Hazy recollection

It's the season for pointless time-consuming traditions and dull end-of-year lists: yes, The Golden Pints are upon us once more. 2018's deliberation beer is one I acquired at the Mikkeller takeaway bar in Copenhagen airport with my final fistful of kroner. Hazy is a New England IPA of 6.6% ABV, an opaque orange-yellow, topped by a thick white head. In the minus column there's a pinch of dreggy yeast and a rising garlic note as it warms; the principal plus, however, is a massive juiciness -- mostly sweet orange but there's a balancing citric bitterness too, from the Simcoe, I'm guessing. Three months on from canning and this was still a perfect example of this style done well. It does need to be consumed cold, though: I was only half way through deliberations when it warmed up to the point of losing juice. A lesson for me to make my decisions quickly. Anyway, without further review, here are...

The Golden Pint Awards 2018

Best Irish Cask Beer: O Brother: The Whippersnapper
This cask-conditioned Berliner weisse ran a close race against another oddity, Third Barrel's Raspberry Stout, but just pipped it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Barrel-aged pale farmhousey beers rocked my world this year. Extremely honorable mentions go also to Rascals for the Chardonnay Sparkling Ale and DOT's Dainty Wood. This one, while perhaps not the most complex, had the best mix of classic wild-fermented and wood-aged flavours, very like an authentic Belgian gueze. I hope they can recreate it, and that there are customers in the local market who appreciate this sort of thing.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Larkin's: Baltic Porter
This award is based not solely on the quality of the beer -- though that is consistently excellent. It's almost as much the availability: this one has been there for me at regular intervals throughout the year; occasions when I just want something unfussy but great to drink. It looks to have been renamed now, as "Dark Matter", but it still tastes perfect.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Hope: Hop Hash DIPA
My standout from The Big Grill Festival this year translated perfectly into canned form. Citric hoppy deliciousness.

Best Overseas Draught: Purpose: Smoeltrekker #68
Another one of those barrelled sour blondes, hailing from Colorado but showing up on tap at the Leuven Innovation Beer Festival back in the spring. All the oaky spices.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Sierra Nevada: Tequila Barrel Otra Vez
I've been a bit grumbly about Sierra Nevada's harmless gose-alike but I was genuinely wowed when I happened across a bottle of the tequila-barrel-aged version.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Collective Arts: Ransack the Universe
In Ireland, "Overseas canned beer" is mostly going to mean "some murk from England with an abstract design on it" -- there are a hell of a lot of those on the market at any given moment and I don't bother trying to keep up with them. So instead I'm picking some murk from Canada with a sort-of abstract design on it, and very nice it was too.

Best Collaboration Brew: Jester Zinne
This one from De La Senne and Jester King -- barrels, funk, sour: you get the picture -- could equally have been awarded Best Overseas Bottle but I'm slotting it into the collaboration bracket where there's less competition instead.

Best Overall Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Scouring the above for the most memorable, pupil-dilating, beer experience of the year, and I think this is the one.

Best Branding: Kinnegar
The Donegal brewer switched its minimalist monochrome designs to the new busy cartoon bunnies and their associates. I haven't seen it on a label yet, but I loved the design for Rustbucket, featuring the late eponymous doggo.

Best Pump Clip: Beerbliotek: Shakes Fist Angrily
Still amused by the sheer daftness of this.

Best Bottle/Can Label: YellowBelly: Covert Operation
The Molloy's guys and YellowBelly are up to something. With a fox.

