Taking sides

Two evenings at the 2018 Big Grill Festival was enough time to get round to all the beers I wanted to try. As usual the beer and cider offer was prodigious so I'm going to have to split the review into two posts, arbitrarily on geographic lines. We begin at the bars on the west side of Herbert Park.

Rascals, at one end of the row, had brought a new spiced milk stout called Chai So Serious? It's a sort-of answer to calls for them to bring back their original ginger porter. There is, apparently, a complex mix of flavourings added to this, but for me it was all about the ginger. That was present as flavour rather than heat, as you'd find in a ginger cake or biscuit, with plenty of it in the aroma too. The base beer is balanced and creamy, with enough of a roast bite to prevent it getting overly sweet, and a modest ABV of 4.8%. Although this was a small limited batch, it is due to be scaled up and tweaked to bring out more of the spices.

Brewtonic had one of the sensations of the festival: Passion Wagon, a sour ale with passionfruit. It's a light and refreshing 3.8% ABV, not overly complex but great at what it does. The sourness is merely a dry chalky tang instead of full-on tartness as found in, say, YellowBelly's Castaway, while the texture is smooth and effervescent rather than fizzy. There's loads of real passionfruit flavour as well, but like the milk stout above it's not too sweet.

Next door to them, Rye River was showcasing the third in its limited edition series. After a big stout and a big IPA, part three is a summer lager called Ól. They've added orange zest to this, as well as a cocktail of orangey hops. I expected zingy and clean but that's not quite what I got. The flavour is certainly fun, sweet and juicy first, then with a more savoury spice, as found in orange skin. All of this lasts long into the finish and I think that's my problem with it: it lacks the cleanness and crispness of a good lager. Enjoyable, but not quite what I was looking for.

From an unmarked tap, Simon was offering sneaky tastes of Rye River's new smoked stout, Big Smoke, and this was much more my sort of thing. The almost meaty aroma from this paired well with the enticing smoky smells coming from the festival's barbecue pits. The mouthfeel is big and satisfying, suggesting more than its 5.7% ABV, and then there's an unexpected but pleasing spicy bite in the finish. I don't know what the availability of this is, but it's worth keeping an eye out for.

Next along was Metalman who had brought a new pale ale, badged here as The Pitmaster, though also known as Waterford Walls and other things, apparently. It's 4.2% ABV, yellow-amber in colour and with a charming lemon tea aroma. That develops on tasting into a dry white wine, Pouilly-Fumé in particular, with a similar kind of smoky edge. That's a lot of complexity for such a light ale, yet it's all well-integrated and not busy.

On day two, they tapped up Calypso which, in defiance of the New England trend, they've badged as a "South-Eastern" IPA. It's pale yellow and slightly hazy with a full body and sweet core flavour. So far, so New England. Lemon-flavoured chews was the main impression I got on tasting: zingy, with just a small bitter tang on the end for balance. That's pretty much it. It's simple and tasty, if maybe a little overclocked at 5.6% ABV. It will enhance your lazy summer evenings, if you can still squeeze a couple of those out of the next few weeks.

The first stretch of bars ended at Eight Degrees, offering MAD as their new one. This 4.5% ABV IPA gets it name from the use of Mosaic, Amarillo and Denali hops. I think I just plain don't like Denali, and nothing here convinced me otherwise. It tasted sweaty: a bitter staleness with an added sour fruit tang and vanilla sweetness. Nothing about it suggested Mosaic or Amarillo to me, so I'm laying the blame squarely on the Denali. Your mileage may vary with this one; in fact I hope it does.

We turn the corner, literally and metaphorically, by moving on to the perpendicular row of bars, and O Brother. Their new one was called The 1%er, and yes that's the ABV. It's an IPA too. Brave. And yet there's a proper depth to this. It's the hazy yellow of a table beer, and has a similar kind of yeasty buzz, but there's no unpleasant thinness. There is a proper IPA bitterness, and even a mild dankness, while it avoids being harsh or acidic -- another pitfall that often besets these. The flavour is smooth and orangey, and while the finish is quick, there are plenty of IPAs at five times the strength which do the same. I hope there's a market out there for a beer like this as I think there are plenty of occasions for it.

