Sour '16

The final post of the year brings the Golden Pints, beer blogging's annual personal awards, working to a template devised by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg. Sour beers have played a major role in my drinking over the last 12 months so I thought I'd accompany my deliberations with one. This bottle of The Purple from Oregon's De Garde brewing was a kind gift from Jeff Alworth back in September. You can read Jeff's profile of the brewery here.

The label describes it as "a wild ale aged in oak wine barrels with black and red raspberries" and it's 7% ABV. It's very purple, pouring scarlet from the bottle, settling to a deep maroon shade and briefly topped by lurid pink foam. It's also very sour: an intense puckering bite that's had none of the edges smoothed out by the oak. Instead, the fruit is on balancing duty, giving it a fresh juicy aroma and adding a jammy sweetness to the flavour. It's nice, but I don't think it quite measures up to the best of Belgian framboise: it's stronger, brasher and generally louder. Americans, eh? Still, enjoyable sipping while I get down to the serious business of...

The Golden Pint Awards 2016

Best Irish Cask Beer: Otterbank Beta Barrel 1
And we're starting sour. I met this mixed fermentation chardonnay-barrel-aged golden ale at the fabulous White Hag birthday party back in August. It's a sessionable 4.5% ABV but immensely complex with it. Tart, juicy, herbal and lots more. With a 13 month lead time I doubt we'll be seeing more of it, but a man can dream.

There was a worthy runner up in the delightfully dark yet refreshing Uncle Columb's Mild by West Kerry Brewery.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Galway Bay 303
The most fun beer of the year was O'Hara's Grapefruit IPA, while Hope Session IPA was the most promising. But Galway Bay's low-strength sour pale ale kept me coming back again and again, for as long as it lasted. I can't see any reason not to bring this one back. Shout-out also to White Hag for their Brett Pale Ale, and of course Little Fawn which was the beer I probably drank most of for the second year running.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Crafty Brewing Company IPA
Honorable mentions here go to White Hag barrel-aged Black Boar imperial stout and the superb Roadtrip Extra Stout that the McHugh's off licence team produced at Independent. However, I always feel I should favour beers I drank lots of during the year, and the magnificent Aussie-hopped IPA that Rye River brews for Lidl certainly fits that bill.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Whiplash Surrender to the Void
Several Irish craft brewers got busy with the tinnies this year giving us a range of hoppy delights. When I went down the list it was Alex's amazing double IPA that really leapt out at me. Full-on hops but complex and nuanced with it. Beautiful.

Best Overseas Draught: Upright Brewing Four Play
It probably shouldn't be surprising that something from my visit to Portland, Oregon wins this one. Area man Jeff Alworth picks an exceptional beer for his annual Satori Award, named after the Buddhist term for the moment of sudden enlightenment. Well I got a fierce bang of Satori off of this multidimensional soured barrel-aged cherry saison. Worth the 7,500km trip. And along the same lines, BrewDog's Saison Blitz also gets a big-up in this category.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Jester King El Cedro
Ugh. I suppose I'll have to put some of that geek-bait Awesome Craft Beer™ into this. The award goes to one kindly supplied by Steve Lamond at the afterparty following the superb BrewCon 2016 back in April. Brett-fermented and cedar-aged for a fantastic combination of fruit and pepper.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Three Boys Pils
I struggled a bit to come up with a foreign can that really impressed me this year. Then I remembered the train home from Boundary's birthday bash in March and this glorious Kiwi pilsner which makes perfect use of the local hop varieties.

Best Collaboration Brew: YellowBelly-Hope-ShaneSmith Castaway
The review bottle I took home from the Killarney Beer Festival probably didn't do it justice but I've had it a couple of times since and it has always tasted magnificent. I understand YellowBelly is planning to can it next year too. Hopefully there'll be plenty to go round.

Best Overall Beer: 303
Quite a cross section there, I think, but 303 is the only one I became seriously, chronically, addicted to. And that's the best measure of quality there is.

Best Branding: YellowBelly
Nobody else is at the races, really. Illustrator Paul Reck has turned out tap badges, labels, comic books, animations and most recently a computer game featuring the brewery mascot and a host of supporting characters. The visual jokes and references hidden in the detail are worthy of Bosch.

So it's no surprise that YellowBelly wins both...

Best Pump Clip:
Jack Bauer's Power Shower Sour
It's the sheer literalness of it that I like.

...and...

Best Bottle Label: Pink Freud
I never actually had the bottled version of this, but it does exist and it's my other favourite YellowBelly design of the year. Shine on, etc.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
The Co. Kildare brewery started the new year with a new premises in Celbridge. Though I've enjoyed Cousin Rosie's Pale Ale and even an occasional Francis' Big Bangin' IPA through the year, it's the beers Rye River has produced under other labels that have made it my standout for 2016. Crafty Brewing Company, Whiplash, Grafters: lots of amazing quality beer, and often at very sessionable prices.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Commons
The Portland brewery I enjoyed actually sitting and drinking in the most: a bright open space, a friendly welcome, and first-rate farmhouse style beers. Over on the right-hand coast I stumbled across a couple of very tasty Jolly Pumpkin beers, so that gets an honourable mention in this category.

