Like it or not

It's another One-Shot Wednesday: beers that don't really fit into any other theme so get a mid-week post to themselves. The series will continue until my notebook and beer fridge are both cleared.

This one didn't come from the beer fridge but the taps at The Beer Market. To Øl's LikeWeisse is a 3.8% ABV Berliner weisse, but that's one of those catch-all style designations that's beginning to mean almost nothing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. For one thing it's hardly sour at all, going instead for a tropical fruit vibe: mango in particular. There's a pleasant sherbet candy spicing as well, but it's all very understated and the rather watery body doesn't help endear it to me.

The brewers' description says it's designed to be a mild, easy-drinking Berliner weisse but I can't help thinking this intention has brought the resulting beer close to the point of being boring. It's certainly much too basic to be charging €5 for a small glass of it. Galway Bay's own Heathen and 303 both succeed better at what this guy is trying to do, and at a much more sessionable price point. I'll take a pint of either, and the change from my fiver.

Passing sweeps

Dropping into bars and offies on spec in search of beers new and interesting is a fairly regular part of my drinking life, particularly when left to my own devices.

One such wandering into the beer section of SuperValu recently turned up a bottle of Redemption IPA, the first of the style from the generally quite safe Kildare-based brewery Kelly's Mountain. The ABV is certainly safe, a very approachable 4.8%. It poured beautiful: the flawless clear gold of fine Czech lager with a pure white head whose loose bubbles showed that the carbonation was at just the low level I like. Sure enough there's a lively sparkle to it but no more fizz than it strictly needs. According to the label it's dry-hopped with Chinook and Admiral, promising "magnificent hop aromas balanced with a high bitterness" but it had already started to unravel even before I looked for the brewer's description. The aroma is all malt and sweet almost to the point of sickliness, a golden syrup note bringing thoughts of pilsner to mind again. But definitely no hops to speak of. And it's sweet again to taste: cloying brown sugar and a dirty great smear of diacetyl, though finishing quickly and leaving just a lightly acidic bitterness in the back of the palate. Doubtless the brewer had good intentions but something has let them down: the kit, the recipe, the method. It's not a bad beer; it will have fans, but it doesn't deliver on the promise of the label. Redemption is very much pending.

Work sent me on a rare foray into the south-eastern quarter of Dublin recently and I stuck my head into The Square Ball on the way home. Brewtonic's new porter was on: 13 Seconds, another one brewed at Rascal's to Rossa's recipe and commemorating a recent victory of Dublin's top kicky-punchy man Conor McGregor. It's 5% ABV and foamed a lot as it poured, staying fizzy as I drank my pint, though that didn't take long. The first impression on tasting is a slightly ashen roasted grain quality, followed quickly by a balancing velvety milk chocolate effect and seasoned with gunpowder spices of the sort I normally find adding complexity to dark beers on cask, so it was nice to find them in this cold fizzy keg. Last week's Alltech beer festival, of which more anon, provided the opportunity to try the cask version and it's as sumptuously smooth and creamy as I was expecting. But back to the keg, which finishes dry with a more serious metallic hop edge. It doesn't taste 5% and is very sessionable. I'd have happily stayed for another but there was another pub I wanted to drop by.

It was a specific beer that lured me to Alfie Byrne's, having already drawn a blank at its big baby sister The Gasworks. Kompass is described by Galway Bay Brewery as a "hopfendunkel" -- the first I've come across. It's 8.2% ABV and colourwise is, well, purple when put in front of a candle, the pub's main and rather inadequate source of light. I assume it's a dark red colour where it's bright enough to see. A haze was visible too, which is fair enough because the aroma leaves no doubt that we're in weizen territory: there's a massive hit of boozy bananas in the aroma, like Aventinus with the volume up. The texture is appropriately smooth and there's lots more luxury bananas and a darkly decadent rum baba flavour with lighter notes of vanilla ice cream. But then the special effects kick in: a sharply acidic, palate-scrubbing, green hop bitterness that's completely out of place. On each mouthful it's not noticeable at first but then jumps in, loudly and unbidden. The end result is a beer which tastes like an ill-advised blend of a weizenbock and a harsh IPA. I'd like to try this dunkel without so much hopfen, thank you.

