Time and tide

Another year over. Time to wrap up, take stock, award meaningless prizes for things I thought were good. It's year fifteen of this, and I may be the only person still keeping to the old ways, as set out by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg in the heady year of 2009, and later revised. But before that, a tradition of my own: the beer I drink while making up my mind.

I acquired this bottle of Beer Hut's Ebbs & Flows on my visit to Bullhouse East in Belfast last month. It came with the Simon Boyle seal of approval, so if this goes horribly wrong it's all his fault. It's a mixed fermentation blonde ale, aged in barrels for a year and finishing at 6.7% ABV. The cork under the waxed cap was saturated in beer, which was worrying, but it looked well in the glass, the bright gold suggesting it hadn't been oxidised. The aroma says Golden Delicious apples to me. The flavour is greener and more acidic than that, into the Granny Smith zone. It's assertively sour, but still has enough malt density to prevent that being a full-on burn, and so it only hints at white spirit vinegar. That's pretty much all it has to say, really. The barrels in particular don't make much of a contribution: little wine character and no oak spices. It is at least clean, but I don't think I'll be distracted by the taste as I set to work on...

The Golden Pint Awards 2023

Best Irish Cask Beer: Land & Labour Geimhreadh
It means "Winter" but I drank it in April. This is Land & Labour's take on geuze, and it's a pretty accurate rendition. While one might not expect such things to be served on cask, as this was, one does not pass it by either. The same brewery's Bière de Rhubarbe runs it a close enough second to effectively share the award.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Whiplash Oxen
We've been blessed with a selection of delicious barley wines from Irish breweries this year, with Wicklow Wolf, Kinnegar and DOT all stepping up to the plate. My favourite of them, however, was this bourbon aged delight which appeared on draught at the brewery's bar in Dublin.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Black Donkey Yes Marm
Land & Labour aren't the only ones getting the hang of wild yeast in Belgian-type recipes. Black Donkey had a number of wild fermented specials, of which this one, with a subtle hint of Seville orange, was my favourite. 

Best Irish Canned Beer: Lough Gill Blue Blue Sky
I'm surprising myself by putting a hazy IPA in as the winner of possibly the most competitive category. But this isn't about the cerebral analysis of the year's drinking, it's remembering the sheer impact of a load of fresh New Zealand hops, hitting the back of my nose as soon as the tab was popped. From first impressions onwards, the beer didn't disappoint: bright, fresh, fruity and just bitter enough. 

Best Overseas Draught Beer: The Kernel India Double Porter
This little keg found its way all the way from Bermondsey to celebrate the re-opening of UnderDog during the summer. It wasn't, it turned out, the beginning of a whole new wave of Kernel beers on draught in Ireland, but what's rare is beautiful, and this hits all the right chocolate-and-flowers notes for a 7.5% ABV porter. It's nice to read about historic beers, and this feels as though it's as close as we can get to drinking one.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: De Dochter van de Korenaar Rien Ne Vas Plus
Another award based on my memory of our first encounter. I had no idea what to expect from this experimental take on the port wine method, but applied to barley wine. If you'd asked me, I would have said no way any beer would be the better for six years of barrel ageing. There's no disputing that here: six years made it amazing. Brewers rightly get a bit of stick for claiming to be daringly experimental when they tip a canister of blueberry syrup into a pale ale. This is what proper creativity looks like, and how it pays off.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hoppy Road Coco En Stock
This was a bit of a tricky one to award. My home drinking of overseas beers was fairly down this year in favour of drinking locally. Rummaging through the records, however, I did uncover this fantastic coconut imperial stout which I bought from the Hoppy Road brewery in Nancy.

Best Collaboration Brew: Wide Street / Land & Labour Many Hands
The funky lads are now co-located at Wide Street HQ in Longford, but before Land & Labour moved in, they created this blend of mixed culture beers from both sites, aged two years in Chardonnay casks. You can't tell that there are two different underlying beers, but you do get a massive amount of flavour complexity, spritzy and funky, all at once. It shows that they really know how to do the blending bit to maximum effect.

Best Overall Beer: Land & Labour Geimhreadh
I love that spontaneously-fermented beer of this quality exists in Ireland, and is perhaps even getting a little more commonplace. Land & Labour has certainly had a good year of beers, honing its ability to make future classics rather than throwing out endless new brews. Everything it does pays off in the glass.