Best New Brewery Opening 2016: Hope
New brand highlights included Whiplash and DOT, but neither is an actual brewery. So this one goes to north Dublin's Hope which made the leap from contractee to fully-fledged production brewery. The four limited specials devised at the new set-up have ranged from good to brilliant so big things are expected as head brewer Mark develops a new swathe of permanent recipes.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Sunflower
I hope it's not cheating to award this one to a pub I didn't visit during the year. The Sunflower began 2016 under threat of demolition. It ended it with the news that not only had it been saved but had told the industrial brewers whose wares it reluctantly carried to do one. I think that deserves to be celebrated. Have a Golden Pint on me, Sunflower. An extremely honourable mention goes to 57 The Headline, of course, who've put in another stellar twelve months.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2016: Brickyard
I came back from America in October complaining that beer bars here ought to have up-to-date printed beer menus. Brickyard does! It's situated right on top of Balally Luas stop and seemed a little cold and clinical at first: all stark Scandi angularity. But the atmosphere softens when the lights come on and it starts to feel more homely. The draught selection is sizeable and my visit last month included both White Hag's Little Fawn and O Brother's Bonita. Can't say fairer than.

A bonus shout-out goes to The Woodworkers in Belfast which opened in December last and I visited a couple of times during the year. They're doing a fantastic job of sourcing first-rate British and Irish craft beer.

Beer Festival of the Year: Killarney Beer Festival
My festival attendance was down this year. For shame! No Borefts, no Franciscan Well Easter Festival. Though I really enjoyed both the March and September gigs in the RDS, and spent a wonderfully relaxed three days swanning around Alltech Brews & Food, the most fun was Killarney in May where I got to try my hand at a bit of beer judging as well.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
Though my local SuperValu has been continuing to knock it out of the park for a second year, Fresh in Smithfield has come to rival the independents with the wideness and currency of its range. I'm reliably informed that the Grand Canal Square branch across the city does things just as well.

Independent Retailer of the Year: DrinkStore
Back on top again. I am pleased that I finally made it to McHugh's on the northside and The Vineyard in Belfast, both fully deserving of their reputations. But DrinkStore is where I buy my beer.

Online Retailer of the Year: Nope.
In some years I've given this one to sites I've used for reference but I can't be arsed this year, and I still don't buy beer online.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Pub by Pete Brown
With all due respect to Pete I didn't encounter many beer books this year. The Pub was the nicest of them, though.

Best Beer Blog or Website: BeerFoodTravel
I've been enjoying the trip down the beer history rabbithole that Liam has been on lately, as well as the beer reviews and travelogues. Shame about that big posting gap in the middle of the year, but it won't happen again, right?

Best Brewery Website/Social media: @PilotBeerUK
For anyone involved in the use of Twitter to market a brewery, or anything really, this is how to do it properly.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @ManusCronin
The rest of you go and have a think about what you've done.


And that's it. If you've read this far I hope you found it worthwhile. 2016 is officially a wrap. The Beer Nut 2017 will commence on Monday. Happy New Year!

Points north

I mentioned in Tuesday's post the single Portland brewery that was on Jeff's must-see list. There was only one on mine too: Upright Brewing. This was partly because I'd read good things about it, though also because its opening times meant there was only a small window of opportunity to visit. It's in a north-eastern neighbourhood of the city and we were able to take in a couple of nearby breweries as part of the excursion.

First call, then, was Culmination. This place only opened last year but has already made an impact on Portland and picked up a few awards. I met their marketing guy Steven at the Mt Tabor event and he suggested I drop by: how's that for direct marketing? It's based in a small business centre with several other craftsy start-ups. The bar is quite small but there's a lovely sunny terrace. Let's get the IPAs in.

I opened with their flagship, Phaedrus, a 6.7% ABV number mixing up classical tropical fruit with a bit of a savoury turn and some oily pine resins: all of the new world IPA food groups in a single nutritious serving. As it settles on the palate the peach flavour comes to the fore, while there's a brief flash of bitterness on the end before it all finishes quickly and neatly. Very easy drinking, overall, and pleasant with it.

My wife opted for Translator IPA, brewed by Ruse, a client brewer which uses the Culmination kit to create beers for the local art community and its events. How very Portland. This one is 6.6% ABV and a slightly darker orange than Phaedrus. I got a bit of worrying stickiness on the nose, but thankfully that ended right there. There's a touch of aspirin dryness and it's spicy rather than fruity: a mild sweetness present but under control. This is another decent, easy going IPA, though rather less complex than its cousin.

For the next round I couldn't resist the beer called Sour Flower Power Hour: not an easy phrase with my accent but I did manage to get served. It arrived a clear and pale yellow, tasting of lemon sherbet with just a very light tartness and no weight from its substantial 5.5% ABV. I was reminded a little of White Hag's The Púca, though it's not quite as full-on. The finish is dry and chalky, and haunted by a slightly out of place acrid sharpness which I suspect might be oxidation, but there wasn't enough of it to be sure. The beer still works as a refreshing thirst-quencher.

