The local news

Irish Craft Beer Week rumbles onwards, leading us to the final destination of the Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival, kicking off in the RDS tomorrow afternoon and running through to Sunday. The beer list is exciting and intriguing in equal measure, with lots of new beers to tick so I've been doing my very best to get to as many as possible beforehand.

As usual, the Bull & Castle has been doing sterling work in this department of late and is still my routine destination for new stuff from Irish micros. Although that said it seems like a lot -- a hell of a lot -- of new Irish beer is coming from the one plant: 8 Degrees in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. So with great fanfare last month we had the Dublin launch of Kinsale Pale Ale. Sam Black is in the process of setting up his own operation, with premises acquired and building under way. If you fancy getting involved in his project you can join in with his crowd funding effort on IndieGoGo. Meanwhile, he's brewing at 8 Degrees, though very much his own recipe.

It's safe to say Sam is comfortable around hops. Kinsale Pale Ale is a 5% ABV symphony in Citra. I wasn't all that impressed with the bottled version when I tried it at the Alltech Gathering -- and that's a bit of a theme with 8 Degrees beers for me: the bottles are very often duller versions of the draught, sometimes downright wonky -- but on keg it was powerfully flavoured, perhaps even a little too much for my taste. Masses of pine resin and freshly chopped mixed herbs form the vanguard; a little bit of the medicine cupboard and a little of the urinal cake. Once my palate adjusted -- which is why it really deserves to be served by the pint rather than the 33cl bottle -- it opened out into a more nuanced peach and pineapple experience, much more my sort of thing. I'm sure it'll change once production moves to Kinsale, but this first effort show that Sam knows what he's about and wants to keep the hopheads happy.

The Dublin-based 8 Degrees contractee is Five Lamps, who came out of the traps last year with a fairly plain but acceptable golden lager. The boat remains unrocked by their follow-up, Liberties Ale. In stark contrast to the super-sweet Sweetman's red reviewed on Monday, this is very dry, with an almost stoutlike roastiness going on. It reminded me quite a bit of the excellent Traditional Irish Red that Carlow brewing used to make for Aldi, though I've yet to find anyone who agrees with me on that observation. This swings a bit too far in the opposite direction from Kinsale Pale Ale for me; a few more hops would be appreciated, but I'm sure there's an audience out there for it. The rumour mill has it that Five Lamps have recently secured a premises in Dublin (embarrassingly on the other side of the city from the Five Lamps) and will be setting up a real live brewery in due course. (Late edit: In fact, the brewery was already up and running and Liberties is brewed there. The lager will continue to be brewed at Eight Degrees.)

With this lot going on it's hard to believe that 8 Degrees have time to brew anything with their own label on it, but the recent big news was the arrival of a competing pair of IPAs brewed to the same recipe only differing in the hops. The starting point for both recipes was the brewery's standard 5% ABV pale ale Howling Gale, so they have retained an anemological name for the new ones, though intensified to signify the higher 7% ABV. The northern hemisphere hops Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic went into Hurricane, while antipodean Motueka, Pacifica and Ella feature in Cyclone. I set them up blind to try them side-by-side.

The first thing that struck me in these supposed grist twins is that they're different colours from each other. What's going on there? The second is that for pretty strong brews they're both a little on the thin side. This does make for easy drinking, but it also leaves the hop flavours in both rather muted: I expected a much bigger punch on the first sip. The golden one to begin and it starts with a very floral perfumey nose, but turns sharply bitter on tasting, though not unpleasantly so. There's a lot of pithy zest here: orange rind and dried lemon. It was the one where I felt the understated flavour most acutely and I would have liked to savour it a bit longer than sharing a small bottle allowed.

Turning to the amber one, the hops were much more eager to please here, sending out keen aromas of mandarin peel and herbal dank. There's a little more to the mouthfeel here too: it's rounder and smoother and the flavour flashes a beautiful grapefruit and nectarine juiciness, but suddenly dies off leaving next to nothing in the finish. It tastes better than the first one, but not for long enough to make it a better beer. My vote went to the paler offering, which turned out to be the southern hemisphere Cyclone. A fun experiment, and two beers I'm really looking forward to trying in draught form.

And outside of 8 Degrees? Yes, there's plenty happening. The Porterhouse have bottled their stonking American style barley wine Louder and I suspect it'll be a great one to leave for a couple of years to age. Galway Bay have installed their new bottling machine and so far I've brought home their Full Sail pale ale -- my go-to when I'm in their tied pubs. It's quite a raw beer: cloudy and unrefined with lots of big citrus hops right in the middle of the flavour. A good return on one's hepatic investment too: all this hop power comes at a very reasonable 4.8% ABV. And Dungarvan's Comeragh Challenger bitter has re-emerged for another late summer run. It was showing a bit murky when I tried it on cask in the Bull & Castle. Does it ever drop bright?


