Boozing my religion

As soon as I heard that Priory Brewing had filled in the gaps in its line-up, I was straight back to the tank bar in Tallaght, to pick up where I left off.

The new stout was my Priory priority: Guilty Pleasure. At 1.30 on a Wednesday afternoon, I'll say. It's 4.1% ABV, and served on nitro, though with a slightly "realer" ivory-coloured head, rather than the finely processed snow-white of the macros. That coarseness of bubble means it doesn't have the pablum smoothness of the mainstream brands, but equally there's more surface area for the flavour to cling to. I'm guessing they're going for old-fashioned with this, because it's bitter: leading out with aromatic medicinal herbs like eucalyptus and aniseed. Dark chocolate and very dark-roasted coffee add new types of bitterness later on, before a burnt-toast finish and some lingering aromatic oils from the early herbs. Wow. This packs a lot into the advertised strength,  to the point where I would question its sessionability. Luckily, the beer selection at Priory makes alternating with something else an easy alternative. I love to see a brewery take this serious and grown-up approach to stout and it has really paid off for Priory.

The red ale had a hill to climb after that. I've said before that the whole Priory tank bar concept belongs to a different era, but having a nitro red in the line-up takes us all the way back to the mid-1990s. Since when was that style a must-carry? Regardless, Cardinal Sin is a spot on 4.3% ABV and presents as the cream-topped mahogany of a Kilkenny or a Caffrey's (ask your parents). There's a very mild toffee aroma, while the flavour opens with the caramel and phosphorus of a cola or red lemonade. Generally, these sorts of beers lean into the gloopy sweet side, but this one takes a sudden turn into a metallic aspirin bitterness. It's different, but I don't think it really works. The sweet/bitter clash is curdling and awkward, and only the beer's fizzy lightness saves its drinkability. A finishing tang of saline sweat confirms this as a beer which is technically flawless but not well designed. I hope all the people clamouring for more red ales either appreciate it, or can use it to understand why they are wrong.

Heresy! declares our last one. Because sour beer is anathema to the time-traveller who created the brewery? Back in the day, this would have been a raspberry wheat beer, and Heresy looks like one: a murky pink emulsion. The aroma is all raspberry, but cool and tart and fresh, not gloopy processed syrup. It's light-bodied, even for 4.4% ABV, but that adds to a refreshment quotient which is, I suspect, the beer's whole deal. It's not sour, as such, but it centres on a very real-tasting raspberry tartness, like biting down on an actual ripe raspberry. There's nothing behind that, just fizz and maybe a tiny, teeth-sparking, mineral buzz. I'll trust them that it's soured but it could equally be a lager given the crushed berry treatment. I liked it, and pending the brewery's Brett-and-barrel ageing program which I've just invented, it will serve nicely.

My second visit to Priory Market did nothing to reduce my enthusiasm for the whole project. If you can go but haven't yet, I think you're running out of excuses. Get in before they discover IPAs can be hazy.

What's up, Dublin?

Another heaping helping of Irish beers today, gathered from the locality in recent weeks.

I'm starting with DOT Brew, and a pair which came my way at the annual beer-cheese-whiskey sipathon in Teeling's Distillery -- thanks to the Teeling PR folk for the invite. Drinking After Midnight is a foreign extra stout aged nine months in 80-year-old bourbon casks. Unsurprisingly, brown sugar and vanilla are right up front in the flavour, but perhaps not as much as in other bourbon barrel beers. The texture is quite sticky and there's a molasses bitterness to help balance the sugar. The barrels' previous use for Irish whiskey shows up in the honeyish aroma. The finish is quick, making it overall less effort to drink than most 8.2% ABV beasts of this nature, while not lacking complexity at all.

The bar at Teeling's is one of only three places it's possible to buy DOT Light Ale, the others being Beef & Lobster on Parliament Street and Galliot et Gray on Clanbrassil Street. It's very much designed as a beer for food, says Shane, Mr DOT. Funny, I'd have though you'd want something heavier for that but it's only 3.8% ABV and a very pale gold. The recipe is based around pilsner malt and there's an attendant crispness all the way through. The aroma is pinchingly citric, while the flavour is aromatic: perfumed jasmine and apricot notes, hanging around for a long floral finish. I found it very pintable despite the small bottle. Something this light yet interesting deserves a wider audience.

