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.

Next in line

You're not a proper craft brewer unless you do one-off beers in a sequence of related recipes or themes. Two such are the subject of today's post.

Simcoe SMASH is the fourth and allegedly final in Trouble Brewing's series of single-malt, single-hop pale ales and had been out a while before I chanced upon it one evening in 57 The Headline. Like its predecessors it's a nicely sessionable 4.8% ABV and this time the malt is Propino, the first of the series to utilise Irish grain. But the malt doesn't contribute very much to it: the colour is very pale, though beautifully clear. There's a gentle lemon sherbet aroma at first, turning to richer sweet stonefruit once the beer has warmed up a little. The first sip reveals an intensely sharp lemon tart bitterness with a strong perfume aftertaste. I'll be honest: it's not what I expected from Simcoe -- no heavy dank or resinous funk -- but I think it's a better beer for that, loud and rudely bitter, but great fun to drink.

Over at Galway Bay, meanwhile, they've brewed a sequel to their collaboration with Chicago's Begyle, Goodbye Blue Monday. But while that was a hefty IPA (and a rather good one at that), Maybe Next Monday is a dry-hopped low-strength sour beer. €6.75 a pint was the asking price and, haha, obviously I'm not paying that, so settled for a €3.90 33cl serving. The sour bits and the hoppy bits both come on very strong and obvious in this, with an end result that tastes like a soured fruit cocktail. There's an unpleasant, out-of-character, stickiness to the whole thing which, allied with the hops, makes it taste like Um Bongo or similar children's tropical juice drink, with an added lactic tang and then an oxidised cardboard twang on the end. Barry, sitting next to me, nailed the yoghurt-and-fruit effect as like a peach-flavoured Petits Filous. This is a very silly beer, and might make for a fun novelty if it wasn't for the po-faced pricetag. It definitely shouldn't command the same sort of money as a properly-made lambic.

I'll miss the Trouble SMASH series, it was a great idea and yielded some excellent results. And the growth of nouveau-sour in Ireland and abroad? I look forward to that getting better. The next one from Galway Bay, Godspeed, arrives in their pubs today.

Doubles and quits

It's the last post of 2014, a very busy year for beer and for Irish beer in particular. New breweries popped up all over the place and I paid overdue visits to Carlow Brewing, Porterhouse and Galway Bay. Dublin has been a little slow to catch up with the rest of the country but I'm expecting that to be somewhat rectified by the end of next year. The slew of winter seasonal beers has been bigger than ever and, for the second year in a row, Eight Degrees has released a trilogy of strong brews. One of them is a re-run of last year's Imperial Stout but the others are brand new and I caught up with them when they went on tap in The Norseman.

First up, a 7.2% ABV Belgian Dubbel. It's the appropriate shade of chestnut red and poured quite clear, though not completely. It's big on banana esters and heavy on the caramel too for an unsubtly sweet boozy banoffi effect, the heat rising to a slightly off-putting hint of marker pens at the finish. Thankfully the heat and markers don't build and the end result is a reasonably decent take on the dubbel style. While I got a little bit of a savoury yeast bite in the flavour, I suspect that this would be even more present in the bottled version and would help balance the intense sweetness. It's certainly one that will be interesting after a few years' maturation.

Eight Degrees wowed us in spring with The Full Irish IPA (and not just because of that photo) and have followed it up with a double IPA version named, topically, Double Irish. I didn't get much of an aroma from it, but that could have been the glass: those trumpet-shaped half-pints really should be banished from decent beer bars. Cut grass eventually wafted out of it when I'd drank down far enough. On tasting, the bitterness strikes first and while the flavour is complex, it's not a fruity one. There's everything else, mind: dank oily resins, grassy sharpness and a mouth-watering dry spicing. While carrying the full weight of its 9% ABV it's not at all sugary. It's a little more grown-up and serious than Ireland's other double IPAs and you can decide for yourself whether or not that's a good thing.

And speaking of comparisons, with all of my beer reviews done for the year, that means it's time for:

The Golden Pint Awards 2014

Best Irish Cask Beer: Full Sail
What happens when you take an already strong and hoppy pale ale and then dry hop it as far as physically possible. This is a face melter that goes through hoppy and out the other side. I'm hoping the expanded capacity at Galway Bay will make it a more regular sight.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Black Boar
We’re not worthy. Oh wait, yes we are. Where the hell has this been until now, White Hag? A silky knock-it-back 9% ABV stout that's so easy to drink they had to name it after a dangerous animal to remind us of the risk. At the opposite end of the hydrometer, a major tip of the hat has to go to Trouble Brewing for Graffiti: more of this, and this sort of thing, please.

