How's it hanging?

Meat! That was the theme of the Meatopia event which set up at Open Gate in early July; meat and smoke -- I came home reeking of both. The event has been running for some years now, in New York and then London, and this was its first time in Dublin, invited by Diageo to take over the yard outside their experimental brewery and brewpub for two days.

The format involved six barbecue stalls, managed by people whose names may or may not be recognisable to those who move in foodie circles, each with a single signature dish and a matched sample of beer. Admission (Diageo's PR folk kindly comped mine) got you one of each pairing, plus a bonus pint from the bars: as well as the Open Gate's current selection, The Porterhouse, 5 Lamps, DOT and London's 40FT were also pouring.

We'll begin with the beer created especially for the event: Open Gate's own Meatopia Smoked Lager, a 6% ABV pale bock, created with the assistance of Melissa Cole, who also ably MC'd the beery-talky bit of the event. This is yet another classically-styled down-the-line lager from Open Gate. It shows absolutely the right balance between golden syrup sweetness and a green celery bite, set on a body that's chewy and substantial without being thick. The smoke is deliberately (sez Melissa) subtle: just a small phenolic burr at the back. I don't know that it contributed a great deal to the picture, but it does no harm either. I'm not the person to ask about the beer's suitability for pairing with barbecued meat, but I have no complaints in that department. The greasy lens through which the subsequent photos were taken is a testament to my not letting the beer get in the way of the grub.

And there was a new bonus Open Gate lager pouring inside: Helles Yeah. The 5.8% ABV gave me momentary pause: that's a bit more welly than helles is supposed to have. However, it seems that they've used this additional heft to ramp up the other elements too: it still has the smoothness and cleanness that make helles such a great beer. The grassy noble hops are fresh-tasting and even a little spicy, and then there's a crunch of dry grain as well. It does lack the quaffability of good helles -- one pint was plenty -- but here again I can't argue with the taste.

Finally from the house, Open Gate's West Coast IPA. Unlike lager, the brewery's record with IPA has been pretty poor. I blame the yeast: there's a tendency to use the Guinness strain, and the esters it produces just aren't compatible with clean-and-hoppy. So sticking the words "west coast" in there is just asking for trouble. And yet... It is only 5.2% ABV, which means points off for style accuracy, but it is properly pale and clear. And the opening sip delivered a bright and ringing hit of bitter grapefruit. That the first beer to spring to mind was the style-defining west-coaster Ballast Point Sculpin speaks in its favour; that I've never really liked Sculpin probably doesn't. There isn't much behind that initial blast of citrus. While the body is indeed heavy, it's not as greasy as the other Open Gate IPAs and I did begin to enjoy it once I got used to the bitterness. More importantly, perhaps, the brewery is starting to get the hang of IPA. I won't be as apprehensive about the next one.

40FT Brewery of Dalston had been guests at James's Gate before but this was the first time trying their beers for me. I started with Street Weiss, a densely opaque and luridly orange weissbier. It's nerve-janglingly sweet, tasting almost as much like a smoothie as it looks. The flavour shows more summer fruit -- strawberry and raspberry -- than standard weizen banana. By way of balance there's a harsh plasticky bitterness in the finish which is completely out of place for the profile, as well as being unpleasant in itself. Maybe they're trying to be creative with a staid old German style, but it really hasn't worked.

On my way out I nabbed a quickie pint of 40FT's Hoppy Pale Ale. On a different day, I'd have been quite happy with this. It's fairly inoffensive; 4.1% ABV with a flavour profile that leans more towards the savoury than the fruity, again with the sharp bitter kick in the finish. But after a couple of decent lagers and a super-citric IPA, it just felt like a regression, like this brewery didn't have their recipe game quite as together as the Open Gate did. Maybe there's an observation to be made about the relative merits of craft vs. macro brewing, I dunno. But on the day it was a second thumbs-down for 40FT from me.

Meatopia was a hugely fun event. When in non-ticking mode I got reacquainted with DOT's delicious summer saison and applauded the first time I've seen Porterhouse Wrassler's out at an event. The food was great and, unlike several other food festivals, you got a very solid feed from the admission tokens alone. The theatricality of the cooking and the serving added to the joyous caveman feel of the whole gig. And it was particularly good to see the space outside Open Gate, narrow as it is, made use of this way.

Cheers to the organisers and promoters, and congratulations on a job well done.

