Night night, Ping-Ping

A brand new beer from Trouble Brewing arrived just before Christmas. As far as I can see we didn't get a new iteration of their Dash Away cherry chocolate stout this year, so instead it's a straight-up milk stout called Nocturne. It looks well: black with ruby edging and topped by a creamy off-white head, just like stout is supposed to be. There's a surprising, and pleasing, vegetal bitterness in the aroma, hinting that this will be more in the traditional dry style than anything candyfied or otherwise deriving from the lesser stout cultures of America and Britain.

Sure enough, there's a bitterness at the centre of the flavour, although it is as much the luxurious bite of high-cocoa dark chocolate as the metallic rasp of old-world hops. Either way, it works beautifully. There's only the faintest lactic tang in the aftertaste to remind you this is anything other than a classically constructed Irish stout. If the very idea of milk in stout puts you off, here's an example that might just change your mind.

As a top-ranking husband, I bought the Panda Saga box set from BRÚ Brewery for my Panda Nero loving wife. As a top-ranking wife, she let me have a small taste of the one I hadn't had before: Super Panda. This one follows the basic chocolate and coffee pattern of all the other variants but ramps everything up to 15.2% ABV, so a small glass should be plenty.

It seemed a little thin and translucent as it poured, suggesting high attenuation rather than high gravity. And indeed it's thin on the palate, which is not the way Very Big Stout is normally done. The add-ons are very concentrated, to the point of seeming harsh, and there's very little sense of an underlying beer. This is more of a liqueur than anything else, and I couldn't imagine drinking a whole can. Big pastry stout should be richer and more filling, not simply stronger.

I really hope the current panoply of dark Irish beers doesn't get reduced just because the evenings start to brighten. It's always winter somewhere.

Rebels at large

After Monday's Dublin run-down, a smattering of beers from Co. Cork that found their way up here recently.

Black's of Kinsale joins the micro IPA trend with Night And Day, the lowest-strength Irish example so far at 2.5% ABV and badged as an "ultra session IPA". It's unavoidably watery, alas. There's a certain hop punch: lemon sherbet or Berocca, finishing on a hard waxy bitterness, though even that is dull and muted. I get that it's trying to be light and easy-going but there's a lack of substance that spoils it for me. I can see why other brewers pile in the oats when they're brewing these.

Black's is also continuing its exploration of cannabis terpenes in beer with a third recipe, this one quite different from the IPAs that went before. Black Cherry Soda Kush Porter leans more on the fruit than the herb, delivering a somewhat sticky cherryade sweetness. The chocolate is entirely complementary: a velvety cocoa buzz. There's a rasp of bitterness at the end but that's entirely in keeping with hops rather than anything more exotic. It's lighter and easier-going than 5% ABV suggests, slipping back without fuss, the syrup flavour not building unpleasantly. I'm reminded a little of Trouble's charming Christmas seasonal Dash Away. Perfect if you fancy a touch of winter in your summer.

On a more appropriately seasonal note there's Tropical Kush Crush, a "High PA" with added fruit. This 5%-er is a pale hazy orange colour, with a token head which faded fast. There's a definite weedy element in the aroma: a strong buzz of resins. The flavour is sweeter, the fruit lending it a touch of orangeade. This is balanced with some savoury spicing: tumeric, mint and woody ginger numbing the tongue. The texture is light, making it another quaffable effort, but with plenty of complexity too. Of the four Kush beers from Black's s far, this is the weediest, though it's still a solid IPA and not a stoner novelty drink.

From west Cork to north Cork next. Third in the Eight Degrees eighth anniversary series, following Yellow and Blue, is Red Ball. They've gone for an Australian-hopped IPA, using Vic Secret, Ella and Enigma. It was a job to pour, piling up an extravagant powdered wig of a head. Beneath this the body is a pleasingly clear amber colour. No burst of exotic hops in the aroma; just a dry and tannic tea effect with a slightly sweaty hop funk. The flavour is seriously dry: one of those astringencies that strips the moisture from the mouth. I waited for some softer flavours but none came, neither hop fruit nor malt candy. This is a very severe beer, closest in character to an English brown bitter, or possibly a strong ale, given the 5.7% ABV. Either way, not much fun here.

That's it from the Corkonians. Beer from not-Cork will follow on Friday.

The curtain descends

Old Father Time is oiling down his scythe, ready to take a swing at 2014 and bring the year to close. I'm left with a scattering of beer tasting notes gathered over the year that I've yet to commit to this blog and most of which will have to wait until 2015. For this post I'm pulling together an assortment of Irish ones, mostly to give posterity flavour of what was happening at this point in the big bang of modern Irish microbrewing.

