The lagers of west Dublin

It had been a while since we last had a new beer from my local brewery, Four Provinces, but we got one in February. It's a tribute to/collaboration with the Shamrock Rovers podcast Tales From the East Stand and they've called it Green Ribbon. Though badged as a pilsner, it's a big one at 5.5% ABV. I called around to the brewery's pub to give it a spin.

As expected, it goes big on the malt. Served crystal clear and ice cold, the initial flavour is a very Czech-style honey or golden syrup effect set on a full and almost chewy body. It would run the risk of being sickly were it not for the hops: a peppery rocket effect that holds it in balance. While the carbonation is very busy to begin with, it settles after a few minutes and is a better and more rounded beer once given time to warm up and flatten out. It's not one of your crisp and thirst-quenching pilsners, but is impeccably clean and suits taking time over. Süffig.

Meanwhile, over in Rathcoole, Lineman's first new beer of the year is a schwarzbier called Schadenfreude. I'm a bit fussy about my schwarzbier so this had a bit of work to do to impress. Once again the strength is on the high side for the style -- 5.9% ABV this time -- and there's a little bit more sweetness than normal as a result. The aroma is closer to the caramel and liquorice of a Munich dunkel, but that doesn't follow through to the flavour, thankfully. It's properly dry, if a little lacking in the burnt-toast thing that I particularly enjoy, and is what makes Köstritzer the archetype for me. The gravity gives it a smoothness as well, making for a beer which is exceedingly easy to drink; dangerously so, perhaps. I had to restrain myself from draining the glass before the review was done. So, while not classically constructed, this is a beer of outstanding quality, and very much the sort of thing Lineman excels at. It deserves to be quaffed by the pint mug wherever good beer is quaffed.

It seems that west Dublin is the current centre of strong(ish) lager brewing in Ireland. There are worse things to be famous for.

Ein, zwei, drei, bier

The Helles from Saxon brewery Einsiedler has been around for a couple of years, in both supermarkets and specialist beer shops. The distributor has now seen fit to venture three more from the brewery which I bring to you today.

Continuing the Bavarian stylings we get Einsiedler Weissbier next. Das Hefetrüb promises the label but it's really not very cloudy, pouring a coppery amber colour and almost see-through. Otherwsie they've got the authentic Bavarian characteristics spot on: there's lots of clove in the aroma, as well as a hint of celery from the hops. It's softly textured with a busy prickle of fizz and the flavour is subtly constructed. There's no foghorn of clove or banana in the flavour but a clean and subtle spiciness. The headachey esters which can be weissbier's undoing are absent and it's very easy drinking without seeming bland or watery. I don't drink a whole lot of weissbiers these days, but should the fancy take me, I will definitely be looking this one up.

On to the lagers then. I don't know if Einsiedler Böhmisch has been in continuous production since the early 20th century but they've used an original poster from 1907 as the label. I can't tell you much about the German Böhmisch style either, though I'm sure it is/was well defined. Thinking of modern Czech offerings I expected pale so was surprised and delighted by the Märzen-esque rich amber colour. A weighty texture goes with that, feeling more than its mere 5.2% ABV. The next surprise, then, was the flavour. Although it smells simple and wholesome there's a weird sweetness -- perfume and bubblegum -- as though the esters from the weissbier have migrated into here. A hard bitterness follows, one that's almost woody and smoky. I guess the intention is for it to taste old-fashioned and rough around the edges. It does, and it made me appreciate the century of scientific progress that has made German lagers crisper and more drinkable. Maybe al fresco summer drinking wasn't the correct use case for this and it needs to be consumed by the fire in a dark wood-beamed inn. I'll wait until I have that opportunity before giving it another go.

And so to the one I was really looking forward to. We are badly off in this country for a regularly-available quality schwarzbier. I'm hoping Einsiedler Schwarzbier won't let us down on either of those fronts. It's a perfect cola-coloured reddish brown and topped with a proper off-white head. The aroma is sweeter than I'd like, more caramel than the preferred aniseed. Aniseed does arrive in the flavour, thankfully, alongside some marjoram and dill herbal complexity and a little toasty roast. There's still a sizeable caramel element, but the dry and bitter side does a good job of balancing it and it all finishes properly cleanly. This is also another big-bodied one, even at 5% ABV, but it's much cleaner than the Böhmisch and easier to drink too. The brisker toast of Köstritzer is still my go-to, but while it can't be got this will absolutely do.

