End of the year content filling

Thank you to Alan for the title. And so, once again, it's time to take stock of the year in beer just gone, using an increasingly irrelevant template, last revised in 2013. Changing it now would be akin to re-making Dinner For One in colour HD -- completely missing the point. As usual, deliberations are aided by something from the fridge which is hopefully a bit special.

This year it's a Chardonnay barrel aged wild sour ale from Wide Street, called Réserve Spéciale. It's had two years in the casks and poured a bright golden, almost completely clear. The aroma certainly shows off the wine, and very much that Chablis Burgundy dry fruitiness. The oak is perfectly integrated into this, just like with good wine itself, and there's no tacked-on vanilla or butteriness. At only 5.4% ABV it's light-bodied and crisp, refreshing even, its flavour opening with an immediate kick of Golden Delicious apples, tart gooseberries, soft kiwi and real white grape. More typical oak vanilla arrives late, but doesn't last long, and it finishes on a light saltpetre spicing of which I would have liked more. The fruit is almost at the level of a grape ale, and I commend this in particular to my fellow lovers of that style. In the 75cl bottle it makes for an excellent special occasion beer, and ideal for proselytising the wonders of wild fermentation and barrel ageing. But there's only one special occasion on my agenda today. Time to get on with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2024

Best Irish Cask Beer: Hopkins & Hopkins Sitric
It's a beautiful pale ale, no question, but this award is in part for what it represents: it was the first beer to show up on the revived cask handpump at The Porterhouse on Parliament Street, and it has been a regular there ever since, though occasionally time-sharing with Lough Gill's beers. Neither The Porterhouse nor H&H needed to do this; it's totally out of keeping with trends in Irish pubs and beer, and I've never seen anyone but me order it. But it is massively appreciated by this drinker and adds a wonderful bit of diversity to a beer market that can feel a little samey betimes. A Golden Pint is the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Otterbank Oíche Mhaith
It's probably a lot more common bottled than draught, and the keg which went on sale at UnderDog in February was doubtless a rarity. Nevertheless it counts, and I don't see any reason why 9.4% ABV vatted porters can't be sold on draught in Irish pubs as a matter of course. Everyone just needs to grow up a bit.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Beoir Chorca Duibhne Leann Láidir
Honestly, the headline beer on this post is a contender, and I'm only having my second glass of it now. But on mature reflection, West Kerry's barrel aged rye porter was the Irish bottled beer that best delivered the goods for me this year. That was back in June, so finding it may be difficult at this stage, though I bet it didn't sell quickly and that there are still bottles to be had.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Third Barrel Hello Yes
Maybe it's because I'm quite jaded about IPAs in general, and that's what most canned Irish beers are these days, but it was a struggle to find a stand-out winner in this category. The one I picked is an authentic-tasting Czech style pilsner, though you'll have to wait until next week for my review. Take my word for it, however: cans of this one are still readily available and well worth picking up.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Uiltje Pomme Pressure
I'd say I drank close to a thousand different beers in 2024, though only a handful of them taught me anything new. This dark barley wine aged in Calvados barrels had a very special flavour profile and one that has stuck in my memory as distinctive and delicious. That's enough to mark it out for an award.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Den Herberg Geus Genereus
After a sizeable hiatus, the Toer de Geuze happened for me again this year, and included plenty of beers and breweries I knew little about. The specification of this complex geuze caught my eye from the brewery's temporary festival bar and delivered absolutely all of the implied complexity. Up top, I said that I would have liked more spice in the Wide Street beer. This one had spice enough for both.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
In the summer I went to Bulgaria, and while the beer I found there often wasn't the best, there were some stand-out moments. Those produced by a group of heavy metal fans on the edge of the Black Sea (possible beer/album name?) were among the most memorable, in a positive way. Metalworks is a barley wine with figs, dates and spices, but pulls off the trick of tasting balanced and integrated while still being a playful novelty beer. They compensated for the frustratingly tiny can with a huge and brilliant flavour. 

Best Collaboration Brew: Sofia Electric / Põhjala Väga Suur
And I'm as surprised as you are to find another Bulgarian beer at the races this year. In fact, this was originally picked for best overseas bottle, but with an absence of other suitable collaboration beers among the year's highlights, it made more sense to slot it in here. It's another complex barrel-aged barley wine which has been skilfully blended to create a unique drinking experience. Bulgarian brandy barrels get filed along with Calvados as ones to look out for. 