That was only a couple of weeks ago but the Kompass sign was already coming down from the blackboard in The Beer Market when I called in last Thursday, to be replaced by yet another new Galway Bay beer: 303. There's lots to conjure with in the description: a "tart pale ale with Azacca hops", but it's really quite a simple affair. It's pitched at a sessionable strength and sessionable price: 3.5% ABV and €4.50 a pint respectively, presenting a murky orange but happily not yeast-bitten (a second pint, in Alfie's on Saturday, was perfectly clear). There's not much by way of aroma: a lightly sour acidity and no more than a suggestion of hops, but the hops are front and centre in the flavour. It tastes bright and fresh with a gorgeous rounded, juicy tangerine foretaste, then a slightly sharper pineapple note in behind, but tropical through and through. While a salty sour tang is certainly present, it's not a defining feature and serves only to aid drinkability. Those who are "into sours" probably won't find much to engage them here. On the downside I think I got a flash of stale oxidation on the very edge of the flavour and, unsurprisingly, the texture is rather watery which starts to get a bit irritating towards the end, but these are teeny tiny quibbles. 303 is a nice sidestep from both Heathen and Via Maris, and like both of them it's a beer I will happily drink, in quantity, until it runs out. I hope it lasts long enough for al fresco consumption.

Turkey trimmings

The Christmas break was spent with family in Shropshire, just outside Shrewsbury. Castle Pulverbatch may be a one-horse town but fortunately said equine is The White Horse, a charming little country pub with a proud emphasis on local produce. Still, tickers be tickin' and on my first visit I eschewed the Hobsons in favour of St Austell Jolly Holly.

It looks warming: a welcoming dark chestnut red, and perfectly clear, of course. Into just 4.3% ABV it packs a lot of comforting winter flavours -- bready pudding; figs and plums. More than anything it reminds me of the Scandinavian Julebryg style, though obviously at a much lower strength. It's certainly a very clear indication that all those spices that are commonly used in Christmas ales are entirely unnecessary.

There's plenty of local beer around Shropshire and I'll dedicate the next post to them. This one is for the odds and sods from around Britain that passed my way, in pubs or in front of the telly, during the break.

On day two I went to Shrewsbury to collect last-minute shopping and last-minute relatives. I also left a bit of time to drop into The Salopian Bar. Salopian Brewery turns out consistently excellent beers and I had been looking forward to trying a few under their own roof (edit: except it isn't, see comments). The pub, by the banks of the Severn, is an odd one, with a tiled floor and sparse fittings making it seem more like a continental café than an English market town pub. And oddest of all, only one of the eight handpumps had a Salopian Beer on (Oracle, which is lovely, but I wanted something new). Time for a random pick, then.

I opted for Brewski, a 4% ABV American-style pale ale brewed for local distributor Real Ale Direct at (according to RateBeer) Grey Trees brewery in south Wales. And it's a rather good cask interpretation of the style: light and quaffable with lots of lemon spritz on a token malt biscuit background. It gets perhaps a little bit soapy as it warms, but that's nitpicking really. A convincing oily citrus rind note at the end finishes it off nicely. I got through it fast enough to realise I had time for another beer before I needed to leave.

That beer was Rooster's Yankee which I was surprised to find, on checking the old Scoop-O-Meter over there, that I'd never had before. This is a dark gold pale ale with more than a touch of lager about it: the same sort of lightly sweet and husky malt. The hop contribution is a harsh acidity of the sort found in cantankerously old-fashioned brown bitters: nothing fresh or fruity going on at all. I expected better, but them's the breaks, I guess.

