Drinkhana

The market for independent beer may have contracted somewhat, but the breweries can still put on a show. A couple of weeks ago the Dublin Beer Festival returned to the Ring Hall in the RDS's horsey bits for a third year, with an impressive array of beers from local and foreign breweries. There was much new and rare to be discovered, so let's begin.

For me, the beginning was O'Hara's and Le Chéile, a lager. I was interested to see "Brewed in Dundalk" on the tap badge. O'Hara's has taken ownership of the former Pearse Lyons brewery and is running it in parallel with Bagenalstown, as predominantly a lager brewery. This New Zealand-hopped pilsner bodes well for the plans, showcasing the Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka beautifully, from a powerful mown-grass aroma, to a flavour packed out with peppery spice and dank resins. 6% ABV gives it plenty of heft, though without any malt sweetness interfering with the hop explosion. Magnificent stuff, and well capable of giving the high-end west-coast IPAs a run for their money.

In sharp contrast, O'Hara's also brought a new Hazelnut Brown Ale, 5% ABV and served nitrogenated. This was somewhat less successful, being a gloopy, sticky affair, loaded up with cloying hazelnut syrup. It has very little to offer beyond the intense sweetness, and while it does taste of nut, it's very much processed and candified. It goes without saying that the nitrogen helps none of this, though it does mean there's little by way of aroma, which is probably a mercy. It compares particularly badly with the pilsner that preceded it, but even without that, I don't think it would have been to my taste.

More lager was needed. I didn't realise that Lough Gill releases an annual Octoberfest beer, and this was my first time encountering it. It's good. There's nothing off-kilter about this pale golden 5.5% ABV job. It has superb balance between the slightly souped-up chewy malt base and fresh salad-leaf hopping with a spinach level of green bittering. The süffig drinkability is helped by a lightly tannic iced-tea note in the finish, keeping the experience supremely clean. This seems like a beer that has been honed; it takes effort and skill to make a lager so casually delicious.

Rye & Coopers is a newly arrived contract brewer, seemingly making in-roads into lots of normal, non-specialist, pubs in Dublin. Good luck to them with that. That has mostly been with a lager, but there's a second beer too, called Gypsy Tongues. Initial marks off for the dreadful AI-generated tap badge, and for the reluctance to name Brehon Brewhouse as the place of production. But the beer is decent, as one would expect from Brehon. It's a straightforward hazy pale ale of 4.5% ABV, leading on vanilla, following through with tropical fruit and exiting on a mild tang of bitterness for balance. There's nothing unusual or exciting here, but absolutely no off-flavours or upsetting surprises. If the intention is to have some by-the-pint fruity haze for the pub, then they've gone about it in exactly the right way.

I didn't go especially all-in on the big beers, but wasn't going to pass by Saturnalia, an old ale from Eight Degrees. It's genuinely old too, having started as a barley wine a couple of years ago, then left to mature. The result is 12% ABV and a gorgeously smooth luxury dessert of a beer, exuding vanilla, butter and a scattering of plump raisins. The undisguised booze gives it a heavy Pedro Ximínez vinous quality, the sweet side balanced by a considerable dose of tannin. It all works harmoniously well together, doubtless due to the extra time it's had in the tank. Sadly, this all goes to Italy. It's a shame that a few nip bottles aren't left behind for Irish drinkers.

It was a pleasant surprise to find a veritable rake of new beers from Trouble Brewing. I began with Easy, a 4% ABV pale ale served on cask. It's a hazy one; light and pithy, with medium dank and a hint of garlic. The brewery does not want us to think of it as a junior version of its flagship Ambush, but I couldn't shake that impression. This has a lot in common with Gypsy Tongues above, being simple and accessible, and well built for session drinking, especially in smooth cask form.

