The variation enigma

Rye River looks to have completed the retiring of its McGargles brand. It was hackneyed when they introduced it in 2013 so I'm not sorry to see it go. The new branding is clean and classy and the beers are mostly the same as ever, which is good. Matching the new names to the old is pretty straightforward, though there also appears to be one brand new addition: Backwaters American Wheat. At 6.2% ABV this is stronger than both the former Bill's Wheat IPA and its sort-of successor (different hops) Coastal IPA, as well as the American-style wheat beer they make under the Crafty Brewing label for Lidl.

Backwaters certainly looks darker than both of them, the rich gold of a süffig Märzen or similar central European lager. The aroma is all crunchy fruit candy at first, before bringing a more serious note of bitter grapefruit. The body definitely reflects the ABV, being as full and chewy as many a stronger beer. They haven't called it an IPA but they absolutely could have: it resembles the classic American variety more than it feels like a wheat beer. Maybe it's the low bitterness that stopped them. The Cascade and Strata hops seem to primarily serve to bring more of the Skittles effect, while the main parallel feature is the thick caramel malt. It's crying out for a sharp and cleansing bite in the finish, but that never comes. Ah well.

It's a decent beer, and fully in keeping with the Rye River core range. It fills a poorly-populated mainstream niche of sweet fruit-forward ales of substantial strength. One was plenty, but I will come back to it. Still, the clean crispness of Coastal remains my preference. Thankfully that's still readily available too.

Life's rich pageant

My drinking life isn't all festivals, though it might seem like that on this blog lately. I do manage to fit the odd pint or can in between them. Like this lot, for example.

I don't know what it is about the term "wheat IPA" but I really expected the wheat to come first and the hops to be an afterthought. That's not the case with Bill's Wheat IPA, released earlier this year from Rye River. It's a middle-of-the-road 5.2% ABV and pours a glaringly bright pale yellow, but with only a gentle haze. "Wheat" doesn't always mean hazy in this mixed-up world of beer we have now. The aroma is softly citric, suggesting lemon sherbets and sweet meringue pies. The flavour has more of an edge on it: a squeeze of lime juice, some naughty herbal dankness and a savoury edge of fried onion. What the wheat brings is the softness: a luxurious pillowy texture which deftly offsets any hop sharpness. This is a non-bitter IPA without any of the New England trappings, and as such is yet another complex, high-end yet accessible Rye River beer, to be filed right alongside Francis' Big Bangin' and the Lidl American Brown Ale. Like the supermarket beers, the branding is understated but there's finely-spun gold inside.

With the announcement that Whiplash is staging a festival in July came a pair of new releases. We begin with Melody Day, a 2.8% ABV "micro IPA", like their award-winning Northern Lights, this time using Enigma and Simcoe hops. It's a murky pale orange, topped by a loose fluffy white head. The aroma mixes citrus pith and juice pleasingly, while the texture is surprisingly full for the strength, continuing the fun and fluffy theme. I got garlic heavily in the foretaste, building to a lime juice crescendo before fading to out leave a gentler vanilla, lemon curd and mango pulp sweetness. Just like Northern Lights this does a great job of squeezing real New England IPA character into a tiny package. The only telltale is the mouthfeel, but that lightness just means it's easy to drink and very refreshing. Perfect for outdoor summer sessions.

At the opposite end of the scale there's Nice Dream, yet another Whiplash double IPA, this one benefiting from Galaxy and Amarillo hops and the usual 8% ABV. Even cold from the keg the aroma was striking: a tart mandarin pith effect. The texture is thick and creamy, in keeping with the hazy yellow appearance. There's a layer of savoury yeast, but nothing drastic; a bitterness that's all hop aggression and quite charming with it; but the centre is those oranges, oscillating between spritzy orangeade, thicker cordial and real fruit flesh. No alcohol heat either. This is highly enjoyable, though the harsher elements do contribute more to the aftertaste than I'd like. Overall, though, a very decent example of Whiplash's stock-in-trade style.

12 Acres has tried its hand at trendy beer with its first canned hazy IPA: The Far Side. This is darker than most, a deep orange rather than yellow. The aroma is more like a weissbier than an IPA, providing a hot hit of butane and ripe bananas. The flavour offers more of that, and a sharp gastric acidity, but no fresh hops, no vanilla or garlic: none of the attributes of New England IPA, for better or worse. "Tropical fruit flavour and a juicy bitterness" says the can. Nope. There's maybe a slight tang of orange juice, but the overall picture is definitely more banana than citrus. The texture is moderately smooth, so I'll give them that. It's not a great beer, though, and definitely not a good example of the genre.