Not a skull to be seen.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
2016's winner returns to the top spot, though for different reasons this time. It still does excellent contract-brewing work, and the Brown Ale and Saison for Lidl were two very strong new strings to its bow, but the five limited edition seasonal launches really marked out the progression of 2018, and we got hints too of a pilot series a few weeks ago. The Rye River brand has come of age, and attached itself to some very fine beers.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Exchange
In a busy and diverse drinking year, no single overseas brewery stood out for me. This award is going on visitor experience, then, and the smart, bijou taproom of this place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, visited in September. It brews good stuff too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2018: Four Provinces
OK technically this was a 2017 launch, but it was 2018 before the new range started getting out and about. Láidir in particular was the best new regular-production Irish beer of the year, but there's no Golden Pint for that.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
In the grand tradition of the previous year's Best Newcomer winning Best Pub this time round, UnderDog takes the prize. Anyone who's spent any amount of time there will know why. It's always entertaining and only a small part of that is because of what's on tap. Shout-out to Paddy, Barry and Chris who make it what it is.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2018: GIST
I think I'm right with the timing here: I don't see any reference to its existence prior to last January. Anyway, Brussels has a new star in its pub firmament; a lovely blend of traditional cosy brown-café vibes with a bang-up-to-date modern beer list. A most honorable mention goes to the Metalman bar in Waterford which opened just over a year ago, pouring great beers and hosting fun events on the city's quayside.

Beer Festival of the Year: Hagstravaganza
The only Irish beer festival that people talk about; the centre of the calendar for the last two years; performing stellar geek-service while also being just a fun day out. After a few hiccups in year one, the 2018 outing nailed it.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
Time was this was a back-and-forth between the supermarket near work (Fresh in Smithfield) and the supermarket near home (SuperValu Sundrive) but both have lost crucial staff resulting in the loss of elite status. I'm going with Lidl instead this year, largely because of the Rye River commissions above, as well as the exotic oddities from the summer. More tickworthy exotic oddities please!

Independent Retailer of the Year: Stephen Street News
Unlike the supermarkets, Martin's and DrinkStore have done nothing at all wrong, but here comes the disruptor, jumping on the aluminium bandwagon and making exemplary use of price-points and social media to corner the poorly-served ubergeek end of the Dublin beer market. Long may it continue.

Online Retailer of the Year: YellowBelly Brewery
I don't usually award this because I don't buy beer on the internet, except this year I did: I joined the first outing of the YellowBelly Beer Club which meant four six-packs in the post. As I mentioned in relation to the last one, they weren't all brilliant beers, but there's still a bit of fun in parcel-post beer delivery, especially when it's a local outfit rather than a, say, Scottish or pseudo-Danish one.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Good Beer Guide To Belgium, 8th ed.
The mostly-annual award for The One Beer Book I Read This Year goes to Joe and Tim for this one. It is genuinely good. You don't get Golden Pints, or any pints, for putting out dreck.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Every Pub In Dublin
I've mentioned in previous years how I'm a sucker for a grand project. Dublin has two which came to my attention this year, attempting to visit all the pubs in Dublin (for a given value of "Dublin"), so shout-out to Dublin By Pub, but for sheer indefatigable doggedness, and regular laugh-out-loud pen portraits, this one goes to Cian.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @Bill_Linane
It was well worth keeping a blackboard record of how many times each Twitter account amused me during 2018. The final tally shows Bill to be out in front. Well done Bill.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
The most frequent winner of this category takes it again and godammit it shouldn't be this easy for them. It's not rocket science for breweries to put information about their new releases out on the internet so customers can see what they're buying when they're buying it, yet Eight Degrees is the only one that has the information to hand when I want it. A spirited, and much appreciated, attempt was made on Instagram by Whiplash but they still didn't manage to document all their own releases (Love is Lost? Hello?). Meanwhile, every other Irish brewery: pleeease do this better.

And there we are. Can you believe that that's ten whole years of Golden Pints? Madness. Big thanks to Mark and Andy, of course, who originated the categories, ones which are looking a bit clunky for the current beer scene, but my unhallowed hands shall not disturb them, or the beer world's done for. See you in 2019!

A fresh look

Alltech's beer extravaganza rolled into town in early March for its sixth annual outing. The untimely death of company founder Pearse Lyons on the day the gig opened failed to put a damper on things, and the show rolled on as a tribute to his memory. Exhibitor numbers were down, affording extra elbow room in the Convention Centre's main hall. And I still didn't get to try every beer on offer, so no complaints about the scope of the selection from me.

New breweries are always a major draw, so I made an early appearance at the Brewmaster beer stall. This range is produced by Dundalk Bay Brewery, itself a subsidiary of metal fabricator Spectac. I had assumed that the intention was to present the brewery as a showpiece for potential customers, and it may still be, but its primary purpose is as a white-label facility for contract brewing.