The next one is also intended to be easy: a 4.2% ABV German-style pilsner called Alibi. They say it's unfiltered yet it's flawlessly clear, with almost the greenish tone I associate with Jever. It's not quite as full-on as that hop monster, but isn't far off it, tasting strongly of lawn clippings but not going overboard with it. There's a significant crisp edge as well, giving it a mineral-water character, which complements the hops well. Maybe a little more malt flavour would have made it more interesting, but at the same time, this beer is all about the drinkability, and it's a very quaffable affair altogether. It's not complex, but has just enough to hold one's interest as it slakes one's thirst.

They don't describe True Stereo as a west coast IPA, and at 5.1% ABV it's maybe a bit light to genuinely be one, but it certainly leans in that direction. It's clear and golden with lots of hard pithy bitterness from the combination of Simcoe and Centennial hops. And it tastes as clean as it looks, with nothing interfering with the sharp crispness the hops bring. A bit one-dimensional? Maybe. But with clean pale ale like this a rarity these days, that's not a problem. There are much worse dimensions it could be showing us.

Lastly from Trouble, a dunkel lager called Pull the Smiles Inside. It's a bit of a lightweight at just 4.8% ABV but hits the important style points well. It's big-boned and chewy, delivering the requisite flavours of bourbon biscuit, chocolate and roasted grains. That the recipe was created for, and was successful in, a home brewing competition, isn't in the least surprising. I often find the real thing to be a little too hop-forward, detracting from the dark malt fun. This is dunkel done the way I like it, however.

The other brewery bar I spent a bit of time at was Blarney Brewing. We don't see their beer in Dublin and I'm almost never in Cork these days, so it was good to have the opportunity to give some of the beers a once-over.

By pale lager shall ye measure them, and Blarney's flagship is the 4.3% ABV Hydro. It's designed to be clean and easy-drinking pub fare, and is a little lacking in character as a result. I reckon it resembles Czech pale lager most closely, and has a touch of the golden syrup aspect they show. The texture is soft and there's a mineral crispness at the centre, though little malt and virtually no hop. It's refreshing, but very much not pitched at the geek audience.

Squared - Blood Orange is more for the likes of us. This is part of a series of limited edition IPAs and claims to be west coast style, though the addition of fruit syrup is a bit off for that, as is the mere 5.5% ABV. Still, the pale amber colour fits, as does the strongly dank hop aroma and foretaste. It finishes dry and I almost didn't find the orange. It arrives at the very end and is respectful of the hops, not adding any sticky sugariness, as I feared it might. It's more of a seasoning than a tacked-on flavour. It all works rather well, providing good complexity centred on tasty American hops, in a pub-strength package. Nice.

A different limited series uses Blarney's hogshead-sized pilot kit, and on tap here was Moxee!, a session IPA of 4.6% ABV, single-hopped with El Dorado. I wasn't too impressed by this, and I blame the strength. It's thin and fizzy, and lacks any proper hop impact. El Dorado should be presenting a multicoloured fruit candy effect, but there's none of that here. There's clean and pubby, and then there's just bland. I'm afraid this one fell a bit too much on the latter side.

Onwards! Just one beer from Kildare's Dew Drop brewery, a Motueka-hopped IPA called Far Side, because New Zealand, obvs. I don't have much to say about this one either, unfortunately. It's a simple and harmless sort of murk; 5.2% ABV, and although it boasts of being double dry-hopped, that's extra meaningless here, as it doesn't taste especially hop-forward. Garlic is more prominent than any of the herbs or fruit I would expect Motueka to bring. Add a smear of vanilla and you have something very ordinary, done all the time by lots of different breweries. I'm sure it sells but it doesn't make for very interesting drinking.

The Kinnegar stand is where I finished my evening's drinking. They had another new pilsner, called Day Skipper. I'm not sure how this differs from their core-range Donegal Lager, though it's very slightly stronger at 4.7% ABV. And typical of Kinnegar, it's precision-brewed to be clean and balanced, with a harmonious mix of crisp biscuit malt and a gentle noble-hop celery bitterness. It's light-bodied without being thin, and has a soft texture reminiscent of the kind of lager you get from a side-pour tap in Czechia. I don't know where they're sending it after the festival, but I wish it well.

