End of

Oof. I'm glad I'm not in the business of making predictions, because the things I merely hoped for in this post last year did not work out. No, don't go and check; let's leave 2024 in the rear view mirror, with 2025 now ready to join it.

It's time to run through the highlights of the year just gone in the time-honoured (17 years!) fashion. My trusty assistant for the work at hand is Brewers At Play 48 from Kinnegar. It's a 10% ABV barley wine so should be up to the task. It's as viscous as one might expect, pouring slowly and forming a thick puck of cream-coloured foam over a murky mahogany-red body. The aroma combines bready malt warmth with some summery fruit: cherry and red grape in particular, a reminder that the style was named for its mimicry of wine. It opens with a bitter, herbal bite, something like a brightly-coloured Italian aperitif, with a hint of oak vanilla too, even though it hasn't seen the inside of any barrels. That settles but never quite goes away, while the fruit from the aroma makes a return, forming the centre of the flavour. The brewery says plum, and I get that, but I think it's more intense, suggesting damson, blackcurrant and raisin. Towards the end there's some pepper and nutmeg spicing, meaning there's a very decent degree of complexity on offer here. Coupled with the heavy texture, it's a sipper for sure. That's copperfastened by a growing warmth as it progresses. You don't need me to tell you this is a beer to take time over, and there's lots to explore and ponder. But I have a different sort of pondering to do. 

And so, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats and pray silence for...

The Golden Pint Awards 2025

Best Irish Cask Beer: Otterbank: The Magic Road 
It hasn't been a bad year for Irish cask, with Lough Gill and Brehon Brewhouse joining Hopkins & Hopkins in the rotational cask selection at Dublin's Porterhouse branches. The winner comes from a festival, however: Belfast, last month. Otterbank presented The Magic Road as a strawberry sour beer but there was much more happening than that short description conveys.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Wide Street: Cuvée Spontanée
This could also have been a cask contender, though was a little green when first presented, at the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival in April. By Hagstravaganza four months later, it shone on keg, delivering by-the-numbers classic oude geuze flavours.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Rye River: Grafters Night Shift
Dunnes Stores takes a gamble on the American-style brown ale that Rye River previously supplied to Lidl. I hope it stays here longer, because the combination of brightly floral hop fun with indulgent chocolate is rather special, while the teeny price tag is almost unique for a beer of this quality. Please do your bit to keep it on order at Dunnes. A very honourable mention goes to WhiteField for their joyously no-nonsense Irish Stout.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Lough Gill: North Star
Unsurprisingly, there were lots of contenders for this one. Lineman cornered the market for hop-forward styles, Third Barrel aced the lagers, but Lough Gill continues to reign supreme in imperial stouts, and gave us a dizzying array to choose from. Sherry-aged Solera was a strong contender, but the one with the Christmas spices -- crucially, not overdone -- was my top preference.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: 't Pomphuizeke: Peper Lambiek
Preference is an important factor in these awards. I'm not saying that the spiced lambic from a Belgian brewery I'd never heard of was the best overseas draught beer by any objective measure, but it's very much the sort thing I like, and enjoy finding when it's done well. This one, from this year's Borefts Beer Festival, goes full-on novelty while still retaining its core lambic character. Superb.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Tommie Sjef: Flint
More sour beer from the same festival. No gimmicks here, just spontaneously fermented and barrel-aged flavours, exactly the way I like them. A reminder that lambic, and lambic-a-likes, don't necessarily need spices to taste spicy.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Dois Corvos: Magnetic Poles
The Portuguese brewery puts a dent in my theory that classic lager styles are best not given wacky, craft-era, recipe twists, with this tonka'd up Baltic Porter. What if tonka, but just the right amount? This is the first beer I've ever encountered that's done that.

Best Collaboration Brew: DankHouse and De Molen: Dank & Dutchies
Is it just my imagination or did black IPA have a wee bit of a resurgence this year? Not much, but it seemed noticeable. Not all of them were great, but this collaboration for Borefts was everything the style ought to be, which is a near guarantee of an award from me. 