Kinnegar was next along. There was a bit of a buzz about Phunk Noir, the Brett-aged version of their Yannaroddy coconut porter. Maybe I'd built it up too much by the time I got to it but I was underwhelmed. It tasted like sour chocolate: two things that are fine when separate but just don't meld together well for me. Add in a thin texture and a heavy dollop of dark soy sauce and I was done. It's distinctive and complex all right, just not very nice.

Luckily they had a handy counterbalance available in the form of Inquisitive Hare, a lager which is usually only available at Tigh Neachtain in Galway. "Hoppy" is how the brewery describes it, and it is that: almost greasy with resins. A sticky sweet-apricot aroma wafts from it, while the flavour mixes refreshing herbal notes with a bitter and zesty lemon bite. The combination, akin to some sort of fancy cloudy lemonade with green sprigs and twigs, is lovely and refreshing in spite of the full body and 5% ABV.

Wicklow Wolf's new draught special is called No CAN Do, in part because it's draught only, but it's also another hop-acronym, representing Citra, Azacca and Nelson. All of them were added late to the pale ale which is a mere 4% ABV. It's a slightly hazy golden colour and offers an enticing aroma which is dank and tropical in equal parts. I was surprised by its density: this is a thick beast. A hard lime-skin bitterness kicks it off, bringing in a wisp of friend onion on the end, and a tiny vanilla aftermath. While not complex, it has a lovely punchy hop character, very much in the Wicklow Wolf style.

My standout beer of the whole gig came from the last bar on the row. It's not the first time that a Hope limited edition has been the highlight of Big Grill: beers 1 and 2 in the sequence caught my particular attention way back in '16. Number 12 is the latest: Hop Hash Double IPA. I understand this is the first Irish beer to use hop hash, a miracle ingredient which is essentially a by-product of the pelletising process. It's sold as being capable of concentrating the hop impact, and the Centennial and Amarillo varieties used here certainly did that. A very large basket of tropical fruits is on offer here. I'm not going to list them, but it's all the ones you'd expect. Now maybe the bitterness is lower than it should be, and at just 8% the ABV is too. But this is the DIPA's DIPA: clean, bright, fresh and simply booming with new world hop goodness. If you see it, get it.

Only twelve beers in and I've run out of bars. Guess I'll have to start again over on the other side of the park. Sit tight...

Of Saints and Rascals

There's much to catch up with as regards new Irish beer in recent months. Going all the way back to early October, St. Mel's were in town, occupying some of the taps in The Beerhouse for an evening. The new kid was St. Mel's IPA, which came with the warning that it's made to be sold in Longford. Which is fine: Longford people need IPA same as the rest of us. It's 5.2% ABV and a dark red colour. There's a wholesome density to it, warming, with an autumnal dark fruit kick on the end plus a touch of tannin. So an IPA in the strong English bitter mould then? Very much so. I happily downed a couple of pints of the kegged version but would love to try it on cask.

The guys had also brought the last of this summer's Beer Garden Wit, a seasonal I completely missed last year. There's elderflower in this and it features in the flavour in a big way. Alongside it there are big and warming Belgian yeast esters which I wouldn't have marked down as particularly summery, but maybe they're less intrusive when the beer is served cooler. It left me looking for the clean refreshing edge that witbier can usually be relied upon for.

From an out-of-season beer to one that was right on time: Rascals Social Hops #1 débuted in The Square Ball the following night. Social Hops is a community-based hop growing project, supported by the Bodytonic pub chain. The harvest was in mid-September and three weeks later there was a 4.5% ABV blonde ale on tap. The hops were all Prima Donna (except for a token bittering addition of something commercial) and the signature soft lemon flavour of this variety really shone, set on a lightly effervescent body and with a dry finish. It's, understandably, a subtle beer, but very drinkable and refreshing with it.

