Unshore

This blog turns 13 today, and anyone who has been reading it for a while will doubtless have noticed that I write more about Diageo beers than I used to. The reason, of course, is that there are simply more of them these days, since the Open Gate Brewery came on stream. For the record, I have always sought out and written about anything the multinational has released locally: you'll find reviews of The Brewhouse Series from 2005/6, Guinness Black Lager from 2010, Smithwick's Pale Ale from 2011, and so on. Hell, I've even taken notes on Harp. It's easy to think that The Brewers Project and Open Gate represented a turnaround in how the company sees the market, but of course they weren't, merely an extension into another segment of it.

And so it is that the latest Diageo release, Rockshore, is pitched at a whole different audience. It was developed at Open Gate Brewery, just like all Diageo's beers, but it doesn't bear its name, nor even that of Guinness. It's a 4% ABV lager of unspecified style. I haven't yet seen it for individual sale in the off trade -- eight cans or six bottles seem to be the only options. A pint it was, so, at the airport. "Best served ice cold" said the branded glass, and the bar definitely tried to optimise my experience, nearly giving me frostbite in the process. That produced a sensation very similar to the Coors Light experiment I ran a few years back: the beer is thick; syrupy and sweet. The first hit of flavour was ripe red apples, a lot like a sugary alcopoppish cider. That does fade quickly, but there's absolutely nothing behind it, for good or ill.

In its favour, it's not watery, it's not harshly carbonated and it does taste of something. In the minus column what it tastes of is not beer, isn't pleasant, and the thickness strips it of refreshment power, which I'd have thought would be one of the aims.

Two thirds of the way down my pint I discovered I had grown accustomed to the apples, and by the end I could see how someone would be happy to drink another straight afterwards. Not me though. Not when there's Galway Hooker on the bar and 40 minutes before my flight is called.

Fit for a prince

Yeah, just pretend you didn't already read Thom's bit on Fürstenberg last week, eh? That way, this'll all be new to you...

The first time I ever heard the word "reinheitsgebot" I would have been about eight or nine. It was in a TV ad for Fürstenberg lager, a beer which Guinness (as they were then) had recently acquired the licence to brew and were promoting heavily. By the time I was old enough to drink, it was still clinging on at the budget end of the Diageo range, next to Harp and Satzenbrau, while Bud and Carlsberg claimed the premium spots (yes, I know). Then, at some point in the late 1990s, it vanished leaving only thousands of give-away steins as evidence it had ever been here. Warsteiner now occupies then took over (see comments) the same odd place in Diageo's five-lager Irish portfolio.

In the meantime, Fürstenberg was acquired by Heineken, and has now re-appeared on the Irish market in bottled form. Perhaps the new distributors are hoping for the nostalgia factor, and that punters will dust off those long-empty steins. Tesco are stocking it at the knock-down price of €2.19, and I decided to give it a go.

There's actually quite a decent aroma from it, a proper hoppiness which is very attractive. The body was the next thing I noticed: there's enough here to lend it that almost-creamy texture that marks out quality German pilsner. But that's where the plaudits end. The actual flavour itself is rather uninteresting. Still, I was drinking this with a vindaloo, where the full body was of much greater benefit, taking on the chilli heat and dampening it. Fürstenberg, then, is a decent but ultimately boring quaffing lager. If that's your bag I'm sure there are better uses for €2.19.

While I was at it, I also picked up a bottle of Hofbräu Original, from another blue-blooded German brewery. The pour is a lovely limpid gold and the gentle carbonation gives it the smoothness characteristic of a Munich helles. Again, we have quite a big body, but here the sugary origins of it are very apparent. It's way too sweet and slides into cloying towards the end of the glass.

I'm a little surprised to find myself preferring the sharper, drier Black Forest lager to the full and malty Munich variety, but there you have it. Not that either of them was any great shakes, but I'm using the tall German bottles for the IPA I just made (à la Russian River), so it's still a win for me.