Best Overall Beer: Cuvée Spontanée
One does not simply walk into the brewhouse and begin making beer like this. Wide Street's abundant enthusiasm for the style and years of honing its processes has paid off handsomely, and I think that deserves recognition. In place of proper recognition, however, I can offer only this meaningless plaudit. Bottled Cuvée Spontanée is out and about at the moment, and deserves to be snapped up.

Best Branding: Wicklow Wolf
I've long been a fan of the way Wicklow Wolf presents itself, and there have been some lovely variants on its consistent house style this year. The contrasting colours on the tap badges for Pacific Heights and Cliff Walk looked striking side-by-side at Tapped back in April, while the glow-in-the-dark Halloween label and the Troy Parrott football celebration lager showed a wonderful sense of fun.

Best Pump Clip: Galway Bay: Forbidden Cats
More fun from Galway Bay too. Rock on, racoon!

Best Bottle/Can Label: Hopfully: Snowboard
For the second year on the trot, the best label goes to a beer I haven't published a review of yet. This was the work of Laurynas Butkus, a student at the National College of Art & Design. I loved the geometry and economy of the picture. I hope we'll be seeing more of his work on future Hopfully beers. And indeed, more named artists on beer label smallprint generally.

Best Irish Brewery: Lough Gill
I've never gone back to count the number of Golden Pints that Francesco Sottomano is responsible for throughout his years at various Irish microbreweries, but I bet it's a few. This year he has been absolutely killing it at Lough Gill across a range of styles and formats. I hope the team up in Sligo enjoys making the beers as much as I enjoy drinking them; they have a lot to be proud of. 

Best Overseas Brewery: Hill Farmstead
This award is on the strength of only three beers (one of them, yes, at Borefts) but they confirmed my conviction that Hill Farmstead is not a brewery whose beers one passes by when they're available. Their output is quite different to how European breweries do the whole wild beer thing, but if there are more operators like this in the US, please send those our way too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2025: Priory
It's a re-opening rather than an opening -- the kit in Tallaght hasn't moved an inch since it was installed in 2017, but this year it exited an extended Covid-era suspension and began brewing again for its new onsite taproom and tank bar at the Priory Market food court. The beers have largely been excellent too, with particular shouts-out for the Helles and stout.

Pub/Bar of the Year: La Fleur en Papier Doré
Another welcome back to a long-closed establishment. I was delighted to be able to enjoy a beer at this Brussels icon back in the spring, making it my favourite pub experience of the year.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2025: Daphni
A tough category, with openings of good beer outlets very much in negative growth around here -- RIP UnderDog. The new bar from Animal Collective, at Bolands Mills, wins by default, though I was genuinely impressed, by both its beer offer, and the setting: it's the sort of high quality renovation of an old industrial site that we don't see enough of in Dublin.  

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It supplied three of the award winners above, so it shouldn't be a surprise that De Molen's festival gets this prize again. Third year running, but last year ever, following the brewery's closure in September. The field is open for 2026.

Supermarket of the Year: SuperValu Sundrive
The era of specialty beer being one of the front lines in the endless War of the Supermarkets is long over, but nobody seems to have told my local SuperValu. It continues to stock a first-rate range of core beers from Irish breweries, as well as solid classics from Belgium, the UK and further afield.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Martin's of Fairview
I only trekked up to the far distant northside on a couple of occasions this year, but I came away both times with beers I hadn't expected to find, or didn't know existed. Add in their fondness for commissioning special beers from local breweries, and you have everything you want from a neighbourhood offy. If only it were in my neighbourhood.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
Four years running. I'm not even going to pretend there's anyone else in contention. I click the beers, I pick them up, and the rest of this blog flows from there, by and large.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Filthy Queens
It's the battle of the books this year, with two works of beer history, taking very different approaches. Kudos must go to Martyn Cornell's monumental Porter & Stout: A Complete History. It was a slog to read, but even before I finished it, I was using it as a reference resource. It will stand for the ages, and double-fastens the author's legacy. Christina wins on narrative grounds, however. Her book is one of people and their stories, rather than cold numbers and diagrams. It's an account of the real lives lived by the people -- mostly women, it must be said -- who brewed and sold Ireland's beer down through the ages. There has not been a beer book like it.

