A long way from summer

Summer 2022 saw festivals return to these parts. One that I didn't get to attend was The Big Grill in Dublin. The Porterhouse, unusually for them, had two special edition beers made for outdoor warm-weather drinking. The leftovers went on tap at their Temple Bar pub afterwards, where I missed the passionfruit IPA, but I did get to have a pint of Porterhouse Lime Lager.

"What is it," I asked. 
"It's a lime lager," the barman's reply. Fair enough.

I figured they had simply whacked some syrup into one of the house pale lagers, and maybe they did, but the result was much better than expected. The soft texture is that of a very good Helles, while the crisp cracker base flavour is quality pilsner. Except, instead of grassy noble hops on top, there's a subtle and real-tasting essence of lime. It works wonderfully to boost the beer's refreshment power, which I'm sure was the point in the first place. I bet it went down a storm in Herbert Park last August.

And so we tear pages off the calendar and go Around the Clock. The Porterhouse's huge annual winter stout is in its fourth iteration in 2022. I haven't enjoyed any of them as much as the first one, but maybe this is the year they nail it again.

AtC4 is the usual 12% ABV and of course the brewery's sister distillery, Dingle, provides the ex-bourbon barrels. There's not much beyond sweet bourbon-y vanilla in the aroma, and the flavour certainly puts that front and centre, including a big dose of raw wood. There's some nice complexity alongside it, however, bringing black pepper, dark chocolate, vegetal hops and a certain savoury soy-sauce umami. It works, overall, but as in previous recent years it still tastes a bit raw and unfinished. I'll be picking up another to see how it mellows.

The brewery doesn't have the busiest of turnover as regards new beers, but it does seem that careful consideration goes into what they design and release.

Up all night

We don't get new beers from The Porterhouse very often. Since the last big rebrand a couple of years ago the only thing of note was their Around the Clock winter imperial stout, so it was a pleasant surprise to find another imperial one arriving mid-year: SLVRSKIN, a 13% ABV job with added coffee and aged in bourbon barrels. The description mentions that it gets a 24-hour boil so I suspect that the base recipe here is Around the Clock itself, or a close relation. No harm.

It pours as thickly as one might expect, a dense black colour with a dark tan topping. There's a lot of bourbon in the aroma, as well as a slightly off-putting autolytic umami tang. The predominant flavour is alcohol, showing all the heat of a spirit or fortified wine without really bringing much flavour complexity with it. Chocolate and coffee are mere traces, and there's surprisingly little sign of the bourbon, given how strongly it smells of it. 

A full day of boiling followed by 9 months of maturation means this wasn't a simple process to create but the effort hasn't really paid off, in my opinion. The fundamentals of imperial stout are missing, though I couldn't say whether that's the fault of the base recipe, the extra enhancements, or my palate. Either way, it was a disappointing experience. The beer improves a little as it warms but never quite makes it all the way to what I wanted it to be.

Pinta this, Pinta that

My experience of Poland's Pinta brand, from previous visits to the country, was of a stolidly reliable producer, a veteran of the 1990s microbrewery boom and still turning out decent if unadventurous beers. I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that they've adapted to current market conditions and are now making more diverse and trend-chasing products. I discovered this by buying two of them.

That they do hazy IPAs in colourful cans probably isn't very noteworthy in itself, but this particular one, uses a hop I hadn't heard of before: Pacific Sunrise from New Zealand, to the tune of 20g per litre. With a cheery optimism they've called it Enjoy Pacific Sunrise and it's 6.5% ABV. The visuals are certainly on-trend: a pale orange-yellow emulsion, the colour of beaten egg, with a loose white froth on top. For all the massive hop charge, the aroma isn't especially exciting, offering merely a nod to some non-specific tropical fruits. It follows that there's no taste explosion in the flavour either. It's quite sweet, with tinned-fruit-in-syrup vibes rather than anything fresh and juicy. The texture is spot-on though, so if you come to hazy IPA for the creamy smoothness rather than the hop impact, then this is for you. Mercifully, there's nothing unpleasant taking up the space where a bigger hop flavour might be: it's clean and, if not quaffable and refreshing, at least sippable and enjoyable. Pinta's look may have changed, but I detect a certain caution in how the beer has been put together. And I'm not really any the wiser on the merits of Pacific Sunrise.

