Changing tides

"Imports" is our designated topic for The Session this month, set by our taskmaster Christopher at I Think About Beer. He asks a very specific question of us non-American participants: "How are American beers (imported into YOUR country) viewed? What is their place in your market?" and I think now is a particularly interesting time to answer it.

When I started taking a serious interest in beer, the speciality and niche end of the market in Ireland consisted almost entirely of British and Belgian imports. You'd get a few central and eastern European lagers and wheat beers bundled in with them, but Britain and Belgium was where it was at, on the off licence shelves, in the pub fridges and the tiny handful of online outlets.

I reviewed my first American beer, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, in my fifth ever post in 2005. It didn't revolutionise my outlook on beer. Neither did the second, Samuel Adams Boston Lager, over a year later. It wasn't really until 2007 and the point where I joined in with Dublin's nascent beer geek and homebrew community that the significance of American beer came to my consciousness, and that centred on one beer: Goose Island IPA.

Goose Island was, by all accounts, the last word in hoppiness. It was strictly not to be touched until the end of a session as it would obliterate the palate and render all subsequent beers tasteless. From then on American beers, and American hops, were the focus of the beer discourse. There were more Sierra Nevadas to be consumed, including their since-retired IPA; there was Brooklyn, Anchor and Rogue for the non-lovers of hops, and Harpoon, Flying Dog and Great Divide for the growing number of drinkers who looked first for the letters "IPA" on the label.

And then the deluge. Younger importers began putting the American selection front and centre in their ranges, and draught American beers started to arrive. This was also just as the independent Irish scene began its first serious growth spurt and I noted with amusement when one distributor who had built an empire on sturdy traditional Belgian and English ales took one token brewery from each of America and Ireland: by 2012 you looked silly without them.

Availability has waxed and waned over the years. Great Divide and Dogfish Head were both missed when they stopped being available, but life went on. Things seem to be on a bit of an upswing at the moment, largely led by Grand Cru Beers who push their Californian and Coloradan brands heavily. It was Grand Cru who took the decision to drop Goose Island IPA from their portfolio, citing a decline in quality and tanking brand equity as the reason. Happily they still carry Founder's All Day IPA which I consider to be a perfectly adequate replacement.

While there always seems to be new American beer to try, there's also less reason to. That hoppy kick which was once the sole preserve of US imports can now be found in abundance in Irish and British beer. I'm not sure why anyone who fixates on freshness would even bother with something that's travelled across the Atlantic, refrigerated containers notwithstanding.

Maybe the imported Americans don't generate the same buzz as they used to, but the hand-transported rarities still do. Even non-whaley commodities like Pliny the Elder get reverentially Instagrammed when someone brings one back. I'm making my own contribution to the buzz around American suitcase beer with this bottle of Captain Lawrence Frost Monster imperial stout which I acquired in New York last September and which spent the winter in my attic. It was quite elderly when I got to it, bottled in late 2015 according to the printing on the neck. No ABV is stated but research tells me it's a stonking 12%.

It smells... rich. There's a decadent chocolate truffle sweetness in an aroma that whispers words like "luxury", "sumptuous" and "calorific". While the chocolate continues in the flavour, there's also a big bitter green hop whack, strangely fresh for a beer that's been sitting, sequentially, on a shelf in lower Manhattan and a floor in west Dublin. The silky truffle and the twangy veg perform a duet all the way down, with the chocolate a little bit louder but still balanced nicely. The alcohol provides percussion: a strong hot back beat, keeping the whole performance grounded, never losing sight of the fact that Big Strong Stout is what this one is all about. It's a superb rendition, exactly what is demanded of a beast of a beer like this.

One of my grievances with modern beer hype is that so much gets left behind, and for no good reason. I had never heard of this beer before I bought it, yet it's absolutely world class. For anyone considering standing in line outside an American brewery in the hope of bagging something special to show off with back home, check the local liquor store first: there might be something there that'll save you an hour or two.

Stainless and hoses

New York brewery Community Beer Works seems to be conducting a bit of market research via this month's Session. The somewhat needy theme is Are Breweries Your Friends? posing questions about whether we like breweries engaging with their customers on social media, and asking for examples of breweries who do it well. It's all very unbeery if I'm honest, and I suppose that's what I'll use this platform to say: if you're a brewery with a social media presence tell us about the beer. There's a huge difference in the way social media marketing works compared to other forms: you're not just throwing a message out there hoping it'll stick, like you might with a poster or TV spot. The people who see your social media content have made an active decision to follow it; we want the details. Tell us about the recipes, what's currently in the bright tanks, Vine the bottling line. The pictures on your feed should be full of stainless and hoses. If there's nothing but professionally taken product shots, hackneyed inspirational quotes or, worst of all, repetition of messages from people who've tagged you in to their comment about how great your beer is, rip up the strategy and start again because you're boring your audience.