Best Beer Blog or Website: The Drunken Destrier
I had this flagged for greatness since the spring, but the flurry of entertaining beer reviews petered out in late May. In the hope of some revived activity -- I mean, how hard is it to drink a beer and write down what it tastes like? -- I'm slinging a Golden Pint in Kill's direction.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: barmas.bsky.social
Yeah, it's mostly for the dog pictures, but you knew that.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Rye River
This was the year that I made a firm and final break with Twitter, in favour of doing much the same sort of timewasting on Bluesky instead. Like the media outlets I used to follow, not many breweries have made the switch, but Rye River have, and regularly post their beer news and other fun stuff from around the brewery. I'm hoping to see more of my favourite producers posting to The Nice Place in 2026.


And with that, the awards table is empty for another year. Thanks for reading in 2025, and here's to more award-worthy beer in the year to come.

Wiccan mix

Hagstravaganza 11, the seventh of its name, took place at The White Hag brewery recently. As usual, a team of guest brewers from Ireland, the UK and Europe brought a wide selection of beers for us to work through, 200ml at a time.

I was looking for a lager to start me off but they were in somewhat short supply, so went for a sour IPA instead, for that post-travel refreshment factor. This was Sour Drop by Lambrate, seemingly a very typical example, being 4.5% ABV and a pale hazy yellow. The aroma is fairly standard too, showing the yoghurt-like tang of a kettle-soured beer. On tasting, however, its all about the hops, making excellent use of the plain base to showcase a firework display of zingy, zesty citrus flavour, with a punchy and invigorating bitterness. The finish is quick, but that only serves to help its thirst-quenching powers. I've been a fan of sour IPAs since my first encounter (hello Eight Degrees!), and while they're not always brilliant, this example was a reminder of why they're worthwhile, especially outdoors on a sunny afternoon.

The drops continued next, with Pressure Drop. Their Pale Fire pale ale is one of those modern British classics, but also a beer I had never tried myself, a bit like Elusive's Oregon Trail, reviewed last week. And a bit like that one, I wasn't a fan. It actually has the same savoury sesame or caraway kick which is one of the peculiarities of my palate when it comes to particular hops, although to a lesser extent here, thanks, I guess, to the beer being only 4.4% ABV. At first I found it dry and a little rough-tasting, followed by a growing pithy bitterness which I felt was a bit overdone in a session-strength ale. I don't doubt its boldness, or that it's exactly what the brewery and its customers want it to be. Too much of it was not to my taste, however. Could it be that the age of soft and fluffy pale ales has ruined my palate for big-boy bitterness?

The following beer proved immediately that this is not the case. Drink While Laughing (great name!) is from White Hag itself, in collaboration with regular festival participant Green Cheek of California. It's another pale ale, and still modestly strong at 5.5% ABV. They say "West Coast" in the description and they really mean it. For one thing, it's a gorgeous clear gold colour, and attention has been paid to the malt side of the recipe, with a lovely big and chewy golden-syrup base. Not that it's sweet; the malt provides a platform for some wonderfully complex yet accessible hop character, starting on the classic grapefruit bite which, instead of building, gives way to a subsequent mandarin softness. This one-two citric hop effect continues all the way through, so while it's quite easy drinking, it still managed to hold my attention. Cans of this are currently in circulation, and I'm very much minded to become more familiar with it. I flag it thus for the attention of all the west-coast whiners out there.

That full-on hop experience necessitated something clean and fizzy to follow. Brewfist -- a blast from my beer-drinking past -- had a lager from their pilot scheme on the board: Italian Pilsner 03. Now, maybe it's not my place to tell a seasoned Italian brewer what an "Italian pilsner" should be like, but this wasn't the beer I expected. Full marks for the visuals: a flawless golden body topped with a perfect fine shaving-foam mousse. The aroma is also that of a top-notch Mitteleuropa pilsner, a pristine grassy note which, if it isn't from Saaz hops, is doing a convincing impression of them. And so it goes with the flavour: spinach and celery on a clean base, perhaps suggesting more German-style than Czech to me, and absolutely delicious, but shouldn't the Italian style have something a bit extra going on with the hops? And shouldn't pilot releases be rather more experimental? I'm probably overthinking it. This is a pilsner from Italy, and an utterly superb one. Version 04 could up the hop quotient a little, but I wouldn't change the fundamentals.