Best Irish Bottled or Canned Beer: Independent Pale Ale / Dublin Brewer IPA
I first drank this way back in February but have been caning most of it under its Dublin Brewer guise at The Larder. I didn't realise they're the same beer but I have it on good authority that they are. Another big blousey whack of hops: invigorating, refreshing and great with a feed.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Het Uiltje G&T Radler
Wiper & True's Mosaic pale ale was a major contender in the pupil-dilating stakes this year, but the Dutch contract brewers take the prize for me. All the wonderful things about my two favourite drinks in a single package. It's quite possibly the oddest beer I drank this year, and perhaps that alone deserves recognition.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Black Eyed King Imp
The second imperial stout to take a gong, but it couldn't be more different from Black Boar. BrewDog's limited edition special has a convoluted back story but when you meet it it's entirely integrated: one piece of warm, sumptuous liquid comfort.

Best Collaboration Brew: Crushable Saison
There have been lots of great Irish collaborations this year, thinking of Goodbye Blue Monday and Horn8's Nest in particular. But I'm giving this one to the Americo-Belgian saison made by Tired Hands and De La Senne because it best represents what both countries are great at, which is a good thing for collaboration beers to do.

Best Overall Beer: Het Uiltje G&T Radler
It has to be the weirdo, I'm afraid. That's just how I roll. But you knew that. Seriously, though: drink this beer and tell me it isn't amazing.

Best Branding, Label or Pumpclip: Jack Cody's
Gotta love that goat.

Best Irish Brewery: Eight Degrees
The same winner as last year, with no qualms at all because, while 2013 Eight Degrees was excellent, 2014 Eight Degrees surpassed it with a never ending stream of daring hop-forward beers. As the Irish microbrewing industry expands, the issue of quality -- and whether newcomers are up to scratch -- is raised again and again. Anyone looking for a benchmark on what quality tastes like can grab a handful of whatever the newest Eight Degrees releases are. A very honorable mention goes to Trouble Brewing for excellent beers reasonably priced: everything that's required of a local brewery.

Best Overseas Brewery: Siren
There was no particular outstanding beer that won this for the Berkshire brewery, but they kind of insinuated themselves into my drinking this year, in locations as diverse as Rome, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Bristol and my own kitchen: wherever top-notch beer is served, basically. A varied range of styles and all of it very good indeed. Word has it that importation into Ireland is imminent, which is great news.

Best New Brewery Opening 2014: The White Hag
Well duh!

Pub/Bar of the Year: 57 The Headline
The Norseman ran it pretty damn close, both of them having taken the mantle from the Bull & Castle as ground zero for Dublin's beer obsessives. If pushed I'd say The Norseman probably has a better beer offer, but the quiet, comfortable neighbourly feel of The Headline makes it a better pub, which is what this prize is about. My top international finds this year were Open Baladin in Rome and The Bag o' Nails in Bristol, but neither is a 20-minute downhill stroll from my front door, so they lose out there.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2014: Alfie Byrne's
With JD Wetherspoon totally dropping the ball on the cask ale front, there aren't very many candidates. Alfie's opened in February and then we had a long wait for The 108 and The Back Page, which both appeared in late autumn. Alfie's gets a bit of stick because, through no fault of its own, it's a hotel bar. But the staff are great, the draught selection always includes something inspiring, and whereas you might see a lack of "atmosphere", I see a choice of places to sit. Away from you for a start, if you're going to whinge.

Beer and Food Pairing of the Year: Venison & Ale Pie and Leann Folláin
Always a tricky one for me as conscientious beer and food pairing is really not my thing. But down at The Pieman on Crown Alley a while back they had a venison and red ale pie on special, which I ate with a bottle of O'Hara's Leann Folláin, and it was lovely, and amazing value for a tenner. So there's my nomination.

Beer Festival of the Year: Quartiere In Fermento
Borefts was fantastic as always; The RDS September festival was huge and did not have a bad beer at it, that I tasted. Franciscan Well Easter Festival also took things to the next level this year. But the charming random oddness of the Wallace winebar chain's celebration of Italian beer gets my vote for 2014's festival highlight.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
As usual I did very little supermarket beer shopping, but I did pick up the odd bottle or two in Fresh. They do seem to keep a good range of locals and quality imports in stock.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Martin's of Fairview
I was wowed on my first visit to this northside offy: a fantastic range, all nicely spread out for ease of browsing. I still buy most of my beer in DrinkStore, but I will be back to Martin's.

