Yellow streak

My week of scattergun Irish beer reviews ends today with a bit of focus for once. YellowBelly has been firing out the new releases at high velocity so I'm giving them a post of their own. I'd like to say I chased these around the pubs of Dublin, but it's more that every time I went in for a beer, there was another one on tap.

Kellerbier arrived unannounced on the taps at Cassidy's. "Unfiltered helles" says the badge but there's precious little sign of it being unfiltered: it's almost completely clear, shining gold even in the gloom of this too-cool-for-proper-lighting pub. It's extremely soft, all bubblegum and the fluffy spun sugar that seems to be the fashion in donuts these days. It makes for a lovely texture and at 4.3% ABV it's eminently sinkable. By way of balance there's just a pinch of mild noble hop veg, but really you need to like your lager sweet to enjoy this fully.

At the Black Sheep I caught the tail end of a keg of Fruit to Thrill, a sour ale with assorted fruits. I wonder if this shares an ancestry with Commotion Lotion and Mindreader: it has a very similar blend of strawberry, raspberry and other summery fruit, light on alcohol at 4.3% ABV again, and this time tinted with a tang of sourness. Childhood memories of sugar-coated sour jelly sweets and raspberryade came immediately to mind on drinking it. It's definitely not a sophisticated beer, but it's a simple and refreshing one.

Within a few hours of my drinking that, it had been replaced by Snooze Button. This is billed by the brewery as a breakfast stout, containing oatmeal and lactose, though lighter than most others at just 5% ABV. I can't say I found it particularly breakfasty either. Rather it's a classically constructed dry Irish stout, with charcoal and bitter dark chocolate being the main features. The Black Sheep was serving it ice cold that evening, and I made sure to let it warm up, to see if anything else emerged. Not much did; maybe a fresher and sweeter coffee character, but that's your lot. This is another good, straightforward, unspectacular beer. Is a theme emerging?

Kind of a Big Deal, found at UnderDog, is the first to suggest otherwise. This is a saison, and quite a big one too at 6.7% ABV. At least some of that alcohol is down to the ageing it got in a wine barrel. The aroma is normal enough: peppery, like a saison should be and mercifully lacking in sweet esters. The wine really makes an impact on the flavour, bringing a gooseberry tartness and a certain tacky fresh oak sappiness. I got an edge of diesel as well, a flavour I associate with German white wines in particular, though it's a Burgundy which donated the wood in this case. The classic saison is still there underneath all this: clean and spicy. The barrel adds a really fun twist, complementing the saison flavour and adding to it. I'll bet it takes real skill to make something this complex seem so effortless.

And if that one felt like a re-directed Otterbank beer, this goes even more so for The Harvest King. The description really doesn't do this one justice, telling us merely that it's a sour saison brewed using Irish hops. Around here, local hops tend to be more of interest as a concept than as a flavour. I wasn't expecting much from it when I chanced across it at Against the Grain one quiet Tuesday evening. It's only 5% ABV and a hazy yellow colour. It doesn't really fit the saison flavour profile, nor is it simply another sour blonde ale. The aroma and foretaste are both pure Gewürztraminer: that juicy and sweet white grape flavour with just a naughty lacing of fusel alcohol. There's some lambic-like saltpetre spicing and a dry flinty finish, turning the Gewürztraminer into a Sauvignon Blanc. The luscious fruit makes it incredibly easy drinking but the complexity is such that I took ages over it, savouring every sip. A little goes a long way and you'll still find yourself wanting another. I couldn't help but think of US brewer Hill Farmstead, whose reputation as one of the world's greats is built on beers like this: La Vermontoise and Florence both have a similar act. As an ultra-seasonal beer this one won't be around long. Grab it if you see it.

Not a dud amongst these, I'm pleased to say, and a couple of the best Irish beers I've had all year. The brewery recently launched a beer club which will ship exclusive beers to subscribers throughout 2018. If the current form continues it will be well worth joining up.

Amsterdam and company

Hello Amsterdam! This was the final stop on the ten-day bimble across Belgium and the Netherlands I did in September. We arrived in on a Sunday afternoon and headed straight to Beer Temple, meeting up with a friend who has recently moved to Den Haag and who joined us for the day's crawl.

I'd picked Beer Temple specifically because they had a Hill Farmstead on, and Hill Farmstead generally makes good beer. This was Florence, a saison. Except it's nothing like a saison, except maybe the cloudy pale yellow colour. It's tart, for one thing, almost like a young lambic but with extra fizz. With the tartness goes a gentle lemon zest, some dry straw and a pinch of farmyard funk, all beautifully balanced and complementary. It was hard to hold onto this one for long enough to write about it; suffice it to say it's highly enjoyable.

