Loaded at the docks

Finally, the event space down at George's Dock in Dublin's financial quarter has been given a use worthy of its potential. I've reported before on the so-so Oktoberfest that happens down here, and last weekend Irish beer got a look-in for the first time as the Carlow Brewing Company put together the first St Patrick's Craft Beer Festival.

Most of the independent Irish breweries were represented at the long festival bar, with a mix of regular and seasonal beers. I was along on Thursday, Friday and Sunday with my hit-list, as well as to represent Beoir and talk to punters about Irish brewing history whether they wanted to learn about it or not.

First and foremost we had the welcome return of Porterhouse Chocolate Truffle Stout after a two-year absence. And it's in superb form: bursting at the seams with smooth real chocolate sweetness, tempered by just the right level of dry stoutiness. I'll be having plenty more of this before it runs out, and earnestly hoping we won't have to wait as long for it again.

Knockmealdown Porter

This was also the first I'd seen of Eight Degrees Knockmealdown Porter on draught. With low-to-no nitrogenation it was every bit as good as the bottle. All of the liquorice bitterness, sticky burnt molasses and the tangy hop bite were present and correct, made all the better for coming in a grown-up serving size. (There's now a tap at the spanking new WJ Kavanagh's on Dorset Street: get down there).

Other familiar favourites included the all-too-rare cask editions of O'Hara's Leann Folláin and Curim Gold, plus the dark amber hop epic that is Messrs Maguire American Pale Ale. The latter was badged anonymously as "Seasonal Special", which hopefully kept the riff-raff away from it and ensured it was available all weekend.

MM APA's moment in the sun is fading, I believe, and they also had its replacement lined up: the new version of Messrs Maguire Porter is a decent and quite dry effort, but not terribly exciting. It probably warrants some closer analysis when it eventually shows up in its home pub.

The hosts made much fuss about their new ale, billed as a "dark IPA" and named, following a public competition, "Perfect Storm". This is an experimental blend of Leann Folláin and O'Hara's IPA (how very Mikkeller!) and it's a battle that the stout is winning: a big sweet chocolate hit dominates the taste with only a mild fruitiness backing it up. For the next iteration I'd suggest seriously ramping up the IPA levels in the blend, and then dry-hopping in the cask (but I would say that).

It was great to see Hilden's Twisted Hop making one of its first appearances south of the border -- it was also on at The Black Sheep where I snapped its picture on Friday night. This pale ale started out as a special but has become a regular, the way good specials often do. It's a golden-coloured pale 'n' 'oppy affair, offering a light white pepper piquancy rather than a full-on alpha-acid burn, as well as some gentle peachiness in both the aroma and flavour. Very sessionable, all-in-all, and I hope we'll be seeing more of it.

Warning: may start spraffing
about Manders Brewery

Irish accents seemed a bit thin on the ground when I was at the festival, and I met a fair few serious beer geeks from the US, the UK, Italy and Sweden. Having an event like this to show the diversity of Irish beer to the visitors who have come to Dublin for our National Day is not just nice: it's important. I really hope this becomes a permanent feature despite the seemingly endless red tape the authorities appear to have put in its way.

And the festival calendar rolls on, with little over a fortnight to the Easter festival at the Franciscan Well. If you're planning a visit to Ireland this spring, it'll be worth your while to fit that one in. No-one will even try to talk brewing history to you.

The living dead

We had an hour or so to kill on a Sunday evening in Dundrum recently. I'd heard that one of the new bars in the shopping centre had Carlow beers on tap so went in on spec, in the hope of a pint of O'Hara's Red.

Ruairi Maguire's is a run-of-the-mill superpub: multiple mezzanines, lots of open floor space for cattle-shed drinking plus a few nice little quiet corners decked out in dark wood and fake leather: not the sort of place I'd make a beeline for, but needs must when there's craft beer on the go.

Alas it appears that O'Hara's Red has left the building, leaving Curim Gold as the only craft tap in the place for the moment. We were actually on the way out when herself spotted the specials blackboard by the door advertising bottled beer of the month White Lady for €3.80. Well how bad can it be?

I was actually really seriously expecting it to be cider. But it is a beer: an organic bottle-conditioned lager from North Yorkshire (both the region and the brewery of the same name therein) titled after an undead milkmaid who haunts the premises.