A few weeks later I caught up with DOT's Saison Barrel Aged Blend IV, which is a saison, possibly barrel aged and may have involved blending at some point, I'm not sure. It looks innocent but is a whopping 7.4% ABV. For all the convoluted production it remains a saison: dry and crisp from the get-go, maybe just a little thicker than the standard sort. There's a refreshing peppery spice, a chalky alkalinity and a purely Belgian kick of medium-ripe banana. A similar fruit and spice mix comes from the aroma too. I'd never have guessed it was barrel aged. Looking for it, yes there's perhaps a layer of vanilla in there, but I think it gets mixed in with the esters. Of anything specifically rum, bourbon or Irish whiskey there is no sign. I liked it a lot. It manages to take all the great things about saison and accentuate them without making a mess. Refreshing yet warming is a flavour profile I'd like to see more of.

To Urban Brewing next, the venue for the 2019 National Homebrew Club finals judging. When the morning's work was done it was time to hit the commercial stuff. Urban Brewing Belgian Wit was served with lunch. It's an excellent example of a style that can be very hit and miss. The fruit level is low, with just a spritz of lemon, but there's a plenty of peppery spice, headlining the flavour without upstaging the other acts. A clean finish gives it the all-important power of refreshment, again not overdone so it isn't watery. It's not a clone of the classic wits; it's is own thing and excellent for it.

A Dry-Hop Pilsner came next: 5.3% ABV with Mandarina Bavaria being the last hop in. This handsome fellow certainly looks like a pilsner: pleasingly clear for a beer dispensed directly from the secondary fermentation tanks. The texture is quite heavy but it does retain sufficient clean crispness to stick to the style guidelines (nothing like a homebrew judging session to bring that to mind) and there's lots of Saaz-like grass. Only at the end does it turn any way unorthodox, with a pinch of grapefruit and an odd tannic buzz. Another good twist on a classic style here, then. "Creative" brewing doesn't have to involve lactose and maple syrup.

The odd whiskey barrel doesn't go amiss, though. The second (I think) beer in Urban's wood-aged series is the Whiskey Barrel Red. This was only on the bar downstairs and not on the blackboard menu in the main bar, so you may need to ask for it. And ask you should. There's a delicious Flanders red sour vibe here, with a sprinkling of juicy autumnal blackberries. The colour brings its own pleasure: a deep black-cherry red. At 6.1% ABV it's quite reasonably strong. I noticed on the day that the still-excellent golden sour ale they made last year is beginning to taste a little tired. The same fate may befall this one too, in time, but you have a few months yet to try it at its best, stocks permitting.

I can't remember ever enjoying this many Urban Brewing beers in a row. The streak had to end, though, and it did so with the Simcoe IPA. It wasn't offensive or flawed in any way, just profoundly dull after all the fun stuff that preceded it. It's a middle-of-the-road 5.5% ABV and hazy gold in colour. I expected the fresh and herbal resins of Simcoe but instead got just a heavy cloying bitterness and no more than a token scattering of citric pith. I was in the mood for some hop aggression but this didn't deliver.

I didn't get it at JW Sweetman either, where the after party kicked off soon after. The Burgh Quay brewpub was serving the sole barrel of a different homebrew competition's winner. This 6% ABV Lemon Saison was created by John Reilly and won the pub's own competition last year. It's one of those boozy and thick saisons, but justifies the heft with plenty of flavour. The lemon is intense and concentrated, more like lime, and there's a an almost oaky spice, bringing notes of fortified wine. The pint took me a while to get through, but I enjoyed the cocktail vibe as I was drinking it.

