I do know Panenka

It's a football term, apparently. You might expect a lager called Panenka to appear on a rotation tap when there's a football tournament on. Indeed, the same brewer created one called Maracanã for the 2014 Brazil World Cup. I don't know why this one is here and now. "Here" is The Porterhouse in Dublin's Temple Bar and it's branded as a house beer, though since the Porterhouse brewery was sold on, all beers are produced elsewhere, and this is the first of them to come from Hopkins & Hopkins, upriver in Smithfield.

A Czech-style pils is what's on offer, which seems like a reasonable prospect from a brewery that has made Helles its unlikely but welcome flagship. Magnum hops from Czechia are the signature feature we are to be on alert for. I didn't expect them to be fruity, so was surprised by the waft of light yet ripe pear in the aroma, and the same in the centre of the flavour. Around that, it is the light summer pilsner we're promised, despite a not-insubstantial 4.7% ABV. The base is very crisp and dry lager grain, teaming up with an almost aggressive carbonation. Nevertheless, it's not basic or bland. I would have liked a little more assertive noble hop bittering, beyond the faint green herbs of the finish, but it still stays on the right side of the boring/interesting divide.

I don't mean interesting as a euphemism for wonky. I think this would pass muster in a proper lager culture anywhere in the world. Obviously, nobody else who comes to The Porterhouse to drink it will appreciate what's going on the way I do, but I hope it brings a little bit of golden continental sunshine into their otherwise dreary lives.

Putting the boot in

One can measure the progress of the Irish beer sector by the commemorative beers it produces for sporting events. For previous football tournaments it's only been one or two: Eight Degrees's Trapattoni Potation for Euro 2012 and JW Sweetman's Brazil 2014 beer Maracanã. Maybe it's the presence of the Republic of Ireland team at Euro 2016, but there are three beers out to mark the occasion: one can, one bottle and one cask. At this late stage in the tournament it's a bit après match but let's take a look anyway.

Claiming the best possible name for an Irish football-themed beer is Danger Here from Western Herd Brewery in Co. Clare, the first of their offerings I've tried. It's a session IPA of 4.8% ABV, pale amber with suspended floaty bits and very little by way of head or carbonation. There's a mild green grassiness on the aroma but the flavour is an absolute freight train of noisy hops, led by screaming Sorachi Ace, if I'm not mistaken. It's harshly bitter first of all, which fades just enough to allow it to be identified as a lemon skin bite, followed by billowing gusts of oily coconut. The finish is dry and sharply waxy, metallic, but even calling it a finish is less than accurate because none of these flavours actually go anywhere, they just squat on your palate, waving their flags while shouting abuse at the encircling riot police. It's a bruiser of a beer and serves as a reminder that "session IPA" is about more than lower ABV. You'll need your shinguards if you want to spend the full 90 minutes tackling a few of these. Danger indeed.

The next beer is also a session IPA, this one from Dublin's own Rascal's, produced exclusively for the Molloy's off licence chain and puntastically named All Night Long. More sessionable promises are made on the label here -- "juicy", "fruity" -- and it's a more sinkable 4.2% ABV. The head didn't stick around much on this either though it is clearer and the aroma is very west coat: all mandarin sherbet spiked with pine. It's a little thin of texture and there's a weird savouriness in the foretaste, possibly a result of one of them oniony hop varieties: is that you misbehaving, Mosaic? A gentle peach and mango fruitiness sits behind it but the flavour really lacks depth and I blame that light body. Yes, it's easy to drink and you could get through a lot of them while engrossed in the game: Molloys is helpfully selling five cans for €10, which should be enough for ninety minutes and possibly even pennos as well, But it's not as juicy or fruity as I was expecting. I should probably face the fact that what I want out of session IPA is Little Fawn and that session IPAs which aren't Little Fawn are guaranteed to let me down. All Night Long is fun and flavourful but just doesn't slot in to my taste preference as I thought it would.

The solitary draught offering is Euro Gold, on the handpump at JW Sweetman. Now this is a beer that would make me sit in the pub and watch football. For one thing, on a humid June afternoon, it was pouring beautifully cold from the cask. There was only a very slight fogging to the otherwise flawless gold, and nothing that interfered with the flavour. Lemons are the star player, not sharp or harsh but soft and sherbety in both flavour and aroma, sitting on an equally soft meringue pie texture. It slips down smoothly and there's a very quick finish setting up the next mouthful. Though I suspect the hops are new world, the overall sensation is of an English golden ale, and a damn good one at that. Yes you can happily chug it down in front of the big screen but it's equally worth taking time over in a quiet corner of the pub, if you can find one. At €4.50 a pint for loyalty card holders it's fantastic value too.