Sadly, it's a bit of a ghost lager. Massive attenuation has sucked all the character out leaving a wan, thin and rather cidery beer behind (so I wasn't too far wrong in the first place), very pale and with a mountainous weissbier-like cap of foam on top. There's none of the big bittering or flavour hops you might expect to compensate for the lack of body. I can't see too many committed lager drinkers turning to this, regardless of whether their normal tipple is Bavaria or Budvar.

Nevertheless, props to the pub for at least having something different and cheap available. I'll be checking that blackboard next time I'm through.

All it's casked up to be?

I love cask beer, but there's an awful lot of horseshit preached about it, particularly from certain sectors of that lot over to the east of here. One of the observations that often gets trotted out is "I've never had a well-kept cask beer that's not been better than the brewery-conditioned version". Fair enough: you can't argue with anecdotes, but I have a theory that this cask-is-always-best principle only holds up for beers which were designed for cask in the first place. It is, by and large, a British thing, and people who believe it need to get out more.

So, mostly for my own reference, I thought I'd take advantage of this month's Session to examine the handful of beers I know in various dispense formats and see just how often natural condition is the best method of serving.

The two examples I trot out most frequently are Clotworthy Dobbin and Galway Hooker -- two of the best ales in regular production on this island. Bottled Hooker does not yet exist, but I've encountered it on cask on several occasions and it's always lacking. It's very much a hop-driven beer, and the Cascade and Saaz get deliciously propelled by the pressurised CO2, creating a clean, refreshing zingy session beer. When that force is taken away it ends up flat, watery and quite green-tasting, like it's not finished. What it probably needs for cask purposes is a dose of dry hops, but as-is it just doesn't work. Clotworthy also loses its hop character on cask. I'm most familiar with the force-carbonated bottle where late Cascade adds a mouth-watering fruitiness to the dark chocolatey ruby porter. The one time I had it on keg this interplay of malt and hops was even more pronounced, and if it wasn't for a bit of a metallic bum-note on the end, it would have been sublime -- I definitely look forward to seeing the keg version again. But on cask this all gets blended into a homogeneous brown lump, indistinguishable from a zillion other brown beers. A case for dry-hopping again, I reckon. Consider this next to the extremely unhoppy Curim Gold wheat beer from Carlow Brewing. I don't think I've met anyone who likes the dishwater bottled version; the keg edition has more of a fanbase but was still a little soapy for me; but on cask it's stunning -- jam-packed with witbier spice and refreshing lemony zing.

And yet, big hop flavours don't always die in the cask. Porterhouse Hop Head is a beer not at all dissimilar to Galway Hooker -- a bit bigger, a bit bitterer -- and it works equally well from cask, keg and naturally-conditioned bottle. If anything the bitterness is even more extreme in the cask edition, which is why I'd generally opt for it kegged, if given a choice.

Where I've found cask really works best, however, is with black beers. O'Hara's Stout, Porterhouse Plain and Porterhouse Oyster all far outshine their force carbonated incarnations. At least part of this is the unmitigated evil of nitrogenation. I can completely understand why Guinness came up with it: I'd say the early test batches of keg Guinness Extra Stout didn't get very far since the feel of CO2-pressurised draught stout was all wrong. It would have been so good if they'd just said "Well, there you go: you can't keg stout" and went back to casking. Instead, they managed to recreate the texture of the cask beer, but via a method which destroys its taste and aroma. I've met very few beers which are bold enough to stand up to nitro, Wrassler's XXXX being about the only one I can think of, and the Porterhouse have achieved this by brewing a monstrously aggressive stout that's probably undrinkable any other way (bottle-conditioned edition out soon, I hear: beware!). It's a massive shame that even across the water, in the spiritual home of cask beer, the style of beer which works best on cask is overwhelmingly represented by smoothflow keg rubbish. Where are the mainstream cask stouts from Britain's large regional breweries? Why aren't they as ubiquitous as the brown bitter and nitrokeg stout?

I should add that even stout-is-best-on-cask isn't a universal rule. Hilden's Molly's Chocolate Stout manages to dodge most of the rich sumptuous roasty flavours and comes out rather boring and thin. The bottled version at least adds a certain carbonic dryness that makes it a little more interesting. Which brings me on to the beer I'm wedging in for review in this post. It's not one I've had from the cask, but it is bottle-conditioned and wears its "CAMRA says..." badge up front with pride on its neck.