Love lager

When it comes to beer, Ireland is pretty much synonymous with stout. As far as I can tell, this is largely down to Diageo's marketing power rather than what anybody actually drinks. The latest figures , from 2006 (p.12 here), say that 63% of all the beer sold in Ireland is lager (stout is most of the rest, with ale a mere 5%). The typical Irish pub certainly offers a dizzying array of locally brewed lagers. You'll find Bud, Carlsberg, Heineken, Miller and Coors Light side-by-side on almost every bar. More upmarket places will also have draught imports like Stella Artois and Beck's Vier, and bottles of Sol, Corona and Tiger as well, while pubs serving a less affluent clientele will have local Amstel and Fosters bringing up the rear.

When Ireland's first lager brewery closed up shop in the summer of 1893 after a meagre 19 months in business, I'm sure Mr Stoer who owned it never dreamed that the daring new style he found in Bavaria and the US would one day rule supreme in Irish beer. Yet when the latter-day beer pioneers Oliver and Liam set up The Porter House in the 1990s, it was inevitable that lager would be a key component in their success. The first brews were called Probably Lager and WeiserBuddy, each with its own distinct and individual branding.

Of course, the multinational which holds the licence to brew Carlsberg and Bud in Ireland threw a fit, and the beers were hastily renamed. I've already covered the Porterhouse's Bud clone back here and today I'm looking at the other two lagers they make and sell: Temple Bräu and Hersbrucker. And yes, I'm well aware that by writing about fancy-pants microbrewed beer I'm breaking my own Session rule on plain everyday lager. Sue me.

I got my first sip of Temple Bräu in just before the rain started and we had to leave the beer garden of Porterhouse North. I hadn't tasted it in a long long time so had basically no expectations, other than what you see here: a fizzy yellow lager aimed at the mass market. I was still surprised, however. It's nice. The body is quite full and comes close to the creaminess you get in the best German pilsners. The aroma indicates a definite hop character and it tastes pleasantly bitter with a long aftertaste. All is not completely rosy in the beer garden, however: there's a bit of a metallic tang as well, right in the middle of the whole thing, though not enough to spoil the enjoyment. Despite its flaw, Temple Bräu remain a tasty quaffer for sunny afternoons.

Inside, I moved on to Hersbrucker. Once upon a time, this was Mrs Beer Nut's regular tipple but she quit a couple of years ago, citing an unpleasant change in the beer. I had never been a fan so was very much on the alert as I took my pint back to the table. Rightly so, as it happened. Hersbrucker, slightly darker than Temple Bräu, is damn near undrinkable. The only thing that saves it is its watery hollowness. The flavour starts with nothing but is followed by a massive disinfectant flavour: pure essence of hospital. Sharp, tangy and unpleasant. I did, in its defence, finish the pint, but I couldn't help thinking that I might have been better off with a pint of Carlsberg, sadly.

I was going to leave this post here, but the guilt about drinking microbrewed lager got the better of me. I had to go back to my roots.

It's very hard to find a pint of Harp in Dublin. It was still relatively common in the mid-1990s but pretty much disappeared soon after. Diageo brew it in Dundalk and just about all of it heads north across the border. Fortunately (or not), there are a couple of hold-outs around town, one being O'Neill's of Suffolk Street, a vast pub that seems possessed of the desire to stock every draught beer that exists anywhere on the Irish market. They have a Harp tap. Since it's the beer I drank most when I started drinking beer, I felt I owed you all a pint.

And it's not awful. I was astounded at how unawful it is. It's not in the least watery and has quite a sweet foretaste with a bit, but not much, of a bitter kick at the end. To be completely frank I doubt I could tell this blind from your typical pale Czech lager. In fairness that's probably more a damning indictment of what the multinationals have done to the established lagers of Prague and Plzeň than any kind of kudos for Diageo, but still: I could actually drink Harp without complaining. That's an eye-opener for me.