I make no comment on the social media nous of the breweries whose beers I'm covering today. These draught specials are all stragglers from the festive preliminaries that got left out of my big Christmas Eve Irish beer round-up.

The first is JW Sweetman Belgian Blonde, the latest seasonal from the central Dublin brewpub. It was a served a clear pale gold colour, giving off a gentle aroma of lightly spiced mango concentrate. First sip reveals it to be quite heavy and warming but this is neatly offset by a sprightly fizz. The foretaste is full-on Belgian: hot esters and sticky honey putting me immediately in mind of Leffe Blonde, a beer I quite like in keg form. And like Leffe Blonde this is also 6.6% ABV and that was enough for me to check with the brewer that it isn't a cheeky rebadge. It isn't, he was friendly enough to confirm. An oatcake crunch finishes the flavour on a sweet grainy note. It's not terribly exiciting, but it is a well-made homage to the medium-strong Belgian blonde style, and as a variation on the winter warmer makes quite a refreshing change.

Galway Bay has a matching pair of winter seasonals on the go, available as a boxed set of 375ml bottles for an eye-watering €16. Fortunately it's rather cheaper on draught in the pubs and I caught up with both in Against The Grain.

Space Suit is a sour amber ale, mixing up Lactobacillus, Brettanomyces and Galaxy Hops for a nasty-and-nice combination of power moves, though the ABV is a modest 5.5%. The sourness and the citrus both arrive simultaneously in a big way, and the combination works incredibly well: you get a juicebox of refreshing tropical fruit and then an acetic scrub on your teeth afterwards. Unfortunately it has the same Achilles' heel as its predecessor The Eternalist: the murk. Its appearance is a muddy brown and there's massive savoury interference from the yeast over what deserve to be pin-bright sour and hop flavours.

The counterpart is Diving Bell, a "salted caramel" scotch ale at 9% ABV. It's surprisingly light-bodied for something so strong and malt-driven, which is very much in its favour. There's all the flavour of toffee with none of the density or cloying sweetness and then a cleansing tang at the front of the palate from the salt. This combination makes it extremely moreish in a way that beers of this type so rarely are. I managed to limit myself to one glass but I could see myself getting dangerously merry on this stuff.

And lastly to Wigwam, the latest bar in the Bodytonic chain, a refurbishment of the grotty-but-loved Twisted Pepper into a much more grown-up food, booze and coffee outlet. They've made the innovation of putting the taps on an underback behind the bar which is a great idea, opening up the counter space and banishing the barman-in-a-cage effect that Against the Grain suffers from in particular. Diageo and C&C dominate the content but there's Founder's All Day IPA and a selection from Rascal's, who act as surrogate brewery to Bodytonic's beermaking offshoot Brewtonic. And there was a new limited edition beer from them: Hoffmann's.

"Belgian Ale 5% ABV" is all I had to work with on being presented with a handled mug of murky amber beer -- it could be anything. On tasting... oh! Sour! I wasn't expecting that. It's not excessively tart but there's combination of funk and tang that acts as the centrepiece of the flavour. Behind it there's a sweet summer fruit quality for a kind of balsamic strawberry effect, with enough unattenuated body to give it a satisfying heft and smoothness. The finish is a rounded cereal chewiness, like a typical Belgian brown ale. I'm still no wiser as to what it's meant to be, except... wait a minute: isn't "Hoffmann's" the name that Waterford Brewery used to give to the beer composed of all their batches of other things that went wrong? Is that what we have here: something or somethings that didn't pass quality control and got rebadged as something else for sale? It is an acceptably drinkable beer, however, so I'm not criticising if that's what's happened. But more information would be nice, perhaps on social media. That's what a friendly brewer would do.

Bakewell start

On the eve of Alltech Brews & Food 2015, Grand Cru beers held a meet-the-brewer session with Thornbridge in Against the Grain, tasting the classic line-up of Chiron, Jaipur and St Petersberg and finishing on the 10th anniversary special Jaipur X. This monster is 10% ABV but really doesn't taste it, being the same innocent pale gold as Jaipur and exhibiting the same waxy, honey flavours as the basic edition, just  a small bit more of them. I've never been much of a Jaipur enthusiast, but I think the profile works better in a mellower, stronger beer, like this.

Two other special editions were on: Eroica (left) is a 4.3% ABV golden ale with little by way of hop character. Some might call it simple and sessionable; I'm afraid I'll have to file it under watery and boring. The complete opposite can be said of Jehanne, an amber-brown bière de garde of 7.4% ABV and laying on that alcohol in hot and heavy fashion. The dominant flavour is green apples (acetylaldehyde, if my beer chemistry is correct) which I found drowning out any subtleties on offer. Still, it's nicely smooth and warming from the keg and a full pint (cheers Wally!) sent me home glowing.

