Postmodern postscript

I thought I had finished my west-to-east Dublin taproom odyssey with Urban Brewing, as reported on Monday. But having completed the blackboard there it occurred to me that Dublin does have another drink-in brewery further east still, one which has been turning out new beers almost as rapidly as the others. We set a course, then, for BrewDog Outpost Dublin.

There were three beers from the in-house kit available and I started with Dem Beets, described as a "beetroot sour" and 5.2% ABV. It's clear and purple, with a lemonade aroma which reminded me immediately of Hopfully's excellent and much-missed beetroot saison, Beetjuice. The beetroot is present but mild, bringing a touch of damp earthiness to proceedings. While there's no real sourness to speak of, it's zingy and refreshing so gets the job done.

To follow, an American-style pale ale called Camarillo Brillo. It's on the strong side for pale ale in Ireland at 5.1% ABV but is mellow and easy drinking, quite a gear change from Urban's waves of hop napalm. This is softly textured, with medium bitterness and touches of orange sherbet sweetness. It works on the level of a reliable house beer rather than a one-off special edition, but is decently drinkable regardless.

It's back to the more unusual beer styles next with a roggenbier called Seth, Joe & Co, which almost works as a pun. For some reason I expected it to be stronger than 4.7% ABV but that's where we're at, and a turbid ochre colour to boot. The next surprise was an aroma of bitter dark chocolate, while the flavour melds rye's spicy grass with an amber ale's sweetness, including milk chocolate and orange essence. I'm sure the hops are involved in contributing both bitterness and citrus elements too, but it was hard to pick them out in the rest of the blend. It's fun and characterful and not at all as serious and difficult as I feared it would be. Roggenbier doesn't have to be harsh; a new lesson for me there.

I couldn't resist adding one beer from headquarters to the list, namely Farmhouse Cartel, a bière de garde that's 10% ABV and aged in tequila barrels, just like the French farmers don't make them. It's bright orange in the glass and smells powerfully strong and sweet, giving it liqueur vibes more than beer. And that's how it tastes too: Cointreau, Malibu and other sticky bottles from the back of the cupboard. It's a tragic irony that in trying to make a classy tequila beer they've ended up with a lot in common with Desperados. The dry and spiced side of farmhouse character is completely missing in this hot mess of a thing. I'm not keen on the name trading on cheap Mexican stereotypes either. BrewDog gonna BrewDog, I guess. At least I can't blame the brewers in Dublin for it.

And that is indeed the end of the tour and a cross-section of what Dublin's taprooms had on offer over a couple of weeks during the summer of 2022.

And for the hop-dodgers...

It's round two of the Boxtravaganza selection today. As with the beer that kicked off yesterday's pale ales, the first is a low-strength one at just 3.5% ABV. It's from Horizont in Budapest, their Berliner Weisse with Guava & Passionfruit. From the brewer's introduction on the festival live feed I know it's a full 20% fruit. I'm not surprised there's a lot of fruit in this opaque custard-looking job. The initial aroma is a slightly alarming farmyard funk, settling after a moment to proper tropical juice. And tropical juice is largely how it tastes. The base sour beer is present to an extent, enough to stop it from turning cloying but not enough to give it a proper edge. On balance, yes: it delivers what one might expect from the description. It's not especially complex or exciting though. They have a whole series of these and I suspect they're more interesting to formulate and brew than they are to drink.

A palate cleanser was welcome after that and next in the official drinking order was 310 a blonde ale from Santa Monica Brew Works. This is 4.8% ABV, a perfect clear golden and single-hopped with Summit. The aroma is atypical: dry cracker, pencil shavings and honeydew melon. What? That dryness takes up most of the flavour, scorching my palate a little. A sweetness follows that, more sticky honey and lemonade than cool refreshing fruit, accentuated by low carbonation. I found this quite difficult, which I'm sure is not the intention behind it. The brewer said its origins were as an alternative to Budweiser and it seriously lacks that beer's cleanness and ease of drinking. My palate got the scrub it needed, but I was very unthrilled by this.

Today's blueberry beer is Outdoorsman, a "triple fruited sour" from Gipsy Hill featuring blueberries and bananas. Unsurprisingly it's very smoothie-looking: an opaque beetroot purple. And like yesterday's muffin thingy, the aroma is spicy first, in a Christmassy way. There's a properly sharp sourness lurking behind this, which is promising. Sure enough the texture is light and the tang is there in the finish, clean and tart, though tasting more of cherries than blueberries to me. Before this, a swirl of sweetness; milkshake and ice cream. I like the contrast, the two sides complement each other really well. It's soft and cuddly, but not jarringly sweet; assertively tart but not severe. I wasn't expecting to like this but it's spot on -- complex yet accessible; silly but well-made.