And lastly Choco Mountain Stout. The name had me expecting a major sugar rush from this 5.8%-er, but that's not what happened. Instead, the aroma opens on a huge kick of dryly roasted grains. The texture is appropriately smooth and creamy while coffee is at the centre of the flavour, though milk chocolate puts in an understated cameo appearance. A slightly severe burnt edge on the finish prevents it from getting sweet and cloying. This is all rather classic and elegant, and not the breakfast cereal disaster implied by its name.

It was a solid half-hour walk to Upright from here. The brewery is notoriously hard to find, buried deep in the bowels of the nondescript Leftbank Project building, another artsy business hub. Down the twisty stairs and winding corridors one eventually arrives in a starkly lit concrete bunker with a handful of folding tables scattered around the tanks and an array of taps bolted to the coldroom wall.

A flight for starters. Beginning on the left of the picture below, that's Four, a 4.5% ABV saison which looks a lot like a witbier to me, and has a very similar gentle orange and dry wheat flavour profile. Stylistic qualms aside, it's a simple quaffable session beer, not about to set the world alight, but not meant to either.

Beside it is Five, another saison, up an ABV notch to 5.5% and this time a clear dark gold colour. This time the style it reminded me of was German bock: that mix of heavy grain and green bitterness. There's also a Belgian estery quality on the periphery of the flavour and just enough saison pepper to be on style. This is another decent but unexciting beer.

Next along is Green Hour, a fresh hop saison at 6.1% ABV. Fuggles from day one of the harvest went into the boil and a month later -- two weeks before drinking -- it was dry hopped with the last of the year's Liberty. It's heavily textured and quite flat. The union of fresh hop fruitiness with saison ester fruitiness gives it an appley quality, a cider tang which felt a little out of place but tasted gorgeous: proper wholesome autumnal refreshment. I've no idea if that was the intention but it worked.

And on the end there is Donuts, based on a recipe from Oedipus Brewery in Amsterdam and intended to taste like donuts. It doesn't. This 4.9% ABV is extremely dry and has a major musty husky cereal component in the taste, a cobwebby burlap staleness. There's just a hint of candied orange sweetness, but it's really quite harsh and difficult beyond that. Certainly a long way from any circular cakey treats.

Moving on to pints, a barrel-aged mixed-fermentation cherry-infused special version of Four, called Four Play. It's a masterpiece of balance, holding all of the many competing elements in check while exploiting them to the full, for the drinker's benefit. There's a bricky nitre dryness that's different to the sort you get in quality Belgian kriek, but just as enjoyable. The dark cherry adds a gentle Black Forest sweetness while the oak gives it a classy smoothness of the sort you normally find in old vintage wines. The combination of sharp, smooth and sweet, seasoned with a dusting of Brettanomyces funk, is absolutely sublime. And all at just 5% ABV. I could have drunk a lot of this guy, always finding something new in it.

Supercool IPA looks remarkably similar to it, but is a very different beer. The aim here is to produce a classic American IPA flavour profile except, in keeping with the house predilections, using a saison yeast. I didn't see which hops were used but I got a major central European vibe off it: lots of sharply bitter damp grass, in  both the aroma and flavour. Saison + IPA = Pilsner? Appropriately for the 6.5% ABV, it's thickly textured, with a kind of oily, greasy feel for which I don't know whether the yeast or hops were responsible. The white pepper bite it delivers is very much saison thing, I'd say. Once you get used to the odd texture and flavours it's quite a decent beer: smooth and well-integrated. The guy who only drinks IPA and picked this as a distress purchase will get a shock, but maybe that's no harm.

Alongside The Commons (mentioned yesterday), Upright is definitely on my top recommendations list for visitors to Portland. Both are having tremendous fun with the highly-attentuated family of Belgian styles, and the ones that don't taste great are at least interesting.

The final brewery for this trek was just a couple of blocks further north: Ex Novo. The company started in 2014 and, uniquely, funnels 100% of its profits to good causes. It was getting late and this place -- another one of those ex garage/workshop spaces -- was already busy but we got a table outside.

I opted for Cactus Wins The Lottery, a prickly pear flavoured Berliner weisse which, understandably, bears a significant resemblance to Sierra Nevada's Otra Vez gose. It has that same slightly sticky pink cactus fruit flavour but nicely balanced by a crisp and sharp tartness. After these two elements spark off each other on the palate it settles back into plain wheat, much like standard unadorned Berliner weisse tends to. It's fun, but doesn't offer much different to a million other flavoured versions of the style.

The session IPA is a 4.5% ABV one called Casual Ex. I got a big hit of caramel from the aroma here, and then wrong-footed completely by a flavour full of watermelons. There's a proper bitterness and a nicely full body, so while it's not the hop rocket I was expecting it is a fun few minutes of drinking.

And there was a rauchbier too: Rauch Paper Scissors, a 5.3% ABV dark lager which would not be at all out of place in Bamberg. It hits the sweet spot of rich hammy smoke against a sparkling clean lager base absolutely perfectly, for properly satisfying down-the-hatch quaffing.

At this point, coming to the end of our last evening in Portland, Jeff had joined us again. And there was another brewery, not far away, he thought we should see.