Before leaving town I ducked into the lovely low-ceilinged Three Fishes and suppressed the ticking urge long enough to enjoy my first pint of Landlord in about five years. Then popped into posh offy Tanner's for a nosey at their beer selection. It's not up to much, but one bottle on the bottom shelf did catch my eye: the legendary and elusive Black Country ale Bathams Best Bitter. Of course I know that you have to go to a Bathams pub in the West Midlands to have the Bathams as the Bathams is intended to be had, but there was still no way I was passing up this opportunity to put a foot on the bottom rung of the Bathams ladder.

Surprisingly, it's not bottle conditioned and poured a clear gold with a head which fizzed up suddenly then vanished just as fast. It smells of golden syrup and celery, like good lager, while the taste is an odd mix of greasy gunpowder sulphur and bitter brassica with a touch of Landlord-ish honey creeping in as it warms. The texture is thin, but there's a pleasantly soft alkaline minerality too. I'm not at all sure it worked for me: I found the mix of soft, spongy effervescence and hard metallic edge off-puttingly strange. Looking at it objectively, it's quenching and quaffable if you're cabbage-proof but on this showing I would not place it up with Landlord and Harvey's as the way English bitter oughta be done.

A kindly relative went on a spree in her local Adnams shop and picked me up a few goodies from one of my favourite English family brewers. First out is Mosaic Pale Ale, a 4.1% ABV hazy pale orange number from the Jack Brand craft-ish range. You know it's craft because it comes in a 33cl bottle. Peach tea is the long and the short of what's going on in this: juicy hop fruit and nicely dry tannins. And like tea, it's rather lacking in body, which makes the hop bite a little more nippy than is completely enjoyable. The flavour elements are all great here but I don't think they quite dovetail together properly.

Wild Hop was the next one out. This one is a perfectly clear dark gold, though advertised, oddly, as being amber. There's a gentler mix of lemon and tea in this, nicely quenching with the slightly higher gravity at 4.8% ABV giving it extra heft, the malt helping bring out lovely palate-coating hop resins. A classic Adnams hop-and-tannin job.

I wasn't expecting either element to feature much in 1659, described as a "smoked ruby ale" but more brown than red. And sure enough smoke looms large in this one in a kippery-but-clean way, calling to mind that thing that Bamberg does so well. A bicarbonate of soda softness helps smooth the experience. It's another watery one but that does help it finish quickly the way good Franconian smoked lagers do, so I'm not complaining.

The last beer before starting the journey home was Sourdough by Somerset's Wild Beer Co. It's a bit of a gimmick: a 3.6% ABV wheat beer made using a vintage sourdough yeast culture from a neighbouring bakery. It's an ugly, pissy, murky yellow colour with no head to speak of. The aroma is powerfully sour, nearly to the level of sour milk rather than deliberately soured beer. I was trepidatious about tasting it. But it's really rather good: cheek-puckering, palate-scrubbing, up-front acidity with just a hint of lime citrus in the background. The modern Berliner weisse can be a bit weak-tea, but this is seriously invigorating stuff, packing a similar punch to Galway Bay's Heathen. Three cheers for gimmickry!

To Birmingham airport, finally, where the JD Wetherspoon landed a pint of Moorhouse's Winter Looms, another medium-strength dark red seasonal ale. It's nearly a boring brown bitter: it has the same dull cereal taste at the centre, but it's nicely dry as well, and light-bodied enough to be pleasingly quenching. While it's certainly not hop forward, nor meant to be, there's a definite background tang of English hops which adds a metallic edge and holds the caramel malt sweetness in check.

The other bar in BHX departures has a selection of casks from local outfit Purity Brewing and I had a go of their Pure Gold, a pale and lagery-looking 3.8%-er. I got a slightly sour hit from my pint which I'm not sure is supposed to be there. Behind it a gentle soft-fruit bitterness -- guava and lychee. The sense of softness carries through to the texture which is beautifully smooth and effervescent. Despite that initial bum note, which I'm pinning on the venue, this is a really good quality quaffing beer with enough to keep your attention if you want it kept, but also very downable when you need to run for your gate.

