Siren call

There are more Siren beers coming into Dublin than I can keep up with, a phenomenon which delights me. The importer is also the management of The Beer Market so that's where I've encountered most of them, including...

Siren and Omnipollo Life's a Peach, a 6.4% ABV IPA which tastes like the union of a marijuana bud and a pineapple: heavy and resinous in texture and flavour, but with a breezy tropical fruit zing bursting out of the oils. It delivers a lovely fresh hop sensation which coats the palate without getting too sticky or cloying and without any trace of bitterness or harsh acidity. Added lactose and peaches? Who cares? This is just a pure quality IPA with no perceptible extra weirdness.

Sticking with the orangey IPAs, Dippy & The Equinox is a double IPA Siren produced with the help of Oregon brewery Boneyard. It presents dense and opaque, and innocently pale. However, it explodes violently on the palate, shedding a napalm bitterness that shocks at first and fades only gradually. The flavour it brings with it is a beautiful but deadly mix of gunpowder and mandarins. The fruit doesn't last quite as long as I'd like it to, getting replaced by a rather harsh waxyness after a short while. Overall, though, a beautifully constructed complex hop powerhouse.

With this sort of hit rate there just had to be a failure, and it came in the form of Liquid Monstrous, a beefed up version of Siren's rather tasty red IPA Liquid Mistress. Its appearance did it no favours at all: a very muddy red-brown. The aroma started well, with zingy orange sherbet, but it was no surprise to get a waft of mucky yeast sludge with that as well. It doesn't taste yeasty, mind, though there was a definite gritty quality in the texture. Instead it's hot and sharply bitter, big hops being part of that, but there's also a coffee-like bitterness from, I assume, the dark malts. Cherry fruit flavours lighten it only slightly, but it wasn't enjoyable drinking and lacked the usual bright and clear flavours I've come to expect from Siren beers, even the hazy ones.

We switch over to The Porterhouse next. Calypso showed up as their €4 bottled special a while back and that was enough to draw me in to try it. This is a 4% ABV Berliner weisse, dry-hopped with varieties that vary from batch to batch. Code G377 tells me I got one with Mosaic. It poured clearer than I expected, with just a slight haze through the gold. The head dissipates quickly, the millpond surface giving off enticing aromas of lemon sherbet, dank resins and the promise of a puckering sourness too. The sour leaps to the front of the queue on tasting, a big smack of tangy vinegar. But in proper Berliner weisse fashion it fades very quickly. First in behind it is a crisp and grainy, wheaty effect of the sort that predominates in Berliner Kindl's weisse. The hops don't do much here, adding little more than a whiff of urinal cake to the finish, but they don't get in the way. This hits exactly the refreshment points that a beer like this is supposed to and is, I would say, capable of resetting even the most jaded of mid-session palates.

And home again for the last one: Bones of a Sailor Part III. This is a 9.5% ABV imperial porter brewed with vanilla, raspberries and cacao and then aged in Pedro Ximinéz barrels. That's a lot to put on a label but the flavour does a great job of reminding you about all of it as soon as the dense black liquid goes in your mouth. The raspberries are first: an unmistakeable fruity tartness that shouldn't really be so obvious in a strong dark beer, but like that raspberry imperial stout Thornbridge did, it's very very present here. Pedro Ximinéz is so fashionable for beer ageing these days that I bought a bottle of the dark sherry when I was last in Spain to find out what it is. And as well as looking like it, this beer really tastes of it too, all sweetly tannic like plump boozy raisins. Vanilla and dark chocolate are present -- but only just -- underneath this, and I guess they're flavours you'd expect to find in an unadulterated oak-aged porter anyway. There's a smoky roast quality too, just in case you weren't sure that this busy concoction started life as a real beer. Though quite sticky, it's buoyed up by a busy prickle that helps with the drinkability. I was expecting a heavy and rich beer entirely unsuited to the sunny afternoon on which I drank it but the raspberry acid cuts through all that and gave me a powerhouse porter that's also really rather refreshing.

Liquid Monstrous notwithstanding, I'm in no rush to change my current high opinion of this brewery.

King for a day

King Street is a cobbled stretch of central Bristol, linking two of the waterfronts in this inland maritime city. It is exceedingly well-pubbed, enough to warrant a mention in the opening chapter of Boak & Bailey's recent Brew Britannia as an example of the radical changes currently happening in British beer. But there's even more than that: King Street is a veritable microcosm of British pub life, from shooters to schooners and everything in between.

I spent a few days in Bristol in July and managed to darken the doors of several of the varied establishments of King Street.

The central draw for me was The Beer Emporium, essentially the cellar of an off licence with a vaulted bar and a solid range of British beers on cask and keg. Proceedings here kicked off with Soul Train from the Box Steam brewery in neighbouring Wiltshire. It's an innocent pale gold colour but exhibits intense bitter orange peel and pith. Biscuit malt flavours form a background, but no more than that. A straightforward clean and enjoyable introduction.