And the last beer is the latest in Kinnegar's regular limited edition series. Brewers At Play 52: Spruce Tip IPA is 6.1% ABV and uses its novel ingredient to good effect. It doesn't interfere with the hopping, but adds a complementary herbal note to an otherwise quite sweet IPA, centred on notes of meadow flowers and ripe strawberry. It's certainly unusual. The big gravity gives it a luscious softness, and while it runs a risk of being overly sweet, the hopping, and pine, are generous enough to add the right level of bitterness to keep it enjoyable, orthodox and gimmick-free.

That was quite a jolly set, for the most part, and it was particularly pleasing how many good lagers there were to try. Nothing had the beatings of that first one by O'Hara's, however. I hope I'll be seeing it again before long, and that there's more like it to come from the new brewing arrangement in Dundalk.

Midsummer mixtape

Round-up time! Here's a small sample of what the Irish breweries have been throwing my way lately.

There's another classically quirky Kinnegar can label on DL - Donegal Lager. The description is short on technicals, just that it's "light, refreshing and crushable" -- the sort of thing you might put on tap in the pub in happier times. It's a pure and bright golden colour and keeps its head well. Sweet golden syrup is the centre of the flavour, with just a mild lacing of Saaz-y green herb. If I had to label it with a lager sub-style I'd go with Czech světlý ležák: it has that balance of smoothness and hop bitters at a very reasonable 4.5% ABV, drinking more like 12° despite being closer to 10° in gravity. If such nit-picking doesn't interest you, all you need to know is that this is a clean, crisp and well-made lager with all the essential qualities though lacking a little in distinctive features. Independent Irish breweries tend not to package beers like this because the industrials have the market sewn up between them. It's good to see one of them taking on the challenge, and if easy-drinking lager is your thing, buy this one.

Shaka canned is next, an east coast pale ale from Lough Gill. Amarillo and Azacca, says the label, for "tropical aromas and an orange citrus flavour". I will give it the first part, though the tropicality is definitely more from the candy aisle than fresh produce: Skittles and bubblegum, not actual fruit. I expected a burst of flavour to follow from this but it turned out very plain, offering a buzz of mineral fizz with very little hop or malt character behind. Eventually a little of that candy emerges, but only enough to make it taste like an off-brand tropical fruit soft drink. "Lalt". When the half-hearted sweetness subsides, a dreggy savoury yeast aftertaste remains. Yes it's only 4.6% ABV but there should be enough room in that to make a decent fist of a fruity pale ale. This has a fun and intriguing aroma but somehow completely fails to deliver in the flavour afterwards.

Usually one of the country's busiest breweries, O Brother had been worryingly quiet during The Unpleasantness. They came back with a new hazy yellow American IPA, because apparently they're quite popular these days. On Reflection is the name; 6.4% the ABV. It's the colour of a beaten egg, with a meringue of foam on top. Booze is first in the flavour, then a kind of concentrated oily orange, the combination like neat triple sec. Notorious fruit-bomb hops Azacca and El Dorado have been used, and I guess that their usual cheery Starburst effect has been amped up to something sticky lurking at the back of the cocktail cabinet. Maybe it's because there's an echo of Terry's Chocolate Orange in all this, but I get a not-unpleasant note of dark chocolate and coffee too. A slightly harsh medicinal factor creeps in late, before a gritty dry finish. It's quite a workout, and very unusual, but enjoyable with it. A lot is packed in here. Think of it as a session double IPA.

Keeping it hazy but retreating to a 5% ABV pale ale is Hopfully and Indoor Yoga, continuing with Metalman as their host brewery. It's very hazy indeed, so points off, or in favour, depending on your preference. No arguing with that aroma, full of mandarin and mango, a brush of garlic and heavier alcohol than I'd have expected. Juice to the fore on tasting, real fresh-squeezed OJ, before it turns lighter and spritzier, like a soluble vitamin C tablet. There's a small kick of grit and a faint savoury scallion quality, but really this is genuine juice through and through. There's even a balancing citrus bitterness in the finish, a more refreshing conclusion than the big bag of vanilla you get more often. The texture is weighty and satisfying, without it turning overly thick. This is really nicely done: an excellent balance between mouthwatering tang and creamy roundness. Accessible, yet special. It would be well worth their while making this a core beer.