The three beers on offer weren't the most distinctive of styles: a lager, a red and an IPA. Brewmaster Lager is 4.2% ABV and surprisingly sweet, to the point of being almost syrupy. Brewmaster Red piles on the caramel, lacing it with chocolate in a complementary way. It's sweet again, but more manageable with it, tasting like it should be thick while staying light and drinkable. Lastly, Brewmaster IPA is simple and dry, easy-going with just an edge of grapefruit but nothing more intense than that. I expected a bigger kick from its 5.5% ABV.

Clearly there has been no attempt to blow socks off with this lot, but I can see how a publican, looking for something unchallenging for the regulars, might consider re-badging one or more of these.

It was my first time meeting the owner of Ballykilcavan Brewing, currently under construction in Laois, with beers brewed using their own malt at Kildare Brewing, for the moment. Brickyard Red is where I started, copper coloured and a light 4% ABV. It's fairly plain fare, leaning heavily on the dry and toasty-roasty side. New for the festival was Long Meadow IPA, with a candyfloss malt base and a certain lime sharpness -- balanced and easy-going. Pick of the lot was their Irish Hopped Pale Ale, brewed with a variety of varieties, also grown on their own farm. I got a feel of really good pale-and-hoppy English bitter from this: a clean and crisp grain crunch, lemon zest and a dry mineral finish. It's one I could drink a lot of so it's a shame it's so seasonal.

Finally for this opening post, The first set of core beers from Larkin's. I've been following this Wicklow brewery with interest since they first appeared at the RDS festival last autumn. Lager is a speciality and that's why there are four of them in the main six.

My journey started with Larkin's Märzen, which is quite a dark version of the style: a deep orange-amber, resembling an American Oktoberfestbier. It certainly gets its money's worth out of the extra malt, with a huge and sweet biscuit melanoidin foretaste. There's enough noble-hop spinach bitterness to counter it, resulting in a big and bruising, but highly enjoyable, chewer of a lager.

As a palate cleanser afterwards I went for Larkin's Helles. This didn't impress so much. Sure, it looks the part: as clear and gold as you like. The texture is decent, but lacks the soothing ultra-smoothness of really good helles; while the flavour lacks any kind of hop character, or cakey malt, giving just a mild crisp grain crunch. It's serviceable but rather plain: a lager for lager's sake.

I saved Larkin's Baltic Porter until quite late into the festival, even though it is a little weak for the style at 7% ABV.  It's still bang on where flavour is concerned, however: a big liquorice bitterness greets the palate, followed by strong dark chocolate notes. The cool fermentation gives it a superb cleanness and makes it a Baltic porter that's definitely drinkable by the pint, as they should be.

The strongest lager was Larkin's Doppelbock at 7.6% ABV, and this one I found a little too hot and heavy. The deep chestnut red colour is its best feature. The flavour begins on pleasant caramel and hazelnut but they're joined too quickly by hot and cloying esters, making for some tough drinking.

I left the ales to last, starting on Larkin's Pale Ale, which represents a major climbdown in strength at just 4.5% ABV. It's a pale and hazy bright orange colour and exudes a massive jaffa orange aroma. The bitterness is very low, its flavour going instead for a sherbet-like spritz and zest. It's very modern-tasting, though without resorting to sickly vanilla or leaving any nasty yeast residue in the taste. Perhaps most amazingly, it's all done with Cascade hops, I'm told.

Larkin's IPA brings us home. This has a pure haze-craze appearance: smoothie to the point of soupy. The aroma follows up this suggestion of New Englandism with a mix of juicy peach and acidic spinach. On tasting that becomes soft honeydew melon followed by a buzz of garlic or spring onion, set on a smooth body. Where one might expect the claggy sweetness to kick in there's just a long and satisfying proper hop bitterness, lasting late into the finish. These two are quite a switch from the super-traditional lagers, but also a very pleasant one.

More new beers from Alltech next, though this time from more familiar producers.