The Five Lamps Brewery wraps up this post with two beers and an enigma. The company has been wholly subsumed into C&C but I don't know what that means for its beer range or its Dublin facility. The colourful range of warm-fermented beers with the fun local names isn't around as much any more, while this generically-badged couple have cropped up like weeds next to the Tipperary-brewed flagship lager. I've no idea if they too come from the industrial brewery in Clonmel, but I suspect they might.

Five Lamps Light is the awe-inspiring name of one of them. It's 3.8% ABV and a very sad, pale, cidery yellow. I found it jaggedly -- almost painfully -- fizzy. I'd guess they were aiming for a bland flavour but have missed that with the prominent hit of banana and toffee. It's really not very good, and if it is made at their big lager plant they'd want to get their processes looked at. Sensory issues aside, I have to wonder who the market for this is. The ABV isn't low enough to grab the drinkers who don't want to drink, so I don't see who wouldn't trade up to the full-size lager that's always going to be next to it. Is there someone daft enough to believe it's some kind of diet drink? It won't be missed.

A more orthodox choice next: Five Lamps Red. Mind you, this is C&C's third recent attempt to make an impact with a draught nitro red ale. Roundstone clings on where they have a sizeable tap presence already; Caledonia Smooth was chased out of town years ago. Now what? This is also 3.8% ABV, dark garnet in colour, and has a very heavy texture. The flavour is powerfully sweet, even for something of this style: I got a not-unpleasant buzz of tinned strawberry, followed by what I took for milk chocolate. Someone later pointed out to me that the beer is lousy with diacetyl and I went back to check. Sure enough, with that in my head, it is full of butterscotch. I think it works in this style, as long as you don't mind the slick sweetness. Overall I give this a pass. If it's taking aim at Kilkenny then more power to its buttery elbow.

That's it for now. More Irish beers soon, of course, including what was pouring at the Franciscan Well Easter Festival this coming weekend.

A moment of clarity

Boak and Bailey's quest for the origins of beer obsession lead me to revisit a story I touched upon three Sessions ago.

Two days after I turned 19 I moved to Dublin. Guinness, of course, was what one drank in the capital, and I took to that without complaint, getting to know the pubs around town that had a reputation for a good pint. As my first year in college ended I was in no rush to leave city life so rented a flat in Temple Bar and got a job at a nearby pub, one very conscientious about the quality of its Guinness, of course.

I was a terrible barman and hated every minute at the taps. I loved the quiet afternoons just moving glassware around, and treasured evenings in the cellar, shifting and stacking kegs. Serving people drink was a pain, and cleaning up afterwards even more so. The pub was jointly-owned by three very hands-on managers. The youngest was quite the bon viveur and made a point of visiting every new restaurant and pub as soon as it opened, and would report back to his co-managers about what the competition was up to.

After closing time one evening I was cleaning up and making my usual heavy work of it. The owner I mentioned, who had been on an evening off, strolled in under the shutters, poured himself a pint of Bud and plonked himself down on a barstool.

"Went to that new place round on Parliament Street," he told his colleague on duty, "and get this, they're making their own beer. In the pub. And they don't even sell Guinness."

I remember distinctly, over in the corner, I stopped dead with my mop. They do what?!

It's no exaggeration to say I felt a personal paradigm shift right there. The notion that beer could be made anywhere other than in a big factory by anyone other than a multinational corporation staggered me. At the first opportunity I headed down to this "Porter House" to find out what they were up to. Sure enough, there was no Guinness. The centre of Dublin, on the well-worn tourist path between Trinity College and St James's Gate, and no Guinness. Not only that, but a whole soapbox piece on the back of the menu on how our beloved national brands had steadily killed off the variety that once existed in the Irish beer market, and how, once they controlled the market, they set about dumbing-down their beer to meet the needs of their accountants and shareholders. I was sold before I ever ordered my first pint of novelty beer.