It took me a moment to decipher what the angry red things on the label of Mont Hardi's beer were. Beetroot! (Betterrave, en français.) It's called Bête-Raves Sauvages ("Wild Beast-Root", perhaps) and is a saison of 5.9% ABV. Comparison with our native beetroot saison, Hopfully's excellent Beetjuice, immediately sets a high bar for it. There's lots of fizz as it pours and the colour is a pale pink. It smells sweet -- oddly so -- with the caramel and grapefruit of an old-fashioned American pale ale. Not what I was expecting. There's quite a lot of that in the flavour too, though also a definite earthiness which I'm guessing is from the root vegetables. I get a slightly solvent-like funk too, which may be down to the warm-fermented saison esters. This isn't very impressive. Though fizzy it lacks crispness and there's none of the fruit or spice alternatives that make saison worthwhile. Even the novelty ingredient is muted. Taken all together it amounts to little more than a very basic pale ale. Beetjuice has nothing to worry about.

Pilot's contribution is a Lime & Pepper Gose. It pours a clear golden shade, fizzing briskly before settling down to something quite heavy and without a head. There's a bit of salt and lime in the aroma but nothing which prepared me for the frontal assault of lime cordial in the flavour. It is drenched in the stuff, the thick texture spreading it across the palate in a way that's both sticky and tangy. Some briny salt does its best to balance it but without much success. Disappointingly, I found I could could locate no trace of the alleged organic black pepper that's supposed to be in here. All things considered, it's a bit severe and one-dimensional. It is at least properly sour, but more in a lime-sucking way than any microflora complexities, and you can forget about any refreshment given the thickness. Much to grumble about; I'll just move on.

I thought from the name that Jam Up The Mash by Collective Arts would be a murky double IPA or the like, but no: it's described on the can as a "dry hopped sour", the brewery website telling us it's a mixed fermentation and uses Vic Secret, Mosaic and Citra. It's pale and lightly hazy in the glass, again not too concerned about keeping a head. The aroma is tart and spritzy with some carefree summery citrus notes. This goes full-on juicy on tasting, with delicious mandarin at the front supported by pineapple and mango. At the same time there's lots of sourness, a distinctly lactic twang which is a little bit much but doesn't disturb the equilibrium. This is a beauty, using high-calibre hops but not overdoing things, resulting in big flavours while still staying accessible. I'm a fan of sour-'n'-hoppy in general, and this one absolutely pushes my buttons.

The grand finale is Szilvás Gombóc from Mad Scientist, an "imperial pastry sour ale" made to resemble the Hungarian plum dumplings after which it's named. I guess it's the 10% ABV that earns its place at the tail end of the Boxtravaganza list. The deep wine-red colour had me thinking it's hazy but it's actually completely clear. The aroma is strong, sweet and spirituous: the kirsch and slivovitz that I like to have accompanying me on journeys through eastern Europe. Add a thickness to that and the first taste comes across like cough medicine until the sourness kicks in. There's a sharpness like from real plums only moreso, pinching the jaw and inducing a wince. The sweet and sour sides are too equally powerful to complement each other; instead you get parallel flavours, but both are interesting and pleasant to sip. I thought I wouldn't like the booze and busyness but I eventually settled in to it, enjoying the sharpness, the sweetness and the warmth all on their own terms. This needs time to be appreciated, and might even work as a sharer in dinky liqueur glasses. Regardless it's very well made and more than just a gimmick.

Well that was fun, but let's have it at the brewery next year, yeah?

The styles for summer

Saisons, lagers, wheat beers, and the inevitable IPAs: it's been a busy couple of months on the Irish beer scene, from festival to pub to beer launch. Here's what I've been drinking lately, in my attempt to keep up with it all.

There wasn't a huge amount of fuss about Marching Powder, perhaps surprisingly. This new IPA from Black's of Kinsale is the first in the country brewed with lupulin powder, the next stage in ingredient evolution, past whole hops and pellets. They've badged it as a "cryo IPA", and I guess we'll see if that catches on. The pint I got in 57 The Headline was a vibrant orange colour, and almost completely clear, which is noteworthy itself in these hazy days. The texture is pleasantly soft and fluffy, with no yeast interference in the flavour. Instead there's an odd mix of savoury and citrus, opening with spring onion before moving on to more tropical mango and mandarin. A slight perfume spice is the only real bitterness, and I kind miss the kick of proper hops, but I suppose that's not part of the programme when you go cryo. The onion quality grows as it goes, leaving the fruit very much in second place. I think I get what it's trying to be, and it's a good beer, but the novelty aspect of it doesn't do much for me.

