Looks aren't anything

The way Americans talk about breweries -- the physical beer-making bit -- can be quite jealousy-inducing. It seems to be generally taken for granted that breweries are visitable attractions, rather than merely functional workplaces. So, for this month's Session, Maine-based The Beer Babe has asked us to go along to one of our newest local breweries. Now, we're not short of new breweries in Ireland this year, I'm delighted to say. But you don't just roll up to an Irish craft brewery and expect the door to be open and the tasting bar set up. And you certainly don't expect it to be pretty.

Irish breweries look like this:

(White Gypsy)

or this:

(Galway Hooker)

or this:

(The Porterhouse)

You get the idea. None, as far as I'm aware, has ever won an architectural award. And it's only on special occasions or by prior arrangement that anyone other than the staff see the inside.

Fortunately for the timing of this Session, both of the newest breweries had such open days over the summer. Trouble hosted a delegation in July, and just a couple of weeks ago the Dungarvan Brewing Company (right) rolled up the shutters, fired up the barbecue, and invited some visitors in. They even threw in an historical walking tour of the town.

Production is running at full tilt at the moment, which is very encouraging. With the three main beers -- Helvick Gold, Copper Coast and Black Rock -- becoming increasingly well-established, especially locally, attention is turning towards specials and seasonals.

The first of these made a brief appearance at the open day. The brewery has been working with a restaurant in the next town over to produce a special beer and curry menu. From what I've heard, the first few have been huge successes and are about to become a regular occasion at O'Brien Chop House in Lismore. While I'd be very surprised if there were any complaints about the fitness of Helvick Gold to match spicy food, Cormac has put together a Lime and Coriander Wit. It had only just gone into the bottle, so was perhaps a little green still, but it packed a big sharp citric punch -- tangy yet with a definite fruity softness, reminding me of lemon meringue pie. I doubt it will have any difficulty cutting through even the hottest curry on offer. I hope to find out first-hand some time.

I'm also really looking forward to more seasonals and specials from both of the new kids, and even more to the next brewery bringing craft beer to the Irish market. Inishmacsaint Brewing Company is due to have beers at the Belfast Beer & Cider Festival in November. Can't wait.

No more heroes any more

Mark of Clanconnel Brewery has a very acute sense of Place and Time. His branding is carefully chosen to reflect the real life and history of where he brews. So, on his first outing, there was a tribute to Co. Down's former lifeblood, the linen industry, in the fine blonde ale Weaver's Gold (I've just noticed recently that between Weaver's Gold, Helvick Gold and Ór we are living through the golden [hahaha] age of Irish blonde ales -- long may it continue). The long-awaited second beer is named in honour of Co. Armagh's greatest sporting legend: the Lurgan greyhound Master McGrath (1866-1871). It seems my home county's humans are a little behind the canines when it comes to sporting prowess. That certainly explains my abilities at least...

Anyway, McGrath's Irish Red is the name, and once again we're looking at a half-litre bottle, brewed for sessionability at 4.3% ABV. The colour is a little paler than one would expect for an Irish red: it's more the dark amber of brown English bitter. The flavour is a tick-list of what the style does at its best: heavy toffee in the ascendant with a lighter, sweeter caramel middle, topped by ripe strawberries and fading out with a mild dry roastiness. Ireland's other microbrewed reds twiddle these dials to varying degrees, but this has most of them turned up quite high, especially the fruit elements. And yet it's still very light and sessionable with nothing cloying or difficult about it. A break with tradition and a bit more of a hop profile would have been nice, but otherwise this is a tasty and quite complex quaffer.

You can argue the toss as to whether Ireland really needs another beer in this style. But there's no doubt that McGrath's Red can hold its own against the top flight of O'Hara's Red and Copper Coast.

Thanks for the sample, Mark. When's beer number 3?

New and improved

I've only been going to the Easter Beer Festival at The Franciscan Well in Cork for the last three years. But even in that small space of time it has improved noticeably. While in 2008 there was still a fair bit of space allocated to importers and wholesalers, it's now wall-to-wall breweries, with the only absentees being Whitewater (oddly) and the two which neither keg nor cask: Clanconnel and Galway's Bay Brewery.