And so to the main event. Alongside the Irish breweries, Alltech attracted a wide international selection from brewers brought in by their local distributor and those present off their own bat. From the Thornbridge end of the Grand Cru section I snaffled a taste of AM:PM, a 4.3%-er in the must-brew style of the moment, "session IPA". This is rose-gold in colour and has a lovely rich golden syrup aroma, with a matching weighty English ale body. The hops offer little more than a pleasant buzz, with a faint metallic edge. It's not boring and certainly not unpleasant, but it had its work cut out sharing space with the genre-defining Founders All Day IPA and didn't quite match up to it, in my estimation at least.

And that's where it started. There's more to come from Alltech Dublin 2015 next week. A lot more.

A session session

The current American fashion for session IPA has started making itself felt in earnest in Ireland now. Following on the heels of Founders's exemplary All Day IPA, a slew of new ones from familiar US breweries. Getting through them in a single session seemed to be the sensible approach. I chose a drinking order, entirely subjectively, of ascending brewery trustworthiness.

First up is Easy IPA from east-coasters Flying Dog. "Bright" is the initial impression here: a white Ralph Steadman label, behind which I found a clear, sparkling, pale yellow beer of 4.7% ABV. The aroma is sharp citrus, lemons in particular, though there's a thicker resin element and even a little crystal malt toffee. The texture is quite thin and the carbonation soft, which I guess is part of the spec: very easy drinking. Again in keeping with the style, the flavour is assertive without being overpowering, mouthwatering mandarin to begin, though turning a slightly metallic harsh bitterness towards the end and finishing abruptly. A perfectly passable beer and not something I'd turn my nose up at in a casual drinking situation, but I didn't feel any impulse to reach for another.

Sierra Nevada, if my beer history is correct, was the world's first brewery to learn what hops are for, so I had high expectations for Nooner, their new 4.8% ABV session IPA. It's a richer gold than Flying Dog's Easy though offers much less aroma, and what's there is a spiky, grassy Germanic vibe. It's surprisingly lacking in the flavour department, laying on lots of acidic bitterness over stale biscuit malt. There's maybe a hint of citrus, and more of that grassy spice, but this really reminded me far more of a pale German bock than a Californian IPA. The texture is spot-on, so there's that, but I'm really not feeling the love for Nooner.

Which brings us to Loose Leaf, by Colorado's Odell, a brewery which turns out consistently brilliant hop-forward beers. This has the lowest ABV of the set, at 4.5%, and is another pale one. The obligatory texture assessment is once again positive: it's very softly carbonated and the head is almost fluffy. Of hop fireworks, however, there are none. Perhaps some watermelon crispness and lemon sherbet candy, but the heart of this beer is just water. An uncharacteristic false move by Odell here.

And just for purposes of calibration I had a Founder's All Day IPA on standby to finish the tasting. It still has the beatings of all of these imitators -- strongly bitter, full bodied and with all the complexity of beers far stronger than its 4.7% ABV. There's no sense that it's in any way compromised, that it's a trade-down from "real" IPA. I think that a self-effacing approach to session IPA may be some of what's behind how the other breweries missed a beat on the style.

Found art

Three pale ales from Michigan brewery Founders today. I'll get to the more usual styles, but first up is something called All Day IPA: 4.7% ABV and proclaiming itself a "session ale". I'm immediately wondering what the point of this is, as distinct from the regular non-India pale ale. It's a darkish gold colour and smells heavenly: ripe mango, pine resin and a little bit of toffee. The flavour is quite straightforward, showing a light acrid dankness, fading to grapefruit and then tailing off, leaving a dry and slightly metallic green aftertaste. There's a certain wateryness behind the hop wallop which I guess helps to take the sharper edges off and which, coupled with the light carbonation, makes it sessionable. I could certainly drink this all day. But I still don't know what makes it an IPA rather than a non-I PA. We have to go deeper.

Founders Pale Ale is paler, for one thing, and also a fair whack stronger at 5.4% ABV. The aroma is quite minerally and little carbonic, with no sign of the dry hopping. Nicely smooth again, but the flavours are extremely muted, showing just a little bit of waxy bitterness and candy caramel. It doesn't stack up at all well next to the All Day IPA and I really can't see why they make it, when they can turn out an infinitely better pale ale at a lower strength.

Could it be that the Centennial IPA is just as pointless at a higher strength point? It's a familiar orangey gold and the aroma speaks more of toffee than hops. While it's certainly sweet and sugary, there's a decent hit of pith and peach amongst the toffee, and even some friendlier pineapple high notes. Best of all there's no harshness, no strong bitterness: just enough to balance the big malt. It's damn drinkable for 7.2% ABV, but in terms of flavour intensity it's not a patch on the All Day IPA: more a slow smoulderer than a quick exciting fling.

Founders, it seems, appear to reckon that as long as it's hoppy enough it's fair game to call it an IPA. This backseat brewery manager would be badging the All Day as a pale ale, and probably abandoning the Centennial hops for something more complex in the IPA. And it would definitely be a case of All Day in my back seat going home from work each evening.