I came back to Brewfist a little later on, when I noticed the strong beers were running out and I didn't want to miss theirs. That was Vecchia Lodi, a 12% ABV barley wine. Style fidelity was in evidence here again, although it's not one of the hopped-up barley wines typified by Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot. Instead, it's sweet all the way through, from a syrupy treacle aroma to a cereal and cake flavour. A tang of grape and cork brings in the "wine" part of the spec, and is perhaps a result of this being a six-year-old vintage. While by no means spectacular, nor showing signs of much development after the extended ageing, it was simple and enjoyable fare; smooth and lacking any overweening alcohol heat or sharp hop edges.

A palate scrub was required again, so I followed this with New Moon, a gose by Manchester's Balance. The brewery specialises in the wild and funky end of things, so it shouldn't be surprising that their gose is a straight-up one, lacking any novelty add-ons. It's 4% ABV, a mostly clear gold colour, and presents flavours of zest and brine, the sour culture doing the work that hops might normally perform, giving the beer acidity and bite. Classic gose is made with coriander as well, and if that's included here, it didn't really make itself known. Still, I had little to complain about as the sticky barley wine residue was washed from my gob.

I stuck with Balance for the next one, a dry-hopped saison called Long Shadows. There was more than a hint of geuze about the aroma of this: an enticing spicy sharpness. The flavour was less impressive, but still good, with a lot more sourness than hops in evidence. The gunpowder spice of the aroma is reduced to a more saison-like white pepper, and there's a residual kick of vinegar, verging on the too-sour. I still enjoyed it, sourness and absent hops notwithstanding. There wasn't a lot of this kind of beer at the gig, so Balance's presence was very welcome. I should have tried their third one too.

At the opposite end of the sour spectrum, there's French brewery Nautile and their "lemon and almond pastry sour", called Sneffels. I'm rarely without apprehension on approach to things like these, but I'd had strong recommendations during the day, and they proved accurate. Although this is 6% ABV and presumably brewed with lactose, it's no sticky mess, and isn't horribly sweet. It's not sour either, but does let the lemon do most of the talking, with a zesty aroma and a lemonade flavour, including a sprig of rosemary for a bonus oily herbal effect. I did not expect clean and refreshing from something of this description, but I welcome it.

Nautile also had a Flanders red on offer, a big one at 9% ABV, called Katsberg. That heft didn't suit some of the drinkers who expressed a preference, but I thought it worked, and covered the style's requirements well. Yes, it's a bigger beer all round, with a denser body and more of a cherry and strawberry sweet side. The sharp and fizzy brisk sourness is not a feature, but I think the heftier spec works almost as well. There was certainly no shortage of complexity in the flavour, with lots of balsamic vinegar and dark chocolate in evidence. Flanders red, especially when produced by a brewery that doesn't specialise in it, can sometimes go too far with the acidity, and you get an unpleasant raw vinegar tang on the end. There's no danger of that in this big sour softie, however. It's unorthodox, but it's made me less of a purist about this style.

And we were spoiled for choice, since White Hag were launching a Flanders red of their own. The name, Oud Foudre No. 1, implies that this isn't the last one of these they'll do. It's another fairly big one, at 6.6% ABV, and picks a different direction from the previous beer, and the style generally. Instead of going all-in for tartness, this is all about the funk, smelling almost like a ripe blue cheese. Not a beer for beginners, then. There's a sweet side represented by exotic dark fruit flavours -- tamarind and date -- plus a peppery spice, giving it a not unwelcome vibe of HP Sauce. It's still plenty sour too, which makes it a little curdling, but it's far too interesting for me to complain about such details. I could have spent the whole evening exploring its strange yet pleasant sensory features. Here's hoping this wasn't beginners' luck.

After all that microbial pyrotechnics, it was something of a comedown to drink a simpler fruited sour ale. Cloudwater's Cherry Gentle Breeze is a mere 4.5% ABV and pink coloured. Although two types of cherry are used, it tasted more like raspberry or redcurrant to me, with that level of tartness, plus a sweeter ripe plum side. That problem tells us that the cherries were added as real fruit, rather than a substance designed to make beers taste like cherries. I approve. This is a simple and well-made affair: smooth and very sinkable, and streets ahead of all the garish syruped-up fruit beers pumped out by lesser breweries. I'm no Cloudwater fanboy, but this was excellent work.