We're not quite done with England yet, however. Beer from three of the Shropshire breweries will follow on Thursday.

Gold and brown

And just like that the year was over and it was time to hand out the Golden Pint Awards for 2015. This is the seventh year that bloggers have been invited by Andy Mogg (and formerly Mark Dredge) to nominate the best of the year's beers, and beer-related artefacts and activities: if you're interested in what I've had to say in previous years, you can find them here for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Andy has expanded out several of the categories this year, and mercifully dropped a couple I never had much of an opinion on, though sitting up here on the first paragraph it remains to be seen whether the re-jig will make things easier or harder.

But before getting stuck in, the customary beer. There's a tenuous connection to the awards as I bought it from the winner of the Best Supermarket category, though longer ago than I realised because it was several weeks out of date when I pulled it from the fridge. Karmaliten Kloster Dunkel is a dark lager from eastern Bavaria, about half way between Munich and České Budějovice, so right in the heart of lager country. It's a pure mahogany brown colour and exudes noble hops on the aroma. Their acidic greenness doesn't go very well with the accompanying dark caramel smell so I was worried it may be a bit gastric on tasting. Thankfully it's not. Crunchy, chocolatey bourbon biscuit is at the centre: sweet, but cleaned up beautifully by lagering so it doesn't linger on the palate. It's also balanced by them hops, adding a healthy burst of celery, still fresh and moist even if the beer is older than it ought to be. The carbonation is little more than a light sparkle and the body is chewy enough to be satisfying drinking without getting difficult. It's a lot easier going than many a Bavarian dunkel I've had, though no less complex for that. Good, accessible quality, which is just what a supermarket beer should offer. And so to business.

The Golden Pint Awards 2015

Best Irish Cask Beer: Giant's Organ
It's always a roll of the dice when an Irish beer shows up on cask, but I'd no such qualms when it came to Lacada's IPA. It was beautifully kept at the Belfast Beer Festival: clean and clear and bursting with sherbet citrus. Honourable mentions go to a similar offering from the very opposite end of the island -- West Cork Brewery's Sherkin Lass -- as well as to Trouble's Centennial SMASH. All three were encountered at festivals. Wouldn't it be nice if pubs got the hang of keeping and serving cask beer reliably too?

Best Irish Keg Beer: Little Fawn
I've taken the decision to award this one to a beer I enjoyed pouring down my neck in quantity this year: it's as good a criterion for greatness as any other. As such, this comes down to a three-way battle between Galway Bay's Heathen sour ale, Rascal's Rain Czech pils and White Hag Little Fawn session IPA. And the fresh hops carry the day. Though I wasn't bowled over when I first had it bottled, the keg version is an absolutely perfect juicy explosion. And at 4.2% ABV you can just keep setting them up and knocking them back.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Black Lightning
I can't help but feel I'm being a little unfair in this category. There are loads of fantastic Irish beers available in bottle but because I mostly drank them on draught I don't get to include them in the running here. One that I did come back to was 9 White Deer's black IPA, and while it wasn't as amazing as the ultra-fresh keg version at the Franciscan Well Easter Festival, it's still very good indeed.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Kinsale Pale Ale
A handful of Irish micros have cans available now. I have been very remiss so far in not getting hold of the recently-released Rascal's ones. But instead I've enjoyed the casual hoppy goodness of Black's Kinsale Pale Ale, with a bonus thumbs-up for the sub-€2.50 price tag.

Best Overseas Draught: Magma Triple Spiked Brett
Fresh hops and brett: together at last, said nobody ever. But this one pulls it off beautifully. Belgian maestros Troubadour fit the different elements together so well that you don't even notice how wrong it all is. If there were an award for best brand extension, this would also get it.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Spontanbasil
It was on my must-drink list for quite a while and it didn't disappoint when I finally got hold of it. I've had a couple of basil beers this year and they were all extremely tasty, but this Lindemans-Mikkeller collaboration takes the prize.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Bibble
A string of lacklustre beers on a stifling hot summer's day in London was completely offset by a cold tinny of this beaut, swigged on the way along Gray's Inn Road. Shouts-out also to Beavertown Holy Cowbell and Rooster's Fort Smith. The Brits have got this one in the can! *cheesy wink*.

