot and aftershave. For a modest 6% ABV the texture is remarkably thick, presumably down to the greasy hop resins. And boy do they bring the flavour: sharp grapefruit and lime, like IPAs used to have; a more modern streak of sweet juicy pineapple and passionfruit; and an equally modern buzz of garlic oil. It's a fun combination, though somewhat let down by a different sort of savoury bitterness from the yeast murk, counteracting too much of the tropical side. Overall it's good, though a bit of a clean-up would have improved it further.
The Eight Degrees Rack 'Em Up series moves along to the Green Ball, a Belgian IPA brewed in collaboration with Siphon. It's an innocent pale orange-gold colour, smelling of squashy over-ripe fruit in a distinctly Belgian way. From that I was expecting something akin to a tripel but the the flavour starts out extremely bitter, bringing it back to the IPA realm. It's an intensely waxy sort of bitterness, making me think English hops or Styrian Goldings but the can helpfully tells us it's Vic Secret, Ekuanot and Loral. Shows what I know. The semi-rotten fruit in the aroma translates to a hot marker-pen phenol quality on tasting, adding a different sort of harshness. It's a difficult beer to make friends with but there is a certain softness and warmth in there, with notes of pear and white plum. For me the aggressive hopping gets in the way of the fruity elements. I don't think they've hit quite the right balance between bitter hopping and Belgian fruitiness.That's all I have room for today. Some of the busier Irish breweries will be getting posts to themselves in the coming weeks. Stayed tuned!
