Festival season

It's been a busy few days, beerwise, involving some thorough investigations into the new wave of Irish beers on the scene right now. It began with the kick-off of The Porterhouse Independent Irish Beer & Whiskey Festival on Thursday. This year, joyously, the range is too big to squeeze onto one bar so it took trips to both Central and Temple Bar branches to get a taste of all the newcomers.

Pale ales are something of a theme at the moment, and alongside Carlow's heavy O'Hara's IPA, Whitewater have produced Copperhead: a 3.7% ABV sessioner. It's the dark gold shade of Budvar and gives off a peachy fresh-hop aroma. After an initial strong and waxy bitter hit, it provides punchy citric notes, all on a smooth and very easy-to-drink body. I love this beer, and especially the way it crams so much flavour into a low level of alcohol, guaranteeing the first pint is followed by a second, no matter how many new and interesting beers are on the bar next to it.

At the opposite end of the scale there's Golden Otter, a new one from Franciscan Well. A distinctive, vaguely familar, aroma leapt out of the cloudy brown liquid and continued to dominate the flavour on tasting. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it was, but I eventually pinned it down as Marmite: that sharp, almost beefy, yeast flavour that tends to indicate beer which has been left fermenting too long. I couldn't help but think that this is more a beer for spreading on your toast than drinking. Additionally there's a barnyardy funk to the flavour as well, adding up to an ale perhaps most kindly described as "rustic". Not one I'll be ordering again.

White Gypsy have three newbies out and about at the moment. One, Bruinette, is described as an Irish red and as a Scottish export, depending where you read. It's definitely darker than the typical Irish red with next to no carbonation, leaving it feeling a bit thin. Yet the lack of fizz allows lots of malty flavours come through uninterrupted. I got chocolate, raisins, cherries and some dry roastiness too. Bruinette appears simple but actually packs in a lot if you take your time over it.

On the lighter end of the colour spectrum there's White Gypsy Emerald, a cask IPA. The Porterhouse had this on gravity at Temple Bar where it poured really quite lifeless and dull -- perhaps not yet ready for consumption. Across in Galway, however, The Salt House are serving it from their handpump with a super-tight sparkler ensuring the beer comes to life and performs for the drinker as the brewer intended. Its density means a long wait for it to settle, but when it does you're left with a beautifully clear pale amber ale topped by a firm and lasting blanket of foam. The hoppiness is quite subtle: it's bitter but not intensely so; fruity without being zingy per se. In short, Emerald is a solid, enjoyable sup of the sort that wouldn't elicit any special remarks in Northern England but is fantastic to encounter in an Irish pub.

Last of the Templemore three is Amber, a simple deep gold lager with the smooth body, bubblegum fruitiness and no-nonsense drinkability of a quality blonde ale. This won the Best Lager category in The Porterhouse's competition, and rightly so. I'm not generally a fan of Ireland's microbrewed pale lagers, but this is one I would keep coming back to. For the record, the bottled version of Porterhouse Oyster won best beer overall: not necessarily my choice, but a very fine beer indeed.

There was just one new black beer in the line-up: O'Hara's Easter Stout. It's not a radical departure from the flavours in O'Hara's usual stout, or their cask Druid's Brew: only the emphasis is different. Easter Stout, perhaps appropriately, is all about the chocolate. It's rich, dense and smooth: like concentrating two pints of regular O'Hara's into a single glass. Yum.

I mentioned above encountering Emerald in The Salt House. This was on Saturday in the run-up to the Irish Blog Awards. The Award Fairy passed me by on the night, but landed in the seat to my right when Nine Bean Row deservedly took the gong for best newcomer. Congratulations to 'Neen, and to the dedicated team of staff writers, photographers, researchers and editors whose tireless work makes her blog the success it is.

Meanwhile, back at the pub, James has dealt more blows to industrial swill since my first visit to The Salt House, ditching the last few bottles of Heineken from the fridge and removing the Carlsberg tap, leaving Guinness as the only remaining factory-produced Irish beer in his bar. For now. In addition to the hand-picked import lagers on draught, there's now Galway Hooker Pils. As it happened, Aidan the brewer was in The Salt House late on Saturday evening, and he said it's not an especially inspiring recipe -- more a workmanlike made-to-order job. I have to say I quite liked it. Its best feature is a lack of fizz which makes it smooth and very easy-going. Nothing in the flavour really jumps out, but one interesting feature is a lemony fruitiness before it fades to a dry grainess, just turning slightly unpleasantly to must at the end. Still, no harsh bitterness and no funk: as a pale lager it does actually work better than most brewed around these parts.

And that's the end of the Irish beer for the moment. Festival season reaches a crescendo next weekend with The Franciscan Well's annual shindig in Cork. This year it's not only debuting new Irish beers, but also two brand spanking new breweries helmed by regular commenters on this blog: Cormac and Co's Dungarvan Brewing, and Thom, Paul and Stephen's Trouble Brewing. I'm so excited I'll hardly be able to demand my free samples.