That summer I dragged everyone I knew to the Porter House to show them what a pub could be like in this brave new world. Few took to it, though I tell myself it's because so many of my friends were cider-drinking students on whom craft beer was utterly wasted. My immediate first love was Porter House Red. This was the mid-1990s and the nitro-red craze was in full swing, led by Caffrey's but followed swiftly by Guinness's own Kilkenny. I'm a little surprised that PH Red is still available, given that the style has long gone out of fashion -- Kilkenny is pitched squarely at tourists and Caffrey's is no longer made or sold in Ireland. Yet this beer and another craft clone of the same vintage -- Messrs Maguire Rusty -- are still going strong. Within a few weeks of my first visit, the Porter House had added Wrassler's XXXX stout to the line-up. It was the boldest tasting beer in the country, strong and uncompromising, and I was hooked immediately.

In the following years I began to travel and discovered that pubs with in-house breweries could be found all over the world. It became a habit that, as part of my trip planning, I'd check BeerMe and European Beer Guide for the presence of brewpubs at the destination. This inevitably led to going out of the way to find microbreweries, and then, also inevitably, making trips just for beer. After doing that for a while I became more interested in getting good beer at home -- life's too short to drink bad beer, I reasoned. Or to drink each bad one more than once, at any rate.

But how do I avoid drinking a bad beer twice, or recognise a good beer the second time it comes my way? A bit over three years ago I figured I should start writing this all down. And so here we are. As every quantum theorist knows, observing anything changes its nature. My interactions with beer have certainly changed by being written down here, and reading all the other great beer blogs out there just makes me thirstier.

In the meantime I kind of drifted away from the Porterhouse (as it renamed itself). It gets very crowded and loud, the service is lousy and that initial draw -- beer brewed on the premises -- came to an end as the company outgrew its brewery and moved production to a new facility in the suburbs. I'll still go back for specials and seasonals, but I've mostly lost touch with the place.

So last weekend I went back, to my old seat by the window, for a couple of pints of nostalgia. Porterhouse Red is much bitterer than I remember it. In my head it's loaded with slabs of toffee flavour; in reality there's a good solid dose of galena hops in the driving seat. It's still very refreshing, though I don't know how much of that is down to the temperature and nitrogenation. Interesting without being challenging -- what a good session beer should be. But not what I was expecting.

Wrassler's hasn't changed, however. After all these years it still has the power to shock: intensely bitter tobacco notes kick in first, smoothed out by an underlying and lasting chocolate flavour, and based on a thumping great dense body. No amount of nitro can tame this one, and I'm very minded to re-establish more frequent contact. The newest branch of the Porterhouse is considerably more civilised than its parent. If we get a summer this year I might just make an appointment with some Wrassler's in its beer garden on a regular basis. We have some catching up to do.

Red and dead

As I mentioned, I had a particular aim in mind when I went looking for my first pint in England at the weekend, and it was to try the enigma that is Guinness Red. Diageo brew this in St James's Gate but export all of it to Britain where it is currently being trialled, primarily through the O'Neill's chain of franchise Oirish pubs. I was intrigued by the way it was being marketed, as a tweaked version of Guinness stout, utilising "lightly roasted" barley, rather than what it looks like: your standard nitrogenated Irish red, like Diageo's own Kilkenny or Coors's English-made Caffrey's brand.

The verdict? Well, it has a thicker, creamier head than any pint of Guinness I've met. It tastes of almost literally nothing. Guinness is pretty far from being the world's most flavoursome stout, but this dispenses with even the faintest trace of the dry roasted barley which sits shivering at the back of modern draught Guinness. What would happen at this point in an Irish red is the arrival of sweet, biscuit-like crystal malt flavours, with maybe a dusting of summer fruits, but no, there's none of that either. Just more empty space, and maybe just a hint of dryness at the end. A dry Irish red? Whoever thought of that one needs locking up.

Funnily enough, like Guinness Mid-Strength, Red does have all the texture characteristics of ordinary Guinness. If you've had your senses of taste and smell removed then you might even enjoy this one. Though since you probably work in product development for Diageo, you've doubtless already tried it.

Back to the original question, then, and it's not as clear-cut as I thought. The mouthfeel and the nearly-not-there dryness do suggest that this could be classed as a super-light stout, though a dreadful one. Alternatively, a dry take on the traditional Irish red is another valid perspective. I won't be lying awake thinking about it. The knowledge that this tasteless travesty is being shipped out of the country in its entirety will assure restful sleep.

