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.

A cheap celebration

The Autumn Real Ale Festival at JD Wetherspoon kicked off last week, with the promise of 40 different special beers on rotation across the branches, and the usual handful of international collaborations to get excited about.

The Silver Penny was early with its festival beers, with several available on the day before the event's official start. On the downside, they no longer do third-pint measures. My first half, then, was Hoptropolis, an IPA of 6% ABV brewed at Hook Norton as a collaboration with Mitch Steele's New Realm in the US. It's on the dark side of golden, heading for amber, though quite clear. Azacca hops feature, and the aroma has its signature Skittles or Starburst effect. There's a tannic bitterness in the flavour, where the proper English ale effect kicks in, and a distinct heat from the alcohol. On the softer side, there's apricot in spades, plus a more nuanced forest fruit character. Though it's a powerhouse by the standards of such beers, the dry finish makes it successfully designed for easy pinting. Careful now.

Czech brewery Joe's Garage brought the recipe for a Bohemian Pale Ale to Shepherd Neame. It's 5% ABV, a pale shade of amber, and was designed as a showcase for Kazbek hops. They've given it an enticing perfume of fresh flowers, which I'm sure is being aided by the malt base. The flavour has a little meadowy lavender, but mainly goes for a mild lemon bitterness -- flesh first, rind in the finish -- sweetened up to cookie levels by that malt. It doesn't taste its strength, being light-bodied. This, coupled with a taste profile that's not too intense, makes it nicely sessionable. Apparently, Joe's Garage specialises in pale ale variants, and I would say that even in lagerland, one this anodyne would turn few heads. As an English bitter with Czech hops it's excellent, however, and cleaner than most of what the host brewery puts out under its own label.

The next international collaboration is Zulu Blonde, from Banks's, with Zululand as the guest brewer. Though billed as a blonde ale, it's another on the darkish side, and only yellow with a light source behind it. The aroma is grainy: a savoury sort of oat cookie character of which I am not a fan. The taste is strangely and unpleasantly chemical, like a cheap 1980s perfume or highly-scented novelty soap. Fuggles, Goldings and Saaz are the guilty parties. It's only 4.5% ABV, and quite thin and watery with that, so at least the taste doesn't stick around. I searched hard for redeeming features, and maybe there's some unobjectionable summer strawberry in here, but the chemical twang swings back in as soon as I look at it square on, ruining the effect. Nobody who enjoys this beer is thinking about it too much.

We drop the Saaz and go darker yet with Ratfink & Ripsnorter from Hogsback. This is another strong one at 5% ABV and a seriously dark ruby. It smells wholesome and wintery, of warm plum pudding and fresh-baked raisin cookies. The flavour doesn't vary much from this, adding only a backing of milk chocolate to the dark fruit, so while you don't get any bonus complexity it's also not a hot solventy mess, which can easily happen to cask beers like this. This is pleasant, balanced, flavoursome but also easy drinking: a proper comfort beer. If I wasn't rushing through halves, I could very happily settle into a pint or two of this. 

Lancaster Harlequin is a very pale one, looking like a cheapie lager. I guess the name is a reference to its use of Jester hops (although a hop called Harlequin does exist), in there with fellow modern British variety Godiva, retro-revival Keyworth, plus some First Gold for good measure. The combination is surprisingly dank, with a hint of greasy resin on the nose and then a flavour that goes full on weedy, being bitter and spicy all at once. It works extremely well. I don't know the hops well enough to pick out what each is doing, and whatever they do individually is nicely integrated into an overall grassy picture. As an English golden ale it successfully achieves the goal of being crisp and refreshing as a pilsner, and as bitter as a good one, while also bringing the casual depth of flavour that's unique to cask ale. You might have to be careful given that it's 5.2% ABV, but I recommend it for cheeky pints in multiple servings.