The Eight Degrees Rack 'Em Up series continues with Blue Ball: an unlikely combination of Vienna lager and cold-brew coffee. It's only 4.5% ABV and a pale yellow. I always think Vienna lagers should be darker, but that's just me. It's an interesting effect. There's the crisp and clean malt-forward lager, and then a different sort of crispness from the dark roasted coffee. The finish brings the coffee's oily warmth out, for an almost stout-like effect. I don't know that it works per se, but it's certainly engaging. Those oils, I think, turn it a little cloying by the time the can is half way through. I suspect the underlying lager doesn't have enough going on by itself to counterbalance them. This recipe is suited to being a one-off novelty but no more than that. "Anything but stout" was the brief. Most breweries use stout as the base when adding coffee for a good reason. Thanks to Bradley's of Cork for the freebie can.

Staying in Cork, Black's of Kinsale's latest is Pineapple Express, a sequel of sorts to the OG Kush cannabis-infused IPA they had at Alltech. It's a bright orange colour and a big 6% ABV. I'm certain I detected pineapple from the aroma, but that must just be the power of suggestion in the name as there's no actual pineapple involved in the recipe. That's backed up by a flavour which is in no way sweet, instead being bitter and spicy: a jolt of nutmeg before gentler herbal coconut. While assertive in its hopping, it's not severe, and gets extra complexity from sparks of resiny incense. The texture is properly thick, allowing the hop oils to linger long on the palate. This is really good, clean, hop fun with no perceptible gimmicks.

Meanwhile Franciscan Well did the full-spectrum media launch with Pilgrims, a new pale ale. It shares its 4% ABV with the previous release, Archway: a beer which, for me, torpedoed the remnant of the brand's credibility last year with its vapid taste and try-too-hard marketing. Still, as always, everything gets a fair shake on this blog and I approached my freebie growler with an open mind and a clean palate. Diacetyl. This pale copper job is packed to the gunwales with sickly, buttery diacetyl, especially in the aroma, but stuffed into the flavour as well. It's hard to believe a professional tasting panel for a multinational corporation gave this the thumbs up. It's not heavy and slick, however: for balance there's quite an astringent tannic dryness, while the hops bring a hard, metallic, boiled-sprout tang. To my mind it's closest to the more severe sort of English bitter: Shepherd Neame on a particularly bad day. No, I did not like Pilgrims and I think the recipe is horribly flawed. I'm sure that won't prevent it selling by the bucketload, however.

Following Galway Bay's Crispmas Hell from last December was a new lager for spring, simply called Helles. It's the same 5% ABV, though entirely without haze this time. I thought it might have been literally the same beer, left lagering until now, but the hops have been changed from Mittelfrüh to Saaz, and the water tweaked as well. It's on the dark side for the style and goes big on grassy bitterness (no surprise), the malt only arriving late: sweet and cakey. I was wary of being served my pint in a frozen mug, but it did the beer no harm, and suited the warm afternoon that was in it. This balanced but bitter job is definitely a better fit for summer than Christmas.

And then along came yet another 5% ABV helles from Galway Bay, this one called Trellis. It has been given the distinction of the Motu blend of New Zealand hops plus oats and flaked wheat. The clean lager base is left largely undisturbed, offering soda-water minerals and faint golden-syrup malt. From this follows a layer of spinachy hop bitterness and a softer, sweeter, white-grape effect. It's interesting, enjoyable; but an improvement on the basics of helles? I don't think so. I needed to pause to enjoy the hops, catching the bitterness in the foretaste and the long fruit finish. I prefer a helles I can just knock back. As a hoppy lager, however, it's well ahead of most of those billed as "India Pale" versions.

New from Kinnegar is Barrel Hunter, the latest in their Brewers At Play experimental series. No barrels were involved, but Hunter was: this is the third beer I've had which utilises the Irish heritage malt. It's 5.5% ABV, a pale orange with a slight haze, and offers an intriguing perfume aroma. This expands on tasting into a mix of sharp mandarin citrus, sweet rosewater and spicy cedar. The latter is the strangest feature, lending it almost the feel of a saison. Though the carbonation is high, the texture is decently full, with a definite oiliness. It reminded me a little of a bitter from an old-school English brewery, one of the ones with a very distinctive house yeast. I can't tell you what produced the alchemy in this beer: the exotic barley, a quirk of the yeast, or something else. It's an engaging fellow, anyway, and  -- bottom line -- enjoyable to drink.

