Ireland calls

Time for another Irish beer round-up, prompted in part by the arrival last week of a new beer and a new brewing company. Andrew Murphy and Feargal Chambers (one teacher, one pharmacist) have just established Four Provinces Brewing and the first beer was launched in L. Mulligan Grocer.

The Hurler, brewed at Trouble Brewing, is intriguingly styled a "copper ale" rather than a red. I can see why too: it's a fair bit paler than most Irish reds though stained in a way most pale ales aren't. It was pouring beautifully clear as well, despite not having been through Trouble's filter. I wasn't so keen on the aroma: there's a little bit of stale grain and old hop. On tasting there's a mouthwatering punchy grapefruit bitterness up front from the extensive use of Chinook and Cascade. The guys said they were looking for an Alt-like melanoidin effect, and I can sort-of taste that in there, but the hopping leaves little room for anything else. Joyously, The Hurler comes in a tidy 4.2% ABV package and is light enough to be properly sessionable. I'd happily drink several.

To keep matters dark 'n' hoppy, the next newest Irish beer is from Blackstairs, a Wexford-based brand. There are plans for a brewery in 2015 but for now the beer is in the capable hands of Brú Brewery. The first out is a Ruby Red IPA, though I'd go so far as to say the red is a darker, browner hue than that. The smell is very strange: heavily roasted and almost meaty. The burnt flavours of dark malts are to the fore on tasting but the sharp ashen dryness is accompanied by a strong vegetal bitterness leaving an acrid sensation in the back of the mouth. There's a resinous dank centre and a faint trace of tart red berries. Flawlessly brewed, this is a very grown-up beer and while I'm sure it will have its admirers it was just a bit too stern for me. Maybe it's the disapproving gaze of the wolf on the label but I never really felt I could relax with it.

One that eluded me on my last trip north was Farmageddon India Pale. Fortunately, Richard has my back. This is 5.5% ABV and a dark gold colour, with an slightly off-putting sweaty lemon biscuit aroma. On first sip it nails its colours to the mast with an astringent lip-curling bitterness followed by a rather harsh acid burn. Oddly for a microbrewed IPA, the ingredients list maize, for head retention I'm guessing (edited to add: this is a typo, apparently. Thanks to Steve for the update). There's no sign of it in the flavour, and very little by way of grains at all, in fact. I found this beer to be all sharp angles without any mellow warmth or fruity fun. A bit like the Blackstairs above, it's definitely well made, but just too severe for my liking. Given another bottle it's possibly one to settle into, once the palate adjusts, but as a one-off sipper it's hard work.

I was a little disconcerted when I saw there was a new pale ale from Carrig Brewing. Their Pipers Pale Ale has been around barely a wet week, and now here's another session beer: Poachers Pale Ale is 4.7% ABV, just a notch higher than Pipers' 4.3. It seems a little darker, pouring out a dark gold shade with lots of enthusiastic fizz. While Pipers is all soft and fruity, this is sterner stuff, with quite an astringent bitterness: lemon peel just shading towards washing-up liquid territory. The malt element shows up more in the aroma than the flavour, adding a spongecake effect to the waft of lemons. The bit of wheat they've thrown in adds nicely to the texture making it a full-bodied beer and I can see why the label recommends hearty food as an accompaniment. I enjoyed it as much as I did the Pipers, but for different reasons: that one is all soft luscious fruit while this is invigorating bitterness. No harm having both in one's portfolio.

Kinnegar's latest, in its handsome tall bottle with minimalist labelling, is Otway, a 4.3% ABV pale ale. It's a hazy, farmhousey, pale orange and nicely light on carbonation, with the big loose bubbles of the head subsiding quickly to a thin skim. There's a light waft of spiced mandarin from the aroma plus some sweeter cereal notes. The texture is very thin, even at this modest ABV, and the flavour is as minimalist as the label, offering just some light pine resin and frankincense spicing set against crisp grain husk and finishing with a pithy bitterness. As sunny day thirst-quenchers go, this offers a more interesting flavour combination than most, but the teasing hops have me immediately hankering for something bolder.

Finally we come to Eight Degrees, a brewery which is on something of an upswing at the moment. Amber-Ella, The Full Irish and Hurricane have landed punch after delicious hoppy punch lately. Their latest offering is a white IPA (hoppy witbier) created in collaboration with London's By The Horns brewery and called (wait for it) Horn8's Nest. I caught up with it at Beerhouse where it arrived a just-off-clear pale lemony yellow. There's what I'm beginning to think of as the signature Eight Degrees aroma of fresh and spicy herbal hops. There's a wheaty softness in the texture and a generous dose of coriander though not so much evidence of the orange peel. It's probably safe to guess that the fruit has been buried under an aggressive bitterness, lightened only by zesty lemon and deepened by oily dank. The thirst-quenching power is a good as any wit you can name but this is still yet another Eight Degrees beer for connoisseurs of big hops.

