Draught picks

Time for an overdue look at some of the random stuff showing up on tap around Dublin in recent months.

We'll start with Galway Bay, and their Solemn Black double black IPA has been at large for a couple of months now. I found it when it was still brand new, in The Beer Market. 8.5% ABV and €5.40 for a 33cl glass are your vital statistics. The aroma is convincingly zesty for such a dark powerhouse of a beer: there's a citrus quality which is lighter than grapefruit, offering more of a lemon and lime thing. On tasting, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's sweet at first, the dark malts infused with lemon sherbet. Then there's a rush of harder bitterness: the tar, cabbage and molasses that are standard issue for beers like this. Amazingly, despite the resinousness of its hop bittering, none of it sticks to the palate and the aftertaste returns to that light and effervescent sherbet effect. It's a very impressive beer: super-serious but with a lovely spark of fun to it.

Galway Bay's subsequent release was Acid Mother, billed as a lime gose, and quite substantial at 5.4% ABV. It arrived looking forlorn and headless, a moody dark gold colour. Perhaps in keeping with the name, the first sip gave me a vivid and unsettling flashback: Rose's Lime Cordial, the sticky green stuff that used to come in the glass bottle with the embossed lime leaves on it. That. It's not subtle and comes through so loud and brash it almost doesn't taste like it's part of the beer; like it was squirted in as an afterthought. I got a rough, papery, oxidised twang in the finish, while in the middle a massive punchy sourness. A token saltiness is barely present and you can cancel any plans you had to taste coriander. This rather severe and unrefined beer doesn't meet the stylistic points for gose for me, nor is it relaxing or particularly enjoyable to drink. Loud and spiky, my time with it was spent wishing it would calm down.

Moving away from the brewery, but staying in its pubs, a pint of Trouble Brewing's Hello Sunshine session IPA in Against the Grain. Though a mere 3.7% ABV this is a deep and rather lurid Lucozade orange. As usual when trying a new Irish pale ale I made the correct incantations to appease the beer gods and ward off yeast bite but I must have got the words wrong because -- bleuh! -- yeast bite. And it's one of those beers which is a real shame to find pouring dirty, because behind it there's a lovely balance of sweet mandarin juice and invigorating grapefruit and lime bitterness. It's not thin or watery either, which is all to the good. But that raw savoury overcoat in which the whole thing is wrapped really spoiled it for me. There was very little sunshine in evidence on my barstool.

White Gypsy also had a new one on tap at AtG recently, a 7% ABV stout called Old Smoke. When the pub tweeted it was on I made a beeline. I have very fond memories of the supremely peaty stout that Cuilán brewed at Messrs Maguire in 2007 and I harboured a flickering hope that this might be a recreation. But it's not; it's much more subtle and mature and I doubt any peated malt was used. The base is a very good, full-bodied, export-style stout -- soft, comfortable and rounded, even on keg. Smoke wafts around the edges of this, grazing the lips and sides of the tongue. Some sweeter caramel and molasses are present and just a tiny hint of Laphroaigish phenols. Though not hot, it's plenty warming but in such a way that isn't too much, even in a busy pub on a summer afternoon. Overall, Old Smoke is balanced, complex and drinkable: an all-round class act.

The final two beers for now are parts two and three of Eight Degrees's latest Single Hop Series, following on from the Citra one I mentioned back here. Representing Europe in the sequence is Mandarina Bavaria, arriving across the counter in 57 The Headline disguised as a Rascal's beer. Like the others in the series it's 5.7% ABV and, unsurprisingly, orange features big in this beer, starting with the colour. It's quite sticky with hop resins and a lot of the flavour coming out of that is intensely oily orange skin. As this builds I found it shifting sideways into the coconut flavour more usually associated with Sorachi Ace hops. There's a reminder of Mandarina's German roots too, in a very noble herbal flavour as well. That sticky quality means that the finish is a long one, the exotic oranginess hanging around on the palate for ages. For all its foghorn loudness it's a lovely beer and you come away from it with a very clear grasp of what this hop variety is and does.