Red is something of a theme, and rumours of the death of Irish red ale have been greatly exaggerated. The slightly hoppier amber ale twist is also highly fashionable and Mayo newcomer Reel Deel have launched with an amber ale as their first. Irish Blond is a sort-of in-joke, because it's not blonde, it's red. Ahahahaha. Um. What we have here is a pretty decent fist of an American style amber pouring a lovely shade of chestnut red. The aroma is lightly fruity, combining old school white lemonade and sherbet lemons. There's a lot of quality English bitter about the flavour, a crisp and thirst-quenching tannic element, some spices, but also the rounder exotic fruit of new world hops. It's maybe a bit too dry for first-rate American-style amber ale *cough*Amber-Ella*cough* but it's a very well made beer and one I would happily quaff lots more of.

Dublin's Stone Barrel brewing are coming to the end of their contract brewing phase and are hoping to have their own production brewery in the New Year. Red Mist is their second UK-brewed bottled beer and is an amber ale of a modest and sessionable 4.2% ABV. It packs a lot of complexity in there, being another sherbet-smelling one but showing bags of toffee in the flavour, in keeping with the dark copper body. The sweetness is balanced deftly by pockets of green bitterness, for that hop-studded candy effect I always enjoy in amber ale.

There's less of that sort of thing in Clanconnel McGrath's No. 6 which I chanced upon in The Waterloo in Dublin. Their Saturday night €4 bottle offer is great for some sociable exploring. This is another dark red amber ale but the malt is winning the aroma, showing in a rather musty burlap smell. There's crunchy grain in the flavour as well, though the hops are more assertive here. Rather than American citrus you get a genteel lavender and talcum which adds up to a sweet and slightly twee beer. Think granny's oatmeal cookies. That she eats in the bath.

I'm guessing West Mayo brewery were going for more of a traditional red style with Clew Bay Sunset which I found on tap in The Norseman back in October but this is a weird mutant variant. It's thin enough and fizzy enough, but is over-the-top sweet, with the fake fruit flavour of red lemonade. The aroma is pure butterscotch and the finish saccharine-sweet to the point of tasting metallic. It's the awful candy concoction of an especially vindictive Willy Wonka. Avoid.

More recently (yesterday) in The Norseman they were pouring Yule, a Christmas beer for White Hag's first Christmas. It's 7.2% ABV, mostly headless, and a murky red-amber colour. I'd say it's quite highly attenuated as the texture is thin even though the alcoholic weight is very apparent. There's a powerful red fruit flavour with all the sugar of ripe rasberries and strawberries plus the acidic sharpness of both. I'm definitely not of the opinion that a Christmas beer should taste Christmassy but this one has me wondering why a beer called Yule conjures up strawberries and cream in front of the tennis.

Meanwhile, at the supermarket, Solas is one of the brands Rye River brews for Tesco, the more traditional of the two. Solas Red is a classic dark Irish red: copper shading towards brown. The head is generous to begin with but collapses quickly, while the nose is a charming mix of warmth and red fruit, like fresh cherry pie, including the slight sourness. It's rather plainer to drink: lots of simple dry roast and a highly attenuated thinness. There's no hop character and not much malt either, not even the caramel that any reasonable human might expect from Irish red. It's 4.3% ABV but drinks like a cheapy supermarket own-brand half that strength.

So, apprehension going into Solas Stout. It certainly looks the part, pouring thickly and nearly opaque with a loose-bubbled ivory head. There's a rich and sweet aroma, though it's slightly phenolic, but not in a bad way -- sort of smoky. The flavour is at once classic Irish stout, but also quite unusual: there's lots of dry roast, more than a hint of caramel, burnt edges and a sour tang. It exists somewhere in the middle of a circle marked by bottled Guinness, Knockmealdown and O'Hara's Leann Folláin and is beautifully complex for something that's just 4.5% ABV. I really like it, and it's great to see this sort of interesting full-flavoured Irish stout hitting the mainstream via Tesco.

New lagers are a bit thin on the ground. Who wants to drink lager, after all? Cumberland Breweries from northern England do, and have set up a satellite brewery called Station Works just outside Newry where they're making Finn Irish Craft Lager. It's 4.5% ABV and comes in 33cl bottles decorated in hexagons, because giants and that. It's perfectly clear and very pale, with a suspicious but not unattractive burst of green apples in the aroma. It's very clean to taste, however: lightly carbonated for moussey texture and with light notes of grapefruit and lime balanced against a sweet biscuit graininess. There's a near-sour bite on the end which may be down to a technical flaw but which I rather enjoyed. It's maybe not a session lager, but works well as a refresher or aperitif.

A similar bite is at work in Carden's Wild Ale by White Gypsy, discovered by chance on the beer engine at Alfie Byrne's the other week. The aroma of this red-gold ale is a kind of lemon sourness rather than the full-on acetic of deliberately soured beer. The body is quite thin and the flavour offers a mild combination of pale biscuits, brown sugar and light lemon-and-lime. I'm left a little confused as to what it's supposed to be, and at 5% ABV I expected a lot more of everything.