I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing much slowdown in Ireland's current boom in hop-forward beers.

Time gentlemen

It's hard to believe we're already on year five of Messrs Mogg and Dredge's annual round-robin beer awards thingy, The Golden Pints. As with all regular awards programmes, it's hard work striking a balance between the same parties getting the nod every year and the pass-the-parcel effect where taking the gold is just a matter of waiting until everyone else has already had it. In past years I've tried to avoid these pitfalls but it has reached the point where it's making the whole thing awkward, so for 2013 I'm paying no attention at all to what has gone before and writing down my gut instinct answers to this year's categories.

To assist me in composing my justifications for each winner I'm joined by a large bottle of Kerkom Winterkoninkske, which has been sitting in my stash for a couple of  years now, awaiting its moment to shine. At 13% ABV it's strictly for the darkest depths of winter, and the stiff rubber cork really makes you work for your beer. When I eventually got it open, what poured out is a flat and slightly syrupy-looking dense black beer, briefly forming a loose head which disappears before I can even raise the glass. There's a savoury, autolytic quality to the aroma: the teriyaki glaze effect familiar to fans of Samuel Adams Triple Bock. It's all about chocolate in the flavour, of the top-notch milk variety, accentuated by the silky smooth texture. There's alcoholic heat and no rough edges at all, just a tiny metallic ping from a molasses taste at the finish. For all its strength and sophisticated presentation it's not actually all that complex, but it's just the liqueur substitute I'm after for some end-of-year musings.

The Golden Pint Awards 2013

Best Irish Cask Beer: Moonbeam.
A tough one to kick off. I loved Hilden Number Four when I found it at the Irish Craft Beer & Cider Festival: it's a beer that showcases the richness and depth of flavour that comes with cask dispense. But then so does Moonbeam, and this dark ale by Metalman does it with hops too. Ordering a repeat pint at the Bull & Castle is a rarity for me, but sinkable Moonbeam made me do it, so is my Irish cask choice for 2013.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Of Foam and Fury
Well duh! Galway Bay's 8.5% ABV hop explosion is the beer everyone's been talking about, because it's the beer everyone's been waiting for. I've just got over the novelty at this stage and am actually able to order other things in Galway Bay pubs, but it was a real desert island job for a while there: all the complex subtlety and all the loud brashness you need from a beer, in a single glass.

Best Irish Bottled or Canned Beer: Amber Ella
This pale ale from Eight Degrees impressed at the ICBCF in September when it made its draught début but I didn't go chasing the bottled version until it popped up on special at 57 The Headline. All that mango and mandarin  freshness is still present in the bottle and makes for a magnificently invigorating zing-filled experience.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Edelstoff
A big shout-out for Sharp's Panzerfaust here, which quietly appeared at the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival but hasn't been seen since, alas. But while that's a fun novelty, my top foreign draught experience this year was an old favourite: the inhaleably smooth Edelstoff at the Augustiner Keller in Munich last March. Great beer enhanced by excellent company in wonderful surrounds.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Quetsche
Having missed it at the Zythos beer festival I was overjoyed to find Tilquin's plum lambic afterwards in Moeder Lambic Fontainas. The way it stimulates one's salivary glands to create a genuine taste explosion brought me back to my early lambic experiences and a reminder of why this sort of beer is for me. That it's the dearest beer I've ever had (€30 a 75cl bottle) is neither here or there.

Best Collaboration Brew: Adnams Supremely Self-Conscious
This was also a contender for Best Overseas Draught, though it's hard to do any sort of meaningful comparison between it and Edelstoff. A session-strength dark ale brewed at Adnams in collaboration with Stone and served at JD Wetherspoon in the autumn. Crazily hoppy yet exceptionally drinkable, Moonbeam turned up to 11; a masterpiece.

Best Overall Beer: Quetsche
Flavour, aroma and texture are all well and good, but for its sheer physiological impact, my favourite beer of 2013 was Tilquin Quetsche.

Best Branding, Pumpclip or Label: Otterbank Brewing
I was about to troop after everyone else who nominated Partizan -- their graphics are endlessly entertaining -- but a late Irish entrant shades it for me. This Golden Pint goes to new gypsy brewing operation Otterbank, and their all-business mascot, designed by Twisted Doodles (aka Maria). I wear ties that way too.

