Yellow streak

My week of scattergun Irish beer reviews ends today with a bit of focus for once. YellowBelly has been firing out the new releases at high velocity so I'm giving them a post of their own. I'd like to say I chased these around the pubs of Dublin, but it's more that every time I went in for a beer, there was another one on tap.

Kellerbier arrived unannounced on the taps at Cassidy's. "Unfiltered helles" says the badge but there's precious little sign of it being unfiltered: it's almost completely clear, shining gold even in the gloom of this too-cool-for-proper-lighting pub. It's extremely soft, all bubblegum and the fluffy spun sugar that seems to be the fashion in donuts these days. It makes for a lovely texture and at 4.3% ABV it's eminently sinkable. By way of balance there's just a pinch of mild noble hop veg, but really you need to like your lager sweet to enjoy this fully.

At the Black Sheep I caught the tail end of a keg of Fruit to Thrill, a sour ale with assorted fruits. I wonder if this shares an ancestry with Commotion Lotion and Mindreader: it has a very similar blend of strawberry, raspberry and other summery fruit, light on alcohol at 4.3% ABV again, and this time tinted with a tang of sourness. Childhood memories of sugar-coated sour jelly sweets and raspberryade came immediately to mind on drinking it. It's definitely not a sophisticated beer, but it's a simple and refreshing one.

Within a few hours of my drinking that, it had been replaced by Snooze Button. This is billed by the brewery as a breakfast stout, containing oatmeal and lactose, though lighter than most others at just 5% ABV. I can't say I found it particularly breakfasty either. Rather it's a classically constructed dry Irish stout, with charcoal and bitter dark chocolate being the main features. The Black Sheep was serving it ice cold that evening, and I made sure to let it warm up, to see if anything else emerged. Not much did; maybe a fresher and sweeter coffee character, but that's your lot. This is another good, straightforward, unspectacular beer. Is a theme emerging?

Kind of a Big Deal, found at UnderDog, is the first to suggest otherwise. This is a saison, and quite a big one too at 6.7% ABV. At least some of that alcohol is down to the ageing it got in a wine barrel. The aroma is normal enough: peppery, like a saison should be and mercifully lacking in sweet esters. The wine really makes an impact on the flavour, bringing a gooseberry tartness and a certain tacky fresh oak sappiness. I got an edge of diesel as well, a flavour I associate with German white wines in particular, though it's a Burgundy which donated the wood in this case. The classic saison is still there underneath all this: clean and spicy. The barrel adds a really fun twist, complementing the saison flavour and adding to it. I'll bet it takes real skill to make something this complex seem so effortless.

And if that one felt like a re-directed Otterbank beer, this goes even more so for The Harvest King. The description really doesn't do this one justice, telling us merely that it's a sour saison brewed using Irish hops. Around here, local hops tend to be more of interest as a concept than as a flavour. I wasn't expecting much from it when I chanced across it at Against the Grain one quiet Tuesday evening. It's only 5% ABV and a hazy yellow colour. It doesn't really fit the saison flavour profile, nor is it simply another sour blonde ale. The aroma and foretaste are both pure Gewürztraminer: that juicy and sweet white grape flavour with just a naughty lacing of fusel alcohol. There's some lambic-like saltpetre spicing and a dry flinty finish, turning the Gewürztraminer into a Sauvignon Blanc. The luscious fruit makes it incredibly easy drinking but the complexity is such that I took ages over it, savouring every sip. A little goes a long way and you'll still find yourself wanting another. I couldn't help but think of US brewer Hill Farmstead, whose reputation as one of the world's greats is built on beers like this: La Vermontoise and Florence both have a similar act. As an ultra-seasonal beer this one won't be around long. Grab it if you see it.

Not a dud amongst these, I'm pleased to say, and a couple of the best Irish beers I've had all year. The brewery recently launched a beer club which will ship exclusive beers to subscribers throughout 2018. If the current form continues it will be well worth joining up.

On the path to greatness

A new event for my 2017 calendar was The Great Irish Beer Festival in Cork, now in its second year. It's organised by Franciscan Well but unlike their other events happens in the salubrious surrounds of City Hall. The name overstates the case a little bit: only 15 breweries were pouring beer at the gig, spread across two halls, so there was a manageable number of new beers for me to try, most of them local.

We set up camp opposite Rising Sons, who coincidentally had the most beers on my hitlist. To begin, a half each of two beers brewed to celebrate the visit of the International Space University to Cork Institute of Technology over the summer. Small Step is a session-strength pale ale. It's a hazy pale yellow colour and has a fun peachy aroma. The flavour is harsher, however: a hard green bitterness, like celery stalks. The soft fruit returns in the finish but not soon enough to redeem the beer for me. It's just the wrong kind of bitter.