On pouring, Hook Norton Double Stout does a very good impression of a cask stout, coming out smooth and foamy though just a teensy bit overzealous with the carbonation. From the off-white head you get an enticing nosefull of dry and crunchy roasted barley or black malt. The foretaste contrasts this with a silky, creamy, chocolate sensation, followed by a brief tang of hops. Finally, there's a dry finish to clear the palate for the next mouthful. All this complexity on a mere 4.8% ABV makes it nearly perfect as a session stout. I'd love to try it on cask and would be willing to bet that the dryness tones down and even more of that chocolate creaminess comes to the front and hangs around. Yum.

While I remain incredulous in the face of the CO2 fundamentalists, it's only when we turn to stout that I have to bite my lip.

The good, the bad and the Blondie

Rounding up last weekend's trip to Liverpool with some of the better beers encountered, plus a couple of stinkers.

Obviously, a trip to the Baltic Fleet brewpub had to be done -- an odd little ramshackle pub, squeezed between a busy main road and a vast building site near the docks. It looks like it hasn't seen a lick of paint in some time, and there was no sign of the Wapping Brewery, which lurks somewhere in the building. Wapping Stout was the order of the day, and a damn fine pint it was too -- strong, heavy, and brimming with big earthy hops. Just what you want on a chilly November afternoon with the wind whipping in off the Irish Sea (and through the doors into the pub as the greengrocer made his deliveries).

Initially I'd passed over the offer of Blondie at the bar, fearing another dull golden ale, but my interest was piqued when I read it's a wheat beer. I've had some very positive experiences of cask wheat beer (Barney's Brew; Curim), and this turned out to be another. It's quite sharp and citric, tempered by a calming dryness. It was being served a tad warm, but when cool on a summer's day I'd say it's a winner.

The previous evening, as I mentioned, we were in the award-winning Ship & Mitre. The layout is a little irritating in that the handpumps are spread out in groups around the central bar making it difficult to find out what's available when the pub is packed. Two milds were on: Wentworth Maple Mild sounds promising but is actually rather boring, being pale brown with just a hint of unpleasant phenols to break the monotony. Devon Mild was much better: sweeter and with more chocolate than I had expected, but with all the roasted coffee any mild fanatic could ask for.

Séan, meanwhile, veered away from cask ale orthodoxy when the possibility of some Little Creatures Pale Ale opened up. I've heard lots about this Aussie but had never seen it in real life. It's good stuff -- a rock-solid American-style pale ale with a very nice balance between green C-hop bitterness and toffee malts.

Pint of the trip was a beer I've had before, but never on cask. The Fly In The Loaf was pouring Fuller's London Porter from the cask and it is simply stunning. No. Wait. It's complicatedly stunning. There are all manner of things going on here: hot cross buns, licquorice, dates -- the works -- and all on a silky full body that caresses the throat. Gorgeous gorgeous beer. Next to it at the bar there was a Fuller's beer I didn't know: Red Fox. Very poor, this -- super-sweet and cloying, like crappy keg bitter.

One pint left, and it's where we came in, with local regional Cains. This time we were at their flagship boozer, Doctor Duncan's, as recommended by Melissa. It was just gone 4 on Saturday. The pub was busy with a variety of punters, from post-shopping families to watchers of football. We needed some food and I went to the bar to order. "We stop serving food at 3.30". As Séan put it, that's just like saying "No thank you, we don't want to make any more money". So despite the lovely shiny array of Cains pumpclips and some interesting looking guests, we just stayed for the one. It goes without saying that it was the Cains specialty Raisin Beer. This seems to have started life as an ordinary brown bitter without much happening in it, but the raisins definitely make themselves felt. They taste exactly like raisins -- not raisin extract or concentrate -- real, fresh (for a dried fruit, obviously) raisins. The flavour lasts for ages, and when combined with the malt produces a sensation similar to drinking a glass of Bran Flakes. I loved it, though it would have been nicer with a pie. Everything is.

(A more succinct run-down of the Scouse pub scene is also available, courtesy of Mr R. Scooper.)