Something quite different but equally fashionable follows: a big imperial stout with added coffee and maple syrup, called Risfactor. It's a handsome devil: oily black with a firm beige head of tight foam. Textbook for a 10%-er. There's a decent quantity of freshly roasted coffee in the aroma but it doesn't smell like a novelty beer. And it doesn't taste like one either. There's a light touch on the add-ons, to the point where the coffee element could easily be from delicious roasted malt, and there's nothing I could point to in the considerable dense sweetness that's specifically maple syrup. Both of the novelty ingredients integrate fully into the proper flavour of good imperial stout -- they're enhancements, like seasoning. But wait, there's more. What really propelled this one into the upper echelons is the aftertaste. Once you get past the dessert effects there's a remarkably fresh-tasting grassy green bitterness providing what I guess counts for balance in such a palate-thumper. In this one, the brewery's years of skills really shines through. Pinta is of a similar vintage to Dublin's Porterhouse and, for me, this is their Around the Clock.

There are more versions of Risfactor out there. I hope we'll see them in here.

Enough already

When Boak & Bailey kindly awarded me their 2020 Golden Pint for best beer blogger, the citation mentioned my "business-as-usual, non-plague-related content". So shall it be with my own Golden Pint nominations. I'll try and keep the phew-what-a-year, hashtag-unprecedented clichés to a minimum as I go through the categories below. That said, when picking a sipper to assist with my musings I couldn't go past Whiplash's recent offering Let.It.End.

The brewery describes it as a "futuristic stout", and if their prediction is correct, stouts of the future will be made with maple syrup and... French toast? Huh? It's a dense dark brown in the glass, and is that an eggy yellow hint to the head? The French toast thing has thrown me somewhat. As befits 11% ABV, and more, it is extremely dense: one of those beers where pulling it from glass to mouth takes a concerted effort. Although coffee isn't an ingredient there's a very strong coffee component in the flavour, with all the gritty, bitter and concentrated roast of a ristretto. Maple syrup, another ingredient, follows that to bring a contrasting sweetness, one which is just as concentrated and intense. I wouldn't describe this as complex: it's really just two extreme flavours butting up against each other. It's sticky and slow going, though the pay-off is a gradually growing warmth, which was the part I enjoyed most. Otherwise, it was just too much for me. Luckily I had plenty to distract myself with while sipping through it, what with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2020

Best Irish Cask Beer: DOT Barrel Aged Imperial Saison
I'm not aware of this beaut making it out into the world in any other form. Maybe it was the tail end of something. Anyway, I caught this late at the Franciscan Well winter festival in February and was very glad not to have missed it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Galway Bay Märzen To the Fire
Seems like a simple sort of plan: brew your own clone of world classic Schlenkerla Märzen and stick it on draught in your chain of pubs. I know just enough about brewing to appreciate how tall an order that is, but this one nailed it. Drinking my first pint of it at The Black Sheep on 20th February I was looking forward to many more throughout the year. Just as well, then, that it translated perfectly to cans.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Porterhouse Around the Clock
This field is getting smaller, though is probably now the purview of high-end cork-and-cage or waxed-capped bottles. The Porterhouse's new imperial stout is the latter, but don't hold that against it. Judicious use of barrel-ageing courtesy of the brewery's sister distillery has created a luxurious yet balanced masterpiece.