Best Overall Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
I look at the eight champion beers and try to think of the one that made the strongest impression on me; the one I can still taste and react to, just by reading its name, and that's the Metalheads of Burgas this year.

Best Branding: Kestemont
Back to the Toer de Geuze, and a visit to a brewery I'd never been to before, nor tried any of their beers. Kestemont has only been going since 2022 and doesn't try to pretend to be a vintage institution making old-timey beers. The branding is clean and modern, though also conjuring a more primitive age, for example the woodcut-like dashing hare on their Oude Geuze.

Best Pump Clip: Fat Cat House Ale
I remarked at the time that the house bitter at The Fat Cat in Sheffield is better than it needs to be, and the artwork on the clip is also a cut above. I don't know if it's based on a real cat or, if so, if said cat actually wears a monocle. I just enjoyed his stoic reaction to the shite Yorkshire weather, as seemingly rendered by Frank Miller. 

Best Bottle/Can Label: Lacada Out On A Shout
Lacada cans are always beautifully designed, but the one that stood out for me this year was a beer I've never had, a pale ale produced as a fund-raiser for the RNLI and making wonderful use of the beneficiary's particular turn of phrase. There's something about how it brings the reality of lifeboat work to the prospective beer purchaser that made it instantly memorable to me. Maybe I'll get to drink it at some point.

Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay
While the company's pub end took something of a battering through 2024, the work done by the folks on the production side has been excellent. They've cornered the market in Irish-brewed Catharina sours and also rocked the dark and strong styles with Baltic porter, pastry stout, doppelbock and imperial porter of superb quality. And the schedule has been delightfully relentless, with new beers for me to try at The Black Sheep every few weeks. Throw in some excellent lager, which they did, and that's nearly everything I want a brewery to do.

Best Overseas Brewery: Dok
I had some fantastic beers at this Ghent brewpub when I visited last month, particularly the cherry and grape ale, and the black IPA. They narrowly missed out on the individual beer prizes so I'm happy to award this one for their output collectively. Their whole approach is cheerfully upbeat, and the creativity is matched by the quality of their beers. 