I only managed to catch one of White Gypsy's pair of draught winter specials, namely A Winter's Ale, a title seemingly abandoned by Eight Degrees now after a couple of years of disuse. This "German Pale Ale" promises an intriguing mix of Belgian yeast and ultra-hip German hop varieties Polaris and Mandarina Bavaria. Conveniently for me, The 108 in Rathgar had it on tap so I nipped over one quiet Sunday afternoon to give it a go. It's another odd beast, pouring a perfect clear garnet colour with an aroma very typical of Belgian dubbel, despite a mere 5.7% ABV. There's a double impact on tasting: the heavy brown-banana esters of the yeast and then a sharp, medicinal, mentholyptus effect from the Polaris. I'd been hoping for some rounded fruit tones from the Mandarina but I'm guessing the yeast esters have buried all that. A long menthol burn finishes it off gradually. It's a strange beer: invigorating and like nothing I've ever tasted before. But it's just a little too hot and sharp to be friendly.

Just one token IPA for this post. It's hard to believe people are still drinking this quaint and outmoded style. Bran & Sceolan is one of the White Hag range that I missed at the RDS back in September but seems to be part of the small core range the brewery is selling in Ireland. There's something classically American about the amber colour, the 7.2% ABV and the big hit of mango and peach in the flavour. There's a certain amount of residual crystal malt sweetness, but not so much that the hops suffer; if anything the tropical fruit notes are emphasised by the extra sugar. It's nicely balanced, clean flavoured and very drinkable showing very little sign of how strong it is. The hop acidity lasts well into the finish, coating the tongue, so I suspect it may be a bit of a palate killer, but what a way to go! Another bravo performance from the Sligo lads.

And a handful of dark beers to finish on: St. Mel's first seasonal is Raisin & Oatmeal Stout which showed up in bottles at 57 The Headline. Sharp, dry, crisp roast rules supreme in this 4.5%-er. The label employs the words "vinous" and "port" but you need either a finely-tuned palate or an active imagination to spot them. There isn't even the smoothness that I understand is part of the package with oatmeal, whether that's down to the low ABV or the bottle-conditioned high fizz. Towards the end I got a tiny hint of dark fruit, but not enough to really mark this out as anything other than a decently put-together dry Irish session stout.

Trouble made a much better fist of fruited Christmas stout. Dash Away was on cask for one thing: no upsetting fizz, just luscious smoothness, helped no doubt by 5.7% ABV. Chocolate and cherries are the added ingredients, the former making a huge contribution to the flavour, the latter just a small smattering of the glacé variety. Amongst the warming sweetness there's a mildly spicy edge as well, generated by the roasted grains and yeast, I'd guess. The finish is quick, making it nicely glugable, setting up the next pint. The keg version is simpler and less rich but does preserve a lot of the black forest gateaux complexity.

I found a very similar flavour profile in Carrig Winter Ale, part of an excellent seasonal line-up in The Bull & Castle at the moment. It's dark and dense, and slightly stronger at 6.5% ABV. Chocolate features in a big way, sweet and creamy, while behind it there's a confection of mild winter spices: could be cinnamon, could be nutmeg, but nothing particularly assertive or distinctive. This mince pie effect is even more noticeable in the aroma. As a filling winter warming it's absolutely spot on though the weight and sweetness do mean a pint is a little like consuming an entire selection box in one go. Not a session beer, then.

Time for a palate cleanser. Fortunately JW Sweetman had tapped a cask (possibly the first) of Barrelhead Dry Stout. I suspect that this is a very simply made version of the style: it has the same sort of crisp roast and creaminess of any Irish dry stout. But the natural conditioning adds dimensions to the flavour, with notes of sandalwood and cranberry sneaking in. It's a little watery at heart, reflecting perhaps the sub-4% ABV, but overall a damn decent beer and a great example of how cask conditioning can benefit a stout. Cheers to Steve for the heads-up on this one.

Lastly the second beer from the Blackstairs brand: Dark Fiery Porter. It's 5% ABV and brewed with oatmeal, ginger and jalapeños. What's not to like in that? There's a density to the appearance, jet black with a tan coloured head. For all that, it's a lightly textured beer, low on fizz and smooth without being thick. The spicing is gentle and mannerly with the ginger present more in a candied way, as a sweetness. There's very little sign of the peppers, maybe just a slight fruity pop in the aroma. The end result is a nicely complex warming winter beer, proof that you can get great results with wacky ingredients without the beer itself turning out wacky.

Phew. Bit of a scattergun, that. But it reflects how trying to keep up with Irish beer feels these days. I've deliberately left out several groups of beers and I'll get to those before the clock strikes midnight on the 31st.