Die Grünen

Green cans and Germanic styles are all that connects today's pair of offerings from Irish breweries. Any excuse for drinking two in a row.

For their 25th Limited Edition, Hope came up with the revolutionary idea of not dicking about with a gose. The result is Classic Gose, a brightly golden 5%-er. As it happened I had been drinking Bayrischer Bahnhof's Original Gose not long before so had a memory to compare it with. I don't think it's as good. The Leipzig one has a floral complexity and a precisely crisp texture; this one is softer and more saline. There's also a peachy fruitiness which speaks more of new-world hops than old-fashioned German beer. As a modern take on gose I liked it, and definitely appreciated the lack of dicking about, but I found myself wanting more from the coriander and the sourness. Pucker me up!

Hopfenweisse has never really caught on in a big way. I guess, like India pale lager, bunging in extra hops doesn't automatically improve a style. And on that negative note, let's see how Metalman got on when they tried it. Their Escape Velocity is 6% ABV which is a fair bit lighter than the Brooklyn and Schneider original. It's still plenty thick, though: an opaque fuzzy yellow with a fuzzy mouthfeel. The flavours of IPA and weissbier bump up against each other in quite an unsubtle way. The first hit is sharply bitter lemon peel, followed swiftly by green banana and butane. This fades out on a raspy chalky dryness. It's... interesting. Challenging. For me it's just a bit too busy: every sip required processing time to deal with. More than anything I wanted to clean the grit out of it and let a softer fruity side through. I would class this as an experiment that didn't quite work.

I mentioned on Monday that local brewers are doing less by way of pale ales recently, and here's an example of what we're getting instead. Whatever about the individual merits of this pair, I'm fully on board for the diversity they represent.

Pack hunting

This bottle of Electric India arrived from BrewDog after I visited the brewery last August. Thanks guys! It's a 6.5% ABV saison, hopped with Nelson Sauvin and Amarillo. First appearances are innocent enough: a pale and perfectly clear pilsnerish yellow and a modest topping of white foam. The aroma is where the magic starts to happen: that very slightly funky saison fruitiness backed by pineapple and passionfruit. Its texture is quite light, with just a hint of slickness indicating that it's not a quaffer. The flavour really turns up the elements previously introduced in the aroma: intensely pithy mango and a dash of mouthwatering lime, neither of which I'd associate particularly with the listed hops but there you go. Some dry gunpowder spicing stops the sweet fruit from completely dominating the taste. I like this, and prefer it to the rather simpler Magic Stone Dog hoppy saison, but 33cls was enough. All those mangoes get to be a bit much after a while.

India Pale Weizen is a newer offering which I found on sale in Martin's of Fairview. This was brewed in association with Weihenstephan so immediately invites comparison with the Schneider/Brooklyn Hopfen-Weisse, an all-time favourite beer of mine. This is lighter at 6.2% ABV and is truer to the wheat beer style than IPA, though perhaps closer to wit than weizen: the yeast character is dry and spicy rather than fruity. There's even an element of orange peel, which I'm guessing is from the American hops, but there are no IPA bells and whistles here. The aroma is more of those gentle spices and there's none of the rounded warming weissbier character that makes the Schneider hoppy weizen so approachable. While perfectly drinkable, India Pale Weizen doesn't really show off the talents of the two breweries that created it. Less than the sum of its partners, you might say.

For the season that's in it, BrewDog has re-released the Christmas seasonals it had out last year. It was one of last year's batch of Santa Paws that I found in the bargain bucket of Brewery Lane in Temple Bar back in October, just before the best-before was up. This is a 4.5% ABV black beer, pouring headless. They've billed it as a Scotch ale but the clean liquorice and molasses combination in the flavour reminds me far more of Czech tmavý. Apparently there's heather honey in here but I couldn't taste it, nor did I miss it. It's mildly sticky but overall very pleasant, simple drinking.