My exploration of Boundary's current range continues with Tobi, the first lager of theirs I've tried. They're claiming a Bavarian influence here, although it's a pilsner. The ABV is a helles-like 5.1% and it's an only slightly misty shade of polished gold. The head is promising at first but fades all too quickly. Similarly, the hopping provides a fresh herbal aroma then vanishes on tasting. Instead, the flavour is quite fruity: not full-on banana, but with a sweet edge of apricot and fig. Thankfully the finish is quick and the stickiness short-lived. I think I would have got more out of this had I been drinking it cold-cold, allowing it to be the clean and crisp refresher it's probably meant as. At a slightly higher ale temperature it just doesn't have enough going on.

Staying up north, a collaboration between Beer Hut and Lacada next: 2 Player, a double IPA. Taster kindly provided by Simon. A sizeable 8.1% ABV and lurid yellow in colour, it pumps out strong and raw red onion as the aroma. The flavour is mellower, mercifully, showing sweet orange cordial at the centre, with the onion relegated to a balancing contrast role. The use of lactose gives it a certain heaviness, but not an excessive amount, and there's a pleasing lack of alcohol heat. I'm not sure subtlety was meant to be part of the spec here, but it achieves it, being a calm and measured example of this extreme style.

If your electrolytes need balancing, YellowBelly have just the beer for you with Tide's Out, doubling down on the saline, being a seaweed gose, brewed in collaboration with Neptune Brewery of Liverpool. It's a pale clear golden colour and the aroma and foretaste are dry and biscuity, like a cream cracker or waterbiscuit. Tangy salt and herbs drift in behind this, adding a briney slickness to the mouthfeel, ensuring that 4% ABV doesn't mean it's thin. The sourness is a contributor to the tang as well, lightly done with a gentle gooseberry or redcurrant flavour. Overall it's a crisp and tasty example of the style and, despite the kerr-azy added ingredient, not far off the archetype.

"Blood orange ice pop" is a new sort of IPA for me, delivered via the YellowBelly-Wicklow Wolf joint Super Soaker. We continue the extra-low ABV trend with just 2.7% here. It's a hazy beige-orange colour with a loose and lackadaisical head. The milky lactose is very apparent from its aroma, with the hops providing more of a spicy note than fruit or bitterness. The flavour is almost savoury: pepper and nutmeg against a creamy texture on a sugary base layer, like one of those eggy winter cocktails. The orange side of the equation is faint, with just a trace of sticky tutti-frutti candy and a surprisingly hard bitter-hop kick right at the end. Possibly it's this last element that makes the beer remarkably drinkable for all the syrupy, gungy goings-on. Maybe the low alcohol helps. I can't say I was a huge fan of this, but that mix of spice and fruit certainly held my attention for the full 440ml.

We crank the ABV up to 3.8% for the next Wicklow Wolf -- Eden session IPA: so powerful it has to be packaged in a smaller can. This one feels like the ABV, being much thinner without the benefit of lactose. The oats seem to be asleep on the job. The clear amber colour was unexpected in this Age of Haze, though the clean flavour was a pleasant side effect. I'm not sure I really enjoyed said flavour, though. The can promises juice from a combination of El Dorado, Chinook and Cashmere, but I got a dry and grainy tannic effect with lots of husk and crust. There are mild sherbet overtones, but nothing I'd call juicy, and its rather austere astringent qualities are accentuated by that overarching thinness. There's a definite lack of fun in this bony, scowling fellow.

Shane from DOT kindly delivered a couple of bottles to me at the weekend, including this Rum White Barrel Aged Lager. I wasn't a fan of the last go at barrel-ageing lager so approached this one with caution. The strength is the same 5.2% ABV, suggesting it's the same base beer, but obviously we have rum barrels this time instead of wine. Nevertheless, it tastes much more like wine than rum, showing the beautiful apricot and gooseberry juiciness of a delightful summery new world white. The fizz is quite busy, which adds to the crispness but interfered with my enjoyment of all that lovely fruit. A tiny peppery spice kicks in before it clears off the palate lickety-split. It's a lovely beer and would make for an excellent aperitif, though I'd be quite happy necking it in great big pints too.

And speaking of great big pints, hot on the heels of the new Hope beers at Rye River Rising (see last week's posts) comes another new pair in hop-forward styles. We're up to 14 in the brewery's Limited Edition series, and that's an India Pale Lager of 4.5% ABV. There was a warning signal in the aroma: vanilla and raspberry suggesting something more New Englandish than lagery. The flavour is sweet, no question, but not the way I feared. It's mostly an orangey spritz, with extra thick hop resins and a hard grassy bitterness at the end. This is enjoyable, very full-flavoured in the hoppy Hope way, but it earns my usual complaint of not being lagery enough. I think it's the resins which undo the mature cleanness that lagering brings.