Hook Norton's own contribution to the list is Autumn Ways, a 4.2% ABV best bitter, or possibly a red ale, depending on which version of the pumpclip you believe. It's certainly red; a very deep ruby, in fact. They've imparted a lot of coffee in the flavour, suggesting that brown malt might be involved. It's not good coffee, being sweet and little powdery, like instant granules. After the initial hit it all tails off quite quickly, turning a bit watery by the end, leaving only a slightly sweaty and unpleasant tang. This needs to be bigger, rounder and richer to succeed at what I think it's trying to do.

I like cherries much more than I do plums. So, Titanic Cherry Porter, then? Definitely. They've certainly laid the cherry on thick, moreso than in Plum Porter, I think. That gives it sweet Belgian kriek vibes from the first sip. And through the subsequent ones. The porter gets a bit lost under the jammy onslaught. There's a substantial tang in the background which is a little bit toasty, but quite metallic as well. What it needs, I think, is a different sort of complementary sweetness; a bit of milk chocolate or mocha to express the porter element in a more complementary way with the fruit. As is, it just misses the mark, seemingly trying to be a serious novelty beer, and that's just not going to work.

A few days later, the refreshed line-up included Rudgate Vanilla Mild. The company is famous for its mild so it seemed a bit strange that they would attempt to enhance it. Like its award-winning stablemate, this is ruby coloured, brown even, though is weaker at only 3.6% ABV. The vanilla essence begins to make its presence felt in the aroma and then goes full tilt in the flavour. Luckily, the very light and almost watery body prevents the sweetness from getting too intense, and the added flavouring is almost complementary to the base of milk chocolate and coffee cake. While it's acceptable as a sweet dessert beer, it doesn't really deliver what I want from a mild. The novelty ingredient is entirely unnecessary.

I enjoyed how dark-orientated the line-up was: I had never noticed such seasonality before. But there have to be pale ones, so here's Maxim Slovenian Pale Ale. "Styrian Goldings", thought I. Yes, and Dana and Eureka, returns the brewery. It's an innocent looking pale yellow, and only 4.3% ABV, but packs one hell of a hop punch, beginning on a strong wax bitterness in the aroma. That's right there in the flavour too, where it's joined by a raw vegetal asparagus kick, plus an intense orange pith of the sort you get from Sorachi Ace and her relatives. I wasn't certain at first, finding the extreme harsh bitterness a bit difficult to take. But, as powerhouse beers often do, it grew on me, and I was properly appreciating the wallop my palate was getting by the end; an extensive tour of the Slovenian hop fields over very bumpy roads. You might want a taster of it first, all the same.

Another international collaboration comes in the form of Dos Perros, an amber ale brewed at Adnams, based on an original by Yazoo in Tennessee. The American beer its based on is a brown ale, and this is certainly brown in colour, very much on the garnet end of the amber spectrum. It's light and smooth, with notes of cork, plum and red grape, seasoned with a generous layer of diacetyl. That's your lot, though: the finish is quick, and there's a surprising lack of depth for something that's all of 4.8% ABV. The signature Adnams tannins are here, but I don't know that they make this particular beer any better.

From Conwy comes Kashmir, a "traditional IPA" not brewed with Cashmere hops but an unspecified mix of British ones. It's a bit hazy on it, a translucent dark orange. Perhaps unusually for a British bitter, the fuzz actually helps it out, adding a roundness and a grainy bite to a hop-dominated profile. Jaffa orange, spritzy grapefruit and a harder oily lime all give it a fun new-world feel, so while it feels a lot lighter than "IPA" as commonly understood these days, it absolutely delivers the requisite hop impact; more than the hazy stuff tends to, anyway. I guess "traditional" here can be read as a synonym of "west coast". Regardless, it's very nicely done: assertive and invigorating. 

The haze in that one came without a warning. Quiet Shadows, a hazy pale ale from Fyne Ales, flagged its haze in advance on the clip, which I neglected to take a photo of. I always like to see Fyne in the festival line-up and this didn't disappoint. Though it's only a little hazy, it has the lovely luxurious silky juiciness that the best of these do. Orange sorbet, clove spice and a harder lime bitterness all feature: something for everyone. Behind these, there's a genuine soft New England juiciness, something that I've rarely if ever encountered in the cask ales from next door, but which proves it absolutely can be done. 