That brings us to end-of-the-festival silliness territory. Before hitting the rails, I took Dave from Wide Street's recommendation of their own Cuvée Spontanée, a geuze clone that was promising on its début in Mullingar last April but has now matured into Boon-like perfection. There was a snifter of barrel-aged Black Boar for the train, but my final tick was Band of Brothers, a triple IPA by Dutch brewer Folkingbrew.

As per, this is custard-yellow and completely opaque, the ABV a full-throated 10%. There's an odd aroma of vanilla mixed with gunpowder, and the spice carries through to the flavour. There, the soft New England vanilla takes precedence, balanced by a slightly harsh and dreggy hop-leaf bitterness, and seasoned by a kind of garlic salt and chilli pepper spice. That doesn't sound especially pleasant, but it all hangs together harmoniously, without any disturbing alcohol heat. I never would have guessed the strength, and it didn't take me long to finish.

But finish I did. It was good to be back in Ballymote after missing last year, though I was reminded, as I always am at Hagstravaganza, that I've never been drinking in nearby Sligo town. That will be changing soon.

You had to be there

When it was mentioned that 2025 was the fourth annual Mullingar Wild Beer Festival, I was taken aback. Can it really have been that long? (yes it can) This edition suffered a fit of last-minute hiccups when three of the six attending breweries pulled out on the day, citing various reasons. So we had to make do without The White Hag, Land & Labour and Ballykilcavan. Those guys can owe us.

Of those that did show, Third Barrel only brought one beer, which was extra-appreciated. It's called Princess Peach, and is an experiment in what happens when you match the sweet stonefruit effect that certain Brettanomyces strains bring to a beer, with actual peach purée. I didn't think it worked very well, but I'm told by Kev the brewer and owner that I'm wrong, which is fair enough. For me, the Brett got lost. The beer tasted very sweet, and very similar to what you might get if you simply added peach extract to a plain blonde ale. The wild side, the fact that it was also aged in a Chardonnay barrel, and the sizeable 7% ABV were all missing from the taste. It's juicy fun, but as a complex beer for insufferable chin-stroking connoisseurs (ie the whole point of this festival) it was lacking.

Everyone else's first beer was a new one from Wide Street: Cuvée Spontanée, so I had that next in case it ran out. The brewery says it's in a gueze style, though was pouring it on cask, a format generally reserved in Belgium for straight lambic only. That left it a little on the warm and flat side, which gueze shouldn't be, but it got the other basics correct. Brettanomyces is indicated in a lightly peachy aroma, while the flavour is decently sharp and tangy, with a kind of green-apple acidity to the sourness, enriched with an odd but not unwelcome smear of butteriness. It finishes cleanly, making for some very easy drinking. I assume this will be out in bottled form in due course, and it will be interesting to see how it develops with a bit of age. Some extra complexity would be good, though it's hard to fault it as it was served on the day.

Finally, there was Otterbank, a Donegal brewery which no longer has any distribution in Dublin. By way of apology, the management sent me away with a selection of bottles, so I got to try a few of the offerings in both draught and small-pack formats.

The first of these was Messers, an ale brewed with heritage barley and oats, fermented with locally harvested wild yeast for three years in an ex-Chardonnay barrel. I'm guessing the aim is to create something historical-ish, though without reference to any established style of beer. It pours a honey colour -- much paler than in my terrible photograph --  and has a very oaky aroma, with sparks of mineral spices. Perhaps in keeping with its pre-modern sensibilities, it's quite flat, with only a very faint sparkle. The white wine is to the fore in the flavour, with elements of gooseberry and lychee, plus a heaping helping of vanilla and an odd seam of coconut. The sourness is quite assertive, so it's not one for beginners, but there's a balance, too: a sweet side from its fruity characteristics and the significant gravity (finishing at 6.6% ABV) which helps it stay drinkable. It probably resembles straight lambic more than anything else, and as such is highly enjoyable.