We'll leave it there so.

Drink the past

Bill asks us to make a connection to beers-gone-by for this round of The Session. With beer being a high-volume, rapid-turnover product its history is plentiful and varied. The contexts in which people have brewed and drunk beer, the types they made and the ingredients they used are manifold. In Dublin, porter looms over all. What Flann O'Brien aptly called "The Workman's Friend" was the first style to be made in industrial quantities to meet the needs of large urban population centres. And in maritime cities like London and Dublin, the plain people's drink went with the plain people's food: shellfish. Oysters, mussels, whelks and whatever else could be harvested from the shore in quantity and turned into food with minimal preparation. The Porterhouse has long commemorated this tradition in its Oyster Stout but more recently the Mourne Seafood restaurant chain commissioned one from the Whitewater Brewery in Co. Down. The company has just opened an outlet in the Dublin docklands, making Mourne Oyster Stout available south of the border for the first time.

It's a wonderfully velvety stout, smooth even by the standards of nitrogenated beer. Rich milk chocolate dominates the flavour but there's also a gentle green vegetal hop flavour in the background. A simple and pleasant beer overall, lacking the depth and complexity of the Porterhouse one, perhaps, but not likely to interfere with the taste of your seafood either. On the downside, a pint of this will set you back a whopping €6 so to get your money's worth you'd better enjoy the picturesque setting while you sup.

Porter spent almost two centuries as Dublin's beer of choice before its place was eventually taken by lager and, according to the most recent figures I've seen, two out of every three pints consumed in Ireland these days is lager. While Diageo and Heineken have most of that market sewn up between them, they weren't the first to produce golden cool-fermented beer for the Irish palate. That honour is normally accorded to the Dartry Brewery, in what's now a leafy residential suburb of south Dublin.

Reporting on this Teutonic curiosity while it was still under construction at the beginning of 1891, The Irish Times does note¹ that the founder, Herr Stoer, is seeking to meet an already-existing local demand for lager. Much like the porter brewers over a century previously, in fact. The Dartry Brewery was in a converted mill by the River Dodder and utilised the millwheel to run its machinery. "One of the special features claimed for the new beer," says our Victorian churnalist, "will be its freedom from injurious clarifying ingredients which are so much used in many other beers". The reader is advised that it may be February by the time this slow-to-produce foreign style is available for drinking, and indeed it's May before an ad in the 'Times² lists the nine Dublin pubs where it's available, including Neary's of Chatham Street, the only one still trading today under the same name. Also in the spring of 1891 The Whiskey Trade Review sent its reporter to Dartry³, who gushed "We have been Lager beer drinkers in many places and many climes, but never tasted a finer quality than the glass with which we toasted 'Success to the Dartry Lager Brewery' of Messrs. Stoer and Sons, Upper Rathmines, Dublin."

The fine tradition of riverside brewing in Dublin continues today at JW Sweetman on the Liffey quays, though they have yet to harness the free fluvial power that runs past the conditioning tanks in the basement every day. As it happens, they have a new lager on the taps: Maracanã, brewed for thirsty football fans in the pub for the World Cup. It passes the colour test for an accessible lager: perfectly clear and medium gold. I wish everything else about it were as clean. The hopping has been done generously so there's lots of wax and grass. But there's also a very high sweetness: spun sugar, caramel and a hint of butterscotch too. The effect isn't helped by a sweet-sour green apple aroma. It's back to lager school for Mr Sweetman, I'm afraid. A rare misstep, and it's just as well the whole brewery isn't dependent on this one brew for its success.

A little over two years after the Dartry Brewery began selling lager to the Dublin public, a terse notice appeared on the back page of the paper⁴:

FOR SALE: The Dublin Lager Beer Brewery, situated at Dartry, Rathmines, in full working order. An enterprising party with capital would find it a very good investment. 

And with that questionable claim, Ireland's first lager brewery vanished into history.

Notes:
1. The Irish Times, 8th January 1891, p.7
2. 26th May, p.7
3. Reproduced in The Weekly Irish Times, 28th March 1891, p.6
4.  The Irish Times, 12th August 1893, p.8