Kerry gold

Late May saw the second Killarney Beer Festival take place at the Gleneagle Hotel and once again I made the trip down for one of the country's top beer events. I was on judging duty this year but still managed to get a taste of all the unfamiliar beers from the twenty beer stands in the main tent.

The locals were well represented and Killarney Brewing Company, just up the street from the festival, had a new saison called Spailpín. Pretty good it was too: a modest 5.5% ABV with the classic fruit and grain saison aroma and a flavour which stacks bitter orange rind against crisp dry crackers. Classic thirst-quenching stuff and I wasn't even slightly surprised when it was awarded the show's best Belgian-style beer.

Killarney's other brewery, Torc, also took a prize for their salt-and-coriander German-style beer Anything Gose. As the style has become more popular, finding a straight gose has become a little difficult. This one perhaps lacked the cleanness of Leipzig classic Bayerischer Bahnhof, but had oodles of refreshment power. The texture was light and fluffy, there was a generous dose of coriander and yet it avoided tasting any way soapy. Its sourness is a little muted but it does leave that lovely sea-salty residue on the lips. And all at just 4% ABV. It deserves to be quaffed in quantity all summer.

Moving further afield to Dingle, West Kerry Brewery had two that were new to me, both dark. The Festive IBA only passed my way fleetingly but I got a strong impression of its smooth, rich and roasty character, livened with sparks of citrus zest. There's warming dark fruit deep down in the flavour -- blackberries in particular -- and a spike of roasted dryness. Balanced, complex and interesting, this one.

Its companion had the folksy name of Uncle Columb's Mild and it's another smooth and roasty one, this time a bright shade of garnet. It's full bodied for just 3.5% ABV with a wholesome cakey sweetness and more of those lightly tart blackberries. Poured cool from the cask it was surprisingly quenching on a sunny afternoon. I'd really love to see more of this kind of beer out in the real world. Properly looked after, of course.

Kerry-based contractors Crafty Divils had their second beer on the go: a 4.3% ABV amber ale called Iron Bridge. The style designation is somewhat notional and it's really much closer to Irish red or English bitter, toffee and tannins being the main feature. But it's not especially sweet and certainly not sticky, the clean simple flavour making it an enjoyable sessionable pub beer. Nice label too.

Side-stepping to Cork, 9 White Deer was pouring Fia, a crisp and lightly fruity Kölsch-a-like that's bang on the style, while Mountain Man had a new IPA: Banjo'd, brewed at the brand's third host brewery Brú. It's 5% ABV with a sharp citrus aroma and notes of peach plus an earthier red apple effect and even a touch of pear. Overall, clean and refreshing, and very enjoyable to drink.

The Dew Drop Inn in Co. Kildare had a stand with its two house beers, which the guys have produced at their neighbouring brewery, Trouble. '96 is an oatmeal pale ale, the standard hazy orange colour and quite harshly bitter. It's big on pine and lemon rind, with that scrubbed-toilet effect I've come to associate with Citra hops, though Target and Ella are the advertised varieties. Some oily dank helps round it out and while it's not easy drinking it is good. Its companion is a white IPA called Forbidden Fruit. This is a good example of the style -- light and accessible, soft of texture with gentle orange and lemon flavours. I was surprised it's as strong as 5.5% ABV.

Carlow Brewing has gone all-in with its own white IPA, Freebird, though it's a little lower in ABV at 5%. Rakau and Amarillo are the hops but the flavour is dominated by massive coriander and orange peel. While looking an innocent clear yellow, this is a loud and brash beer and while definitely not lacking in flavour I imagine it won't be to everyone's taste.

We finish with the two breweries representing Wexford, both of which brought a sizeable range of specials and one-offs to attract the tickers. Arthurstown Pils is a beer the brewery makes presumably for use at its home hotel Dunbrody House. It's not a great example of the style, being a bit too hot 'n' heavy, with greasy banana esters and some woody phenols. There's a light hoppy sharpness in the foretaste, but not enough to carry the off-flavours away. Amber IPA is a new style on me but I don't think Arthurstown's did it justice. The aroma is sickly and the texture heavy with sugar. It tastes of boiled sweets and a lot of buttery diacetyl. The only relief comes from a light pepper spicing but again one good feature does not suffice to make it a decent beer.

Similarly sickly smelling was Arthurstown's Rum & Oak Porter, but it's sufficiently attenuated that the aroma is where it stops. It's dry and quite light bodied for 5.7% ABV and of course there's a fair whack of vanilla to it. Fun and complex, but maybe just for the one. And the joker in their pack was Oak-A-Cola, a 4.7% ABV red ale, wood-aged and infused with cola essence. It sounds awful but it works extremely well. The cola dominates both the aroma and the flavour, herbal and sweet with the same sort of dry carbonic twang, but there's just enough malt character left, especially in the texture, to remind you that you're really drinking a beer. A gimmicky novelty, sure, but tremendous fun.