Online Retailer of the Year: The Homebrew Company
It doesn't say this category has to be about beer does it? Anyway, I don't buy beer online, and I do like the service from HBC, so they get this Golden Pint.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Sláinte: The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider
This is an actual contest for the first time in Golden Pints history. I love flicking through Ron Pattinson's Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer, while Boak & Bailey's Brew Britannia was the most engrossing read of the year. But a book on the current state of play in Irish beer and cider was badly needed, and Caroline and Kristin have done a marvellous job of documenting it in an accessible and visually appealing way.

Best Beer Blog or Website: The Beer Cast
I am not alone in commending Richard for his forensic unravelling of the bullshit that Scottish brewers Brewmeister cloaked their brand in. The whole saga made for fascinating reading as well as demonstrating the real practical benefit of this blogging lark. Tremble in fear, ye quacks and charlatans. A pat on the back and a jolly-well-done goes to Mr Brissenden for his sweetly crafted observations on the production end of brewing, and to Belgian Smaak which has done fantastic work documenting rural Ireland's new breweries this year.

Best Beer App: BeoirFinder
And while Belgian Smaak has been tearing around the country, I rarely do. However, it's comforting to know that BeoirFinder is there if I end up somewhere unfamiliar and in need of a decent beer.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitter: Chris Hall
We all want witty and informative, and thankfully there's plenty of it out there in the beery tweetosphere. Chris has been on top of it more than anyone in 2014, which is why I invite him to take a bow and receive my Johnson.

Best Brewery Website/Social Media: White Gypsy
Lots of current information on what's available and where to buy it, plus some lovely pictures of the brewery's hop garden, White Gypsy were really making the most of their Twitter account this year.

And that's your lot. Thanks as always to Andy Mogg and Mark Dredge for devising the Golden Pints and to everyone in the beer brewing, selling and commenting industries, especially here in Ireland, for making 2014 the busiest and most interesting year of my drinking career. See you in 2015 for the next round.

'Spoons, man

One of the more momentous events of the past year was the arrival of British pub chain JD Wetherspoon to Ireland. The original surprise announcement was made in August 2013 and news came through by the end of the year that the first branch would be in the well-heeled south Dublin suburb of Blackrock. So this wasn't going to be one of those Wild West Wetherspoons, run down and gum-stained, that one occasionally encounters across the water. Though they didn't make it explicit, I suspect the intention was for this to be both pilot fish and flagship all under one enormous roof.

The doors of The Three Tun Tavern opened in early July, by which stage news of the next phase of the expansion was trickling out. More Irish Wetherspoons are expected in Dublin, Cork and further abroad next year, and the second Dublin outlet opens three stops down the DART line in Dún Laoghaire later this month. For the moment, however, The Three Tun Tavern remains one of a kind.

It was August by the time I made it along, late afternoon on a sunny Friday. When it's quiet you really get a feel for the size of the place: a vast wooden floored bearpit with a long bar at the centre and more secluded carpeted areas on different levels off to the sides. I had a slight awww moment when I noticed the silent TV screens were set to RTÉ News Now rather than Sky, as would be normal in the UK. Lots of staff were milling about, far more than there were customers. I guess the rotas were still in the planning phase. A drink, then.

Twelve handpumps makes it easily the caskiest pub in the country, though the everyday selection isn't really up to much: rather mainstream humdrum large-regional British ales, the sort of stuff that the company can pile very high and sell exceedingly cheap. I thought that Adnams Ghost Ship would be a safe bet, having always loved the bottled version but it just felt tired and sickly on cask. Not the refresher I was after that particular afternoon.

Having decided there was nothing on cask I wanted and moving over to the keg taps, the first one to catch my interest was DNA, that oddity from Charles Wells made with a dash of Dogfish Head IPA. My pint arrived a cheery clear copper colour but dear lord it was cold. As the condensation cascaded onto my table that's when I noticed the pub doesn't put beermats out, though they are available. Once it was warm enough for me to taste something I found it quite a subtle and refreshing beer. Its American heritage is there in the sherbety fruit tones, though there's nothing you'd actually call bitter or citrus, and then there's a rising caramel aftermath meaning that it soon starts tasting as brown as it looks. DNA offers a few seconds of enjoyment but just gets boring after that. I understand that the recipe has been revised since the summer so your mileage will obviously vary, if you haven't already been put off it.