When not putting crowd-sourced hops to good use Rascals has also been continuing the sour beer series it began in September with The Hoppy One. Project Sour No. 2 is subtitled Seriously Saison and is very saison. Peppery vapours drift up from the hazy gold beer, and it tastes very fruity -- I get plum and lychee in particular -- plus a spicy edge in the finish. There's only the briefest pinch of tartness in amongst this before the fruit esters take over the flavour once again. It's a decent saison but I wanted much more from the sourness.

I hoped I'd find that in Project Sour No. 3 aka Forest Fruit Sour, and I sort-of did: there's a big punchy lactic sourness in the flavour of this clear purpley-pink beer. But in front of it there's an unsubtle candy-sweet syrup flavour which brings the blackberry, dark cherry and even blueberry notes into the equation. It really reminded me of the cheapo fruit lambics made by the industrial brewers of Belgium: they were what first interested me in sour beer and I have a soft spot for how they operate, but they're not exactly sophisticated. This beer does deliver what it promises: it is sour and really tastes of forest fruit, but I was looking for something more substantially complex.

More recently, Rascals has also released an updated version of the Mint Chocolate Stout they were pouring at the RDS in September. The specific item of confectionery they're attempting to mimic is signalled by the name: 8:01, and they've raised the ABV and general flavour levels. The end result is 6% ABV and has a lovely oily mint twang. At the launch event in (where else?) The 108, I got to try it nitrokegged side-by-side with the straight-carbonation canned version. And while the nitro one hasn't been stripped of its flavour, the dry roast crispness and fun milk chocolate sweetness are much more apparent in the cans. Like the Ginger Porter on which the brewery was founded, this never loses sight of the classic beer style at its roots, which is very much to its credit.

And a footnote from Rascals: their Aussie-hopped Flamin' Red double IPA from last winter has been tweaked, rebadged and relaunched as Big Red DIPA but is still pretty much the same jammy spicy warmer it was before.

That's it for now, with much more Irish beer to come next week.

Danger: Rascals at work

Dublin has been a little left behind in the Irish craft beer revolution. While breweries are sprouting from the topsoil across Ulster, Connacht and especially Munster, the big smoke still mostly has only the old guard of 20th century micros, the one exception being Five Lamps, itself heavily aided by funds from multinational macrobrewer C&C. It's a rent thing, I assume: there are lots of places far more economical to perch your new manufacturing business than in the re-bubblising Dublin property scene.

Bucking that trend, and a few others, comes Rascal's Brewing, the first new independent Dublin microbrewery since 1998, if I'm not mistaken. Award-winning former home brewers Cathal and Emma created the brand last year, with a superb Ginger Porter produced at Brú. Now they have a standalone brewkit, just inside the Dublin county boundary in Rathcoole. The range has expanded to include two more beers and the official launch was held in Rathmines a couple of weeks ago, showcasing all three with pairings by renegade caterers #BrewsWePlate (goat and kimchi sliders: yum).

Brian from the NHC pitches in

It was a warm summer's evening so I made a beeline for Wit Woo, a Belgian-style witbier. There's a generous hand on the orange peel in this, though it's not at all sweet like certain US-brewed witbiers I could name. Instead there's a fantastic crispness and a mineral, even sulphurous, quality. It's an extremely refreshing version of one of the top thirst-quenching beer styles and has a joyously low ABV of just 4%.

So, just a taste of the other new beer and then back to Wit Woo for the rest of the sweltering evening, then? Wrong. Big Hop Red is the other debutante, a 5% ABV American-style amber ale. The brewers admit they've missed a little of the intended aromatic effect, to be rectified in a later batch, and it's not meant to be a high-octane hop-bomb on tasting. Instead, it introduces itself to the palate with a pop of pine and follows it with a long beautiful tannic peach tea effect. The texture is light considering the strength which, combined with that flavour, makes for a supreme summer cooler. This is what I stuck with for the duration of the event.

