Just a quick one

Prolific Dublin brewery Third Barrel tends to warrant big long posts as I try to keep up with everything they've put out. It's a much more manageable handful today, however.

The first, under the main brand with collaborative input from Berlin brewpub BräuGier, is a cold IPA called #Verboten. This is the first cold IPA I've featured here and you'll need to go somewhere else to learn why some nerd thinks it's genuinely innovative while a different dork considers it the same as India pale lager. Regardless, it's 7.5% ABV and a rich golden colour in the glass with a slight haze. Strata, Idaho 7 and Cryo Pop all feature in the hop charge, with a promise of juiciness to come. It smells like your basic American IPA, with more modern candy-chew sweetness favoured over citric bitterness. The body is quite heavy, fully reflecting the ABV but not the promise of cool fermentation: no lager crispness here. Mind you, going back to the label it says it's brewed like a lager and "fermented like a West Coast" suggesting, as the mouthfeel definitely does, that it's an ale after all. I am confused. The flavour offers much of what the aroma does, being fruit candy again, plus an added savoury dimension: fried onion and peppers. The very ale-ish texture gives that a long and slightly sticky finish. Overall, it's fine. I'm not wowed by this amazing new style of beer, nor by a superior American-style IPA, but it's nice. Third Barrel does IPA well, and this is one of those, no more, no less.

New for TwoSides is Hazy Train, an IPA which does what it promises: an opaque orange-yellow with a fine meringue topping. I was expecting sweet but it's very nicely balanced, delivering a tang and a spice with the juice and eschewing any vanilla or other confection. I was happily horsing through my pint at The Headline before I thought to check the ABV: it seemed light but the complexity hinted at hidden alcohol. Thankfully it's only 4.5% ABV and thereby fully horseable. I was reminded a little of the past TwoSides classic Two Yards: it has the same bright and summery freshness. On a dismal midwinter afternoon it was exactly the ray of sunshine I needed.

Dessert is breakfast: a coffee and oatmeal stout from Third Circle called A Shot in the Dark. Coffee and cereal is exactly what the aroma delivers, and the flavour is strikingly bitter. They may as well have added a couple of Gauloise to this, because it's extremely grown-up and not even remotely creamy. 5.2% ABV is low for something of this nature, but the lightness it provides accentuates the powerful roastiness. To ding it, the coffee side is a little overdone and I can't help feeling there's a good stout buried under it. Also, isn't oatmeal meant to make it smooth? It really doesn't here. That's me being persnickity, though. On its own terms, this is lovely: one of those boldly flavoured beers where the boldness is a reward in itself. If you've yet to find a coffee stout that delivers sufficiently on the coffee front, here you go.

Three quite different beers here, all showing off the talents of the Third Barrel team. Dublin's brewing scene would be a lot duller without them. I'll have a different brewer's very different take on cold IPA in a post coming soon.

Tiny rebels

Work threw up a quick day's work in Cork last month and, emerging into the twilight afterwards, my first stop was at the Rising Sons brewpub to see if they had anything new for me. Turns out they did. In fairness it had been a whole half year since my last visit, though I wasn't quite expecting to see two summer seasonals still on tap.

I salute the bravery that went into the decision to make one of them a stout. A Shot in the Dark was brewed with coffee and strikes a wonderful balance between the two flavour sets. It opens as a creamy and warming Irish coffee substitute and finishes properly dry and roasty. In the middle there's a touch of red berries which I suspect is also the coffee at work. My only criticism is that it was served far too cold to get a proper chance at appreciating it by the half pint, but then at a highly impressive 3.7% ABV it's not really meant for half measures.

There was a more traditionally summer vibe to On the Razz, a wheat beer with, obviously, raspberries in it. Real raspberries too, brewer Shane assured me, which explains why it's not especially sweet and certainly not syrupy. There is plenty of proper raspberry flavour, though, making great use of the permissive wheat beer base. Not a subtle beer, but still fun and refreshing, even on a dark winter's evening.

Two more recent offerings had to be tried as well. Nightshift is a porter, one of the fruitier sort, with that lovely lavender and rosewater effect that I always associate with The Kernel but I've met in plenty of other breweries' dark beers since. But once that taste faded there really wasn't much behind it, just a plain and lightly chocolatey porter that comes across a little too heavy for a mere 4.8% ABV. On any other day I'd be happy with it, but it pales, figuratively speaking, next to the stout.

The newest addition to the line-up was Redemption, a red ale that presented on the pale side: more a rose-gold than actually red. It's possibly the closest thing to mass-market Irish red I've tasted from a micro, having that crisp lageryness about it. There is a proper hop bite at the front but one snap and it's gone. Every new Irish red has me expecting it'll be the one to revolutionise the style and convince me that it's worthwhile. Despite the name, Redemption isn't that beer.

After those few I nipped around the corner to Bradley's in search of a couple of train beers. I was particularly intrigued to learn that the off licence had its name on a new beer, brewed by and in collaboration with Cork's brewery-restaurant Elbow Lane. It's called Meeting House and is a Vienna lager, confident in itself at 5.4% ABV. Poured into the glass it looks like a wholesome cup of carrot juice and smells, as one might expect, like kellerbier: that blend of yeasty spice, warm bread and a lightly green, white-cabbage-and-celery, German hop vibe. For flavour it's more of the same: there's probably a solid and gently caramelled Vienna lager in here, but the murk is calling all the shots: an acrid edge on an otherwise fluffy malt-forward medium-dark lager. I was sceptical about the idea of this as a winter seasonal, but it does have a more comforting heft than many a weaker, darker winter beer so it gets a pass from me.

We move out of the Rebel County, but only just, to finish: the Smoked German Ale by Killarney's Torc Brewing. Experiments with smoked malt have never been my favourite aspect of Ireland's new beer diversity, but I'm always willing to give something new a go, especially if it's claiming proper German credentials. This is 6% ABV and is as black as, well, any black beer style you care to name. It smells smoky, but in a pleasant smoky way with a touch of roast which had me immediately whispering the hopeful word: porter? The texture is certainly appropriately smooth and there's plenty of comforting milk chocolate backed up by a light green bitterness. The smoke is little more than an afterthought and I think that's very much in this beer's favour: it has the smoke-as-seasoning quality you get from beers that aren't trying to be gimmicky and certainly don't think they can take on the rauchmeisters of Franconia at doing clean smokiness well. Considered on its own merits it's a sumptuous, silky, flavoursome dark beer and among the best winter seasonals Ireland has to offer. If you're looking for something to serve with the Christmas pudding, this could be your guy.

And there's more wintery Irish beer to come later in the week.