I had time for one more pint and opted for Revisionist Lager, holding out possibly naive hopes for Marston's craftified series of beers. This is medium gold and the point-of-sale material promises dry-hopping with Admiral and Boadicea hops. I couldn't wait to get stuck in. Ow my teeth! So very, very cold. I suppose with a lager it's part of the spec, a reasonable demand of the customer base. I cupped my hands around the glass and gingerly took another sip. There's definitely some hop action up front: a sort of chew-sweet artificial fruitiness, but there's not much behind it. No malt, for one thing, which perhaps isn't that surprising at a mere 4% ABV. I kept searching for more taste, letting the beer warm, until notes of butter began creeping in and I knew I was on to a loser. I drained the glass and went on my way.

I wasn't expecting to be back as soon as October, thinking that the chain wouldn't bother with including Ireland in the yearly cycle of special beer festivals. But they did, and on Friday 17th October the first beers from the Wetherspoon International Real-Ale Festival went on sale in Dublin. I really enjoyed my time at this event in Belfast last year so headed straight for Blackrock early in the afternoon of day two.

Just five to pick from, and my first choice was the Hook Norton / Brew Moon Real Antipodean, a 4% ABV golden ale. That's getting into the airy upper reaches for English beer of this style but this was definitely rather thinner than I expected. Still, a lovely spiced orange aroma opened its account and there's a similar sort of fruit flavour, lots of light sherbet and then a cheeky invigorating bitterness right at the end. The hops are Motueka and Wakatu and really didn't have much that was typically New Zealandish about them, but they still worked nicely together. It's another one to finish quickly however: bath salts and orange cordial started to come out as it warmed. Just as well I had more to try.

Meanwhile, the wife opted for the strongest beer on the menu: Freak of Nature double IPA, brewed by Bateman's and based on an original by North Carolina's Wicked Weed brewery. 7.5% ABV and a gorgeous rich gold-amber colour. What could possibly go wrong here? Everything. Aside from the forgiveable powerful alcohol heat there was a massive hit of phenols: pure TCP yuck coating everything. Where it was possible to taste the beer underneath it was all sweet and syrupy. The bottom line is no fresh American hop loveliness, just anguish and despair. Was the problem in the recipe, the brewing or the serving? I don't know. The total trooper I married did manage to get through the entire half pint, however. What a hero.

After that I lost my nerve on risking whole pints and opted for the, admittedly wonderful, three thirds for the price of a pint. We settled in front of the real fire while I set about them.

On the left of the picture, the first was another down-under collaboration: Two Birds Golden Ale, by the Melbourne brewery of the same name, brewed at Banks's. It's a reddish sort of gold and that's probably its most interesting feature. A bit of golden syrup malt, maybe, but otherwise harmless and bland. Neither bells nor whistles in JW Lees John Willie's 100 (far right) either. This is brown bitter of the very brownest sort, a one dimensional toffee pudding that had nothing wrong with it, but I was glad I only had a small glass to work through all the same. And in the middle Abbaye Blonde brewed at Shepherd Neame with input from Belgium's Val-Dieu brewery. This 6%-er was pretty good, all biscuits and bubblegum, sprinkled with honey and cereal. No Belgian stickiness, just good, clean, drinkable golden ale.

My advice to myself for these Wetherspoon collaboration sets is to look out for the ones brewed at Adnams. They tend to be a cut above the others. There was only one on this list, a collaboration with SixPoint called Bklyn Bitter. The pumpclip was present but flagged as "coming soon" and the helpful barman said he expected it to be pouring later that evening. We were in no rush. A wander up the street brought us to The Dark Horse where Goodbye Blue Monday was pouring on cask, throwing all of the Wetherspoon offerings far into the shade. We returned to The Three Tun Tavern just after six to find the afternoon's families had cleared out and the place was now heaving with determined evening drinkers. 6pm on a Saturday seems to be the time when Blackrock turns up its rugby shirt collar and heads to the pub. We found a space in a corner and I brought us two pints of Bklyn.

It didn't let me down. Maybe a little over-egged at 5.5% ABV while tasting far more safe and sessionable, this is rose gold in colour and smells enticingly of sulphur and black tea. It's tannins a-go-go the way Adnams does best, more a lemon tea effect on tasting, when the hopping kicks in, and hitting the back of the throat and roof of the mouth with a tannic dryness. I'd have been happy if that's all it did but there was also big rich mango juiciness and a dusting of incense spice. Phwoar. This one was well worth waiting for.

So, clearly a mixed bag at The Three Tuns, but hooray for choice. I doubt I'll be making regular forays out to Blackrock, Dún Laoghaire or Swords just to go to Wetherspoon, and even if and when they open in the centre of town I can't see it becoming a destination for a night out. But just a few pints of something of Bklyn's calibre per year will do me. Welcome to Dublin, JD.