That just leaves Wexford Town's YellowBelly. Night Porter has been on the brewing roster there for a while now, I think, but I hadn't encountered it before. This is a whopping 7.2% ABV and smells weird: tangy and twangy, and somewhat autolytic. It gels together on tasting, however, all smooth and smoky with rich dark chocolate, a heavy bitterness, hot alcohol and woody burnt cork. Insanely complex, it tastes incredibly old-fashioned and makes for really interesting drinking.

Zë Germans (since renamed "On the Fritz") is a pale ale which owes its name to the use of Hüll Melon hops. It's balanced rounded and fruity, showing juicy notes of peach and nectarine as well as honeydew. That's your lot though: I guess this is designed as a refreshing quencher, a task it performs well.


Last tick of the festival is The Passion, Ireland's second passionfruit lager in recent months, and ever. I much preferred this to Trouble Brewing's Last Crash. Here the lager character has been dialled all the way back to provide a clean base, 4.4% ABV, maybe a touch of grain flavour and nothing more. The fruit, meanwhile, is fresh and sinfully juicy -- sweet without being sickly and adding a bitter complexity to the pinkness. It's still a very silly beer, of course, but seriously well made and, like the Oak-A-Cola, great fun to drink.

Cheers to all the breweries who made the effort to set up stall in Killarney, and congratulations to all who won prizes in the competition. Until 2017, then.

Chasing Trouble

Lately I've been all over the southside, looking for Trouble. It started with the grand re-opening of Ranelagh's The Hill as a craft beer bar. I lived around the corner when I first moved to Dublin so remember this as a dark and slightly down-at-heel football pub. Darragh (pictured, right) and Derek from Ugly Duckling have taken it on, brightened it up, and installed a wide selection of good draught beers.

Opening night saw the début of the first of this set of new Trouble offerings: Stakeout, described as an "American Wheat Ale". I was sceptical: in my head, that combination of words means a wheat beer fermented with a neutral ale yeast and sorely lacking in character. Early American craft brewing seemed to be awash with them but you don't see them as much any more. In 2016, "American" seems to have become a signal that we are to expect citric hops, and so it goes with this. The wheat is still a big part of what it does: the haze is that of a wheat beer, as is the soft pillowy weissbier texture. Then there's a quenching tropical juiciness from the hops, guava and papaya flavours assertively refreshing, though perhaps turning a little too bitter on the finish. At 5.4% ABV it's substantial without being unsessionable. Another welcome addition to the Trouble pantheon of hop-forward delights.

To The Beer Market a week later, and a pint of Last Crash, a passionfruit lager, of all things. This had been pouring in a few places around the country -- cheers to Liam for the heads-up that it had made it to Dublin at last. And it's hard to think of anything to write, beyond the brewery's own description. It's got passionfruit and it's a lager. The former is a huge and rather sickly hit, on both the aroma and right through the flavour. It smells and tastes pink, with a fleshy fruit softness up front and then a harder twangy bitterness at the end. There's a certain syrupyness to the effect, as though the passionfruit were the tinned variety rather than fresh. Behind this sits the lager itself, and I got the impression it's a rather good one: crisp and husky, while the post-gulp burps brought a waft of grassy Saaz to the palate, as well as the fruit flavour add-on. I drank this quickly but couldn't help wondering how it would have turned out without being, erm, "enhanced".

Last Crash is fun for one, but the novelty wears off quickly. Should you find yourself ordering a second it's possible that you don't like drinking beer. Have a word with yourself.

Beer three landed at 57 the Headline following a world première at the Belfast Craft Beer Festival in late April. Owl Day is a pale stout at 6.1% ABV. YellowBelly has been twiddling with this style for a while now, and they have a bottled version knocking around now. Trouble's attempt is definitely pale, a clear orange-gold behind the condensation on that glass. The aroma is low: just a touch of green-veg old-world hops. The illusion is all accomplished in the flavour: a big and crunchy Irish stout roast opens it up, followed by a rather forced-tasting chocolate and coffee. The finish is dry but it still leaves a bit of a sickly impression from the chocolate. So, yes, this beer does successfully achieve what it's trying to do -- it really is a pale beer that has the assorted flavour characteristics of a dry stout -- but it's not a dry stout and, beyond the gimmicky giggles, isn't something I'd be interested in drinking again. Where black IPAs brought something new and thought-provoking to the beer world, pale stout, in my opinion, does not.

And finally it's back to The Hill for a fourth beer: Amber Avenger. Sorachi Ace hops loom large in this, producing big, big coconut flavours with just a slightly more severe acidic burn coming in behind that. I was fairly convinced that it was a single-hop job, but a glance at the Trouble website tells me there's Wakatu and Mosaic in it as well. They have been thoroughly bullied into submission by their loud Japanese colleague, however. As befits an amber ale there's a strong contribution from the malt, but here it's more texture than flavour: it's a heavy and filling beer, tasting stronger than its 5.5% ABV. There's maybe a slight crystal malt sweatiness, but not so much that it interferes with the hops.

Stakeout and Amber Avenger are my top picks out of this lot, which leaves me wondering if Trouble Brewing's hop mastery is leaving it at risk of being a one-note operation. Probably not. I'm just a bit intolerant of gimmicky recipes, unless they taste better than the middle two here.