I was even more underwhelmed by Bullet Proof IPA, though pleased to find this beer from Galway-based Limerick-brewing Soulwater on tap at The Headline: their beers rarely seem to come this far east. This is 5.7% ABV, presenting pale and hazy, and clocking up an eye-watering €8.50 a pint, pro rata. At that price I think it's reasonable to expect a clean beer, but it's not: a nasty yeast bite pervades it and all but covers any hop fruit character. The savouriness survives and I got a sizeable dose of onions right up front, alongside bathsalt minerals. From the residual orangey flavours I picked up an impression that there's a good IPA buried under here somewhere, but it's in need of a major cleaning up.

I had a lot more fun with the beer I followed it with: Old English IPA from Boyne Brewhouse's pilot brew series. This is a serious dark orange colour, with a serious ABV of 7.5%. None of your modern pine or mango flavours here, it opens instead on a heavy incense and cedarwood spicing. Citrus fruit does enter the picture later, mixed with dry and bitter herbs, creating a Camapri or Aperol sort of effect. And like those liqueurs it's wonderfully dry, with no booze or stickiness from the high gravity. This beer manages to be fun and interesting, while also offering very grown-up beer flavours. And depsite everything going on, it's all integrated masterfully into a single coherent whole. Well played, Boyne Brewhouse.

The first run of Indie Beer Week happened around the country in late June. I only made it to one event: the launch of Weisse Guys, a collaboration between Rascals and the client brewers they usually host, Brewtonic. It's a hopfenweisse, which is a style I don't often enjoy, much like its twin, white IPA. This one's pretty good, however. It's an extremely opaque yellow colour and with that comes a slick and creamy mouthfeel. The hops aren't overdone, having been all added in the whirlpool, and just imparting a gentle citrus. In defiance of the style's Bavarian roots there's added lemon peel, and this winds up being the dominant flavour, coupled with a mild peppery bite. 6% ABV means it's a big beast, but the texture is smooth enough and the flavour subtle enough to keep it refreshing and drinkable. I had it on draught at The Back Page where a couple of pints slipped back easily, and the can presentation will doubtless make it an outdoor favourite this summer.

Brewed under Brewtonic's own steam, but still at Rascals, is Nautical Boogie IPA which I caught up with on my first visit to MVP,  their outlet by the canal on Clanbrassil Street. It's a golden amber colour and smells rich and malty, not far off a red ale, with just a hint of hop spice. The hops are in control of the flavour, however, driving a blend of dry savoury onion powder and naughty resinous dankness. Fruit does not feature, making this an IPA for the grown-ups: a bittering punch up front, a long oily finish, and home to bed with no supper.  I liked it, though would prefer a slightly lower ABV than the 6% here. It tastes sessionable but it really isn't.

For the first time ever I got an actual press release about a new release from 5 Lamps, which was welcome: more breweries should do this. It's a classic pale bock, called Bang Bang, and once again 57 The Headline was where it showed up first. This pours a flawless clear gold and leads with green and spinachy noble hops. They're balanced perfectly with a weighty malt, showing all of the 5.7% ABV but not claggy or hot, as can sometimes happen in this style. I only had a half pint at the end of a long night's tasting, but it was a real breath of fresh air and I fully intend to come back for more.

The Headline's own brewing subsidiary Two Sides celebrated the summer, and the return of a certain TV series, by bringing out a pink grapefruit witbier called Little Finger. It's a middle-of-the-road 5% ABV and offers a simple flavour profile on a light body. There's the dry crunch of wheaty grain husk plus a spicy and herbal complexity. A vague breakfast-juice fruitiness comes from the grapefruit, but no real bitterness. This is a solidly-built, if unexciting, summer refresher, ideal for the tables outside The Headline and T.O. Brennan's where most of it will be served.

To UnderDog next, and that's where I encountered the new session IPA from YellowBelly The Imposter. I suspect this has been rushed out of the brewery too quickly because it's full-on murky and the yeast has a strong influence on the flavour and texture. It's slick and gloopy, with kind of a meringue feel. The flavour, meanwhile, is a dessertish mix of lemon and vanilla, making it taste more like ice cream than beer. An interesting effort, but not what I'm looking for in a session IPA.

On UnderDog's opening night, as well as the collection of Lervig beers I mentioned here, they were also pouring's YellowBelly's new saison Get the Table. As the name sort-of hints, this is low-strength: a mere 4.5% ABV. It possesses a lovely balance between the earthy, gritty Belgian farmhouse flavours and lighter, fruitier melon and peach notes. An odd, but not unpleasant, sour tang sparks off in the background, adding further complexity. Interestingly, it doesn't taste or feel any way weak, the body having a proper heft. Overall it's a nicely refreshing beer with plenty of classic saison character.