Also hazy, we have Bunny Hop from Purity: not exactly a tail-end-of-the-year sort of name, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It's light and spritzy and, very impressively, is only 3.5% ABV. There's not an ounce of watery thinness in here. Instead you get bags of zest plus a softer melon and peach sweetness. This has that easy-drinking complexity that English cask ale does so uniquely well: you could quaff pint after pint of it, while it absolutely stands up as a sip-and-explore job. I ordered a half and was served a pint, so did both. Recommended, tbh.

And I thought I'd get another half in that round and it too arrived as a full pint. This is Cracklewick, a pleasingly Dickensian name for a dark ale by Shepherd Neame. The pint I got was a murky dark ruby colour and tasted a bit dreggy, so this may be what remained in the bottom of the barrel, though I find it hard to believe that casks in Dublin 1 ever get that far down before being discarded. So, I got a red wine or red grape sweetness up front, plus a hot port-like alcohol, which was a surprise as it's only 4.8% ABV.  There's a disturbing solvent heat, which I didn't care for, as well as a sharp vinegar tang. The latter suggests beer-gone-off to me, but I'd been attendant in the pub long enough to know that this hadn't been on for very long and must have come from the brewery like this. While it's interesting, the pint I drank is not what I want from a dark Kentish ale. The uncertainty around English cask beer is why I'm glad that the pint only cost me €1.25.

Early on a bright and cold Saturday afternoon I headed down the Grand Canal to the lesser-Wetherspoon, The South Strand, not one that normally puts a lot of effort into its cask offering. Conditions were perfect for a warming pint of stout, and they had Inveralmond's Ossian Oatmeal on tap. I was a bit confused when I saw this on the list: Ossian is a golden ale and it seems weird that they would re-use the name. Anyway, this is 4.1% ABV, and bulked out nicely by the oatmeal so it tastes and feels bigger, rounder, and more nutritious. The texture is beautifully smooth and there's a balanced flavour of filter coffee and dark chocolate with a hint of herbal spearmint, wearing its bitterness lightly. Just the job, and an occasion to remind everyone that stout works brilliantly on cask and there should be much more of it.

As fortune would have it, there was another stout on the line-up: Easy, one of the international collaborations, this time Bateman's with Steel & Oak in British Columbia. It looks identically lovely, black with a thin off-white head; none of your domey bollocksology. "Tropical" it says on the badge, and there's a definite suggestion of sweet fruit in the aroma. That gets much louder in the flavour, a full-on tang of grapefruit, alongside a slightly rough roasted bitterness: you would certainly miss the oatmeal. I was left wondering if the texture is actually annoyingly thin, or if that's just by comparison. Overall, it's OK: the inclusion of Amarillo and El Dorado gives it character, but there's a reason these don't often feature in stout. They kind of interrupt the flow here, adding intrusive black IPA vibes, which normally I'd be fine with, but the effect is strong enough to be unsatisfactory. I still give this the cask stout thumbs-up, but at the same time would prefer a simpler proposition.

I finished on a Krafty Kiwi, from Brewsters. New Zealand hops are great, though the ones they've used here -- Pacific Jade and Pacific Gem -- aren't the most assertive. The result is a beer that lacks punch, though I suppose as a 4% ABV sessioner, punch is optional. It's a golden ale, almost completely clear, showing just a very faint haze. There is a certain amount of slightly exotic tropical fruit flesh and zesty citrus in the flavour, but at heart it's quite a plain example of the style, allowing crisp and biscuity malt to do most of the talking. It should therefore be easy drinking, but I found it getting a bit cloying by the half way point: the malt sweetness building on the palate while the fruit turns spiky and acidic. For me this just misses the mark, failing to bring the assertive hop fun and letting the worst aspects of musty malt and harsh hops take control. Oddly, more malt and more hops may be the solution. They usually are.

The festival runs across the estate of pubs until the end of this week. See the app for some version of what they might be serving at any given time.