How to classify a beer with no flavour. Have the BJCP thought about this one?

Vote red

It's been a tradition of mine that after voting I go to the local (whose doors I rarely darken) for a pint. Today is the first election day since this blog began and I'm using it to report on my pint of choice in said local (and Peter's Pub, which is the only other Dublin pub I regularly find it): Beamish Red. Beamish Stout is dreadful muck, but their nitro-red is rather better than the competition from Caffrey's, Kilkenny or Murphy's. Like all of them it's smooth past the point of blandness, but if you're paying close attention there's a faint kick of ripe strawberries at the end which makes the whole thing worthwhile. That, and the fact that my local charges a mere €3.40 a pint (up 40c from last election day, mind).

Beamish Red: Drink early, drink often

Med-iocre

Just back from the Catalan capital, where the beer roost is ruled by Damm, who have a large brewing facility near the airport. Estrella Damm is their plain red-label lager which has the malty weight typical of the region, and which I most associate with San Miguel, also made in Barcelona. Confusingly there's also Estrella Galicia which is made by Hijos De Rivera in La Coruña and tastes exactly the same. San Miguel themselves now make a German-style pilsner called 1516 which is lighter than ordinary San Miguel, being 4.2%. It's a bright golden colour, instead of the brown-gold hue of their basic lager and is sweeter and generally more German tasting. Lastly for the big guys, Moritz is another lager native to Barcelona. This is my favourite of the common lagers available -- a full 5.4% but very light, soft and fluffy. There's a slight bitter aftertaste, though not much else by way of flavour, but the texture makes up for that. If it's hot and you're sinking cold ones, go for the Moritz.

I was last in Barcelona a bit over four years ago and while there I visited La Cervesera Artesana, a pleasant little brewpub up in the Eixample. It was Saturday night but the place was deserted. I remember thinking "Bless them, it's a nice idea, but it looks like it's just not going to last in this town." I fully expected the place to close soon after. So I was very surprised when I did my research for this trip to find not only was it still there, but it now has a web site. I went along yesterday afternoon to sample the wares, finding it drinkerless once again. The most surprising thing is that, while everything is brewed in-house in full sight of the punters, all the brews are nitro kegged. There can't be many microbreweries who do this (for obvious reasons) and it's very strange to get a pint of local brew with three inches of tight foam at the top -- though it did prove useful when some of the local six-legged wildlife took an interest in my beer.

I had time for two "pints", each containing about 400ml of actual liquid. The Iberian Pale Ale bears some passing resemblance to real IPA, but is served totally cold and, coupled with the nitro head, is more reminiscent of Kilkenny or Caffrey's or one of that sort. It's pretty refreshing though, if you're after that cold lager experience with just a smidge more hops to it. Their Iberian Stout is an altogether better proposition, though again nitro-headed and served at arctic temperatures. I reckon they borrowed the Small Brewers' Guide to Good Stout from the local library (in Catalan, of course) because this has a smooth sweetness up front and a dry finish: almost everything a good basic stout should be.

La Cervesera Artesana is the reason my second-rate brewpub index is headed "Top Marks For Effort": it's not terribly impressive as a pub, their beer isn't brilliant, but by God they're trying and they're fiercely proud of what they do. That sort of dedication deserves credit.

Down near where Barcelona meets the Mediterranean is Cerveceria El Vaso De Oro -- a tiny neighboorhood café consisting of a long bar, some stools and very little else: the sort of joint for which the term "watering hole" was coined. It was jam-packed with locals being served platefuls of amazing food from an open kitchen and tall glasses of Rubia, the house märzen. Once again it's typically malty, though sweet and fairly flat. The result is something smooth, easy-drinking but chock full of flavour. Some more choice would be nice, but it's really not that sort of place and I respect that. Thanks, finally, to European Beer Guide without which I'd never have found the place.

Barcelona's beer may indeed be quite mediocre, but I had a great time finding that out.