We also have a new one from Metalman -- a rare full-brand beer rather than another Chameleon edition. It's a style-defying 6% ABV amber lager using (why not?) Sorachi Ace hops, called Sahara. On the strength and hop choice I really was expecting a clone of Kiuchi's Nipponia, but it's not that at all. It's a paleish red-gold and overwhelmingly dry (hence the name, I've only just realised): tannic and bitter like an old fashioned nut-brown bitter served in a dimpled glass by Bet Lynch. The signature lemon notes from the Sorachi Ace slowly unfold as the beer warms, and on that dry, almost astringent, base it acts as a grime-and-lime scrub for the palate. But even this bitterness gives way in the finish to those all-conquering tannins. It's an intriguing beer and one I'd be very willing to explore further if it were a more sessionable strength.

And with those cheery beery notes made it's head down for the big push and off to the RDS. I'm volunteering / getting in the way for all four days so give me a wave if you see me.

Bullet: the bite

New from the Cork Beer Renaissance™ is Green Bullet pale ale, ostensibly by Mountain Man Brewing in the wild west of the rebel county but the eponymous Phil is doing these first batches closer to sea level at Eight Degrees in Mitchelstown.

It's a mere 4% ABV and looks as light as that vital statistic suggests, being a rather wan pale yellow. The aroma is far from understated, however, kicking off with the heady golden syrup waft of a lager twice its strength. But it's the hops which drive the flavour, starting on a zesty citrus rind note and finishing waxy and bitter with a floral sweetness in the middle. The draught version gave me an overall impression of honey and lemon: slightly medicinal but in a very pleasant way. The bottled one provides a fuller bodied and smoother experience, with more of a malt backbone.

I'd place this alongside the other sharply bitter pale Irish ales like Howling Gale and Bo Bristle IPA, but at a percentage point lower than either, Green Bullet gets extra quaffability credit. A 33cl bottle in the garden was an enjoyable summer refresher, but I really hope we'll be seeing more of it by the pint.

On-side Trap

I confess I have a soft spot for the whole topical seasonal beer thing they have in Britain. For every major sporting event there'll be a slew of thematic one-offs in the pub. And yes they're often indistinguishable from the brewery's bog-standard 1.038 brown bitter, and yes the pumpclips are too often aesthetic atrocities, but it's the idea I like: the limited-time-only special-event beer. When done well it brings a certain shared-experience camaraderie to pub-going.

It's not something that usually happens here so I was delighted to see Eight Degrees taking a leaf out of our neighbours' book and putting the tortuously-titled Trapattoni Potation on tap at The Brew Dock, The Black Sheep and Against The Grain for the Euros. And yes, just like across the water it's not a million miles from one of their regular beers: it's a pale and sharply-hopped keg ale very very much like Howling Gale, but it's the thought that counts, and if it shifts a few extra pints for them during the matches then its job is done. I'd like to see other breweries follow suit.

Staying in Cork, we've just seen the launch of the first beer from Elbow Lane, Cork's newest brewing company. (I'm shying away from the term "brewery" because they've been very cagey about saying where these are actually produced -- only that it's contract brewed somewhere in Cork.) Angel Stout is the name of the beer, and the management kindly sent a preview bottle my way a few weeks ago.

It's a massively full-bodied beast, tasting far above its 5.1% ABV tag and heading into O'Hara's Leann Folláin territory. There's bags of caramel and a little bit of a molasses tang. Behind this are the heavy, almost slick and greasy, esters I've come to associate from my homebrew dabbling with S-04 yeast. The tang just turns a little bit sweet and smoky, like pipesmoke, at the end. Elbow Lane are pitching for the beer-with-food angle in a big way but this one, I reckon, is a beer for after dinner.

More releases from Elbow Lane are anticipated, and I'm also very keen to get my hands on the two new beers from Clanconnel, in what looks to be some very smart new livery. Meanwhile the beers from Donegal's Kinnegar Brewing are starting to make an appearance outside their home territory as well. It's all go over here right now.

One non-blonde

Thanks to DrinkStore for the eagerly-anticipated bottle of BrewEyed Blond, one of the newest Irish beers to start seeing off licence shelves.

At its début in Galway last spring, the Metalman guys reckoned this was quite similar to their own pale ale, so obviously I've been looking forward to assessing that for myself. Pouring from a bottle which is resplendent in '70s tracksuit livery, it's definitely amber rather than blonde: a bright, clear copper shade. Some mildly assertive hops on the nose as well as hints of golden syrup. That firm malt base is borne out in the heavy texture: it avoids syrupiness but definitely has a fuller than average body for a 4.5% ABV beer.