Although it would have been rude not give the Ginger Porter a once over. I didn't notice any significant difference from the Brú-brewed version -- the same full smooth porter, allowed to do its own portery thing without too much interference from the ginger piquancy. This was a version aged on cacao nibs and did nothing to dispel my theory that cacao nibs have very little effect on flavour: I could distinguish no chocolate element other than what you'd normally find in a porter.

A solid bunch of beers, then. And while the styles might appear radically novel at first glance, it occurred to me afterwards that they're not all that different from the mainstream styles that Carlow Brewing produced for their first decade or so: a stout, a red and a wheat beer. Irish brewing is definitely evolving, but it's nice to see it's not losing the run of itself.

Thanks to Cathal and Emma, Eric and Flo, and all the Rascals-for-a-day who were so generous at the event. Look out for Rascal's beer around Dublin in 57 The Headline, Blackbird, The Norseman, The Bernard Shaw and probably a few places on the Northside as well, if you dare.

Ten beers and four provinces

We're travelling the country but mostly staying in for this new Irish beer round-up. Galway Bay are, of course, an exception, with their Chinook Pale Ale arriving on keg in the tied pubs. From the swift half I had one idle half hour in Against the Grain, this -- the second runnings from Of Foam and Fury -- appears to be a bit of a rush job. It's disturbingly opaque, for one thing, and lacks any kind of subtlety or finesse. The harshly spicy Chinook is laid on thick and is big on hard acidic bitterness. The finish is quick, hastened by a lack of body or malt character. Like Full Sail and Voyager, it's refreshing in its own slightly watery way, but otherwise unremarkable.

I had high hopes for Trouble Brewing's new Galaxy Pale Ale which appeared on cask in The Brew Dock last week. Now it wasn't by any means my first beer of the evening so I may not be giving it a fair shake but I was underwhelmed. Another cloudy one, it lacked the punch I enjoy from Galaxy hops. It's smooth, there's some light orange notes, but not much else. I should probably come back to it on a clean palate.

I paid my first visit to The Beerhouse in Dublin recently, which is situated on a corner-of-death by Bolton Street College. I hope the current incarnation does better than the predecessors as it has quite a fun bohemian vibe, with a decent beer selection at reasonable prices.

The attraction was Blackpitts Porter, the first dark beer from C&C-owned Five Lamps Brewery in Dublin 8. A big yay for the lack of nitro in this, though it is somewhat overgassed and it took me a while to punch through the ivory afro to the beer beneath. The dryness from all that fizz actually performs a useful task in counteracting some uncompromising chocolate and treacle notes, backed up by a vaguely lactic tang. More than anything it reminded me of Czech dark lager, balancing the sweet molasses against a bitter bite. I liked it, though I can't imagine drinking a lot without bloating up.

We continue the Five Lamping at home with Honor Bright, a red ale. More garnet than red, if you ask me, not that that's any sort of real criticism. There's an attractive candy-caramel aroma with enticing fruit chew hops in the background. And it's that candystore sweetness that is the centre of the flavour, a combination of mildly citric hops and crystal malt, plus an odd sort of acidic apple tang. Interesting hops notwithstanding, it was quite true to its stylistic roots by being a little watery and somewhat overcarbonated -- forgiveable in the likes of Smithwick's at 3.8% ABV but not what I'd expect at the full 5% ABV we have here. The story behind the name, incidentally, can be read here.

Kinnegar Brewing have eschewed their usual bright and cheery branding for this intriguing special edition: Long Tongue. It's a pumpkin and ginger rye ale: don't they know pumpkins are exclusively an October ingredient? Cuh! It's an appropriately autumnal dark amber but smells much more Christmassy: figs and plums; cinnamon and clove. It's the sort of thing that could easily be a spicy mess but is actually beautifully smooth while getting full value out of the ginger and allowing the dry rasp of the rye do its thing too. 5.3% ABV gives it enough of a fullness to be warming and satisfying to drink but without any trace of overdone heat or stickiness: a refreshingly balanced winter warmer.