And that's all I've got to say on the yellow fizz of Ireland. Post your linkages somewhere on here, or e-mail me or whatever. A round-up will be forthcoming some time in the next week. In the meantime, I'm off to Belgium for the weekend where I won't be so much as tempted by a Jupiler. I'll likely be Twittering my way through Cantillon's public brewday tomorrow, but unfortunately won't be able to read your jealous howls until I return.

Too much taste, and too little

When I went to open the bottle of Poacher's Choice I bought in Newry the other week, I suddenly recalled Leigh's comment about Badger beers tasting artificial. It's not something I'd noticed before, but here it was: on flipping the cap of this dark ale I got a strong whiff of sweet sugary flavourings. And on the first sip, the taste is sickly raspberryade, not the damsons and liquorice which are supposedly in here.

As far as redeeming features go, there does seem to be a passable sticky toffee malty beer at the base here, and the texture is full bodied, unfizzy and quite satisying. But I just can't get past that sweet artificial taste. Yes I know I said I wanted the volume turned up on unusual ingredients, but poor-quality beer can't be hidden behind fun adjuncts.

And speaking of poor-quality beer, a note on two others I encountered while in Newry, at a friend's wedding. I began my drinking career in Northern Ireland on Harp and Tennent's -- generally the only lagers available in the pubs of my youth. I was amused to see that the brewers have produced new versions of both, for those who find the taste of the usual lager too much to handle. Both Harp Ice and Tennents Ice taste of quite literally nothing. A shot of raspberryade would be an improvement, but I had moved on to Bloody Marys after just one swift pint of each.

And yet they say British beer is among the best in the world...

Time for a ruby?

Beer and food? That's a no-brainer for me and means curry every time. Historically speaking, the beer should be Carlsberg, the first lager to be associated with Indian food back in the 1920s. In general, however, I tend to drink Cobra. Yes I know it's made with maize and is about as Indian as I am, but I don't care.

In the halcyon days of the Dublin Brewing Company, my curry would always be accompanied by Maeve's Crystal Weiss, a spectacular spicy weissbier which sat beautifully with Indian food. It's gone now, though another Irish craft wheat beer is almost as good, namely Curim from the Carlow Brewing Company.

For this post, however, I'm going with a new "slow-brewed" lager called Time. This appears to be another one of the plastic paddies I ranted about over on Hop Talk last month. "Born in Ireland" says the label, and "Brewed in the European Union". The web address given is dead and the company address is an office over a boutique in central Dublin, also the address of several marketing and communications companies. It all adds up to contract brewed abroad and passed off as Irish.

Time, incidentally, was a brand formerly used by Smithwick's before it was taken over by Guinness. If Diageo still owned the trademark, no doubt they would have had it made at one of their Irish lager factories in Kilkenny or Dundalk where they make Harp, Satzenbrau, Bud and Carlsberg. However, I'm told the "Time Brewing Company" acquired the name when the trademark lapsed and they're having this brewed in England.

The beer itself, I'm pleased to report, is quite decent. It has a fairly light carbonation for a pilsner, which is a plus point when it comes to curry, and a bold malty flavour which cuts through the vindaloo sauce beautifully. At the end there's a little bit of a dry hops bite, but nothing too severe. It puts me in mind of Beck's, and if I had to guess a country of origin I would have placed it in Germany. All-in-all, Time passes the curry test with flying colours.

However, what with the vast range of eastern European lagers now available at bargain prices, I find it bizarre that someone would try and push an Irish-themed premium-priced lager onto the market. This sort of money will get you a bottle of Flensburger or Augustiner in any decent off licence. Why would a punter, either here or abroad, be attracted to this?

Seven pints of the Devil's buttermilk

"Welcome to Belfast International Airport," the old joke goes, "please set your watch back 300 years." My native Northern Ireland hasn't garnered the best reputation for progressiveness and liberality over the years. The old puritanical streak left by the Planters can still be felt in the many spotlessly pretty villages which curiously lack pubs. Sunday trading is still a relatively new phenomenon and looked upon sceptically by the hardcore saved. So it is with extra delight that I report on a beer festival I attended on Saturday in the little village of Hilden, in the east Ulster heartland just south of Belfast.