Roll in the barrel

The Bull & Castle's commitment to Ireland's craft beer has reached new heights in recent months with the addition of a beer engine to the downstairs bar. Yeah, the counter-mounted barrel is a bit of an eyesore, squatting on the bar in its black jacket like an undercover warthog, and the handpump is rather hidden out of the way, but the succession of cask beers we've had from it have been worth all of this and more.

The set-up was put in place through the good offices of the Carlow Brewing Company, and although there's no tie arrangement all of the beers have been supplied by the Carlow team. On the stout front we've had plenty of their fabulously chocolately Druid's Brew -- normally a festival special only -- plus their normal O'Hara's Stout which is so much more multi-dimensional on cask than in any other form, even when the immersion cooling system broke down.

So content was I with the stouts that I never batted an eyelid the first time a cask of O'Hara's Red was delivered in an unsaleable condition. I changed my tune when the second one arrived and I got a taste: nastily vinegary, sure, but underneath there are some quite wonderful raspberry and redcurrant flavours. When they eventually get this one right I'll be first in line. The last of the three core bottled Carlow beers is Curim Gold, their light lager-like wheat beer. It's dullsville normally, but when it appeared on cask it blew me away: jam-packed full of lemony citrus notes it was all kinds of quenching and the single cask drained away over the course of one balmy weekend last month.

And then the direction changed. Carlow, to the best of my knowledge, don't have a pilot plant. In fact, they're in the process of moving out of the Carlow goods store by the railway station into a bigger site. They don't do small runs (I'm sure someone can tell me their minimum batch size; I keep forgetting) and yet the latest residents of the Bull & Castle beer engine appear to be just that. First up was the charmingly-monikered Malty Bitches, a full-bodied red-brown bitter which looks like it ought to be malt-driven but has been dry-hopped to give it a fabulously citric juicy-fruit bitterness, as well as bits of hops in the bottom of the glass. It's interesting to compare it with Ireland's other copper-coloured bitter cask bitter, Porterhouse TSB. It lacks the intense harshness I generally find with TSB, making it easier for one pint, but the second pint of TSB always goes down a treat as the tannins come out and I'm not sure this sort of complexity exists in Malty Bitches. I can't be sure though, as all I got was a half pint from the fag end of the cask. You snooze you lose. For more ruminations on MB v TSB, see Reuben's Tale of Ale.

Next day, it was replaced with an IPA called Goods Store, a name derived from it being the last beer to be produced at the old brewery. Woah! What a beer! A bright and hazy orange colour it resembles nothing so much as a Bavarian hefeweizen. If there isn't a very generous dose of Cascade at the tail end of the hopping schedule then I don't know hops, but we're talking massive zesty mandarin orange flavours. There's a touch of the chalky dryness I tend to associate with, and quite enjoy in, Hilden Ale, but the body is really quite thin with the malt just providing enough of a stage for the hops to sing on. And sing they do. Goods Store IPA is without doubt one of the best Irish beers I've ever tasted, and I'm actually a little worried about what might happen to the rest of the batch.

Obviously, we need more pubs set up for cask. But what are the chances of that?

A drop of Irish

The wife and I took the day off on Friday and headed down the coast to Bray, a town we hadn't visited in several years. This is where The Porterhouse began, before the building of their (now dismantled) Temple Bar brewery, and it still retains a more traditional vibe, with Guinness and Heineken on tap. The annual Belgian beer festival is on across the chain at the moment, and in addition to some lovely draught Belgian ales (Abt 12, Tripel Karmaliet, et al) they've brewed up a new batch of their wonderful Chocolate Truffle Stout normally only seen in the spring. Chocolate, Belgian: geddit? A couple of pints of that in the front yard, overlooking the sea, made for a fine start to the weekend.

Saturday was brew day at home: an uncertain attempt at a dubbel. After the clean-up we headed for the Bull & Castle where the cask of the moment is Carlow Brewing's Curim Gold. I've never really been a fan of this in the bottle: it's a little bit bland and soapy. They'd never casked it before, but did so on request from the Bull & Castle who wanted something light and summery for the handpump, after a succession of stouts. Good thing they did, because it was fantastic. Belgian witbier is the closest approximation, and it has that spicy yeast character on top of refreshing zingy lemon flavours enhanced by some supreme sparkly conditioning -- so good you'd nearly think it was from a keg. Between four of us, we had the barrel drained by closing time.