Best New Brewery Opening 2024: Smithfield Brewing
I mean, the beers aren't brilliant, being very much designed for mainstream pub-goers at the venues run by the brewery's owners. Rather, this award is for the project: the return of brewing to the old Dublin Brewing Company site in Dublin's north inner city. It looks like they're planning to open for visitors, being centrally located not far off the tourist trail with a bar just inside the entrance. And the old redbrick soap factory they're in is a lovely bit of Dublin's historic industrial architecture. In short, there's a lot of promise, and I hope to see it realised in 2025.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
Ho hum, right? Where else would a thirsty person go for a quality selection, constant turnover, and an opportunity to rub shoulders with the cream of Dublin's beer geekery? UnderDog is the place and that's all there is to it, really.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024: The 108
Strictly speaking this is a change of management rather than a new opening, but enough changed after Galway Bay vacated their Rathgar footprint that I'm counting it as a new opening. While there's a more mainstream appeal to the offer these days, there's still a good choice of quality beers (hello Kinnegar), and getting that out in the D6 boondocks is a rarity to be treasured. I'll throw in a most honourable mention for Bier Draak in Norwich which opened in May this year. It's an extension of the Sir Toby's market stall, but with worthwhile innovations such as a roof and a toilet. The beer list is impeccable.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It's been a while since De Molen's two-day shindig has troubled my Golden Pints, and nothing much has changed with it in a few years now. But it's my call, and I had a wonderful time at this year's gig. I'm sure the great weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact that I missed last year. It's still a bit overcrowded and some breweries are overly fond of making punters queue for timed special releases, but mostly it works brilliantly, the exhibitors are well chosen and the whole thing is a quality affair. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
This year, it's an award for reliability and dependability. Aldi had the turnover of beers, but I bought more in Lidl because they have such solid reliables on the shelves permanently: fridge-fillers like their Crafty Brewing IPA and American Brown Ale, but also modern classics including Little Fawn, Scraggy Bay and Rustbucket. Grabbing a handful for a weekend of unfussy drinking has become a regular habit.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Molloy's
Specifically this goes to the Francis Street branch which has done best at offering me beers that I didn't see anywhere else, and all without having to go outside the canals. Yes, your Martin's and your Redmond's and your Blackrock Cellars have better ranges, but for the convenience/price/selection criteria, Molloy's on Francis Street covers things best.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
And Captain Obvious's Retail Recommendations continue here. Just as UnderDog is the place where gobdaws like me sit in to drink, Craft Central is where we get our cans of whatever was just released or imported. I don't (often) touch the stupidly expensive ultra-rare imports, because haze is haze and they don't make it magically better in Illinois or wherever, but CC has a proper devotion to Irish beer and even stoops to selling Irish breweries' bottled beers on occasion. As well as this award, I present them with the encouragement to do more of that sort of thing.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Devil's in the Draught Lines
We have two books in contention this year, but I think the prize has to go to this wide-ranging, deep-diving and wonderfully person-centred account of women's place in the beer world, past and present, commissioned by CAMRA and written by our own Dr Christina Wade. It's a story that needed told and a document that will stand witness for future writers on the subject.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Belgian Smaak
My runner-up book was Breandán Kearney's Hidden Beers of Belgium, which is genuinely excellent, so I'm very happy to award this equally prestigious Golden Pint to Breandán for his website. Output isn't exactly quickfire but the quality is worth waiting for. Claire Bullen's delving under the skin of Brouwerij Boon, and Breandán's own telling of the Eylenbosch/Boerenerf saga, were literally my two favourite pieces of beer journalism I read this year.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @articnead
I think Simon would have been quite happy for us to include Bluesky under the remit of this award now, and although I'm doing that, and Sinead does have an account on The Nice Place, this is still mostly a Twitter thing for probably the last time. Our winner does a marvellous mix of nordie snark, righteous outrage and old-school good-time bants, often within the same 280 characters, and generally gives proper vintage-era Twitter vibes, the way Bluesky is supposed to but doesn't. I very much doubt she reads this, so you can pass on the good news for me, Sean. Thanks.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Ballykilcavan
And also in the fractured social media space, we have Ballykay shining a light of positivity, interesting happenings, more righteous outrage, and fleeces, into the swirling maelstrom that is today's beer internet. More Irish breweries should be telling us what they're up to and what's on their mind via a held up phone in a working brewhouse. Casting a new Cleo the spaniel will be a tough task, however.


Is that it? Have we only 25 categories? Cuh! I could have gone on all year. Congratulations to all 2024's deserving winners, and shame on you who got nothing: you've seen the bar, now get planning how you'll raise it. Me, I'm still very slowly getting through the tail end of 2024's Irish beer releases. You can expect opinions about them arriving here well into January. No rush with whatever you breweries have in store for us in 2025.

Summer on a budget

The German discount supermarkets are great when summer rolls around and your requirement is for things merely decent, cheap, refreshing and in quantity, for drinking outside. Normally I wouldn't look beyond Aldi's Spaten or (and) Lidl's Crafty Brewing IPA, or any of the dry Irish ciders they both carry, but during a recent sunny spell I spotted a couple of new candidates and thought it only right to give them a go.

Lidl's Perlenbacher marque has been a byword for cheap lager since time immemorial. I hadn't seen Perlenbacher Radler before, or maybe I had but passed it by because the half-litre green can resembles any old tin of budget beer. It cost €1 and is 2.5% ABV, a whole 25% stronger than Lidl's Austrian radler which I reviewed last year. I didn't think much of that one, but this is way better. The sugar level is far lower and there's the tang of real lemons front and centre. The carbonation is gentle and the overall effect is like sherbet lemon sweets, the flavour finishing mostly cleanly with only a slight residue of syrup. And the whole experience, while not exactly high-class tippling, is really aided by the large-format can. This is perfect for glugging back to quench a thirst before opening a proper beer, though it's probably not a good idea to drink more than a couple lest the sugar jitters set in.