You know what's coming next, of course: Giant Leap, which is a black IPA. 5.1% ABV and a murky dark brown colour, it goes in for coffee in a big way, especially in the aroma. The flavour mixes it pleasantly with sherbet fruit, the end result being spicy rather than bitter, and the best feature is the smooth effervescent texture making it nicely easy drinking. It's very much on the porter side of the black IPA equation, however.

Mayhem is a recent addition to the Rising Sons line-up, described as a hoppy saison, and it really draws the juiciness out of both those words. There's a deliciously fresh cantaloupe flavour, beautifully thirst-quenching. A sprinkling of white pepper finishes it off. It could stand to be crisper; there's a slight dry bite in the finish but not as much as saison typically shows. What it lacks in crispness it makes up for in lusciousness.

Last one before moving on was Rising Sons Nitro Extra Stout. I wasn't expecting much but this is beautiful: massively bitter with bags of healthy green veg in the flavour and all coated with a luxurious layer of high-cocoa dark chocolate. Like the benchmark Wrasslers XXXX it manages to punch through the suffocating effect of nitro on taste. There was a nitro pale ale as well but I decided not to push my luck too far.

The next bar over was Torc, featuring the experimental Extra Pale Ale. "Extra-Pale" is to be taken as a single element, explained proprietor John: the idea was to make it as pale as possible. But there's lots more extraness about it. For one thing the ABV is a substantial 6%. And for another the hopping level, mostly Citra, is absolutely off the charts. It's intensely bitter: a concentrated spinach and vine leaves taste, and the closest thing I've drank to biting a hop pellet. Despite the imbalance it's perfectly clean tasting and hides its strength very well. I don't know how much of it I could drink but it was certainly an interesting experience.

Amazingly I could still taste other things after that. It was into the main hall next, to try the new rye beer from West Cork: The Rapids. This is pretty typical of the style, a murky shade of orange with a sharp grassy bitterness and touches of thick-shred marmalade. The texture is big and weighty, surprisingly so for just 5.3% ABV, and the overall feel is of something wholesome and unprocessed. Solid stuff.

There were a couple of new ones from YellowBelly, including another saison, Periodic. There's a heady aroma from this one, all pears and booze, despite the ABV being just 5.1%. It tastes very sweet, with more squashy ripe pear in the flavour and some white plum as well. Later a herbal element creeps in too: vanilla pods and cardamom, making it taste like a middle eastern dessert. This is just too heavy and too cloying for my liking. Lack of crispness is a real problem this time.

And there was also Mind Reader, the lager that gets transformed into Commotion Lotion by the addition of Buckfast. And much like Commotion Lotion it's a fun and clean fruit salad of a beer, getting full value out of its strawberries, raspberries and pineapple. It's very nearly too sweet but the clean lager base pulls it back from the brink in time.

By this time we had been joined by regular visitor Sid Boggle and decided to skip out early to pay a visit to The Abbot's Alehouse. I was hoping to try the new sour cherry beer from YellowBelly but it wasn't on. I made do with their Red Noir instead. It's 4.4% ABV so I expected a typical Irish red, and while this does have a to-style profile, there's a lot more flavour than you'll find in most Irish red ales. It's thick and smooth, full textured and jammy, the flavour packed with summer fruits. Not a subtle beer, nor especially complex, but very satisfying to sink a pint of.

The other attraction at The Abbot's was available: Buxton Rain Shadow imperial stout. 10% ABV on the nose, it's dark and foreboding in the glass. An aroma of liquorice, coffee and alcohol sends an early signal that it's one to be careful with. The flavour is much cleaner than the smell suggests, with no real alcohol heat despite a very dense texture. The liquorice is there in spades, as well as an acidic bitterness, turning almost metallic, and tasting like boiled green cabbage. It's a beast of a beer and utterly uncompromising in its taste. But if you go along with what it's trying to do it's a very enjoyable experience. Just the ticket to finish the night on (trainbeers excepted).

One beer that did make it off the train and home was Sullivan's Kiwi Lime Pale Ale, donated by Alan Smithwick who was looking after the Sullivan's bar. This was brewed on the pilot kit in Kilkenny and is a collaboration with Dublin's Hellfire Brew Club. It's bottle-conditioned so poured a little murky despite my steady hand, and featured a tall bouffant of white foam. The lime zest was added late, with the dry hops, and the fresh lime really comes out well in the aroma, enticing like a lime sorbet if you're posh, or a HB Loop-The-Loop ice lolly if you're not.