Best Irish Brewery: Eight Degrees
Where output, innovation and distribution are concerned, Eight Degrees were first rate this year, and the quality of their products was pretty damn good too. Putting out three simultaneous winter seasonals was a ballsy move, and that deserves credit.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Kernel
2013 was the year I finally "got" hoppy Kernel beer. I don't know if they just happened to be using varieties I like when I drank them, or if it's personal lupulin threshold shift going on, but I really enjoyed the Kernel IPAs I had this year; their dark beers are as consistently brilliant as always; and then there's London Sour.

Best New Brewery Opening 2013: JW Sweetman
Technically I think this was a late 2012 opening, but it was definitely 2013 when Dublin's one and only brewpub made its presence felt. First and foremost, the product quality under brewmaster Rob has been exceptional. In a Dublin pub scene where prices appear to be spiralling insanely upwards it offers easily the best value around. And there's a real sense that the serving staff actually give a shit about the product, which was rarely the case in its previous incarnation. So three cheers for Barry, Dave, Rob and all the team at JWS, and somebody please steal their business model: Dublin needs at least three more of these.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Bull & Castle
There are many contenders for this, but I can't go past the Bull & Castle. Literally, in fact. The range of Irish beers and the turnover of specials and seasonals has been phenomenal. It remains the best venue to get a handle on what's happening on the national scene.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2013: 57 The Headline
And hot on the B&C's heels is Geoff's new venture on Leonard's Corner. A solid core of quality beers plus ample space given over to rotationals, with a suburban local feel which is conveniently in my end of town. Having only opened in October it's still finding its feet so we can expect the offer to improve even further in 2014.

Best City for Beer in Ireland: Kilkenny
Yes, I'm overlooking Dublin, Cork and Belfast -- all of which I enjoyed drinking in this year. But the most fun was a summer weekend in the Marble City, centred on the fabulous Brewery Corner pub.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
BräuKunst Live! in Munich was certainly educational, but my other half didn't attend, which immediately means it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. Borefts, then, takes the prize for beer quality, atmosphere and company -- plus a greatly enhanced food offer this year.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
They accidentally underpriced a shipment of Moor beers this year, and Alex didn't manage to snaffle all of them before I got in.

Independent Retailer of the Year: DrinkStore
I actually have to make a concerted, conscious effort to go to other off licences now. DrinkStore is there, and has everything. Job done. They're the reason I'm not giving out a Golden Pint for online retailer of the year, and if I were they'd probably get that too.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: None
Books? Sure haven't we the Internet?

Best Beer Blog or Website: Zak Avery.
Because this.

Best Beer App: Janetter
It's just a general-purpose Twitter client, but it has a mute-by-app function which means I can switch off other people's Untappd updates. This has massively enhanced the quality of my Twitter experience.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @Thirsty_Pilgrim
So many great Twitterers out there, local and international, but I'm a particular fan of the window on the world of beer revealed by Joe.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Galway Bay Brewery
A slick new website, and regular Twitter updates from both owner and head brewer. Real engagement too -- not just an endless retweeting of praise. If your business Twitter account is in the habit of retweeting other people saying nice things about you: Fucking. Stop.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Bourbon Barrel Ale with Bellingham Blue
The beer's pretty poor and the massive sweet oak totally overpowered the excellent steak it was supposed to be paired with at Alltech's reception launching their festival next February. But the acidity of the cheese really put manners on it.

A big thanks to everyone who nominated me for Golden Pints. There'll be more drinking beers and then writing down what they taste like next year.

For a limited time only

As well as meeting new beers and breweries, the other thing the Irish Craft Beer Festival is good for is the festival one-offs. With a captive market of 10,000 people and two of the four days being over 12 hours of pouring (officially -- staff afters ran into the medium-to-large hours a couple of times), it presents the perfect opportunity to throw together a special small-run batch to fill out the taps on your portable bar.

Dungarvan can always be relied upon for this kind of thing, dry-hopping or oaking the standard range and then offering a rotating sequence of one-offs on the other handpumps. You'd need to be some kind of maniac to have been at the festival all four days to catch all six of them. I was told the IPA was a re-run of the excellent one they did last year, so just the five for me.