The companion beer to Santa Paws is Hoppy Christmas and this showed up at a tasting in Probus Wines last month, organised by BrewDog's local importer Four Corners. It's a 7.2% ABV IPA, single-hopped with Simcoe and pale orange in colour. This is definitely one to drink fresh, the aroma a massive wave of funky dank. Rather than big bitterness it's juicy and zesty, bursting with all sorts of citrus. In classic American style there's no heat generated by the alcohol but there's definitely an oilyness from all the lovely hops. Gorgeous now, but it won't be quite such a bargain in ten months' time.

Last beer for this round-up is another that came directly as a freebie from the brewery. My only previous experience of BrewDog's Abstrakt series was no. 3 back in 2011. We're up to AB:16 now, a quadrupel at 10.6% ABV with added coffee beans. I thought there was a touch of Flemish red in the aroma, a gentle woody sourness amongst the dark fruit. It's much more of a quadrupel on tasting, however: damsons and plump juicy raisins, plus a bit of treacle and brown sugar for sweetness. The coffee is a mere ghost of a flavour, flitting past and barely discernible, though adding a sweet cappuccino complexity to the whole. Like the Electric India we kicked off on, this is light and drinkable despite the high strength and full flavour. I'd sort of intended it as a fireside sipper to bring this blog into Christmas proper but I'm not sure it really works for that. While I should never complain about a beer that leaves room for another one after it, there's something not quite right about super-premium session quadrupel.

Slap and tickle

In the pubs at the moment Ireland's spring seasonals are starting to poke their heads tentatively out, ahead of the full bloom heralded by the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival happening this Saturday and Sunday in Cork. Last week I was in The Black Sheep to catch two early risers.

Equinox is the new one from Metalman Brewing under their experimental Chameleon badge. My pint arrived ice cold, hazy and looking rather sad in the head department, but still a radiant bright yellow, for all that. There was no shortage of fizz, something which bothers me in most beers but this has a full enough body to carry it and the copious bubbles even help lift out the thirst-quenching lemon flavours while complementing the dry graininess.

It's refreshing and very drinkable (I had three pints) but I couldn't help feeling something was missing from it. All the way through I expected a wheat beer flavour spike: some cloves or pepperiness or even a ripe banana, but it never materialised. The brewery is calling it a "wheat lager" so is at least up front about its nature. While nicely bitter it lacks the cleanness of a good pils, and while full and fizzy it doesn't hit the weiss or wit buttons either. It's a challenging beer, but in a very sessionable sort of way.

The headline act on the night was the much-anticipated new IPA from Galway Bay Brewery, Voyager, and brewer Chris was in town especially, to formally introduce it to the drinking public and throw out a few freebies. Voyager is 6% ABV and the Pacifica and Pacific Jade are given centre stage, from first wort hopping, right through to the dry addition at the end, with the finished product left unfiltered and unfined, though pouring a perfectly clear gold.

The first taste delivers a powerful bitter shock: the sort of resinous acridity that scorches the tongue and wafts up the back of the palate, leaving a sticky residue on the lips. It's hard to detect anything else going on at first, but after a while some semblance of balance creeps in from a touch of underlying toffee malt. Then half way through the second glass I managed to pick out a little bit of the blackcurrant flavour I associate with another New Zealand hop, Pacific Gem, though it's very much on the puckering end of the taste spectrum, with none of the lighter, more succulent, tropical fruit.

If you're working towards a lupulin threshold shift, this is one to take you over the line.

Meanwhile, above at the Bull & Castle, the annual Irish Beer & Whiskey Festival is in full swing. The highlight for me so far has been Kinnegar's Rustbucket rye pale ale, served from a polypin. In a turnaround from the overly fizzy Devil's Backbone I tried recently, this is very lightly carbonated, almost to the point of flatness, and this in turn makes it difficult to discern any aroma. Only with my nose deep in the glass was the mild waft of citrus detectable. The murky orange-brown colour doesn't help with the visuals either, but on tasting it's a whole different experience. Very much hop forward, it begins with a burst of soft fruit: melon and pineapple, pursued by slightly more stern mandarin peel and grapefruit. Underneath this sits the dry grassiness of the rye and, not being a fan of rye beers in general, I'm not sure what the point of this is. But it behaves itself here, not interfering with the hop party.