The flavour begins sharp, with lots of bittering hops delivering an electric jolt to the front of the tongue. Then a softer alkaline flavour comes in the middle, chalk edging towards soap. This doesn't last long, however, and the hops fill in the rest of the detail, with hints of fresh spinach and jaffa oranges coming out of the bitterness.

I like it. More than anything it reminds me of Eight Degrees Howling Gale, with similar full-on hop bitterness in a medium-strength package that deftly manages to retain balance. My bottle only paid the briefest of visits to my fridge, but I reckon this will still work well at much lower temperatures. An invigorating summer refresher is where I see it fitting into my drinking repertoire.

Days of beer and roses

The Irish summer made a fleeting appearance late last week, coinciding with the opening of Bloom in the Park, a garden festival organised by Bord Bia, the state food promotion agency. Bord Bia are long-standing friends of the independent beer movement in Ireland, having organised the SeptemberFest extravaganza in 2008 and 2009. Last year it was incorporated into Bloom with the creation of the Bloom Inn tent. This year saw the Bloom Inn return, in a larger double-dome form as part of an artisan food village which included pigs-on-spit, Murphy's amazing ice cream, pies, cheese and all the other wonderful foodie delights of which this country has every right to be proud. I spent Friday afternoon dodging the rays and beering and pigging my way round.

Nine of the country's craft breweries were represented at the Bloom Inn, with a mix of their core beers and some specials and seasonals. Unsurprisingly on such a scorcher, the highlight for me was an ice-cold lager. When I visited the revamped Messrs Maguire brewery back in January I remarked on the excellent unfiltered Haus lager, served from the conditioning tank. It stayed there for a while as Mel wrestled with filtering hardware. I'm delighted to say that she eventually gave up and the Haus now in commercial circulation is unfiltered, and really quite wonderful. Amber and only slightly hazy, it's crisp, full-bodied and ever-so-slightly sweet with a light hand on the carbonation. Irish lager is rarely so good.

Galway Hooker was another star of the day: Ronan had the inline chiller turned up to 11 and the pale ale was pouring beautifully. For once I wasn't complaining about the ubiquitousness of hoppy keg ales in Irish brewing as it was just the day for them, with 8 Degrees Howling Gale, Trouble Ór, O'Hara's IPA, Porterhouse Hop Head and Metalman Pale Ale all just the ticket. At the cask-only Dungarvan Brewing stand there wasn't much action between the two stouts, but Helvick Gold was wonderfully cool, refreshing and full-flavoured. While I was overjoyed to find Metalman Windjammer on cask again, it was let down by a too-high serving temperature, but fortunately it was also on keg: the right dispense method for the weather, especially since the keg edition retains a lot of the cask's delicious tropical fruit flavours.

Just one brand new tick for me, from the always-inventive White Gypsy. Bruin is billed as a "Belgian Brown Ale", which had me thinking of tart Flemish red style flavours, but it's quite different. I guess the best way to describe it is a light dubbel: it's a rich chestnut brown, smooth and incredibly fruity, packed with the banana flavours closely associated with Belgian yeast working at high temperatures. There's lots of filling malt sweetness too, hinting at raisins and chocolate. The cask dispense added to the smoothness but it was still a bit of effort to drink it. Even though there was a cooler in action it was just a bit warm for the day that was in it. A beer to save for a rainy day, perhaps.

Today is the final one of Bloom 2011, with the curtains coming down on the beer tents at 6pm this evening. If you're anywhere in the vicinity of the Phoenix Park, go.

Hearty congratulations are due to Bord Bia for putting on a superb show, very well organised and great fun to attend. And a big thanks both from Beoir and me personally for providing this platform for Irish craft beer to show off to a crowd which otherwise might never notice its existence. Here's hoping for many more years of the Bloom Inn.

All 'Well and good

Easter weekend once again brings the centrepiece of the Irish beer calendar at the Franciscan Well in Cork. This year, the Easter Festival featured 13 guest breweries from around Ireland, including newcomers 8 Degrees, based in nearby Mitchelstown.