That Hells/Weissbier/Schwarzbier combination makes for a nice matching set of well-made traditional German beers. I always have room for more like that in my fridge.

As fresh as they get

The Irish Craft Beer Festival at the RDS in Dublin last month saw the début of a brand new Irish brewery, so new it didn't have a logo on the substantial stand. It's always good to see the product come before the branding, and product it had.

Larkin's Brewing Company is based in Rathcoole, Co. Wicklow, and on this showing seems to have gone for continental lager styles as its speciality: a refreshing change, literally and metaphorically. There was an IPA, however. You have to have an IPA. Larkin's American IPA is a biggie at 6.8% ABV, with a slick greasy body, oozing with lupulous oils from the Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic hops employed. The aroma is funky and dank, almost to the point of being cheesy. A much cleaner flavour follows, however: a crisp and chalky alkaline effect. It's unorthodox for an IPA but bodes well when turning to the lagers.

Larkin's German Lager is where I actually started, and was very impressed. No real complexity or tricks here; no twists or turns, and certainly no off-flavours. This is a straight down the middle quality pils: clear gold, with a beautiful peppery rocket-like noble hop flavour at the centre. Magnificently refreshing and moreish with a flavour which shows enough hop boldness to keep the drinker entertained all the way through. Just 4.7% ABV too so I'd have had another except...

... my head was turned by Larkin's Schwarzbier. It's an extremely rare style in Ireland, for no good reason at all. Of those that make it out of Irish breweries, very few have the dry roasted crispness that I love in classics like Köstritzer. Sadly, the Larkin's version I got is no exception to this rule, although it was the tail end of the keg. I got a murky brown sample, with a flavour leaning heavy on chocolate. The darker, drier elements were in there, but too well hidden. I will be trying this again if it gets a more general release, but for the moment it's a very cautious welcome from me.

Inevitably there was Larkin's Kölsch and this was another elegantly executed version of a classic style. The carbonation was suitably low, and there was a pleasant mineral bite in the flavour, balancing the mild malt sweetness and enhancing the drinkability. A few more hops might improve it, but it delivers on what the style is supposed to offer much better than most imitations, and better even than a couple of Cologne originals too.

I was far from the only punter wowed by the offerings. Oddly, however, the beer that most commentators seemed impressed by was Larkin's Czech Amber. Now, polotmavý has never been my favourite type of beer -- it dilutes the good features of both Czech pale and dark lagers -- and this one was bang on style in that regard. There was nothing at all wrong with it: it's clean, dry, and with a touch of mild celery passing as a hop character, but I couldn't really get much else from it; it just passed over my palate and away without making an impact. Ireland doesn't need amber lager the way it needs schwarzbier, but I'm not going to complain about a well-made one if other folk are happy with it.

Larkin's seems to be pushing ahead with more in this vein: a doppelbock is in progress. What happens beyond the festival circuit largely remains to be seen, but I pray there's a market around here for unfussy and well made beer of this nature.

More from the RDS tomorrow...

Under Napoleon's Nose

It was the draw of the Wetherspoon Beer Festival that led me, against wise council (cheers Ed!), to set foot in The Bridge House on my few free hours in Belfast last Friday. It was not yet 4pm so of course the place was buzzing. I felt a bit out of place among the other customers, what with my ability to walk upright and use tools. Had I shown them that I understood the gift of fire I don't know what would have happened. Perhaps I would have been made god of their loud and sticky hell. Anyway, there was nothing from the top flight of the festival listings available, and I settled for 3 Bees Oatmeal Stout. It's a solid, workmanlike performance, very dry for the most part, with a pleasant chocolate complication and a tiny bitter hop bite, shading towards metallic, at the finish, There's a certain charm to it, and it's inoffensive. Quite the contrast to Belfast's JD Wetherspoon and its clientele, in fact. I moved on.