Unsurprisingly, many of the same qualities can be found in Eight Degrees Galaxy which I located at Bar Rua a few weeks ago. Galaxy is another hop I'd tend to associate with juicy orange fruit, but seemingly not when it's ramped up to the intensity that the brewers have here. This guy is supremely dank, so thick with resins you could tapdance across the surface, creating a bitterness that sucked the malt out of my neighbours' pint glasses. This is a hoppy beer. When some flavour eventually emerges from under the bitterness it's grassy green at first, and then a zesty pith which lasts long, once again, into the aftertaste.

Part of me was disappointed that it didn't really taste of Galaxy, the way that the previous two, intense as they also were, tasted very much of their signature hop. At the same time, however, this edgy and uncompromising IPA stands on its own feet as a beautifully rendered face-stripping hop bomb, and it's nice to give one's palate the occasional shock.

Tastes of summer

It's bright and breezy brews today, for the longer, sunnier days. First up, Metalman Zwickel, the Waterford brewery's take on the German lager style. Though unfiltered it's not specially hazy and pours from the can a pale shade of yellow. The aroma promises hints of grass and lemons though the flavour is much more malt-driven. I get a wholesome and husky grain flavour foremost in the taste, properly smooth with a satisfyingly full body and not too much fizz. The sweetness levels edge towards candyfloss but there's a late smack of serious green bitterness on the finish that holds it in check. It's a beautiful beer, and totally convincing as a German knock-off. And despite the biggish ABV of 5.3%, it deserves to be quaffed in larger quantities: three cans will fill your Maßkrug nicely.

Sticking on the hazy and yellow theme, we have The Púca next, described by White Hag as a "Dry Hopped Lemon Sour". I found it on tap in The Adelphi on Abbey Street, recently refurbished following a short spell as The Jolly Monk and shaping up into a very nice venue. To be honest I didn't find a whole lot of hops in the beer, and the lemon takes a while to show itself, but it is substantially, deliciously, sour. It has that very straightforward tang that you find in Berliner weisse which is supremely refreshing. The lemons lurk behind this, creating an effect very similar to posh cloudy lemonade. A cereal crunch finishes it off. If I wanted to nitpick I'd say it is a little thin of texture, which I guess is perfectly understandable at just 3.6% ABV. But that's a very minor quibble: this is a beaut and perfect sunny day drinking.

 Galway Bay, meanwhile, has a new amber ale on the taps at its bars, named Althea. My pint in Alfie Byrne's arrived a somewhat murky orange colour. It's only 4.8% ABV but is very thick and chewy. There's lots of resinous dank and spicy pepper in the flavour and it almost tastes bright and juicy but there's a savoury fuzz from the yeast in the glass that gives it a much more serious edge. This got more and more pronounced as I moved down the pint, eventually becoming almost brett-like in its muckiness. There's a very good beer lurking in here somewhere but Althea just misses the mark to be worth the €6 they're asking for it. That's what Goodbye Blue Monday cost, and this is no Goodbye Blue Monday. Clean-up required.

Finally, and staying on a hoppy buzz, I chanced across Eight Degrees Citra on a quiet sunny afternoon a few weeks ago in The Hill. This IPA is 5.7% ABV and is very Citra indeed. All the Citra, in fact. Lemon candy meets herbal cannabis in a recently disinfected bathroom. For all the hop action it's surprisingly sweet-tasting, almost sticky, like a half-sucked boiled sweet, though also like resin, I guess. The texture is greasy, in a not unpleasant way. Citra is impressively put together and will keep the hop-lovers happy but one pint was plenty for me. Next in the brewery's Single Hop series is Mandarina Bavaria, which should be hitting taps over the coming weekend.

Regarding this lot, however, the lighter and cleaner beers are definitely my preference for summer drinking. Amber Ale and IPA can wait until the autumn. At the Killarney Beer Festival which starts today and runs to Sunday, look for me under the Púca tap.