Hop Hash IPA is the brewery's summer seasonal, a sequel, I guess, to last summer's magnificent Hop Hash DIPA. It's beautifully clear, if a little headless. Pith dominates the flavour: jaffa, shading to grapefruit, with a lacing of sweeter mandarin and satsuma. All the citrus, basically, with only a slight savoury edge of red onion. The heavy texture suggests more than 5.5% ABV, but like the previous one I think the effect is down to its hop oils. Much like its DIPA predecessor, this really gets the most out of hops: the essence, the very quiddity. Great stuff this hash.

Finally, I have been a bit rude about the brut IPA style of late, but I still wasn't going to turn down a freebie can of the new limited edition Boyne Brewhouse one when it was offered recently. Et Tu Brut IPA is the chucklesome name, and it comes in a highly informative can with lots of vital statistics. One of same is the belter of an ABV: 7%. It pours the requisite pale yellow colour and the high alcohol is apparent from both the texture and taste: for a beer defined by its dryness, it is considerably sweet and sticky. At the front of the flavour is quite a harsh lemon-rind bitterness, turning to hard candy by the end. But that's all you really get: once again with brut IPA, I think enzymes have allowed the character to be fermented out of it. What's left is OK to drink but I don't really get the point of it. Et tu? indeed.

Woah that's a lot of beers. I'll pause for breath here, but there's lots more new Irish beer still to be covered. They, and you, will just have to wait.

Well again

After a year's absence, I returned to Cork for the Easter Beer Festival at Franciscan Well last Saturday. I got an early bus down so had time to pop by Rising Sons to see if there was anything new on the taps. Of course there was; it's an essential part of the deal with brewpubs.

I began on Dark Matter, which must be about the sixth beer I've encountered using that name, and the second Irish one in 2017 alone. This is a porter of 4.3% ABV and, in defiance of its name, is not very dark at all, more a garnet red colour. It's quite thin and sharply fizzy and the flavour veers between super-sweet caramel and drily bitter roasted grain. I could detect a certain element of smooth chocolate buried deep within, but it never really gets the chance to shine, battered down by the overactive carbonation. I think this beer needs to be bulked up and calmed down.

On the opposite bank of taps was Rising Sons's Vienna lager Pull Like A Dog (which was also pouring at the festival under the less topical name of "For Vienna"). It's 5% ABV and a hazy dark gold colour. The body is full and the texture smooth, entirely in keeping with the Vienna style, but the flavour is something else entirely. There's a lovely sweet orangey fruit punch which turns oily and spicy towards the end, bringing in elements of incense or sandalwood. It's perhaps not as elegantly simple as one might expect a Vienna lager to be, but it's a lovely beer however you look at it.

On then to the festival for opening time at 1pm. A major revision of the layout has helped get rid of the crampedness and dead corners of previous years. Now there were two bars, facing each other across the yard. I began with the beers on offer on the left, and stayed on my lager buzz.

First call was Port Lager by Metalman, made for their local market in Waterford and using one of the best multilingual puns I've seen in a while. It's a light 4.1% ABV but is no lowest-common-denominator basic commodity lager. This is a proper big-bodied helles with as assertive noble hop green-celery bite. The balance between the two is bang on and the result is extremely drinkable. I'd love to have something like this as the local beer in my town.

White Gypsy had a new (to me) lager as well: Viktor. It's even softer than Port Lager, placing to the fore the Bavarian malt which the brewery swears by, giving it a pillowy candyfloss softness. The hops are relegated far to the back, bringing only a very mild bitterness, and there's also a whisper of sulphur in the mix as well. Really, though, it's not a beer for standing around sipping and writing notes about. Great draughts are encouraged, nay required, by that texture and cleanness.

The day's first IPA was the new one from 9 White Deer: 5 Stags, here making its first outing on cask. The festival being of the plug-and-play variety, the beer wasn't quite presented the way it deserved, showing up murky and thick with a substantial yeast bite overriding the flavour. But what's beneath that is excellent. The hops are all American classics: Cascade, Centennial, Willamette, and Chinook for dry hopping. They start by giving it a soft and peachy fruit flavour which builds gradually as it goes along into a sharper lime bitterness. It'll be interesting to compare the more processed bottled version, but I'd really love to try a cask of it that's been let settle out properly.

Another IPA to follow: Lost Weekend is a rye and wheat one, brewed by Kinnegar as a collaboration with their distributor Grand Cru Beers. It's another dark and murky ochre-coloured beastie and this time the hops include Columbus, Amarillo and Vic Secret. 6.5% ABV gives it a very chewy texture and there's a lot of savoury yeast covering up where the hop brightness ought to be. The spice from the rye comes through well, as does the heavier, danker side of the hop equation. But I missed the sharper, bitterer notes that I think ought to be on show if, once again, the beer was given the time to drop brighter. Without cleaning up it's a bit of a chore to get through.

