The market for independent beer may have contracted somewhat, but the breweries can still put on a show. A couple of weeks ago the Dublin Beer Festival returned to the Ring Hall in the RDS's horsey bits for a third year, with an impressive array of beers from local and foreign breweries. There was much new and rare to be discovered, so let's begin.
For me, the beginning was O'Hara's and Le Chéile, a lager. I was interested to see "Brewed in Dundalk" on the tap badge. O'Hara's has taken ownership of the former Pearse Lyons brewery and is running it in parallel with Bagenalstown, as predominantly a lager brewery. This New Zealand-hopped pilsner bodes well for the plans, showcasing the Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka beautifully, from a powerful mown-grass aroma, to a flavour packed out with peppery spice and dank resins. 6% ABV gives it plenty of heft, though without any malt sweetness interfering with the hop explosion. Magnificent stuff, and well capable of giving the high-end west-coast IPAs a run for their money.
In sharp contrast, O'Hara's also brought a new Hazelnut Brown Ale, 5% ABV and served nitrogenated. This was somewhat less successful, being a gloopy, sticky affair, loaded up with cloying hazelnut syrup. It has very little to offer beyond the intense sweetness, and while it does taste of nut, it's very much processed and candified. It goes without saying that the nitrogen helps none of this, though it does mean there's little by way of aroma, which is probably a mercy. It compares particularly badly with the pilsner that preceded it, but even without that, I don't think it would have been to my taste.
More lager was needed. I didn't realise that Lough Gill releases an annual Octoberfest beer, and this was my first time encountering it. It's good. There's nothing off-kilter about this pale golden 5.5% ABV job. It has superb balance between the slightly souped-up chewy malt base and fresh salad-leaf hopping with a spinach level of green bittering. The süffig drinkability is helped by a lightly tannic iced-tea note in the finish, keeping the experience supremely clean. This seems like a beer that has been honed; it takes effort and skill to make a lager so casually delicious.
Rye & Coopers is a newly arrived contract brewer, seemingly making in-roads into lots of normal, non-specialist, pubs in Dublin. Good luck to them with that. That has mostly been with a lager, but there's a second beer too, called Gypsy Tongues. Initial marks off for the dreadful AI-generated tap badge, and for the reluctance to name Brehon Brewhouse as the place of production. But the beer is decent, as one would expect from Brehon. It's a straightforward hazy pale ale of 4.5% ABV, leading on vanilla, following through with tropical fruit and exiting on a mild tang of bitterness for balance. There's nothing unusual or exciting here, but absolutely no off-flavours or upsetting surprises. If the intention is to have some by-the-pint fruity haze for the pub, then they've gone about it in exactly the right way.
I didn't go especially all-in on the big beers, but wasn't going to pass by Saturnalia, an old ale from Eight Degrees. It's genuinely old too, having started as a barley wine a couple of years ago, then left to mature. The result is 12% ABV and a gorgeously smooth luxury dessert of a beer, exuding vanilla, butter and a scattering of plump raisins. The undisguised booze gives it a heavy Pedro Ximínez vinous quality, the sweet side balanced by a considerable dose of tannin. It all works harmoniously well together, doubtless due to the extra time it's had in the tank. Sadly, this all goes to Italy. It's a shame that a few nip bottles aren't left behind for Irish drinkers.
It was a pleasant surprise to find a veritable rake of new beers from Trouble Brewing. I began with Easy, a 4% ABV pale ale served on cask. It's a hazy one; light and pithy, with medium dank and a hint of garlic. The brewery does not want us to think of it as a junior version of its flagship Ambush, but I couldn't shake that impression. This has a lot in common with Gypsy Tongues above, being simple and accessible, and well built for session drinking, especially in smooth cask form.
The next one is also intended to be easy: a 4.2% ABV German-style pilsner called Alibi. They say it's unfiltered yet it's flawlessly clear, with almost the greenish tone I associate with Jever. It's not quite as full-on as that hop monster, but isn't far off it, tasting strongly of lawn clippings but not going overboard with it. There's a significant crisp edge as well, giving it a mineral-water character, which complements the hops well. Maybe a little more malt flavour would have made it more interesting, but at the same time, this beer is all about the drinkability, and it's a very quaffable affair altogether. It's not complex, but has just enough to hold one's interest as it slakes one's thirst.