The Hilden Brewery has been quietly turning out cask ales since 1981, mostly, I assume, for the export market as I have no memory of ever seeing them for sale. On the last weekend of August every year all and sundry are invited to the brewery yard for live music and a prodigious selection of real ales, both local and imported. This was my first ever trip to this sort of festival, whereby punters can buy an empty glass at the gate and have it repeatedly filled with wonderful liquids. Somewhere over 30 beers were available, about half of them from this island. I skipped the southern offerings out of familiarity (it was good to see a roaring trade in Galway Hooker), and passed on a Belfast Ale from the Whitewater Brewery as I've already reviewed it in bottled form. Instead, I concentrated first on the produce from Hilden itself.

The eponymous Hilden is a deceptively smooth orange-coloured ale that seems rather thin to begin with but waits a couple of beats before hitting the palate with a big no-nonsense bitterness. Scullion is in the same general style but a step up in strength and weight, quite filling and tasting much more than its 4.6% ABV. Hilden's light and tasty summer ale, Silver, was also on tap, as was Molly Malone, their classic Irish stout: bitter and chocolaty yet highly drinkable. Just a shame about the shamrock livery: Irish stout does not need more paddywhackery.

For (hopefully) a limited time, Hilden are also making the beers for the College Green Brewery in Belfast, soon to be established at Molly's Yard restaurant. The house ale is the oddly-named Headless Dog, a smooth, rounded golden ale: pleasant but unchallenging. Molly's Chocolate Stout is also quite light, especially by chocolate stout standards. The flavour is more reminiscent of sweet milk chocolate than bitter dark. Bravely, there is no lager in the set. Instead, lager-drinkers are directed towards Belfast Blonde. This is a lip-smackingly gorgeous bitter keg ale. It's a touch watery, but I can't imagine any dyed-in-the-wool Harp drinkers wanting to go back after one of these.

Beer news from the North, then, is good. I only wish some of these made more of an appearance south of the border. Tomorrow, the beers controversially described in the programme as from "the mainland".

Shame on me

The Biddy Early Brewery was Ireland's first brewpub, opening in Co. Clare in 1995. Their three main beers became fairly commonplace in stockists of quality beer in Dublin, however I'm nearly sure that I've never tried them. So, over the past couple of weeks I've been scouring the city in search of them, basing my search mainly on the list of suppliers given on their web site. My searches have turned up just one. Of Red Biddy and Black Biddy there is no sign, with one proprietor telling me that they've stopped bottling the product altogether, though others have said different.

Whatever the truth of it, I have only Blonde Biddy, their lager, to report on here. Despite its deep golden colour, this is very plain fare indeed. It lacks any discernible taste characteristics, opting instead for the crispness common to most dull mass-produced Irish lagers, especially H**p. If you try really hard, it's just possible to pick up a hint of dry malt in the flavour, but you need to be looking carefully for it. At 4.2%, it'd be perfectly possible to chug through a few of these at a session, but I'd be gasping for something with more taste after the first one. I suspect Blonde Biddy is made for the delicate palate of the average Irish lager drinker and doesn't see broadening of horizons as part of its mission statement.

My quest for the remaining Biddies continues, but in the meantime, to get a proper flavour buzz I had to look across the water once more, to Sussex Dorset (thanks Bailey) and Fursty Ferret. This ale has an aroma powerful enough to be appreciated two rooms away. The taste is similarly bold, dominated by caramel candy, laced with a little hops spice. The result is round and warm and extremely tasty. I'm a total stranger to the Badger range of ales, of which this is one. I think I'll have to rectify that soon.

Ulster Reds

Northern Ireland hasn't been dealt the best of hands when it comes to beer. The dominance of Diageo and Bass meant that for years bar patrons had little to choose from between Harp and Tennents; Smithwicks and Bass. Things are slowly changing, however, with Kilkeel's Whitewater brewery leading the charge. Belfast Ale is the flagship, a red bitter which I found a bit rough round the edges. It's definitely complex, with hoppy bitterness and lots of fruit, but the bold flavours tend to compete with each other, making for an intense but confusing experience. Nevertheless, this is a conscientiously fashioned beer which hints of a time ages past when all beer tasted like this.