The next one is a seasonal and came from Aldi. The season in question, according to the label, is the beginning of Spring so perhaps Schwaben Bräu's Das Frühlings Festbier has been sitting around a while. This is badged as a Märzen and certainly has that classic rich dark gold colour typical of the style. It's a full 5.7% ABV and I detected a certain thickness as it poured, the tight foam head forming slowly. And the flavour... is rather plain, unfortunately. The big texture is certainly there, and I found myself chewing past it to find nothing very much. There's a little bit of the wholesome breadiness I expected, right on the foretaste, but it disappears quickly, as does the mild golden syrup sweetness. Where a hop bite might have been installed there's just a slightly unpleasant plastic burr. This beer meets the bare minimum standards for a medium-strong pale German classic, but it feels like a rush job, a festbier that's lost its party spirit.

Back to the Spaten then. Celebrate!

Sour '16

The final post of the year brings the Golden Pints, beer blogging's annual personal awards, working to a template devised by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg. Sour beers have played a major role in my drinking over the last 12 months so I thought I'd accompany my deliberations with one. This bottle of The Purple from Oregon's De Garde brewing was a kind gift from Jeff Alworth back in September. You can read Jeff's profile of the brewery here.

The label describes it as "a wild ale aged in oak wine barrels with black and red raspberries" and it's 7% ABV. It's very purple, pouring scarlet from the bottle, settling to a deep maroon shade and briefly topped by lurid pink foam. It's also very sour: an intense puckering bite that's had none of the edges smoothed out by the oak. Instead, the fruit is on balancing duty, giving it a fresh juicy aroma and adding a jammy sweetness to the flavour. It's nice, but I don't think it quite measures up to the best of Belgian framboise: it's stronger, brasher and generally louder. Americans, eh? Still, enjoyable sipping while I get down to the serious business of...

The Golden Pint Awards 2016

Best Irish Cask Beer: Otterbank Beta Barrel 1
And we're starting sour. I met this mixed fermentation chardonnay-barrel-aged golden ale at the fabulous White Hag birthday party back in August. It's a sessionable 4.5% ABV but immensely complex with it. Tart, juicy, herbal and lots more. With a 13 month lead time I doubt we'll be seeing more of it, but a man can dream.

There was a worthy runner up in the delightfully dark yet refreshing Uncle Columb's Mild by West Kerry Brewery.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Galway Bay 303
The most fun beer of the year was O'Hara's Grapefruit IPA, while Hope Session IPA was the most promising. But Galway Bay's low-strength sour pale ale kept me coming back again and again, for as long as it lasted. I can't see any reason not to bring this one back. Shout-out also to White Hag for their Brett Pale Ale, and of course Little Fawn which was the beer I probably drank most of for the second year running.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Crafty Brewing Company IPA
Honorable mentions here go to White Hag barrel-aged Black Boar imperial stout and the superb Roadtrip Extra Stout that the McHugh's off licence team produced at Independent. However, I always feel I should favour beers I drank lots of during the year, and the magnificent Aussie-hopped IPA that Rye River brews for Lidl certainly fits that bill.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Whiplash Surrender to the Void
Several Irish craft brewers got busy with the tinnies this year giving us a range of hoppy delights. When I went down the list it was Alex's amazing double IPA that really leapt out at me. Full-on hops but complex and nuanced with it. Beautiful.

Best Overseas Draught: Upright Brewing Four Play
It probably shouldn't be surprising that something from my visit to Portland, Oregon wins this one. Area man Jeff Alworth picks an exceptional beer for his annual Satori Award, named after the Buddhist term for the moment of sudden enlightenment. Well I got a fierce bang of Satori off of this multidimensional soured barrel-aged cherry saison. Worth the 7,500km trip. And along the same lines, BrewDog's Saison Blitz also gets a big-up in this category.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Jester King El Cedro
Ugh. I suppose I'll have to put some of that geek-bait Awesome Craft Beer™ into this. The award goes to one kindly supplied by Steve Lamond at the afterparty following the superb BrewCon 2016 back in April. Brett-fermented and cedar-aged for a fantastic combination of fruit and pepper.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Three Boys Pils
I struggled a bit to come up with a foreign can that really impressed me this year. Then I remembered the train home from Boundary's birthday bash in March and this glorious Kiwi pilsner which makes perfect use of the local hop varieties.

Best Collaboration Brew: YellowBelly-Hope-ShaneSmith Castaway
The review bottle I took home from the Killarney Beer Festival probably didn't do it justice but I've had it a couple of times since and it has always tasted magnificent. I understand YellowBelly is planning to can it next year too. Hopefully there'll be plenty to go round.