The beer, soon to be available bottled, is 5.1% ABV and I could feel the weight of it building up as my pint warmed, but it's moreish enough that this shouldn't be a problem for too many drinkers.

Previously on the Bull & Castle's taps there was Franciscan Well's new Hopfenweisse. At a mere 5% ABV this is a more modest offering than Schneider's originator of the style and it lacks the flavour integration of the Bavarian. Instead you get two separate but delicious flavour profiles: one is the caramelised banana of good dunkelweisse, and then this smoothness is pricked with sharp and rather vegetal hops, resulting in a strange sort of contrast which works surprisingly well.

And that brings me back to the Franciscan Well and the Easter Festival, much like this Saturday's 11am train out of Heuston.

Smoaken!

You know that Change is afoot in the beer world when even staunchly traditional Bavarian breweries start turning out extensions to their seemingly immutable brand lines. In the wake of Schneider's welcome decision to make Edel-Weisse (now called "Tap 4: Mein Grünes") and Hopfenweisse (Tap 5) regular parts of their range, we have a new offering from smoked beer specialist Heller of Bamberg. Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche is an 8% ABV doppelbock based on malt they've smoked over smoldering oak instead of the usual beech.

The first thing that strikes me about the beer is the colour. Paler than the other Schlenkerlas, it's an eye-catching clear shade of mahogany. And then there's the texture. It's a while since I've had a doppelbock but I don't remember any of the more normal ones being this light. It's clean and crisp, with not a lot of residual sugars: easier drinking than their rather stickily delicious 6.5% ABV Urbock.

So easy drinking, in fact, that I'm not going to attempt a run-down of the flavours: Barry's already done that very well here and suffice it to say the beer is definitely as full-on an experience as he suggests. What I'm wondering is what difference the oak makes. I'd been expecting maybe some of the character of an oak-barrel-aged beer, since that's my sole reference point for oak. But it's not like that at all. It's very similar to the regular beech smoke, but there's something a little different about it: a slightly herbal, sappy fresh wood flavour that I wouldn't normally associate with oak at all. I reckon it'd be a sharp palate indeed that can identify the smoke variety in a rauchbier.

All in all, though, this is top-notch stuff, and well worth the nearly €4 I stumped up for it at DrinkStore. The lightness of touch compared to the Urbock makes for a very drinkable smoke-laden flavour powerhouse, if you catch my drift.

Mash up

It's one of the major weapons in the arsenal of the internationally-renowned small-scale brewers, one which helps spread their recognition into new territories, whilst providing a fun couple of days out for the brewers: collaboration, the subject of this month's Session. For some it's a necessity: you'll see lots of Mikkeller collaboration beers, for instance, because there's no Mikkeller brewery. But the like of Stone and BrewDog -- more established breweries -- it's a way of attracting a little bit of the attention which the other one gets. Since the end result almost always tends to be top-notch beer, this is a good thing.

I'm keeping it big this time, though, with a collaboration from two giants of quality beer in the US and Germany respectively: Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse. You will doubtless remember the reverse version, brewed by Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn at Schneider in Kelheim and reviewed back here. The return leg involved Hans-Peter Drexler of Schneider brewing more-or-less the same recipe in Brooklyn and this is the result: a bigger, brasher American in a 75cl bottle, probably an advisable move given the large quantity of sediment in this beer.

Sadly I didn't have them side-by-side to try, but the taste is very similar: major fresh fruity American hops giving off the flavours of bitter grapefruit and sweet nectarine. These sit comfortably next to a different sort of fruitiness, a spicier kind, deriving from the yeast and the esters it produces. This harmonious combination of flavour profiles from the different ingredients is a whole other aspect of collaboration.