Top of my Belfast hitlist was The John Hewitt, across town. Reputed as one of the city's best beer venues it's run as a non-profit co-operative apparently. The beer selection was not as good as I was led to believe: beer of the week was Cruzcampo, unfortunately. Two cask offerings from Hilden and Belfast Black on keg were the sum total of craft beer. I settled for a pint of Köstritzer and one of Hilden Ale before hitting the streets again, a little disappointed.

Round the corner is well-reputed gastropub The Northern Whig: a cavernous venue which serves nothing at all worth drinking, while nearby is the Duke of York where, with the Hoegaarden tap removed, the selection has got worse since my last visit in 2005. This trip to the beer mecca of Belfast was not working out as well as I'd hoped. A shortcut through the generic-UK-shopping-centre Victoria Square brought us out at Bittles, a quite charming narrow pub where whiskey is the dominant theme. The bottled beer selection is quite decent, between local and Scottish micros, but I plumped for a pint of keg Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter, just for the novelty. It's sweet and Tizery, probably pairing well with a dram or two of the decent. The beer lover, meanwhile, moved on again.

Just across the alley, in fact, to The Kitchen. This pub was demolished and rebuilt as part of the Victoria Square redevelopment. While there's no doubt that a lot of the original charm was carried off in skips years ago, it holds a reputation as a proper beer pub and I reckoned it was well worth investigating. I probably should have known when I met a woman at the door dressed head-to-foot as a Magners pear that my visit wouldn't end well. In fact, it ended some thirty seconds later when I observed that the clips on the two handpumps on the bar were turned around, and everything else on sale was muck. Another blow for my perception of the Belfast beer scene.

I don't remember why I'd earmarked The Garrick as worth stopping in, but I did. A decent selection of Hilden and Whitewater bottles languished at the bottom of the fridge, but I was in the mood for ticking and opted for a couple of Italian lagers. Theresianer Premium Lager is from Trieste and is brewed for a definite Austro-Hungarian feel. It has a soft yet dry character which is unchallenging but decent, as a helles should be. Theresianer Vienna is a lot like the Samuel Adams Boston Lager with which it shares a shelf in the Garrick's fridge: properly Malteser-malty, shading towards Ovaltine, with only a slight tail-end staleness spoiling the fun. For unfussy boozing outside on a warm Friday afternoon, one could do an awful lot worse.

By this stage it was coming close to the train time, yet I was desperate to find some Whitewater beer on cask. My list was exhausted, but there was one sure bet a few blocks away: I headed for The Crown. It's been a while since I last set foot in this Belfast institution: a lavish Victorian "Liquor Saloon", owned and maintained by the National Trust. Trade was brisk, though it wasn't full exactly, and best of all there were three handpumps for Whitewater beer, including my first encounter with Belfast Black on cask. It's not quite as good as Fuller's London Porter, but it's really not far off. It has that sour plums-and-damsons complexity next to the chocolate and liquorice. Perhaps it was just as well there was only time for one: having it in a busy bar full of Guinness drinkers started to induce money-changers-in-the-temple feelings in me. There could have been spillage.

And then it was back aboard the Enterprise and home to Dublin at warp factor 0.0000001. In a way I'm a little let down by what I found. Belfast isn't quite the quality drinking city I was expecting it to be. There are no pubs with extensive world-beers selections like I've seen in CAMRA-award-winners in Great Britain, and local cask ale seems relatively hard come by. The Crown is deserving of a visit all by itself, but beyond that: caveat crawlor.

Darkest Germany

Having seen a variety of it on the shelves in recent times, I decided to conduct some further explorations into dark German beers, expecting to find the results heavy and sweet. That's not how it turned out, though, especially with my first find, Frankenheim Alt. "Old" is almost synonymous with "sweet" in my beer experience, so I was surprised to find this dark German bitingly bitter, sour even, with a rough smoky taste. A quality beer, but not a fun beer.

A much better proposition in this blogger's opinion is Köstritzer Schwarzbier. With the light behind it, this beer will just about admit to being deep red, but is mostly very black indeed. It has quite a gentle taste, with smoke and a hint of caramel. It's still pretty dry though, but in a good way.

Bringing us out into the sweetness and light is Distelhaus Landbier. This is a light tan "dunkle", with a chewy consistency and a sweet toffee flavour that's altogether more fun than the foregoing. Who says Germans can't be frivolous?