We'll get the Session DIPA out of the way first. A neat idea: Simon wanted something big and hoppy he could drink all day, so a 3.9% ABV pale ale at 60 IBUs was born. Sadly, the execution didn't live up to the concept: while there's a hint of orange skin bitterness showing what it could have been, the rest is astringent and bleachy. Ah well. That's why the Good Lord made pilot breweries. Dungarvan Saison was my first beer on the first day. It suffered a bit from the warmth of the cask but was otherwise spot-on: nicely spicy with a dash of tangerine and an overarching refreshing tartness. The first argument I've tasted in favour of Dungarvan doing the occasional keg. The Wit IPA -- quite the fashion these days, I believe -- reminded me of the Hopfenweisse genre, and Franciscan Well's example in particular. It's weightily textured with major banana flavours but then jumps unexpectedly sideways to a sudden hop sharpness. A very pleasant glass of misdirection.

There was a lot going on in Dungarvan Amber Ale, especially impressive at just 3.9% ABV. I got spices to the fore, and unctuous oily incense in particular. This is balanced against dry tannins, plus a little diacetyl butteriness. Last year the Rye Pale Ale was developed into Mahon Falls and the Amber Ale would be my candidate recipe for further development this year. The beer I was most looking forward to, though, was Dungarvan Mild. I've never met an Irish mild before and this didn't disappoint: 3.8% ABV with a sizeable chocolate element and finishing on a gently green hop note. Simple, elegant and very drinkable. I don't want this as a festival novelty: I want it in my local every day.

The other brewery that really pushed the boat out (wait, wait: you'll see what I did there) as regards festival specials was White Gypsy. They had a genre-spanning set of four grouped under the heading "A River Runs Through It", each named for a waterway (Aha! See?) appropriate to the style. They even printed an explanatory leaflet. There was a Belgian blonde ale called Semoy: just 4.5% ABV but tasting like much more, with huge heavy banana esters up front and enough carbonation to balance it with a dry carbonic quality. Some light white pepper and hop-induced celery seasons it, and the whole is set on a lightly chalky mineral base. A lot going on considering its modest strength. I left it late to try the Danube Vienna lager, though Aoife told me it was the biggest seller at the bar. It's the appropriate shade of red amber but a little too sweet for my liking: I'd have liked more of a lagery cleanness and maybe a smidge more hopping.

I heard few good words about the English-style bitter Trent, of which Jamie pulled me a half early on Friday afternoon and I tasted on a clean palate, but I really liked it. It poured a hazy gold and smelled sulphourously Burtonish. This sat next to an assertive waxy oily bitterness which coated my palate and left me still tasting it as I wandered around the hall with an empty glass looking for my next drink. The nearest thing to that punchy bitterness I've encountered was in the likes of Timothy Taylor's Landlord. Gota Baltic Porter was the last of the set, billed as a tribute to Carnegie Porter, though even lower of ABV at 4.8%. This comes through in the texture as it's quite light-bodied for the style, though with the appropriate amount of liquorice and coffee. Its dryness lends it an air of schwarzbier, but really it's just a tasty black lager and it's best not to dwell on the specifics of style.

The beer I probably heard most about in dispatches was Eight Degrees's Amber Ella, a warm-fermented successor to last year's show-stopper Ochtoberfest. It's a similarly luxurious dark amber colour and has a heady peach/plum aroma. We swap lager lightness of touch for an aley full body and the flavour is all tangerine tang with a lacing of sharper pine resin. Just like the Ochtoberfest I'd expect this to sell out fast when it appears in bottles.

We conclude this tour at the Trouble Brewing stand. The headline here was Ormeau Dark, third in a sequence of homebrew competition winners scaled up to commercial level. Technically it's an oatmeal stout: a style I've never been much of a cheerleader for but this captures all the smoothness of oatmeal with none of the putty flavour I tend to dislike. The hopping is very generous giving it an air of urinal cake on the nose but transforming into a gorgeous combination of dark fruit, marzipan and rosewater on tasting, plus some lovely creamy chocolate. The other headline was a collaboration Trouble did with Galway Hooker. Sadly they couldn't find a better name for the result than Troubled Hooker. It's a 6.3% ABV pale ale and a deep orange in colour. Bitterness is relatively low and instead the hops contribute a sweet and perfumey character. Combined with the heavy texture it narrowly avoids soupiness. Interesting as a festival one-off experiment but nobody's go-to beer. Lastly there was Kill Lager: not strictly speaking a Trouble beer as it's brewed for, and by, Dublin's Dice Bar on the Trouble kit and normally badged as "Sparta Pils". It's pale gold and lacks much by way of malt or hops, dominated instead by a major apple flavour. Acetaldehyde? Maybe, but I wouldn't count it as an off-flavour: it's actually quite refreshing in this.

That's it for this round of the festival floor, but if you fancy making a bit of cash while helping the Trouble guys make more beer, you can do that here.