The company is the result of a trans-Tasman détente between Aussie Cam (right) and Kiwi Scott, playfully branded and with big plans for its entry into the market proper. The primary product will be 33cl bottles of three different beers, most likely sold by the six-pack. It's not a standard method of beer delivery for Ireland and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. There will also be draught, and the first to arrive on tap is Howling Gale, a blonde ale hopped up on Chinook, Centennial and Amarillo. Aren't there a bazillion craft beers like this in Ireland already? Well, yes and no. At 5% ABV, Howling Gale is weightier than most, with a full wheaty body, despite the absence of wheat. It's arguable how well it'll work as a sessioner, given those extra few strength points above most by-the-pint beers, but I can see it performing in the 33cls as long as they get the pricing right. Its other distinguishing feature is the lack of filtering. Only the finest of haze is visible and it more than pays its way with the extra citrus flavours being delivered. Howling Gale is a promising start for the new brewery, and its unusual vital statistics could well be the beginning of a new spin on the craft beer revolution in these parts.

While I'm banging on about filtering, a word on Galaxy Pale Ale, brewed by Trouble as the grand prize in their Trouble Maker competition last year, the winning recipe provided by Rossa O'Neill. You can read his account of his day at the brewery here. I liked the finished product, honest I did: a gorgeous shade of garnet, super-light cask-like carbonation, a firm bitterness and a subtle biscuity follow-up. But I couldn't help feeling there should be more to it, that a fruit and citrus contribution from the hops should be at the centre of the flavour but has been stripped out by the evil filter. No amount of limpid sparkling beauty can make up for a beer that has been gutted like this. If the flavour is bold enough to cover any yeasty tang -- as is the case with most any of these US-style Irish pale ales -- I don't see why the beer can't be cloudy. Rant over; comments welcome.

A smooth and calming glass of stout next, and my first try of Dungarvan's special edition Coffee and Oatmeal Stout. Cormac tells me the recipe is very different from Black Rock, but I couldn't help but notice the similarities, a function of cask's tendency to smooth out distinctive flavours, I reckon. Anyway, it's a rock-solid stout, well-balanced between roasted dryness and plummy fruit esters. I couldn't say I was able to pick out the coffee, but I'm guessing the dry aspects of it were down to this in some measure.

I had a good natter with Seamus and Liam from the ever-expanding Carlow Brewing Company. Liam has begun a series of smoked beers in half-batch runs, and the first example was on their bar at the weekend. O'Hara's Smoked Ale No. 1 is a reddish-brown bitter, with chocolate malt in the ascendant plus hints of raisins. The smoke infuses this with a subtle kippery tang. A few fellow-drinkers were hard pressed to identify this as smoke but it was familiar to me from my own experiments with rauchmalz. Liam was a little disappointed that it didn't come out smokier, expecting more of a bang for the substantial bucks the brewery spent on the speciality grain. The frustration looks like it may well lead to some messing about with peated malt later in the series: then we'll be talking serious smoke. Can't wait.

After many years of sharing a bar, Messrs Maguire were totally separate from former host White Gypsy at this year's festival, serving two beers that Melissa brewed in Dublin herself, plus the sublime leftovers of Barrelhead's Franciscan Well-brewed Pale Ale: eight months old and tasting fabulous, like Harvey's Best on steroids. Meanwhile, White Gypsy was twinned with its new protégé Metalman, making their first appearance at the Easter Festival with their second beer: Windjammer, on cask. Three different New Zealand hops have gone into this (Pacifica, Southern Cross and Nelson Sauvin) and the result is a punchily bitter pale ale which calms down quickly, presenting the palate with a basket of pineapples, mangoes and nectarines. I only had a half, but I want more. Once the palate has adjusted to the bitterness, I'd say the second pint is a marvel. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long to find out.

My final bit of scooping was at the UCC Pilot Brewery bar, once again giving it the whole Teutonic thing, with pretzels, dirndls and Tyrolean hats. Inevitably, the beers were a lager and a weizen, though it doesn't look like much work has gone into the names: Traditional Bavarian Beer (an alleged Oktoberfestbier) and Fruity Wheat Beer. The latter really doesn't look like much on coming out of the tap: murky brown and headless, but as I may have said before, how a beer looks doesn't matter. There's a lovely spice to it alongside the bananas, putting it in the same general end of the weizen spectrum as Schneider-Weisse and that's definitely a good thing. A bit more condition would have lifted these great flavours a bit more, however. The lager was another fruity one: miles and miles from any helles or Oktoberfestbier I've tasted, other than those you sometimes find in wonky brewpubs. Still tasty, though, and clean enough to stay drinkable and refreshing.

Trade had been brisk from the moment the doors opened and the festival yard was jammed by 8pm when I left for my train. It would have been nice to go back and spend another leisurely afternoon pinting my way round the plethora of summery beers I'd been sampling, but that'll have to wait until someone (anyone?) more local to me starts running a great event like this. In the meantime, thanks as usual goes to the Franciscan Well team and the 13 visiting breweries for making it all happen.