Making their debuts as commercial breweries last Saturday were Dungarvan Brewing Company and Trouble. Dungarvan's emphasis is going to be on bottled product, though they also have a limited cask capacity and were serving two of their three beers from the handpump. Copper Coast is a fairly standard Irish red, ticking the biscuit and caramel boxes appropriately, though with an added dose of bittering hops and a slightly unfortunate touch of phenol at the end. I'm sure that'll be ironed out in later versions. Next to it was Helvick Gold -- about as far from plain, lager-substitute blonde ale as it's possible to get. At 4.9% ABV, Helvick is full-bodied and quite powerfully bitter with a waxy fresh honey flavour. Not a quaffer; more a thinking man's blonde. Black Rock stout did not make an appearance, and by early Saturday evening all the Dungarvan beer had sold out. They must be doing something right.

Next door to Dungarvan, the Trouble Brewing crew were resplendent in their lurid orange uniforms: observe the pride with which Stephen wears his (right). The first beer to emerge from the three-man operation is another blonde ale, called Ór.This is simpler fare than Helvick: lightly fruity with just a little hoppy complexity and a nice clean refreshing fizz from the keg. It'll be a good one for outside summer drinking, I'd say.

This year also marked the first appearance of Beoir Chorca Duibne at the Easter Festival. As well as Cúl Dorcha, which I sampled back here, they had a hand-written pumpclip marked "EasterFest Special". Oh dear, I thought, a batch of something went wrong and this is their attempt at off-loading it. I ordered a glass anyway and felt immediately guilty for being so cynical. It was a rock-solid chocolatey dark ale with an interesting sourness on the end -- something Séan tells me is from the incongruous German hops. Some very tasty rule-breaking there.

Barrelhead was back for a second year. The cuckoo brewery has moved out of White Gypsy's nest and its newest Pale Ale was brewed at Franciscan Well, I'm told. It was a lovely sherbety number, ripe with orangey zing and equally good on cask and keg. Unfortunately I've no idea where this will be available, but it's well worth looking out for.

As always, the UCC Pilot Brewery brought their Germanic stylings to the festival. I've not been massively impressed by these in the past, but things definitely improved this time round, with a golden fruity lager called Hansel and a delicious companion weissbier named Gretel. With White Gypsy Amber and Galway Hooker Pilsner also available, festival-goers were very well served for quality Irish lager.

At the White Gypsy stand, Cuilan was introducing people to Melissa who will be taking over from him as the brewer for Messrs Maguire in Dublin. Hers is the unenviable task of turning the under-used, under-promoted brewkit into a feature that will work for the owners and draw the crowds into the pub. I'll be keeping an eye on how things develop at MM, and not just because they're currently serving a very fine pint of White Gypsy Amber, badged as MM Munich.

Six White Gypsy beers were available at the festival, including Raven, the first commercial release of the Vintage Imperial Stout I went to see being casked last year. Raven is a blend of the unoaked version and the one from the French barrel. It's quite well balanced, being light on general aroma, heftily woody in the flavour but completely missing any off-putting phenolic notes, and without any trace of the astringency which dominated the beer prior to aging. Things got really interesting when Cuilan pulled out a bottle of each of the four versions: original, French oak, American oak and ex-Bushmills cask. After a brief struggle with a mangled corkscrew and a pair of pliers, the beers were poured and the differences between them were amazing, with subtle vinous notes from the French oak, massive Bourbon vanilla from the American one and heady whiskey aromas from the Bushmills. When the American and Bushmills versions were blended the result was stunning: rich, complex and aromatic. Plans for the final destination of the beer(s) are still sketchy: Cuilan's not in any rush to make a decision and seems to be enjoying the learning process of finding out what different woods do and how they can be blended -- a skill which would once have been common among Ireland's stout-makers but which now has to be re-learned from first principles.

And that was the festival for another year: hopefully a sign of a building critical mass of Irish craft beer. Thanks as always to The Franciscan Well for affording the hard-pressed Irish breweries an opportunity to sell their wares, and the equally hard-pressed drinkers an opportunity to enjoy them.