Let's have more joint efforts where the signature styles of completely different brewing traditions are mixed up. Dai-san biiru mild, anyone?

Goldenest Oktober

It's that time of year again, when the mighty merchandising machines of Noreast and Heineken -- distributors of Erdinger and Paulaner respectively -- flood the quality beer outlets with acres of blue and white chequered material, adorned with their competing brands. Yes: Oktoberfest in Dublin.

The Porterhouse were first out of the traps, launching their festival on Tuesday last. Alt is back for a second year and seems bigger and maltier than before. Perhaps not 100% true to style but you'll have to wait a while for my gives-a-crap face. The imports are always great fun year-to-year, and this time round we've got Einbecker's sweet and warming Ur-Bock Dunkel, crisp dry Früh and a wheat beer I didn't know: Unertl. It's one of the darker weissbiers, though not a dunkel. More than anything else I was reminded of Schneider, though it's not quite as spicy and rounded, going instead for a lighter and crisper sort of wheat character. A nice refresher and leagues ahead of your typical yellow weiss we get in these parts.

The bottled selection of course includes some classic Munich Oktoberfestbier, as well as some interesting oddities from further afield. My eye was particularly caught by three from Münster's organic brewery Pinkus Müller, not only because it's Barry's local, but also because the Original Münster Alt he sent me earlier this year was really good in an odd sort of way. Just my kind of beer. In the oddness stakes, both Pinkus Müller Pils and Weiss stood up very well. They're both pale examples of their genre, with the pils a gorgeous limpid gold and the weiss an opaque light orange-yellow. Here's the thing: the pils tastes like weiss while the weiss tastes like pils. That is to say, Pinkus Pils has a very soft carbonation and fruity esters in with the more typical north-German pils bitterness. Pinkus Weiss, conversely, is almost esterless, being light and quaffable like a tasty but easy-going lager.

Pinkus Special is also in the line-up. This is another pale one with just a little bit of haze to it. You get some fascinating grassy herby flavours, and a light touch of bubblegum (pre-chewed bubblegum, as someone around the table charmingly put it). It's certainly an interesting beer and I reckon I'll revisit it before this weekend, when the festival wraps up for another year.

Thanks, as always, go to the Porterhouse team for their hospitality.

My second Octoberfest event of last week was up at Deveney's off licence in Dundrum, where the monthly beer tasting session was moved to the top end of the month. Good to see, since it's been clashing with the Irish Craft Brewer meeting in the Bull & Castle this past while. There were most of the usual suspects on offer, but also a couple of things I wasn't familiar with. Take Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen for instance. At first glance, perhaps, nothing unusual there. Sure every schoolboy knows Oktoberfestbier is a Märzen. But only broadly. Hacker-Pschorr's actual Oktoberfestbier can be seen in Ron's blog, here: a bright golden yellow. Actual Märzen tends to be more of a reddish gold shade, which is what this is. It's really rather flat and though relatively light of body, there's a certain syrupy greasiness to the texture that I don't much care for. The taste is predominantly sweet and bready, as one would expect, and it sails close to being cloying. But I think it just stays on the good side, with a nibble from the hops and a warm comforting finish. And with a swingtop bottle? Well, all is forgiven from this home brewer.

I was slightly late getting to Deveney's on the tasting evening and everyone else was a couple of beers ahead of me. Ruth had cued up Schneider Wiesen Edel-Weisse as last on the roster, so I got to hear everyone else's opinions on it before getting to it myself. It wasn't going down well with the crowd, which was disappointing because I was expecting big things from the new beer out of what's probably my favourite German brewery. "Too much pepper" was the cry. I was intrigued.