Away with the gypsies

My final post for Indie Beer Week 2017, as we head into its second weekend and a new run of events, concerns the producers of no fixed abode, honing their skills wherever there's spare capacity: the gypsy brewers. Some of the country's most interesting beer comes from the peripatetic set, and three of them just happened to have new stuff in my field of vision lately.

At the moment, the headliner will always be Whiplash, of course. To paraphrase Frank Zappa, to be considered a proper beer country you must have an arthouse gypsy brewer -- a Mikkeller or at the very least a Stillwater -- and Whiplash is ours. Alex and Alan ran a two-day two-beer parallel launch last week bringing us the latest of Alex's creations.

I didn't like the first one. Body Riddle is a 4.5% ABV pale ale, and murky as all hell. One sip and I was back at The Kernel circa 2012: the hops give it a powerfully pithy lemon character but even their acidic intensity gets covered by the gritty yeast. To me it just tastes unfinished and raw, with too much of the bottle-dregs about it. There must be a sweet spot where it has been allowed drop sufficiently bright but still retains its fresh hops. That's when I want to drink it.

Its companion is the very different Saturate, an 8% ABV double IPA with an eye-watering dry-hop schedule and served in a tall labelled can. Mama We're All Cloudwater Now. Mosaic is the centrepiece hop and it's pleasingly tropical off the back of that: I got passionfruit as the main flavour, followed by just a slight tang of white onion adding acidity to the picture. The fresh juicy hoppiness lasts for ages and ages, buoyed along by the alcohol without ever being subsumed by it. Saturate is a textbook example of why 20g/L of quality hops is well worth your while if you want to make a beer people talk about.

Special thanks to team Whiplash, and everyone at The Taphouse, who staged a magnificent launch event last Thursday evening.

And where Whiplash has been concentrating on the fresh and zingy end of the scene, Dublin's own DOT Brew has been looking more at the funkier, heavier and darker side of the house. It was disappointing when its Dublin birthday party didn't include one from the most recent barrel-aged range, Bourbon Amber to Dark Rum Barrel, but delightful when it popped up on the taps at Bar Rua a few weeks ago. It looked awful and smelled wonky: a murky ochre colour exuding phenols and green sappy wood. The flavour is rum central: bags of molasses, dark and sticky; warm and boozy; yet all done at just 5.4% ABV. It took me a few sips to get into it but when I did I found it highly enjoyable. As well as the pure rum there's a dessertish complexity: the apple, raisin and cinnamon of a Sara Lee pie. And although it's intense, the flavours don't linger and it's very easy to shake off the palate when you're done. This is a strange beer, and slightly silly, but tremendous fun to explore, as Phil, Stephen and I did.

New from DOT last week was the second in the Seasons of Saison project: Summer. This one is 6.6% ABV and aged in a Chardonnay barrel. I found it on tap at 57 The Headline. It's a darkish orange colour, and slightly hazy with that. It opens sharply; primarily herbal with a softer coconut oil. The fruit comes next, mixing mango and apricot. This juiciness is brief, however, as the alcohol heat rises and a crisp spiciness brings the finish. Overall it's very clean, complex and orderly, the different flavour elements well integrated with each other. Of particular note is the way the fruit flavours have been extracted from the wine barrel without any of the wood or booziness. If the ABV were just two percentage points lower it would be a perfect thirst-quencher.

Gypsy number three is Brewtonic, though it's semi-settled at Rascals these days. I dropped into their city centre outlet Wigwam on a recent afternoon to try Easy Rider, their grisette, which I think is Ireland's first. 3.6% ABV makes it very approachable, though I don't think it's unreasonable to have expected the price of my half pint to be less than €3.50. It's a bright yellow colour, infused with just a little haze. The foretaste presents fresh honeydew melon while the finish brings a sharper peppercorn spice. In short it does most of the things that good saison achieves, and without any wateriness from the compromised ABV. The only thing preventing it from being a perfect quaffer is that price.

As I ordered that, the manager insisted I have a try of the new session IPA, The Little One. It was good enough for me to order a half pint of it too, to take a proper look. It's another summery golden job, with a resinous dank aroma but a foretaste of pure tropical pineapple. Though only 4.4% ABV the body is full, which is perhaps down to the use of Vermont ale yeast. When the fruit fades, a more serious spinach and cabbage green flavour kicks in and it leaves the palate with a film of pine resin. Neither element is properly bitter per se, being just acidic enough to be interesting. This definitely earns a place on my pinboard of good Irish session IPAs. Get it while it's fresh.

And that's it from me for Indie Beer Week. Don't forget to check the list for events near you.