Best Overall Beer: 303
Quite a cross section there, I think, but 303 is the only one I became seriously, chronically, addicted to. And that's the best measure of quality there is.

Best Branding: YellowBelly
Nobody else is at the races, really. Illustrator Paul Reck has turned out tap badges, labels, comic books, animations and most recently a computer game featuring the brewery mascot and a host of supporting characters. The visual jokes and references hidden in the detail are worthy of Bosch.

So it's no surprise that YellowBelly wins both...

Best Pump Clip:
Jack Bauer's Power Shower Sour
It's the sheer literalness of it that I like.

...and...

Best Bottle Label: Pink Freud
I never actually had the bottled version of this, but it does exist and it's my other favourite YellowBelly design of the year. Shine on, etc.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
The Co. Kildare brewery started the new year with a new premises in Celbridge. Though I've enjoyed Cousin Rosie's Pale Ale and even an occasional Francis' Big Bangin' IPA through the year, it's the beers Rye River has produced under other labels that have made it my standout for 2016. Crafty Brewing Company, Whiplash, Grafters: lots of amazing quality beer, and often at very sessionable prices.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Commons
The Portland brewery I enjoyed actually sitting and drinking in the most: a bright open space, a friendly welcome, and first-rate farmhouse style beers. Over on the right-hand coast I stumbled across a couple of very tasty Jolly Pumpkin beers, so that gets an honourable mention in this category.

Best New Brewery Opening 2016: Hope
New brand highlights included Whiplash and DOT, but neither is an actual brewery. So this one goes to north Dublin's Hope which made the leap from contractee to fully-fledged production brewery. The four limited specials devised at the new set-up have ranged from good to brilliant so big things are expected as head brewer Mark develops a new swathe of permanent recipes.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Sunflower
I hope it's not cheating to award this one to a pub I didn't visit during the year. The Sunflower began 2016 under threat of demolition. It ended it with the news that not only had it been saved but had told the industrial brewers whose wares it reluctantly carried to do one. I think that deserves to be celebrated. Have a Golden Pint on me, Sunflower. An extremely honourable mention goes to 57 The Headline, of course, who've put in another stellar twelve months.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2016: Brickyard
I came back from America in October complaining that beer bars here ought to have up-to-date printed beer menus. Brickyard does! It's situated right on top of Balally Luas stop and seemed a little cold and clinical at first: all stark Scandi angularity. But the atmosphere softens when the lights come on and it starts to feel more homely. The draught selection is sizeable and my visit last month included both White Hag's Little Fawn and O Brother's Bonita. Can't say fairer than.

A bonus shout-out goes to The Woodworkers in Belfast which opened in December last and I visited a couple of times during the year. They're doing a fantastic job of sourcing first-rate British and Irish craft beer.

Beer Festival of the Year: Killarney Beer Festival
My festival attendance was down this year. For shame! No Borefts, no Franciscan Well Easter Festival. Though I really enjoyed both the March and September gigs in the RDS, and spent a wonderfully relaxed three days swanning around Alltech Brews & Food, the most fun was Killarney in May where I got to try my hand at a bit of beer judging as well.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
Though my local SuperValu has been continuing to knock it out of the park for a second year, Fresh in Smithfield has come to rival the independents with the wideness and currency of its range. I'm reliably informed that the Grand Canal Square branch across the city does things just as well.

Independent Retailer of the Year: DrinkStore
Back on top again. I am pleased that I finally made it to McHugh's on the northside and The Vineyard in Belfast, both fully deserving of their reputations. But DrinkStore is where I buy my beer.

Online Retailer of the Year: Nope.
In some years I've given this one to sites I've used for reference but I can't be arsed this year, and I still don't buy beer online.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Pub by Pete Brown
With all due respect to Pete I didn't encounter many beer books this year. The Pub was the nicest of them, though.

Best Beer Blog or Website: BeerFoodTravel
I've been enjoying the trip down the beer history rabbithole that Liam has been on lately, as well as the beer reviews and travelogues. Shame about that big posting gap in the middle of the year, but it won't happen again, right?

Best Brewery Website/Social media: @PilotBeerUK
For anyone involved in the use of Twitter to market a brewery, or anything really, this is how to do it properly.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @ManusCronin
The rest of you go and have a think about what you've done.