Next is Matriarch, which is described as "our most complex release to date", being a Flanders red ale, given five years of ageing in Armagnac barrels, finishing at a formidable 9.9% ABV. That strength is immediately apparent from the first sip. It's heavy with caramel malt and lots of fortified wine: port or dark sherry, though the aroma is distinctly all brandy. There's a very clubby mix of flavours, incorporating cigar smoke, oak and old leather, making it very much a beer to sip. Surprisingly, it's not hot, however. Neither is it especially sour: you can just about tell that there's a Flanders red at the base, but not one of the more extreme ones. Think Rodenbach Classic. Come to think of it, this is a better hacked-about Flanders red than most of the ones Rodenbach has come out with. What the wild side does especially well is give it a clean finish, much like the previous beers, not letting the weighty richness become a burden on the palate. This is an all-round classy affair, and another example of getting full value out of a very complicated production process.

Not at the festival, but I had a bottle later, was Welcome To Muff, billed as a session IPA and 3.5% ABV. There has to be a twist, and it's that it's a raw ale, brewed without boiling. That technique tends to be used for beers without hops, because you won't get the proper bittering effect without a boil. However, this adds Galaxy dry. I had no idea what to expect from it. In the glass it's a dusty-looking amber colour and quite hazy. The aroma is fresh and zesty, with the orange-shred marmalade character I very much associate with Galaxy. The body is light and the carbonation soft, which puts us in English cask bitter territory. I assumed there would be some pinch of wildness in its make up, but no: other than the accent on the hops, it's quite neutral. I see this working well by the pint, as a high-quality, unfussy, drinking beer. I would never have guessed the ABV is as low as it is: it gets away with it the same way the English brewers do, with a beautifully subtle complexity. If this was an experiment, it paid off handsomely. The 33cl serving size is the only cause for complaint I have.

Back to Mullingar, then, and as always there were a handful of kegs from breweries abroad.

Echoes of Summer by Little Earth Project was left over from last year's gig. It's a mixed fermentation beer of 5.3% ABV with a mixture of summer fruit in it. The pour was headless and the beer dark brown, with an aroma of spices and dark fruit, a little like HP Sauce. The flavour is quite sharp, and there was a certain staleness going on which made me think that the inter-festival maturation hasn't done it any good. On the plus side, there's an enjoyable richness to the taste, bringing red grape, raisin and fig. I wonder if it had more zing originally, because that's what's missing from the picture.

Cyclic is a specialist wild beer brewer in Catalonia, and they sent a grape ale called Skin Contact. This deeply purple 6.9%-er started life as a saison before the grape skin was added. The result isn't sour, but has a strong Bretty funk, of the farmyards and horseblankets variety. The grape must have gone in in bulk because there's a lusciously dense, weighty, fruit side. I got quite kriek-like vibes, with the grapes adding a cherry jam sweetness, contrasting with the more serious drier funk. It works incredibly well, and sits nicely in between the flavour profiles of wild beer and natural wine. Fascinating, but delicious too.

From the same part of the world comes La Salvatge, and they had another peach beer, called La Viu-Viu. This is a blend of two spontaneously-fermented ales which was then aged in red wine barrels with the peaches. It's 6% ABV and a cloudy orange colour. There was something a bit off about the fruit in this, tasting too sweet and slightly rancid. There's a waxy, bitter quality to the base beer, which adds to the harshness. This is a challenging creature, and while I appreciated the depth and complexity, it's too much for me.

That leaves what I thought was going to be the star of the show: Boerenerf. I didn't recognise the beer on sale from this newcomer in Belgian lambic, badged here as Gueuze: Pineau des Charentes Barrels -- the brewery might have a different name for it. I didn't even know what Pineau des Charentes was, learning it's a fortified wine from western France. OK then. The beer is rather sweet for a proper geuze, and I guess it's the barrels which give it a tropical character, suggesting mango and passionfruit in an odd but not unpleasant way. Though sweet, it's not gloopy, and has a gorgeously crisp Champagne sparkle. The sourness is assertive without being aggressive, and when it warms there's a growing incense spice in the taste. As such, it performs as a lambic ought to, and confirms further my admiration for this new producer.

While it's a shame we didn't have three more breweries on the day, I fully used up my afternoon on the beers that were there. Thanks as always to the organisers and brewers.