More beer from Aotearoa

Where was I? Oh yes, small New Zealand breweries. "Small" covers a sizeable range, however, so I'll try to do this with some sense of scale.

Moa claim to be the boutiquest of boutique breweries, with every bottle enunciating its rareness. It's certainly quite hard to find. Methode Moa is their wonderful lager - cloudy and strongly flavoured with a very tight frothy head. Moa Noir is a deep dark stout with smooth coffee and chocolate notes. Moa Blanc is a witbier in the dry French style which I'm not terribly fond of, but is nowhere near as severe as most of them. Where I would criticise Moa is the difficulty in opening their crown caps. Those three bottles all took a couple of lumps out of me before they fulfilled their destinies.

The Baroona range I could have covered with the brewpubs as I tried them all on site at Onetangi Road on Waiheke Island. However, they are sold elsewhere, apparently. Original is a strongly flavoured and slightly cloudy golden ale, reminiscent of its Belgian cousins. Weiss is a remarkably clear and rather bland beer which claims to be unfiltered. Dark is the best of the bunch, being thick, flat and caramel-sweet. It was almost closer to a liqueur than a beer. Finally, the seasonal at the time was a dark ale called The Full Malty. Though 7.5% alcohol, it was quite light and easy-going with a gentle fizz and a mild roasted coffee taste.

I've already covered Cardrona Gold from the Wanaka beerworks. It has two stablemates: Brewski, a slightly bland pilsener, and Tall Black, which is a heavy, gently sparkling, dry stout reminiscent of that produced by Ireland's microbreweries.

The Tuatara brewery (named after New Zealand's rare native reptile) makes six beers, of which I tried four. Ardennes is another golden ale, perhaps a little lighter than Duvel but otherwise very similar. The IPA is everything an IPA should be: deep amber and slightly cloudy with lots and lots of hops thrown in. Heffe is a lighter version of German weiss -- fairly fruity but somewhat hollow and watery as well. Very unchallenging. Their Porter is a fizzy effort, yet remains headless. It's quite mild with only a trace of burnt caramel in the aftertaste.

Emerson's is a Dunedin institution, though not anywhere near as ubiquitous as its near neighbour Speight's. I only managed to try three of the many beers they have on offer, but I was very impressed with what I found. Old '95 is a rich and bitter ale, while their 10th Anniversary IPA is another strong and flavoursome IPA. Maris Gold is a strange but pleasant blonde beer with a vibrant citrus kick to it.

Dunedin's other big brewery is Speight's -- "Pride of the South" and a legend in New Zealand beer. Largely because of their TV ads, as far as I can determine. I've already covered their Gold Medal Ale but they have a few others. Their IPA is rather dull, and the red beer they call Distinction Ale wins the prize for Most Unsuitable Name, being quite indistinct and forgettable. Speight's Porter is better, being dry and fizzy with a great real stout flavour. Old Dark, however, is their champion: a super-sweet red-black ale which reminded me of the Netherlands' lip-smacking Oud Bruin beers. For a limited period, Speight's was also making a Chocolate Ale which is based on a fairly light ale, allowing the full chocolate flavour to come through. The end result is somewhere between Young's and Floris in the chocolate stakes, and quite delicious.

Mac's brewery runs a number of brewpubs, including one at its headquarters on the quays in Wellington. They also sell their beers through off-licenses and other pubs as well. Mac's Black is very popular with the locals, but I found it somewhat lacking in oomph, being nearly closer to a dunkel than a stout. Wicked Blonde is a decent grainy microbrewed lager while Sassy Red is an aromatic red ale, supposedly like English bitter but more like quality Irish red to me. Copperhead is a toned-down version of the Sassy, like a better class of Smithwick's. Mac's Blonde is a spiced wheat beer, clear with a slight citrus edge. They also do a German-style crystal weiss called Verboten Vice, light and fruity like Franziskaner, and a sharper Erdinger/banana tasting weiss called Great White. I think someone at Mac's likes wheat beer. Lastly there's Mac's Mojo, an extremely tasty, heavy, smoky dunkel.

The last brewery for this post brings us to the west coast of South Island and Montieth's of Greymouth. Their Original is covered below, but they also do a dry smooth Pilsener and a Munich-style lager called Golden (lighter than the likes of Spaten or Hofbrau, however). Their Radler isn't a true radler (shandy) at all, but a full-strength lager flavoured with generous amounts of lemon and lime, resulting in something much tastier than the likes of Hoegaarden Citron or Superbock Green. On the ale side, Montieth's Winter Ale claims flavouring with cinnamon but I found it quite disappointing with only the fainest trace of spice in the taste. There's also Celtic Red which is blander than most Irish reds, having only slight caramel notes, and Black, which is apparently not a true stout but tastes very much like one: strong and sweet, yet fairly smooth and easy-drinking. On tap at the brewery in Greymouth they had one further beer for me to try which they had not yet announced the name of. It's a super-hopped green-tasting ale, almost like a hemp beer, but not overpoweringly vegetal. It's due to be launched, with a name, in a week or two. I'll try and recognise it in order to report back.

Phew. So that just leaves the brewpubs...