It appears to be squarely pitched at the American market, with its USDA Organic badge featuring prominently, and the inclusion of Cascade with the Hallertauer in the hops listing. Oh, and the highly unGerman, almost microscopic, inclusion of the word "ale" on the neck label. It pours a pale hazy amber, giving off quintessential wiessbier yeast fruits with a definite spice behind it. This yeast-hops combination has me thinking of the collaborative Hopfen-Weisse straight away. But it's a lot more drinkable than that badboy, at a mere 6.2% ABV. Cloves are in the ascendant, giving it a spice that I wouldn't describe as peppery per se, but would describe as really tasty. The finish is short, but the body is light and soft enough for another sip straight away. I like this a lot. And I'm very heartened to see an old stalwart like Schneider pushing the boundaries of tradition further in the interests of opening up new markets and, more importantly, new flavours. That's my kind of globalisation.

October, eh? It's great to be spending my time whizzing round Dublin on my bike drinking free beer; but it's probably just as well it's only one month a year.

Beervangelised!

I had passed over the bottle of Ayinger Weizen-Bock while making my selections. There were more tempting alternatives -- new stuff and a few old favourites I hadn't seen in a while. My arms were already full of bottles when a complete stranger leapt into my field of vision.
"Have you tried this?" he exclaimed, grabbing about four bottles of the Weizen-Bock with one hand.
"No," I said, "I've had the Celebrator, though. It's really good."
"Yeah, it is good" he said, not really listening, "but this is just amazing. The flavours, everything."
He filled his other hand with three more bottles and bounded off, eyes gleaming.

I had never been approached by a random beer fan recommending a beer before, let alone one whose attitude implied that crack cocaine was being used as an adjunct. I wasn't sure if I should chance it or not. Then I noticed the label features a goat wearing a hat: how could I resist?

My recent positive experience with Weihenstephaner Vitus left me looking forward to drinking Ayinger's version, even though they follow the Celebrator pattern by packing it in little 33cl bottles. The pour is unimpressive, with loads of fizz and no sign of that classic big weissbier head. The colour is the same cloudy pineapple yellow as the Hopfen-Weisse by Schneider and Brooklyn.

Having built up high expectations following my experience in the off licence, I confess I was disappointed by the taste. It's only a little more intense than your typical good-quality hefe-weissbier: bananas and cloves, of course, being the dominant notes. I will give it credit for its smoothness: a wonderful silken texture which makes it deceptively easy drinking with the 7.1% ABV barely noticeable.

A good beer, but not one of the great ones. Still, each to their own, eh?

Manifestoval

It's beer festivals for The Session this month, and I'm pretty much regurgitating points from a discussion I had a while ago on maeib's blog. He was wondering about the minimum number of beers an event needed to be selling to qualify as a beer festival. I brought up my observation regarding Oktoberfest in Munich: it's not really a beer festival; it's a festival of being drunk. Stonch wasn't having any of this, but I stand by my taxonomy (I'm a librarian -- it's what we do). Oktoberfest is a festival, for sure, in a big big way. But they could be serving vodka or cava in those tents, instead of six specific and unchanging beers, and the whole thing wouldn't be much different. Though there might be more women.

Conversely, when a pub buys in a large variety of beers, it will often put up posters claiming this is a "festival", even though it's business as usual as far as the atmosphere is concerned. I've a few examples of this on here, like the Porterhouse's Belgian "festival" last summer. Beer yes. Festival no.

So, to have a real beer festival you must have both the emphasis on the beer and a proper festive feel to it. In my opinion, the latter cannot be achieved unless the event is held somewhere people can't normally drink. If you're going to have it in a pub you must at least adapt or expand the premises in some way, as the Franciscan Well do when their Easterfest tent (right) goes up in the yard. But the most festive festivals are the ones held somewhere else entirely, since nothing kills off atmosphere faster than one of the locals grumbling at the bar about blow-ins. CAMRA, at least in east London and Belfast, seem to favour dull exhibition space. The lack of music at Pig's Ear almost has me questioning its festiveness, but it still managed to feel properly festivalish. At least the lonely grumblers there had made an effort to leave their usual boozers.