Also around the table there was King Gose from Hoppin' Frog. It's an especially nasty version of what should be a light and quenching style. This one is a murky orangey beige colour and smells of Jolly Rancher sweets, all artificial fruit and solvents. The texture is greasy which heightens the briny foretaste. This is followed by a worrying gastric acidity, harsh herbal aniseed, plastic and aspirin: all the wrong kinds of tang, all at once. The herbs make it taste like some Victorian medicine, like it should be good for you. It's a downright penitential beer and a travesty of gose.

Next it's X, an "extra pale ale" from California's Alesmith. It didn't have much going for it, being super sweet without any trace of bitterness. The hops bring an orange flavour which, without proper balance, make it taste like orange flavoured cake icing. At 5.25% ABV it probably thinks it's light and easy going but it's really surprisingly hard work.

Last one here before moving on is one of those dessertish confections from Evil Twin: Imperial Mexican Biscotti Cake Break. It's definitely one of the better ones, managing to blend all the constituent parts into a single coherent piece. For reference, those parts include coffee, cinnamon, almonds, cocoa, vanilla, and habanero chilli. Phew! The aroma is both rich and spicy, its impact heightened by the 10.5% ABV. The texture is thick too. Obviously cinnamon is the loudest element, but its cookie sweetness is tempered by strongly bitter coffee, while the chilli is little more than a seasoning on top of this. It's still a silly novelty beer, but a silly novelty beer that's incredibly well made.

Gollem next, and a quickie Van Vollenhoven Princesse. It's a throwback wheat beer recipe, apparently, using a mix of lager and saison yeasts and flavoured with coriander and orange peel. Once extremely popular, it lost ground to pils in the late 19th century and the original Van Vollenhoven brewery stopped brewing it in 1900. I found it crisp and simple with a pleasant green celery hop flavour. Think weissbier without the banana esters or witbier minus the herbs and fruit. It's very refreshing even if the ABV is a smidge high for that at 5.5%.

Our meanderings brought us past De Brabantse Aap at one point, a pub which was on the shortlist of great Amsterdam beer destinations when I started coming here but which you hardly hear mentioned any more. I certainly hadn't been in in years.

It shares an owner with De Bekeerde Suster, the brewpub, so serves a few of its range. Auld Sister was new to me: 5.3% ABV and allegedly an attempt at an old fashioned IPA. The ABV holds true to that at 5.3%. I couldn't say if the rest of it does, however. It is massively dry, which is certainly part of the spec, largely achieved through the huge tannic flavours. This makes it taste of stewed black tea and I confess I always like that in a beer. There's a spicy saltpetre edge which reminded me of several homebrewed red ales I've tasted: I guess it's a yeast thing, and there's lots of roast as well -- not something I'd expect in an IPA. I doubt the dark red colour would fetch it much of a price on the docks of Calcutta either. A bit of a rough diamond this, though not without its charms.

My companion was back on the American gose, this time Holy Gose from Anderson Valley. This one was much more like it. It has the classical balance of good gose with mild salt and a gentle sourness to make it easy drinking and instantly refreshing. There's also a fun Californian bonus in the hints of added tropicality: a burst of pineapple in the aroma and some sweet mango in the flavour. It's deftly done and all the better for not trying to be too clever.

The evening wound on and there was oude jenver tasting and rijsttafel: proper Amsterdam stuff. We finished at another of Peter van der Arend's pubs, near Leidseplein. Last time we were here, in 2015, it was called Jopen Proeflokaal. The tie-up with Jopen must have come to an end as it's now called 'Cause Beer Loves Food and BrewDog is the headline brewer.

We went with two from Flying Dutchman, a Finnish gypsy brewer that gets beer made in Belgium and the Netherlands. These were from a sequence they've literally called the "series of beers with weird and long names".

First is Tight Lipped Dry Humored Why So Serious Nordic Berry Sour Fruit Beer. It's 4.5% ABV and a bright purple colour, topped by lurid pink foam. Turns out it's a glass of pure jam; damson in particular, I'd say. It's altogether too sweet and claggy, with a harsh tacked-on sourness that does nothing for balance. Beer should be able to hold the drinker's attention for longer than it takes to say its name.

Beside it is Tree Hugging Wood Chopping Mother-Nature Loving IPA. This is rather better, albeit not very distinctive. It's one of those US-style IPAs that runs big on oily resinous unctuousness, with a heavy sticky body and lots of toffee malt, but also has enough bitter citrus pith incense spicing to balance it. It could pass for more than its 6% ABV and does a pretty decent job as a nightcap.

Day one in the 'Dam is down. Home tomorrow, but not before another few pubs...