Best Collaboration Brew: Radical Brew
Perhaps I'm taking a bit of a liberty here by not awarding this to a collaboration between breweries. Radical Brew was released by Cork-based gypsy brewer RadikAle with input from Waterford distillery Blackwater. The use of gin botanicals in a big rye ale was inspired and clearly both sides knew exactly what they were doing when they brought their respective halves of the combination to the brew kettle. A close second was Crann, the magnificent bière de garde that Inishmacsaint and Poker Tree put together together.

Best Overall Beer: Spontanbasil
Quite a variety of types of beer to choose from among those eight finalists, but it the Belgian basil extravaganza is the one I'd trade a case of the others for. Maybe.

Best Branding: Wild Bat
Breweries that eschew the mystical Celtic claptrap that plagues so much Irish beer branding always get a thumbs up from me. I love the cartoonish energy of Oughterard start-up Wild Bat.

Best Pump Clip: Vincent Van Coff
The name was chosen in a public competition and I think the artist excelled himself in graphically interpreting Mountain Man's final choice of moniker for their coffee and vanilla festival special. Subtle? Tasteful? That's not the Mountain Man way. Definitely fun, though.

Best Bottle Label: Torc Smoked German Ale
The polar opposite of the other two graphic design winners, Torc's branding is all clean and understated elegance. The charcoal grey of the Smoked German Ale is my favourite of their range.

Best Irish Brewery: Rascal's
What do we want? Good beer, produced locally, sanely priced with a spritely turnover of new ones and the occasional stand-out stunner. When do we want it? Continuously. With a solid core range, a fascinating World Hops Series and magnificent festival specials including that superb Chardonnay Saison, west Dublin's Rascal's really delivered in 2015. And through no fault of their own, Trouble has to settle for second place again, despite bringing back Graffiti and turning out a highly enjoyable SMASH series, both of which deserve very honourable mentions.

Best Overseas Brewery: Brewski
These Swedes are my standout from Borefts this year and are ones to watch. Berliner weisse with lime, elderflower and basil is just what the world needs right now. Shut up, it does.

Best New Brewery Opening 2015: YellowBelly
I wish I could keep closer track of what the brewery under Simon Lambert & Sons in Wexford Town is pumping up to the bar counter on a regular basis, but I've enjoyed what I've had. Declan and the crew seem to have hit that sweet spot between playful experimentation and knowing exactly the things you have to do to design and brew really good beer.

Pub/Bar of the Year: 57 The Headline
Yes, again. Several great meet-the-brewer nights secured The Headline's place on my list for the third year running, not least the time we had Carlow Brewing and Starr Hill in for a chat. But even when there's no event on, the turnover and range of beers is fantastic. And there's food and seats and windows and all the other secondary things too.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2015: The Beer Market
As with last year we have Galway Bay duking it out with Bodytonic for the best new Dublin pub. This year I'm giving the prize to the Galwegians, though I've certainly enjoyed my visits to Bodytonic's Square Ball. Though The Beer Market's initial plan to be an international-grade rare-beer heaven hasn't quiite worked out, I've enjoyed several of my favourites from 2015 there and the Dublin beer scene is definitely richer for its presence.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
In 2015 I returned to a few festivals I've been away from for a while: Cask & Winter Ales, GBBF, Belfast Beer Festival, and I also attended my first Polish beer festival, but still nothing tops the kid-in-a-sweetshop thrill of De Molen's annual gig in September. Its days as a well-kept secret are pretty much over and the crowds were definitely bigger this year, but it seems perfectly able to handle it and still give the drinkers plenty of comfort. Good beer you don't have to queue for, and somewhere to sit while you drink it, were always available.