Kildare Brewing did a re-up of their charity IPA Lock Down, called Lock Down Extended. This time I made no contribution to the good cause as the brewery kindly sent me samples for free. The ABV is down slightly to 5.8% from 6.3% and it's still a hazy and juicy job. The aroma is much better this time, bringing a real tropical power play: concentrated passionfruit and pineapple. That echoes in the finish too, which is nice, but there's something wrong in the middle. It's a twang, subtle at first but but becoming more prominent as the beer warms. Burnt rubber, lemon washing-up liquid and some damp cardboard. It runs across the palate quickly and then it's back to happy fruit, but something has gone awry in the technicals here, I think.

Trouble, too, has taken the hazy route with its new micro IPA Love Below. It's only 2.6% ABV and uses wheat, rye and oats, presumably to bulk up the body. And it works quite well: there's no unpleasant thinness here. There's not much of an aroma, just a slight citrus buzz. The flavour is quite sweet: ripe peach and tangerine. Its bitter side arrives late, bringing quite a harsh tang, like aspirin. That doesn't last long and the whole thing finishes up quickly. For a very low-strength beer it does a great job, tasting convincingly like a proper pale ale, if not a very exciting one. That aspirin harshness spoiled my enjoyment a little, but it's otherwise decent.

Clancy's Cans is the new limited edition series from Ballykilcavan, beginning with Raspberry Vice. Despite the informal naming convention around the v-word, and the use of raspberries, it is not in the Berliner weisse style, but an "American raspberry wheat beer". The colour is striking: the pinkish-grey hue of real summer fruit in a blender. The aroma is mostly sweet, though with a tart edge as well: again, very real. The flavour less so. "Jammy" says the can, and it is, but more the jelly-like candy jam in a Jammy Dodger than actual jam jam. From that first impression it gets bitterer; a mix of the tart fruit and an unusually assertive hop bitterness. It might have turned out harsh were it not for the texture: a soft and mellow pillowy effect making great use of that wheat. Overall it's a bit silly, a bit novelty-driven, but that's perfectly fair, especially when there's nothing really like it on the market at the moment. Porterhouse goers who enjoyed the occasional pint of Früli will likely welcome this.

Meanwhile Rye River rebooted its own limited series with Intergalactic Yuzu, a fruited gose brewed in (remote) collaboration with Yeastie Boys. Although yuzu is the title fruit, there's also lime, lemon, mandarin, and something called sudachi which I'm certain they made up as a joke. It's a light 3.9% ABV and a pale orange colour with just a slight misting of haze. A gentle mineral tartness is the opening gambit, followed by the citrus where of course lime is dominant. There's the concentrated lime oil of a cordial as well as spritzier juice. The blurb suggests a margarita but it's too sweet for that; more like the fresh squeeze of a wedge in a gin and tonic. That sweetness does start to cloy a little as it warms in the sun. I found myself craving the cool tartness more and more as it went. It's a decent sort, all-in-all, though doesn't quite deliver on its highly-involved premise.

Galway Bay also talks a big game on this new one, Oregon Grown: all about going to the Pacific North West and selecting only the finest, like an actor in an instant coffee ad, then adding the hand-picked cones every ten minutes for the duration of brewing. What we've got is a pale and hazy IPA of 6.6% ABV brewed with Idaho 7, El Dorado and Strata. It smells dank and weedy, but there's also the pissy tinge of beer left on hops too long. It's a thick beast, with a concentrated tropical effect, like a mango and apricot cordial, the sort of taste you usually find congealed on the neck of a brightly-coloured cocktail syrup bottle. Maybe it's because it tastes like cocktail cordial, but it's hot as well, tasting like an 8%+ double IPA. The finish brings the grassy piss thing back, just when you think you're done. This will have its fans, and I respect the effort that went into it, but it tastes over-egged to me: too much, too hard and completely lacking in balance. Those of a sensitive disposition should approach with caution; hop bros who think Oranmore should be more like Orange County, this is your moment.