As always, UCC Pilot Brewery had brought a few beers to show, staying in the vein of way-out recipes that they've been pursuing in recent years. Two lagers and a wheat beer show that they're still in touch with their German roots, if not the actual Reinheitsgebot.

The first lager is called Basil Instinct, and though basil features in the recipe, the name, and on that distinctly undergraduate tap badge, it's the other ingredient that defines the flavour profile of this beer: juniper. It's a peppery spice that calls good gin to mind, without tasting directly like it. The basil is mild and imparts a general sort of herbiness rather than fresh green basil in particular, reminding me of the old-fashioned medicine cabinet flavours you get in root beer and Euthymol toothpaste. I don't think anyone else in the place liked it but I thought it was great fun, compromised only by an almost total lack of carbonation.

The next hazy yellow lager was called Noot Noot and is a single-hop Polaris job. This one is very herbal indeed, to the point of getting difficult to drink. While there is a decent clean graininess underneath, it mostly tasted like I'd imagine a shot of neat pine floor cleaner would. Polaris is supposed to provide a mint flavour, but I think it only does if used at low enough levels, and possibly at lower strengths than this one's substantial 5.4% ABV.

Finally from UCC was Crimson Cassis, a wheat beer with added blackcurrants. They really went overboard with the fruit here, maybe to achieve that handsome bright purple colouring, but rather than any kind of beer it tastes like the sort of super-cheap rustic red wine you accidentally order on holidays. It has that harsh grapeskin bitterness, the dry tannins and the sickly residual sugar. Hooray for experimentation and all that, but this didn't work.

That finished off the first bar for me and I took a quick break inside the pub before starting the second half. Here they were pouring a brand new Franciscan Well beer: Crafty Cuckoo, a 4.5% ABV blonde ale. It's super pale, a flawless crystalline yellow. The flavour, such as there is, is crisp with grain husk and a touch of some very light nonspecific fruit sweetness, a part that grows in prominence as the beer warms but never really goes anywhere. It's inoffensive but I really don't see the point of it as a limited edition. The brewery already has a blonde ale and this one is not exactly pushing boundaries.

Back out to the yard and at the top of bar 2 there was Black's of Kinsale's inevitable New England-style IPA, Ace of Haze. It's hazy, but far from opaque, and dark orange in colour like Carlow Brewing's 51st State which I reviewed back here. There's a fun spiciness to it but it's not terribly complex and certainly isn't laden down with hops the way these often are. It also hasn't quite mastered the fluffiness that's part of the spec. But these are just stylistic quibbles, not really material to anything. It's a jolly nice US-style IPA at a reasonable 5.1% ABV and very nice to drink it is too.

Cotton Ball's latest celebrates 45 years of Cascade hops with a single-hop pale ale called, funnily enough, Cascade 45 yrs. They've really done it justice too: this has all of the light and spicy Cascade fruit quality and there's plenty of body for a beer of just 3.8% ABV. It's simple, in the way single-hop ones tend to be, but still has plenty of flavour.

JJ's was next in line. I'd been seeing a few of their beers in bottles in supermarkets but hadn't taken the time to try them. First up was Balbec, an IPA. It's strong and sweet, 6% ABV and tasting of orange cordial first, before a slightly harsh aspirin metallic bitterness comes in behind. It's quite old-fashioned in its way, eschewing the clean and bright stylings of modern IPA in favour of a heavy earthy funk. As a result it's tough going to drink.

Next to it was Bill's Red Ale and this was much better. Maybe I'm getting old but I'm finding Irish reds much more palatable these days. This one is immensely complex, having the summer fruit and dry roast that are the basics for doing the style well, but also adds an exotic lightly spicy perfume of rosewater and cedarwood. It's all of 5% ABV so there's plenty of heft to the body as well. I imagine it would really come into its own at wintertime.

Down in the far corner, opposite where I started, was Black Donkey Brewery, who had their first IPA on tap. It's called TKO and, like Balbec, is another heavy earthy beast, sacrificing citrus zing for an almost savoury, meaty flavour. The bitterness provided by the American hops is dry and calm but it's hard to pick out any specific flavours; everything is kind of blended together. If "Farmhouse IPA" were a thing, I think it would taste like this.

The new beers complete I spent my last few tokens on some cider and a couple of old favourites, before starting the trek back home. It's great to see how this festival has continued to evolve yet still retains its essential intimate atmosphere. Thanks to the management, staff and guest brewers who make that possible.