Moving up the ladder there's Clotworthy Dobbin, named after a legendary Belfast brewer, apparently. It's similar to Belfast Ale, but much more coherent. Bitter in the extreme, though smoother and altogether more rounded.

Still in Ulster, but far north and west of Kilkeel, there's a brewery on the Donegal island of Árainn Mhór. I had a chance to try their red ale Rua, which is a cloudy, bottle-conditioned Irish red, weighing in at a whopping 6% ABV. The result is an exceptionally bitter ale, full of green-tasting hops. After the initial shock, it's quite a pleasant, sippable beer. The other flavours -- fruit, candy, spice -- do come out from under the bitterness eventually, however there's room for a bit more craft and subtlety in this one, just like its counterparts from the east coast.

Weiss of the North

I never thought I'd see the day when Hoegaarden was easier to get on draught in Belfast than in Dublin, but there you go. Things have certainly changed in the city where beer was recently limited to Guinness and Harp/Smithwick's or Tennent's/Bass depending on who controlled the supply to that bar.

Amazingly, in the Duke of York, where one can get Hoegaarden, Stella, and Carlsberg (among others) on tap, people were still drinking Harp. What's that about? Still, people were also drinking alcopops so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised it's a low-taste zone.

On the higher-taste front, while in Belfast I discovered an English beer called Curious Brew. It's a strange little dark lager, with distinct yeasty-aley overtones. One to be savoured (and not chugged down in the hotel bar at the end of a ten-hour session and after everywhere else has closed, ahem).

And just for the sake of completeness (which is what this blog is about), I also added Eisbrau Czech pilsner to my list of beers tried (something I will actually add to the side panel one of these months). It's passable, in the mould of Budvar. And, er, that's all I have to say about it.

Cheap 'n' fizzy

For all my ravings about craft-brewed this and complex-flavoured that, I do like to keep a supply of easy-drinking fizzy lager in the house for everyday drinking. My beer of preference for this is Euroshopper lager from Superquinn, which I took a shipment of last night.

Euroshopper beer has a bit of a bad press, having a dodgy name, being dead cheap and the favourite of Dutch al fresco alcoholics. But this reputation is ill-deserved.
The case for the defence:

1. It's Dutch. Imported from the Netherlands: a nation who know how to make beer and expect much of it (though why Heineken allow their name to be used on such dreadfully vapid lagers brewed under licence around the world is beyond me. It might possibly have something to do with the money).

2. The can, though not designed by a team of psychologically-trained marketing experts, features a list of ingredients (and there's nothing there that shouldn't be there). Listing ingredients ought to be mandatory and it would certainly help to show people in this country at least what shite goes into the beers made by the big industrial breweries.

3. It's drinkable. A lot of the cheap lagers we get taste awful. Dutch Gold, for instance, is made from and tastes of, sweetcorn. Harp, Carling, Fosters and the other less-than-premiums all have something wrong in the flavour department. Euroshopper, however, is at least as good as Carlsberg and Heineken and significantly better than Bud. I think the reason for this goes back to point 1.

4. It's full strength. The premiums weigh in at around 4.2-4.3% ABV. Euroshopper is the full 5. Why pay more for less?

5. It's cheap. At €1.15 per 500ml it's close to half what you'd pay in a supermarket for Budweiser, Carlsberg, Heineken or Miller. That €1.15 pays for the beer that's in the can and the journey from the brewery. It does not pay for TV advertising, sports sponsorship or all the other expensive stuff the big guys use to get us to buy their mediocre beer at hyperinflated prices.

Having said all that, I notice that DBC's Beckett's lager is now being sold for €1.29 a bottle. I'd trade up to that in a heartbeat if I could find a way of buying it in the quantities I want.