(This is my second #beerylongreads post in the current round. For the full list of contributions, see Boak and Bailey's blog here.)

More pours

Day two of catching up on Ireland's recent new and special release beers in honour of Irish Craft Beer Week 2014.

Usually ahead of the game for such things, The Norseman in Dublin was an early adopter of Smokey Bacon, a new special edition strong ale from Bo Bristle. This arrived a murky brown-amber colour and exhibits lots of Belgian-esque alcoholic warmth from its 6.8% ABV. The smoke makes its presence felt right from the start: a harsh and heavy acridity. Lots of caramel malt comes in behind it and the two elements battle it out for control of the palate, well into the long finish. While I'm sure it'll have its fans, it just didn't work for me, lacking in the balance and cleanness I enjoy in German rauchmalz-based lagers and also in the fun flavours found in peated dark beers. Reddish ales with a minority percentage of smoked malt just don't float my boat.

Beoir's 2014 AGM happened in Kilkenny a month ago and coincided with the first appearances of a new local beer brand, Costellos. Mr Costello himself invited us along to Billy Byrne's pub after the meeting to try it out. Diageo recently closed the landmark Smithwick's brewery in the city and this is an attempt to bring the local element back into Kilkenny beer, though for the moment it's brewed two counties over at Trouble. Still, a 3.8% ABV red ale can't but attract parallels with Smithwick's, and it does combine several of that beer's better elements, showing lots of lemon-tea-like tannins for superior thirst-quenching power. As it warms there's a sizeable amount of buttery diacetyl added to the mix, which wasn't to everyone's taste but which I thought sat quite comfortably with the cleaner parts of the flavour.

Thanks to Gerald and the team at Costello's for the hospitality, and check out Billy Byrne's if you're in Kilkenny: the Bula Bus kitchen parked out back does excellent street food.

"No new Galway Bay beer yet?" I hear you cry. Of course there is. Before the brewery packed up and shipped itself across town to a new standalone facility it produced a 6.6% ABV IPA called Goodbye Blue Monday, in collaboration with Begyle Brewing of Chicago. It's got oatmeal in it. I don't know why and I couldn't detect any effect it had, but I thought I should mention that it's in there. It is thickly textured, but so are lots of non-oatmeal IPAs so I doubt that's oatmeal alone. The colour is a bright copper and its flavour is immensely complex from just the hops: spicy and greenly bitter; weedy and dank, but also zesty and juicy. Basically it's a walking tour of new world hop flavours. Malt? Keep walking, stranger. If you want something with a bit more impact than Full Sail but smaller than Of Foam & Fury, here it is. But otherwise I don't really see the point of trading up or down from either of those perfectly enjoyable beers.

Last month there was much fooferaw around the launch plans of Sligo's first brewery, The White Hag, at the Fleadh Cheoil. What got lost in the kerfuffle about licensing and strongarm tactics and whether craft beer is a fad was any mention of the beer. White Hag's first release was a special edition created specifically for the event: Fleadh Ale. Fortunately a stray keg managed to roll as far as L. Mulligan Grocer where I got to try it. I'll admit I'm a little prejudiced when it comes to the beer from new rural Irish breweries. "Safe" is a word I may throw out from time to time, and no criticism is implied in it. But Fleadh Ale is not safe. Quite the opposite, I think. It's the clear dark red of an amber ale and starts with an innocent aroma of toffee and oranges. Mandarins flash past on the first sip, then stronger hop resins and incense spicing leading to thumping great dank earthy pine flavours set on a thick toffee stickiness. That hop-blasted chewiness is an effect I associate most with big US double IPAs and I'm not sure I entirely believe the Hag's claim that this is a mere 6.8% ABV. It is a stunning beer and though brewed for a summer music festival it would make a magnificent winter warmer. I hope we'll see it again.

A second new Connacht brewery to finish on: Black Donkey from Roscommon. They've daringly opted for a saison as the first release and the official east-coast launch took place in 57 The Headline recently. Sheep Stealer is the latest of a growing sub-genre of quite sweet Irish saisons, packed to the gills with mouth-watering orangey fruit. There's some level of dryness and spicing in here too, in both flavour and aroma, but they're more akin to the kind of thing you'd find in a witbier rather than a continental saison. I get a definite poke of coriander in the aroma especially, though as far as I know, no spices have been used in the recipe. The lack of sharp edges makes Sheep Stealer an insanely drinkable beer, as witnessed by the first keg being drained on the night in about 40 minutes.

Another round of new Irish beers tomorrow? Ah go on then...