The texture is light, with less body than might be expected at 4.7% ABV. But that's not a problem, because the end result is insanely refreshing. Both of the fruits jump right out in the flavour, and because their green bitterness is entirely complementary to the Cascade and Perle hops, this one can't be accused of being alcopopish or otherwise unbeery. Real kiwi flesh dominates the foretaste, then the oily lime swings in behind, adding a lasting bitterness that coats the palate. The earthy hit from the Cascade is secondary and almost unnecessary: all the required citrus is already there. The sorbet effect never quite goes away, hitting just the perfect level of bitterness allowing all the fruit flavour to come through undisturbed. This is a total triumph, an ideal summer quencher, and very deserving of scaling up into full production, whenever that's an option at Sullivan's.

And on that high note, a big cheers to Shane from Franciscan Well who very kindly comped our tickets, and to all the brewers I hassled through the afternoon. GIBF is another feather in Cork's already-bristling beer festival cap.

Belly accumulator

My sequence of posts in honour of Indie Beer Week continues with a look at just one of the 90-odd (some very odd) breweries currently operating in Ireland. Despite, or perhaps because of, the move to their new home we have had a veritable avalanche of new beers from YellowBelly in recent months. I can't hope to get my hands on all of them but this is what has come my way above in Dublin.

We start at one of my all-too-rare visits to L. Mulligan Grocer, where The Baron was pouring. This is an American-style red, heavily single-hopped with Columbus. It's quite a light-bodied creature, only 4.5% ABV and more orange-amber than actually red. This leaves it somewhat unbalanced, struggling to control the hop onslaught. And a strange onslaught it is too: there's a strong bitter perfume taste that reminds me of citrus-and-herb aperitifs, Campari in particular. The orangeyness fades first but the herbs remain, turning it more towards a Fernet Stock sort of flavour. This is a very weird beer and not at all what I was expecting. It is fun to explore, however: I'll grant it that.

Not far away, Token has opened its doors. This is Dublin's first arcade-bar, with vintage video games, the sort of street-food-inspired menu you would expect to find, and a modest selection of independent beers. On my visit I had some tasty pork sliders, a handsome bowl of short-rib chilli fries and a pint of YellowBelly's Commodore Berry.

It's a blackberry witbier and is an appropriate cloudy pink colour, though the wheat didn't do much of a job keeping the head in place. The berries are not overdone and the basic fresh-lemon witbier flavour is the main act. The blurb promises tartness but you really have to look for that. A low 4.4% ABV keeps it light and refreshing, and there's not much of an aftertaste, just a very slight jaffa bitterness. This is definitely not as much of a novelty as it's made out to be; you can decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I enjoyed it.

Bar Rua is a good spot for finding new YellowBellies, as well as being a lovely well-run pub in general. Here I found Back to Business, presented as a classic American IPA, 6.4% ABV with a roll-call of rock star hops including Azacca, Simcoe and Lemon Drop. All of which was wasted on me. My notes here are guessing if there's Fuggles in it. The pint I got was full-on murky, and tasted murky too. And by that I mean the murkiness of London pale ales from six or seven years ago, not the modern fluffy milkshakes. There's a serious yeast bite, all rough, dry and earthy. A heavy texture makes it hard work to chomp through. At no point is the experience lightened by any fruit or other fresh hop flavour. Back to Business? Back to the drawing board.

The most talked-about beer of the year so far came from YellowBelly. It hit the spot of having a daring recipe, tied in with a musical act and a festival at which they were appearing, and having a professionally-produced press release probably did no harm either. It's called Commotion Lotion, created in collaboration with Waterford dance act King Kong Company, and is a lager with pineapple, strawberries, raspberries and, as indicated by the name, Buckfast tonic wine.

It has the bright pink glow of freshly polished copper and the fruit is all up in the aroma: ripe and sweet strawberry plus sharply tart raspberry. On tasting, however, I think the wine comes to the fore, bringing a sweet and slightly unctuous plum or damson character, and the bitter tang one gets from their skins. The base beer doesn't have sufficient substance to add anything to that, which means the whole impression is of a fruity alcopop more than a beer. But it's very drinkable nevertheless, not at all sickly, and properly sessionable at just 4.4% ABV. The flavour matches perfectly the spirit of raucous fun in which it was designed.

To finish, a step sideways from the main brewery line and into the world of Otterbank, head brewer Declan's personal side project. The Galway Bay bars had his Salubrious Summer Stout on cask and I caught up with it at The Black Sheep. It's a Bushmills-aged Brett-fermented 10.4% ABV imperial whopper yet manages to retain its composure well, avoiding any real alcohol heat while also getting the honeyish Irish whiskey flavour from the barrel and keeping a smooth silky texture. Unsurprisingly there is a host of other complexities going on, from the coffee aroma to the strange mix of red wine and balsamic vinegar that laces the main stoutiness. I'm not sure why it needed a season appended to it since it would be a great slow sipper at any time of the year.

Shout-out to the YellowBelly crew who, if not hitting the nail on the head every time, are at least keeping things interesting.