They don't describe True Stereo as a west coast IPA, and at 5.1% ABV it's maybe a bit light to genuinely be one, but it certainly leans in that direction. It's clear and golden with lots of hard pithy bitterness from the combination of Simcoe and Centennial hops. And it tastes as clean as it looks, with nothing interfering with the sharp crispness the hops bring. A bit one-dimensional? Maybe. But with clean pale ale like this a rarity these days, that's not a problem. There are much worse dimensions it could be showing us.
Lastly from Trouble, a dunkel lager called Pull the Smiles Inside. It's a bit of a lightweight at just 4.8% ABV but hits the important style points well. It's big-boned and chewy, delivering the requisite flavours of bourbon biscuit, chocolate and roasted grains. That the recipe was created for, and was successful in, a home brewing competition, isn't in the least surprising. I often find the real thing to be a little too hop-forward, detracting from the dark malt fun. This is dunkel done the way I like it, however.
The other brewery bar I spent a bit of time at was Blarney Brewing. We don't see their beer in Dublin and I'm almost never in Cork these days, so it was good to have the opportunity to give some of the beers a once-over.By pale lager shall ye measure them, and Blarney's flagship is the 4.3% ABV Hydro. It's designed to be clean and easy-drinking pub fare, and is a little lacking in character as a result. I reckon it resembles Czech pale lager most closely, and has a touch of the golden syrup aspect they show. The texture is soft and there's a mineral crispness at the centre, though little malt and virtually no hop. It's refreshing, but very much not pitched at the geek audience.
Squared - Blood Orange is more for the likes of us. This is part of a series of limited edition IPAs and claims to be west coast style, though the addition of fruit syrup is a bit off for that, as is the mere 5.5% ABV. Still, the pale amber colour fits, as does the strongly dank hop aroma and foretaste. It finishes dry and I almost didn't find the orange. It arrives at the very end and is respectful of the hops, not adding any sticky sugariness, as I feared it might. It's more of a seasoning than a tacked-on flavour. It all works rather well, providing good complexity centred on tasty American hops, in a pub-strength package. Nice.
A different limited series uses Blarney's hogshead-sized pilot kit, and on tap here was Moxee!, a session IPA of 4.6% ABV, single-hopped with El Dorado. I wasn't too impressed by this, and I blame the strength. It's thin and fizzy, and lacks any proper hop impact. El Dorado should be presenting a multicoloured fruit candy effect, but there's none of that here. There's clean and pubby, and then there's just bland. I'm afraid this one fell a bit too much on the latter side.
Onwards! Just one beer from Kildare's Dew Drop brewery, a Motueka-hopped IPA called Far Side, because New Zealand, obvs. I don't have much to say about this one either, unfortunately. It's a simple and harmless sort of murk; 5.2% ABV, and although it boasts of being double dry-hopped, that's extra meaningless here, as it doesn't taste especially hop-forward. Garlic is more prominent than any of the herbs or fruit I would expect Motueka to bring. Add a smear of vanilla and you have something very ordinary, done all the time by lots of different breweries. I'm sure it sells but it doesn't make for very interesting drinking.
The Kinnegar stand is where I finished my evening's drinking. They had another new pilsner, called Day Skipper. I'm not sure how this differs from their core-range Donegal Lager, though it's very slightly stronger at 4.7% ABV. And typical of Kinnegar, it's precision-brewed to be clean and balanced, with a harmonious mix of crisp biscuit malt and a gentle noble-hop celery bitterness. It's light-bodied without being thin, and has a soft texture reminiscent of the kind of lager you get from a side-pour tap in Czechia. I don't know where they're sending it after the festival, but I wish it well.
And the last beer is the latest in Kinnegar's regular limited edition series. Brewers At Play 52: Spruce Tip IPA is 6.1% ABV and uses its novel ingredient to good effect. It doesn't interfere with the hopping, but adds a complementary herbal note to an otherwise quite sweet IPA, centred on notes of meadow flowers and ripe strawberry. It's certainly unusual. The big gravity gives it a luscious softness, and while it runs a risk of being overly sweet, the hopping, and pine, are generous enough to add the right level of bitterness to keep it enjoyable, orthodox and gimmick-free.That was quite a jolly set, for the most part, and it was particularly pleasing how many good lagers there were to try. Nothing had the beatings of that first one by O'Hara's, however. I hope I'll be seeing it again before long, and that there's more like it to come from the new brewing arrangement in Dundalk.