Its companion beer is called Yannaroddy and is a coconut porter. It pours an opaque dark brown and smells crisp and roasty: the dry crunch of raw black malt. Dryness is the main feature of the flavour too, making it a simple, straightforward example of a porter. Only at the very end is there a hint of unctuous coconut flesh. If it's unorthodox flavours you're after it's probably best to stick with the Long Tongue.

And while that's what's on offer from breweries in Connacht, Leinster and Ulster, we have to move to Munster, the crucible of Irish microbrewing, to find a brewery that's really pulled the stops out this season.

Eight Degrees has had a winter seasonal for the last two years, but it didn't come back for 2013, replaced instead by three winter seasonals grouped under the "Back to Black" series.

The first is Zeus Black IPA. It's a black IPA, hopped with Zeus and seems to have skipped past the Imaginative Naming Department at the brewery. It took a bit of coaxing to get a head on this, pouring flat black and just foaming desultorily at the end. The aroma is fresh, but hard and bitter, like a noseful of raw hop pellets giving an intense mown grass smell. The low fizz translates into a beautiful smoothness in the mouth, and there's plenty of opportunity to enjoy the texture as there's very little by way of forward flavour, just a light kind of spiciness. That grassy character from the aroma looms large in the finish, blooming dramatically in the mouth and producing a bitterness that's powerful without being acrid or harsh. On fading there's a little hint of treacle as the sole nod to the dark malt. Very drinkable, despite the 7% ABV. This is worth the price of admission for the nose, but could stand to be more complex flavourwise in the bottle. Just a taste of the draught version showed it to be a much better beer, with all the resinous dank that's missing from the bottle present in full force.

Aztec Stout is the second in the series, another reluctant head, and one which sank without trace almost instantly. The spec makes big promises: 5.5% ABV and brewed with chilli and cocoa nibs. And vanilla. And cinnamon. The aroma has a latent spice in with the roast that I recognise from my own chilli stout experiments which is rather enticing, but it falls a bit flat after that. Literally flat, for one thing: barely a pulse of gas about it, and rather thin of texture. There's a mild tingle from the chillis, and a nice back-of-the-throat dryness. I get a bit of powdery cocoa, but not full-on chocolate, while the vanilla and cinnamon completely passed me by. I'm not complaining that the chilli is the most noticeable of the special effects in here, and the base oatmeal stout is pretty decent, but I think it's another underperformer, certainly compared to the last two years' Eight Degrees Winter's Ales it has displaced.

Last of the set is their Russian Imperial Stout, a style that's known to improve with age so I may not have done this one any favours by drinking it after just two days in the bottle. The aroma is powerful, with an alcoholic heat suggesting all of its 9% ABV and more plus a distinct smell of winegums. This artificial fruitiness leads the flavour, and is followed quickly by a putty taste I associate most with oatmeal in stout (though it's absent from the Aztec) and together they add up to an odd but not unpleasant medicinal flavour. There's a more typical imperial stout finish: mocha, treacle and a little honey too. On the whole it's an odd sort of a beast: bitter hoppy imperial stouts are something I'm well used to, but one that's seemingly late hopped with fruit-forward antipodean varieties is an entirely new experience. While it's probably best consumed young I'll be interested to find out what happens to it after a year or two of cellaring.

We nip back to the pub -- Farrington's this time -- for one last pint: the first beer from the newly-formed Rascal's Brewing Company, a Ginger Porter brewed at Brú in Meath. It pours out very dark and thick, with a thin tan-coloured head. The ginger leaps out immediately on tasting but it's not at all overdone: there's just enough spice to lend a Christmassy feel to the beer but behind there's a very solid unfussy porter, heavy and smooth with some old-fashioned, slightly metallic, molasses flavour and the accompanying stickiness. My biggest criticism is that it was served far too cold in Farrington's, so I'd recommend sitting over it a while and letting it warm up to get the full benefit.

It looks like we're well sorted for dark and spicy warmers in Ireland this winter.