Hawkshead's NZPA is along similar lines only with more of everything, including alcohol at 6% ABV. A candy sweet aroma kicks it off but the flavour is all about palate-scorching high-alpha hops. Once acclimatised, one can detect notes of grass, mangoes and grapefruit. The first of these takes ultimate control of the flavour profile in the finish, as a sort of nettle juice greenness. Fun stuff, but strictly in small doses for me.

Switching to keg for one, I liked the look of Siren's Liquid Mistress, a red IPA of a modest 5.8% ABV. It's a very dark red colour with a dense off-white head and features one of my favourite beer flavour analogues: Turkish Delight. I assume it's achieved by some combination of floral hops and roasted malts and I normally find it in porters but it's here in a big way: all the rosewater and all the chocolate. There's a lot of fizz, which spoils the effect to some extent, but it's still a gorgeous beer. Whatever you say, Mistress.

Back to the beer engines to finish, and some Bleddyn 1075 by Celt Experience. This is a 5.6% ABV IPA, red-gold in colour with rich and exotic flavours of spicy sandalwood, bitter myrrh and peppery rocket. The body is full and the beer complex and satisfying.

So no quibbles about quality on emerging blinking into the daylight again. When I first came to The Beer Emporium it was lunchtime and the bar hadn't opened yet. I asked for a recommendation from the beery smorgasbord that is King Street and the off licence staff suggested Small Bar across the street.

We're definitely in craft territory here. Small Bar looks like a front room that's had a war through it, all dangling bulbs and partially exposed brick. Design is minimalist to the point of absence, with knitting-needle-thin handles on the beer engines and keg taps hidden completely out of sight below the bar. Magic Rock Ringmaster was on the blackboard so I figured I'd start with that. A lunchable 3.9% ABV, assisted by the pub's no-pint policy, it arrived looking a little sad -- all wan and headless. There's a vague dankness in the aroma and the texture is thin, like it's not really trying. It picks up a little on tasting, with some grown-up herby flavours: sage, eucalyptus, thyme, but overall it's not especially interesting and was disposed of quickly.

Having been in the West Country for hours and not had any Wild Beer Co. products yet, I followed it with a glass of Rubus Maximus, their collaboration with London's Beavertown. As billed, this is blood red, topped by pink foam. It smells decidedly girly, of sweet raspberries, and while this is present in the flavour it's buried under a massive steaming pile of dirty brettanomyces, honking like a spooked farmyard in front of any subtleties. Imagine a fresh punnet of raspberries dropped in manure. Imagine durian as a beer. Imagine... but think carefully before ordering.

Let's leave King Street for a few minutes and take a wander down the Avon. Steve had suggested a pub called the Bag of Nails and I'm delighted he did. Quirky doesn't cover this little place: festooned in plants, scattered with vintage toys, infested by tumbling kittens and operating a strict vinyl-only music policy. It has a definite community vibe, though still felt incredibly welcoming. To drink, a pint of Towles' Independents APA,  in vintage glassware, natch. It's not terribly impressive, with simple melon and pear flavours before a butterscotch finish. At a big 5% ABV it doesn't represent great value for the alcohol. Arbor's Hoptical Delusion did a much better job. This is 3.8% ABV and quite resinous, with oily vegetal hop flavours, just shading towards dank. Stimulating stuff.

Before leaving I couldn't pass up the chance to try Dorset Brewing Company's Castaway Coconut Rum Ale, despite an intense fear that it could resemble something by Innis & Gunn. It's a clear dark red-brown and tastes pleasantly of muscovado sugar: sticky, and slightly burnt. Not much rum or coconut to speak of, but on the whole it could have been a lot worse.

Back to King Street, then, and The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer, aka The Volly. A big and quite foodish pub, decorated in classic minimalist gastro style, all painted wood and leather sofas. Picking randomly from the beautifully modernist beer board I sat down with a pint of Wiper & True Mosaic Pale Ale. A sumptuous deep orange and served beautifully cold from the cask, the hop flavour blends sharp pith and savoury dank notes so fresh I could almost taste the bursting colours: synaesthesia in a glass. Behind this some quenching tannic astringency and sandalwood spices, all set on a body that's full and warming: a magnificent paradox in such a refreshing beer. An absolute virtuoso performance.

Dragging myself off King Street and back to the hotel for a quick palate-cleansing nightcap. Freedom Four lager was pouring so I gave that a go, and it was perfect for the occasion. Very crisp, dry and cereal-driven it makes for an excellent reset button.

So that's the beginning of my Bristol beer adventure. More to follow, on King Street and beyond...