And that's it. If you've read this far I hope you found it worthwhile. 2016 is officially a wrap. The Beer Nut 2017 will commence on Monday. Happy New Year!

Pocket change

Ten euro and one cent is what this lot set me back. Five beers from Rye River Brewing released under Lidl's cringeworthily named own brand: two of them new, three previously available as four-packs of 33cl bottles but now reformatted to half litres. And all of them a first try for me.

First over the jumps was the 4.1% ABV Crafty Brewing Company Irish Red Ale which looks quite black in that picture but is more a mahogany red-brown in real life. Mild toffee and lightly metallic English hops are the aroma: invitingly, old-fashionedly, beery. I was surprised how sweet it was: a big, gooey, candybar hit of caramel makes the first impact, growing to the point of sickliness. Thankfully it fades quickly. The bitterness kicks in to replace it, but it's unpleasantly acrid: part liquorice rope, part metal pencil sharpener. This tastes like a thrown-together budget red. It's not boring by any means, but I don't think the recipe has been assembled well.

Onwards and upwards, to Crafty Brewing Company Irish Stout. 4.5% ABV and looking every inch the part: black in the middle, garnet round the edges and topped by a pillow of off-white foam. The carbonation is lower than I'd expect for a bottled stout, perhaps trying for some sort of nitro effect, though missing the mark. And once again the flavours don't quite gel together. While not as sweet as the red, there's still a brown sugar or molasses taste -- mild but enough to make my palate recoil slightly. A classy crisp roasted dryness is the other side of the seesaw but it fails to balance the beer properly. Like the red, it's worth paying a little more and trade up to a better example of the style.

I can't remember the last time I had a 50cl bottle of a new pale lager in front of me, and Irish lager has been on a bit of a roll lately -- including the excellent unfiltered pils Rye River had at Alltech last month. So it was with a mix of excitement and tredidation that I came to Crafty Brewing Company Irish Lager. The tiny badge on the label that says it won a Great Taste Award in 2015 provided some reassurance, as did the appearance: the pure pale gold of Helles. One glance and you're in Munich. Late hopping is promised on the bottle and yep, I get that: a slightly oily celery and white pepper flavour right in the centre. But while I would like that to be floating on a billowing soft malt base, there's instead a honking musty off-flavour: dry, acrid and sharply metallic. This is nearly a superb beer but as-is it's one I'd have to drink very cold and very quick. Up against Aldi's Spaten at the same price it doesn't compete.

That concludes round one and, to be honest, I wasn't really expecting to enjoy any of those. What actually got me through the door of Lidl were the newcomers. Rye River does hoppy exceedingly well, from the much-lauded Francis' Big Bangin' IPA to the hugely under-rated Cousin Rosie to its other budget supermarket own-brand Grafters. Simon had already given the thumbs-up to Crafty Brewing Company Irish Pale Ale so I was expecting a next-level experience, even at just 4.5% ABV.

It poured a dark copper colour and shows a mildly zesty citrus aroma. It tastes... decent. There's a firm malt base and although Ella is mentioned on the label, I detect the down-to-earth citric bitterness of Cascade in here. It's definitely on the old world side of new world, reminding me of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in particular, a flavour profile harking back to its roots in English bitter. Worth €1.89? Sure. But it's another beer that I think is worth trading up from.

And speaking of trading up, Crafty Brewing Company Irish IPA, at 6% ABV, is priced a little higher at €2.45. West-coast gold and smelling dankly bittersweet with a bit of liquorice and a bit of guava, achieved with Vic Secret hops, the label helpfully tells us. The texture is surprisingly light, lighter than the Pale Ale. In fact the whole thing is a much more polished experience than any of the others. That darkly bitter liquorice effect is at the centre which means this could easily be classed as the first pale black IPA. There's a gorgeous fresh resinous hop buzz, a dash of tropical passionfruit and maybe an edge of red onion, much like Francis' has when I drink it. There's no sign at all of that strength and its paleness, lightness and low bitterness conspire to make it exceedingly drinkable. This is a superb beer, especially at the price. I don't expect availability to be particularly high once drinkers get wind of it. Be nice and don't hoard.

And if the low prices of these beers leave you feeling a pang of guilt, Rye River's Kickstarter campaign begins today.