Best Irish Canned Beer: DOT Barrel Aged Session IPA
More barrels, but a very different offer to the last one. This was an exclusive to Redmond's of Ranelagh back in the late summer. Under 4% ABV but brimming with honey, dessert wine and white pepper complexities. If Redmond's still has any in the fridges, grab it.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Jopen Maria Magdalena
The little bit of travelling I did at the start of the year landed me this bargain black IPA. Its mix of citrus zest and tarry bitterness is everything the style should be.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hop City 8th Sin
Another dark one, this time a Canadian dark lager, from the makers of Moosehead. My expectations were low, but I discovered something akin to a superb Czech dark lager, a style we see very little of in these parts. This one is readily available in Irish off licences and is not to be overlooked.

Best Collaboration Brew: DOT / Brú Well-Rounded Individual
There was no shortage of barrel-aged loveliness from DOT this year, and this one on which Brú collaborated delivered the mellow maturity of barrelling at its best.

Best Overall Beer: Porterhouse Around the Clock
Of the seven contenders, the one which comes with a memory of being instantly wowed from the first sip was The Porterhouse's new imperial stout.

Best Branding: Hopfully
The Brazilian gypsy brewers moved operations to Metalman in Waterford this year and gave their branding a makeover. They had always been very artistic in their presentation, and the new style with clean and classy background colours makes their cans stand out even more. There were some lovely beers inside those cans too.

Best Pump Clip: O Brother: Bat Country
A recent one, but still a deserving winner. And while I didn't actually see it clipped to a pump, I did drink the beer via a draught growler and the badge was on display on the menu screens at UnderDog when I bought it, so it counts. Adam West and Hunter S. Thompson getting pulled over by the cops is, for me, a perfect mash-up of pop-culture and literary silliness.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Galway Hooker Cherry
Another serious take on a daft idea. I didn't know Popeye needed a gritty reboot, but here we are. Shout out also to Whiplash's Jupiters, which made me smile every time I took a can out of the fridge. What are those two up to?

Best Irish Brewery: DOT
Nobody has been quite so busy this year as the barrel wizard of Dolphin's Barn. Going beer shopping was the main reason I left the house at all, and DOT's exclusives with various off licences had me biking all over the city. I'm ending 2020 with a vast array of DOT ticks under my belt and a couple more cans still waiting to be opened in the New Year. In this season of goodwill I'll ignore the samey IPAs and concentrate on all the barrel-aged blended class that DOT has provided. If you want in on the ground level, you can find details of their barrel adoption programme in the link above.

Best Overseas Brewery: Oskar Blues
I owe at least some nod to our friends in the States here, having enjoyed several run-throughs of imported cans courtesy of the likes of Cigar City, Ska, Odell and of course Sierra Nevada. Of all of them, I think Oskar Blues had the highest hit-rate of good ones, so while this is largely an award for supply quantity and variety, there is of course a quality element too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2020: Otterbank
Does a brand that's been going for several years taking over an existing premises count as a new brewery opening? I'm saying yes, mostly to make things easier for myself. The first beer has been getting some great press, though it wasn't for me, while the second and third were legitimate hits. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens when Declan really gets into his stride.

Pub/Bar of the Year: 57 the Headline
The resilience shown by Geoff and Máire in an impossibly tough year was nothing short of astounding. When the pubs were shut, The Headline became one of my go-to off licences and kept me well supplied with new beers. And for the brief time during the summer that indoor dining was possible, a couple of dinners here provided a welcome feel of normality.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2020: Crew
What kind of lunatics open a new brewpub in a year like this? Crew in Limerick did, and paying a visit is high on my list of priorities when that becomes an option.

Beer Festival of the Year: Franciscan Well Cask & Winter Ales
I made it to one beer festival this year -- go me! So Franciscan Well kinda wins this by default. I did have a nice time, though. A special mention goes to The White Hag for organising two highly enjoyable online events.

Supermarket of the Year: Aldi
When I started working from home, Rheinbacher quickly became my daily staple. The fortnightly restock at Aldi Terenure became part of that routine. Thanks for keeping the cans consistently in stock, folks.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Mace SCR
In the depths of the first lockdown I had to make a few emergency trips to the office, my route taking me past this unassuming cornershop. It was such a relief to be able to stop, stock up on new beers and continue on my way. Molloy's on Francis Street also provided stellar service of this kind.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
This isn't a category I would usually trouble myself with much, but in 2020 the market for beer delivery expanded hugely. The service from Craft Central was consistently brilliant, and what really swung it for me was the click-and-collect option which was instrumental in letting me stay on top of new Irish beer releases. 