Supermarket of the Year: SuperValu
This was the year that quality beer became one of the fronts on which the Irish supermarkets fight their never-ending war with each other. The drinking public has done rather well out of it, and a special commendation goes to Dunnes and Rye River for the extremely good value of the Grafters beers. But SuperValu has also been commissioning exclusives, and getting in a superb selection of Irish and international beers. It's rare that I spot a beer in the supermarket that I haven't already been able to get from an independent off licence, but that's happened about twice in SuperValu this year. Someone in the company's offices somewhere has the word BEER written large on a whiteboard, with a circle around it, and arrows pointing to it.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Redmond's
As usual I've been mostly shopping in DrinkStore, and it meets almost all of my beery take-home needs. But there have been odd occasions when I've been looking for something rare or particularly special and that's where Redmond's bails me out. Not the cheapest off licence in Dublin, but among the most browseable. I passed twenty years as a customer a few months ago. How terrifying is that?

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Around Brussels in 80 Beers by Joe Stange
A complimentary copy of the second edition arrived just before I went to Brussels in October, so I declare this publication fully field-tested and operational.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Our Tasty Travels
I love a grand project, me, and Our Tasty Travels's "New Beer Every Day Beer Diary Challenge" has kept me enthralled since it began in January. I'd say Brett will be very glad to sign off instalment number 365 tomorrow -- a hearty well done to him for keeping it running. The other grand project I enjoyed was Oliver Gray's attempt to publish a serial novel, December, 1919, over the course of the year. Unfortunately it ran aground in May but I'm looking forward to its return. I need to know what happens with Jack and his brewery just as prohibition bites in Philadelphia.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @BroadfordBrewer
Without a doubt the runaway champion of this category, David has more Johnsons than he knows what to do with. But it's fully deserving so this year I add my voice to the chorus.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
The Eight Degrees website always has the information I need when I go looking: what are the new beers out, what are they made from and what are the vital statistics? It's an essential service when a brewery produces as much new beer as this one does.

And that's your lot. Time to start forming some impressions of beer in 2016 now.

Brave

I'm not given to amateur industry analysis but it's always pleasing to see signs of maturity in the Irish beer market: indicators that it's not all lowest-common-denominator recipes being thrown out for mass consumption, but that there are also enough interested drinkers to support a more diverse offer. And, of course, that there are brewers and breweries with the talent and resources to do such diversity well. Today's beers are both types that we haven't really seen here before and I'm delighted to have them breaking new ground.

Desperate Mile is by Galway Bay Brewery and makes much of its daring combination of hoppiness with sourness, in what seems like a reasonable 5.4% ABV half-litre package. It pours out a slightly hazy gold and smells at first just like a fresh pale ale, all juicy mandarins and pineapples to begin. But a second sniff revealed the signature nitre brickiness of top-notch Belgian lambic and suggests there's a tart treat to come. And sure enough, there on the first pull is a popping, puckering full-on sourness, but one which instantly gives way to the hop fruit. I don't know if it's the varieties chosen or if it's the extra acid loaned by the souring bugs, but the hop flavours are especially pithy here: lime and grapefruit are in the ascendant. Perhaps surprisingly the finish is quick, with neither hoppiness nor sourness sticking around for long on the thin body.

Desperate Mile launched as a limited bottle-only special, but like its predecessor Heathen, I reckoned it would work best as a down-the-hatch refreshment delivery system. I was able to put that to the test yesterday at The Beer Market, Galway Bay's newest Dublin outlet and one which takes the brave ethos to the city's on-trade. Desperate Mile may have lost a little on the hop front in the intervening weeks but still makes for a beautifully invigorating pint.

Meanwhile, Trouble Brewing has released what I think is Ireland's first triple IPA. Hop Priority is 11.1% ABV, which sounds about right to me. I caught up with it on keg in the Bull & Castle shortly after it was released.