Possibly the strangest offering in today's line-up is YellowBelly's Mad Hatters Tea Party, purporting to be an IPA with matcha green tea and lactose. It pours a pale and hazy orange-yellow colour and smells a little of sticky candy. The flavour expands on that, offering a lurid tropical wonderland of brightly-coloured sweets: Skittles were my first thought, but there's Starburst and lemon drops in here too. Yes it's sweet -- thanks a bunch, lactose -- but it's not overdone. Furthermore, I think the hops are making a real contribution, like in a proper IPA. Kazbek I'm not familiar with, but Hüll Melon's signature juicy grape is definitely making a contribution here. Not much sign of the tea, mind, maybe just a leafy papery effect on the end, but I'm quite prepared to believe I imagined that. My preference would be for something drier, maybe ditching the lactose, but on balance I regard this as one of those crazy experiments that actually worked.

Not an experiment but a new addition to YellowBelly's core range is Pirate Bay session IPA. I shouldn't have read the hops in advance -- Centennial, Hallertau Blanc, El Dorado and Idaho 7 -- because I spent too much of my time drinking it trying to pick them out. There's a solid, classic American citrus base, so that'll be the Centennial. And then a big fruit-candy chew thing which says El Dorado to me. The sweetness dominates the whole picture, coupled with a heavy texture, bigger than I'd expect for 4.5% ABV, to the point where I question the beer's sessionability. Murk plays a role too, from the distressing grey colour, to a rough grittiness in the mouthfeel, to a meaty umami taste behind the fruit. Overall I'm not a fan. The limes and oranges are promising but they need a vigorous polishing up.

The blurb on Lineman's Vesper is a little confusing: "tropical and citrus". Well which is it? Sweet or bitter; east-coast or west-coast; fashionable or good? It's a pale ale of 5.4% ABV, mostly quite clear and the golden orange colour of sunsets and tartrazine. The aroma is juicy: mandarin and pineapple. The citrus comes in early in the flavour: a gentle spritz of fresh lemon and grapefruit. When that fades there's a softer jaffa and honeydew melon, and a little candy chew, on a crumbly biscuit base. It's nicely balanced -- accessible but complex too -- and thoroughly clean and precise. Just the sort of perfectly-honed understated excellence that has become Lineman's signature.

That was followed a few weeks later by a dark lager called Undertone. It's a deep amber colour and quite murky with it. The aroma is beautifully rich and sweet, all fresh-baked cookies and old-style candystore. The latter is down to a liquorice quality that forms the centre of the flavour. Around this are crisp and slightly roasty dark malts -- rye bread and fruitcake. I noticed it poured quite thickly and there's certainly a big mouthfeel, especially at just 4.2% ABV. Still, it's a lager through and through, refreshing and sinkable with a quick clean finish. I'm not usually a fan of these medium-dark amber lagers but there's enough going on in this one to hold my interest.

Wicklow Wolf's dismissal of the daft rule that stouts don't belong in summer gives us a big finish. Imperial Four Bean Apex is a variant of their excellent Apex oatmeal stout, with the ABV raised to 9.5% ABV and the inclusion of vanilla, cocoa, coffee and tonka. Tonka beans don't mess about, and unsurprisingly they're the main feature in this concoction, beginning with an aroma of mince pies. That Christmassy cinnamon saturates the flavour, with the roasted coffee being the only other bean effect I could pick out. And the stout beneath? Forget about it, it's tonka town. This is quite an enjoyable beer, smooth and easy drinking despite the strength. But considering all the convolutions of the recipe it's just not very complex: an example of the one-good-dimension genre. A square of dark chocolate alongside helped round it out. If you're a tonka fan, or just tonka-curious, this is where you apply.

After a fairly sedate couple of months, the Irish breweries have really sprung to life in a big way. I've developed quite a backlog of reviews so I'll be picking up the pace for the next while. Stand by...