There was just one deviation to the wheatiness -- a recently-arrived strong red ale from Hilden called Cathedral Quarter. It's the second in their series named after districts of Belfast, and I have to say I wasn't keen on the first one -- Titanic Quarter. However, the pour from this 5.3% ABV beer was promising, offering up summer fruit aromas and more than a hint of a Fuller's-esque toffee effect. The first sip was a major let-down, then. Stale, musty and cardboardy: a shame because there's clearly a good beer under it. As I drank, I found it mellowed a bit and the toffee returned accompanied by milk chocolate and butterscotch. I was getting quite into it by the end, though Níall who was drinking one beside me was less impressed. Can't really recommend this, I'm afraid.

It can be a bit swings-and-roundabouts with Irish beer sometimes, but with a gorgeous chocolate stout and a delectable cask wheatbeer in exchange for a musty red, I reckon I'm still up on the deal.

Time for a ruby?

Beer and food? That's a no-brainer for me and means curry every time. Historically speaking, the beer should be Carlsberg, the first lager to be associated with Indian food back in the 1920s. In general, however, I tend to drink Cobra. Yes I know it's made with maize and is about as Indian as I am, but I don't care.

In the halcyon days of the Dublin Brewing Company, my curry would always be accompanied by Maeve's Crystal Weiss, a spectacular spicy weissbier which sat beautifully with Indian food. It's gone now, though another Irish craft wheat beer is almost as good, namely Curim from the Carlow Brewing Company.

For this post, however, I'm going with a new "slow-brewed" lager called Time. This appears to be another one of the plastic paddies I ranted about over on Hop Talk last month. "Born in Ireland" says the label, and "Brewed in the European Union". The web address given is dead and the company address is an office over a boutique in central Dublin, also the address of several marketing and communications companies. It all adds up to contract brewed abroad and passed off as Irish.

Time, incidentally, was a brand formerly used by Smithwick's before it was taken over by Guinness. If Diageo still owned the trademark, no doubt they would have had it made at one of their Irish lager factories in Kilkenny or Dundalk where they make Harp, Satzenbrau, Bud and Carlsberg. However, I'm told the "Time Brewing Company" acquired the name when the trademark lapsed and they're having this brewed in England.

The beer itself, I'm pleased to report, is quite decent. It has a fairly light carbonation for a pilsner, which is a plus point when it comes to curry, and a bold malty flavour which cuts through the vindaloo sauce beautifully. At the end there's a little bit of a dry hops bite, but nothing too severe. It puts me in mind of Beck's, and if I had to guess a country of origin I would have placed it in Germany. All-in-all, Time passes the curry test with flying colours.

However, what with the vast range of eastern European lagers now available at bargain prices, I find it bizarre that someone would try and push an Irish-themed premium-priced lager onto the market. This sort of money will get you a bottle of Flensburger or Augustiner in any decent off licence. Why would a punter, either here or abroad, be attracted to this?

For the day that's in it

The supermarkets have knocked a few cent off the price of the Carlow Brewing Company's three beers, so I thought a reappraisal was in order.

O'Hara's is their stout: a straightforward, easy drinking, traditional black beer with no fancy texture or flavour. It's quite pleasant and refreshing for all that, very much a pint of plain and your only man.

Moling's red ale is the best of three, and a contender for Ireland's best ale now that Revolution is sadly out of the picture. It has a caramel-candy sweetness coupled with a mild smokiness adding up to a complex and interesting flavour that keeps you turning it over on your palate the whole glass through. Porterhouse Red probably still has the edge on it, but in the take-home stakes, Moling's is the bottle to beat.

Finally, Curim Gold is the brewery's wheat-beer-in-place-of-a-lager. It certainly is gold: a deep amber hue and slightly cloudy. Like its red brother, Curim has a complex taste, with hoppy bitterness to the fore, but tempered by a soft wheat flavour. It's a little bit cloying, and therefore maybe not the best session beer, but ideal as an accompaniment to spicy food.

So that's the round-up. Support your local small brewery and happy St. Patrick's Day.