The aroma isn't really up to much, just some light pine; I expected more from a beer that isn't shy about its all-round bigness. There's an immediate smack of hard liquor bitterness on the first sip and a waft of booze vapours up the nose. But, bizarrely, while it's heavily textured and clearly as high-octane as the ABV suggests, it's not hot as such. Instead of a warmth akin to sherry or brandy, it burns with the clean blue flame of an overclocked vodka. The knock-on effect is that it provides a perfect neutral base for bright and fresh hop flavours, so you get lots of mango, pineapple and even a dash of coconut. This sweet fruit far outweighs the bitter qualities and makes it a remarkably easy drinking beer. Served cold by the half pint it would be very easy to knock back, and that would not be a good idea. Overall a very impressive offering and a real testament to the brewers' skill.

So there, then, are a couple of new benchmarks for daring Irish beer. Beat that, everyone else.

The gaze of Janus

Hidden Agenda joins Graffiti and Vietnow in Trouble Brewing's OMG All Teh Hopz family of pale ales, this one at the 4.5% ABV mark. Australian varieties Vic Secret and Summer are providing the show here but it's not really one of those soft tropical fruit jobs you often get from Aussie hops. Prepare yourself instead for a major blast of fresh, sharp citrus and pine resins. Only in the finish is there any more rounded fruit taste, a swift suck on a mandarin but nothing more. I assume some malt has gone in here from the orange colour but I couldn't taste its presence: it's actually a little watery at its heart, especially when arriving cold. Still, I welcome the clean zippy hop bang and hope they make more like it.

White Gypsy's cask winter seasonal is a big 5.7% ABV dark ale called, appropriately, Dark Night. There's lots of chocolate in here but it's not overly sweet and, while rich and warming, doesn't taste all of its strength. When acquired fresh in The Brew Dock there was an extra bitter bite in the background, for a sort of Wrasslers effect. I couldn't be sure if it was generous hopping, a yeast bite or even an immature greenness I was tasting, but it added an extra dimension to the flavour, one which was gone a few days later when the pub was clearing the cask for the Christmas break, leaving behind some unseasonable but tasty strawberry sweetness.

And across the Galway Bay pub estate we're starting to see the appearance of Heathen, a 3% ABV sour black wheat beer. I've got through a lot of this since it first appeared in The Black Sheep: it's light and clean and super quaffable. The puckering dark vinegar tang is shocking at first but once you've settled in to it the flavour and high carbonation make for a refreshing oxyclean scrub for the palate.

The last of the new breweries to send beer out in 2014 was O Brother in Wicklow. They made sure I got some exercise by keeping the two first-run beers on opposite sides of the Liffey in L. Mulligan Grocer and The Norseman. Believe it or not the two glasses of The Fixer here presented were both poured from the same keg within seconds of each other. It's described as an American Red and it's very bitter: green cabbage and metal, plus some chewy toffee. There's more of a strong English bitter feel to it, I thought, than anything stateside. The cloudy version was actually a little softer, though still rather acrid.

I much preferred their pale ale The Chancer. Startlingly pale and with every right to claim the "'n' hoppy" that goes with it. Bright fresh lemon zest is the principal flavour; malt sweetness steers it towards candied peel, though it does build, becoming a bit piney floor cleaner by pint's end. Overall, a very good quality effort and it will sit well alongside more established luminaries like Metalman and Black's of Kinsale pale ales.

Irish brewing is in fairly good nick, then, if this lot are anything to go by. The current renaissance in international beer styles, starting in 2006 with Galway Hooker, is well documented. But it's the story of Irish brewing before that that I'd love to see told, in answer to Alan's question for this month's session: What beer book yet to be written would you like to see published?

I remember, and drank, the Irish craft beers of the early 2000s, and have seen tantalising glimpses of the extinct breweries which dotted the country in the previous five centuries through the work of Barry, Martyn, Ron and others. But while I'm sure all the information is out there somewhere, and that there are plenty of wonderful stories to be told, nobody has yet taken the time to write a properly wide-reaching history of Ireland's beer. I'd even settle for Dublin's.

In general I'm quite happy with where we're going in this country. I'd just really like to know more about where we've been.