UnderDog was also the first pub to serve Silk Road, a new saison from Trouble Brewing. It's quite a big one at 5.8% ABV, and there's lots happening in the flavour. A sharp spice dominates proceedings, backed by ripe apple and soft apricot. A herbal aniseed element adds further to the complexity. It all makes for a very pleasant sipper with none of the heat or cloying esters that often come with stronger saisons. Very nicely put together, all told.

Completing the trilogy, Galway Bay, too, have a new saison on rotation in their bars: Subsolar. This one is only 5% ABV and gets a lot of its character from some very generous dry hopping. There's a beautifully summery mix of peach pith and melon rind making for superb refreshment. I thought that was going to fade after the first few sips but it keeps going all the way through, bright and fresh. The countermelody is a gritty bitterness from the yeast but one gets used to that. It's very different from both Silk Road and Get The Table, but just as enjoyable. Saison is the beer style that keeps on giving.

The Black Sheep played host to the first tapping of Eight Degrees Berliner Weisse, an especially light one at 3.1% ABV, though with a substantial €6.75 a pint price tag. Redcurrant and rhubarb are the beer's embellishments and they're responsible for the cheeky, cheery blushing pink colour. There's an invigorating up-front sour bite though I think this slightly drowns out or assimilates the rhubarb as I could detect very little of it in the flavour. The redcurrant is a different sort of tartness, more fruity, and it complements the harder acidity well. Unsurprisingly, the texture is extremely thin but I think that actually helps boost the refreshment power here, as does a carbonation which is sparkly without being fizzy. As hacked Berliner weisse goes, this is one of the less busy ones, letting the beer speak for itself.

Wicklow Wolf has optimistically titled its summer beer The Sun Machine though I opened it on a drizzly July evening. It's a 6% ABV wheat beer, brewed with Meyer lemon, a citrus fruit I last encountered in Deschutes's session IPA Hop Slice. The fruit is playing second fiddle to the malt here, however, and it's very grainy, with a dry and dusty porridge oats effect. The lemons offset this somewhat, but there's a definite twang of soap about it, and quite a lot of sickly sweetness. It took about half of the 33cl can for me to decide this one isn't for me, neither as a wheat beer nor as a fruit beer.

It's been a while since there's been a new one from Brehon, but here's Fiesta, behind a suitably garish label and representing the Monaghan brewery's first foray into 33cl bottles. It's a 4.7% ABV pale ale, a clear coppery amber colour. "Dry-hopped with Simcoe" they say on the label. I wouldn't have guessed it. There's a bit of jaffa and maybe grapefruit, but mostly it's a smoky phenolic taste that suggests an infection to me. I don't think this has turned out as the brewer intended. A squirt of spritzy citrus at the end hints at the beer it could be, but that middle is pure dirty.

Dublin's shiniest new brewery Hopfully hasn't fully emerged from its chrysalis yet, but I thought I'd include this bottle from its planned first run: Beetjuice beetroot saison. In with the headline root veg there's sage and lemon thyme, and though it's as purple as might be expected from a 4.2% ABV beetroot beer, the herb garden contributes most to the flavour: I get sweet ginger and cinnamon right up front. Behind it there's the pleasing earthy complexity of the beetroot, playing a solid bassline to the herbs' main riff. The saison element is a little lost in all this, but it's there if you look: a dry kick, and some mild pepper spice. The oily winter greenness of the sage is the last survivor of an otherwise very clean profile. Overall it's a beautifully constructed beer that's very different from anything else on the market. I hope it gets to meet the public properly soon.

And finally Finally, the first ever lager from Kinnegar. It's in the Dortmunder style but unfiltered, so presents as quite a murky orange colour. There was a lot of foam as it poured and I got a slightly disconcerting whiff of vinegar from it. That was only momentary, however: the full glass smells like proper central-European lager, all fresh grass and clean golden syrup. For all the bubbles it's surprisingly full-bodied, though maybe not quite as substantially bready as one would expect from a Dortmunder, or anything at 5.5% ABV. Though there's a touch of dry cracker in the finish, the hops are leading the flavour, floral and perfumey at first, given a complementary spark of spice from the yeast. The finish is a proper noble-hop wax bitterness, though not as long-lasting as I'd like. This performs well the task of being an accessible-yet-complex lager; perhaps missing a trick on the cleanness front because it's unfiltered, but it's still properly refreshing and very well-designed.

That's probably enough to be getting on with for this post. Even now the next tranche of new Irish beers is starting to pile up. If you haven't had JW Sweetman's New England IPA yet, go and do that. It'll be gone by the time I get around to reviewing it.