If I had to pick a favourite out of the half dozen or so festival and festival-like events I've been at in the last twelve months, the prize goes to Hilden. It didn't have the beer selection of CAMRA NI's gig, nor the wonderful local emphasis of the Franciscan Well, but it had damn good beer, and most importantly it had a brewery yard full of people -- families, mostly -- just having a fun day out. With top-notch beer. And even if not every grown-up was drinking the good stuff, this infectious enjoyment is what really makes a beer festival so much better than than, say, simply going to a pub with a great range of beers.

That said, family fun is all well and good, but at the same time there was no way I was going to miss The Big One: September's 2000-beer, three-day tickfest in Copenhagen. Anyone else out there going?

Warning: Tenuous theme linkage ahead

Of course, my drinking life is one big beer festival -- an endless amble along the global bar, perusing the pumpclips and labels, picking up samples here and there, and doing my damnedest to make the best use of the time and capacity I have available.

Capacity is a big practical issue where festivals are concerned. I drew a discreet veil over just how ratted I was when I rolled out of the King's Hall last November after inadvertantly completing the strong beer set. So just two strong beers this session.

First up is Vitus, the weizenbock from Weihenstephaner. The only other weizenbock I know is the mighty Aventinus, one of my all-time favourites. I was expecting something along the same lines so was shocked by the bright yellow beer that poured forth. I should really have known that Aventinus is no more typical of the weizenbock style than Schneider is of weissbier. I braced myself for the onslaught of cloying sugariness that so often arrives with strong and pale beers. But no, I got something else instead. The 7.7% alcohol adds a warmth to the flavour, quite reminiscent of the Scheider-Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse I had back in April. A gentle layer of weissbier clove notes adds to the warmth even further, and the result is a beer you could easily curl up with. I'm enjoying it with some strong cheddar which cuts through the spice beautifully. It has been observed that beer festivals and cheese festivals belong together. Vitus and vintage cheddar would make a great headlining act.

And speaking of vintage... The second offering in my home festival of strong beers comes from down under: Cooper's Vintage Ale. I'm not sure what the label, depicting a man being savaged in the face by a badger, says about the product. It could be some kind of health warning about the beer's tendency to attract badgers. Seems unlikely, but I'm going inside the house anyway, just in case.

It pours a red amber which, frankly, looks a bit watery to me, despite the vast amount of dense sediment in there. The head doesn't hang around long, but there's a fairly strong malty aroma which is carried through into the flavour. It's quite barleywine-ish, with rich and smoky flavours as well as a touch of toffee and maybe even damsons as well. I can't help but be distracted by the thinness, though, which is worsened by an inappropriately heavy fizz. It could well be that the beer's still a bit green, being a mere 2006 vintage -- the only beer I've ever seen with a "best after" date stamped on it.

Alan reviewed it recently, but I think he might be better left alone today. He'd enjoy Hilden, I'd say. Bring the wains.

An Irish welcome, Germano-American style

To celebrate the arrival of Knut Albert to these shores, the Brooklyn and Schneider breweries got together to produce a special beer for the occasion. Yesterday evening the resultant Schneider-Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse was launched in the Bull & Castle by its manager Geoff (with halo, right), surrounded by half a dozen thirsty ICB onlookers.

We liked it. It's very Schneider and very Brooklyn. That is to say there's the rich full body and fruity flavour of Schneider Weisse, while the dry-hopping has left a tasty American-style front-of-palate bitterness that ends the whole experience on a high note.

Two oddities about this beer. One is the incredible amount of sediment in it: the dregs (modelled here by Irish homebrewing legend Oblivious) resemble nothing so much as a pineapple smoothie. The other is the strength: it's a whopping 8.2% ABV though really doesn't taste one bit like it. Fortunately, to minimise the risk of unwittingly chugging a few and then falling over, the price tag has been set at a phenomenal €8 per bottle. Or maybe it's a way to make the Norwegian feel at home.

Good to see you again, Knut. I hope your later experience at the paddywhackery horror show didn't traumatise too much.