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Brussels Beer City by Eoghan Walsh
As usual there was only one contender for this, but it's a worthy winner -- a fascinating delve into the chequered history of Brussels brewing, from medieval lambic to the now-vanquished industrial lager giants, to the city's modern beer renaissance.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Shut Up About Barclay Perkins
The unsinkable Ronald Pattinson kept the lights on all year, every day bringing something new about stout or war or sugar or all three, with a bonus sprinkling of naughty vicars.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @RuariOToole
It was very much the year for weird and grim humour, and Ruari's Twitter provided plenty of it. Much appreciated, my man. Dudes rock!

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Whiplash
They're Instagrammier than I would like, but the information on their beers was always there when I looked for it.


I think that's quite enough of 2020, don't you? We start anew with hope in our hearts and mRNA in our veins, shortly.

All the fancy stuff

You might be thinking of getting a few posh beers for the upcoming Christmas break. Here's some of what the high end looks like in Ireland 2020.

A collaboration starts us off: Brú and DOT got together to create Legna Dearg, a Bretted rye ale aged in Amarone and American oak barrels. On a day I was feeling flush, a 375ml bottle set me back €14. It's a muddy red-brown in the glass and there's bags of barnyard in the aroma, as well as the classy balsamic vinegar effect you get in Flanders red. So far, so Belgian. There must have been a fair amount of wine left in the barrel when the beer went in because there's a serious grape ale characteristic from the start: downright juicy. All the funk follows, offering a pleasant contrast to the fruit, and there's a lambic-like waxy bitterness in the finish. A smack of sweet red grape kisses you goodbye. Where I'd ding this is the weight: it's 8.2% ABV and thick with it, so it lacks that clean briskness of Flanders red. Still, this is very enjoyable sipping, and the effort that went in to creating it pays off. I'd say it needs some further ageing to clean it up properly.

The Porterhouse has been calling its various imperial stouts "Celebration" since 2006. They've abandoned the convention this year in favour of Around the Clock. The name alludes to how this 12%-er was brewed for 24 hours before ageing 180 days in ex- sherry and bourbon whiskey barrels from Porterhouse's sister distillery, Dingle. It smells very spirituous, though not of whiskey -- something richer; rum, perhaps. There's a bite of bitter liquorice too. Richness follows into the flavour, and I can't shake that rummy sensation, now with added raisin, chocolate, black cherry and vanilla. I went into this expecting something hot and serious but it's a fun dessert, though a very classy one at that. Strictly no silliness or syrups. Of course stout is what the Porterhouse excels at. Those chops have been very much earned over almost a quarter of a century with the same guy at the helm, but this is some of their best work, and at under the €6 mark is genuinely good value.

We conclude with this year's large-format bottle from Rye River, a bourbon barrel quadrupel of 13% ABV and €20 called The Herd. I confess I expected this to be several headaches lined up in a glass, but while it meets the description perfectly, it's smooth and balanced without a trace of harshness. There's the luscious warming raisin of an Oloroso sherry plus honey and fruitcake notes like a pot-stilled whiskey. And yes, the alcohol is that pronounced, but it's also integrated into the flavour, not an add-on as it can sometimes seem with strong and barrel-aged beers. Although it's sweet, there's a herbal, aniseed bitterness which emerges as it warms and helps balance things. At various stages, easing my way through the bottle, I also got dark chocolate, cherry jam and coconut. I should mention the beautiful clear ruby colour too, like a glass of fine port. This is a pure class act and perfect winter sipping, not just for the beer world's extremophiles.

There's rarely a shortage of fancy spendy beers on the shelves in Ireland, though finding a local one can be tough. All three of these are worthy of a place among the best of international.