Best Branding: Out of Office
It's such a strange theme, but is endlessly fascinating. The Belfast microbrewery has paper darts on its glassware and produced beers such as Pencil Pusher, NSFW and Kelly From Marketing. I'm curious how long they can keep it up, but I'll be continually entertained while they do. A very honorable mention goes to Hopfully for their fun and subversive can art.

Best Pump Clip: Brewster's Decadence
They continue to go out of fashion here, so I'm turning to the year's selection of English cask beer for this award. You need to like Art Nouveau to appreciate a Brewster's clip, and this one is no exception; the lounging lady expresses the beer's name in a most appropriately inappropriate way.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Canvas Bella
In almost a reverse of the previous one, I loved the simplicity of this: lots of white space and nature being left to do its thing. In a very small rendering, the artist has also managed to capture the body language of bossman Moss perfectly.



Best Irish Brewery: Black Donkey
I had a bit of chasing to do to find the Black Donkey specials this year, but I'm very glad I put the effort in. They are one of the leading lights of wild fermented Irish beer, though don't seem to get the same level of nerd attention as the others. If it's been a while since you tried their beer, I suggest you start getting caught up with the likes of Yes Marm, Hive Mind or Phraseology.

Best Overseas Brewery: Boon
I had the good fortune of spending a couple of days at the Belgian lambic brewery back in Spring, including its new tasting room. It's become very much part of the landscape when I'm in Belgium, as I was on three trips this year. There are lots of vintages and blends to explore and it's all good.

Best New Brewery Opening 2023: Mo Chara
Now here's a category that's of its time. New breweries aren't springing up every couple of weeks, as they were a decade ago. In fact, I don't have anything I can report on from a newly opened brewery. So I'll spin it sideways and allow a contractor in. Mo Chara, a bar in Dundalk, has done a range of collaboration beers in various styles with various Irish breweries, and now has a lager all of its own. They look like their hearts are in the right place, so they get the award.

Pub/Bar of the Year: 7 Stern
I made my third visit to this Vienna institution in January and was delighted that nothing has changed, from the bustling multi-level rooms to the wacky-for-the-1990s beer list (Chilli! Hemp!). I feel very at home here. If you want my favourite nerdy beer bar of the year, that was Taplokaal Gist in Utrecht.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2023: UnderDog
It shouldn't really be possible to win this two years in a row, but UnderDog completed its brief sojourn in The Legal Eagle and moved around the corner to North King Street. The offer is the same as it ever was: an ever-changing selection of interesting draught beers and good company. The bonus addition of lunchtime opening hours has done wonders for my ticking workload.

Beer Festival of the Year: Mullingar Wild Beer Festival
It was the second outing for this one, and while it may not have been bigger or better, it was just great to see it back. We have an excellent little scene around this sort of beer in Ireland now, and I love that it gets focused into a dedicated event once a year. May there be many more.

Supermarket of the Year: Aldi
Bit of a shock, I know. Normally you would go to the other one for beer things. Aldi has had some good special editions, however, and the DOT Spin Off Series is what tips it for them here.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Blackrock Cellar
I always come away with more than I went in for. The shop does a very good line in beers that I just don't see elsewhere, and was my primary stockist for those lovely Black Donkey ones. The closure of The Three Tun Tavern means I have less reason to be in Blackrock these days, but the Cellar means it's still worth a special trip now and again.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
I could just copy and paste from last year. Craft Central makes buying new release beers extremely easy and I still buy far and away the majority of mine there.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Hop Glossy
Issue 3 of Radka's snazzy look at everything going on on the Irish beer scene landed last week. It's a magnificent endeavour, and done, we're told, just for the fun of it. Long may it continue.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Boak & Bailey and A Better Beer Blog
I mean, who's left? I'm jointly awarding this category for the specific activity of posting a weekly round-up of links to things going on in the beer world -- Alan on Thursdays, Boak & Bailey on Saturdays. They're a regular reminder that there's still life out there for those who care to look. Stan Hieronymus's Monday links are also appreciated though haven't been quite as regular.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @BeerFoodTravel
Who's left, part 2. Liam's posts of beers, glassware, food and vinyl have made for cosy and comforting viewing through the year, so he takes my Johnson for the first time since 2019.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Whiplash
The stream of new beers and revisited recipes from this lot has been phenomenal. Generally, they back it up with lots of background information about what they've produced, and where to get it. I'm rarely left wondering, which is the whole point of breweries being online.


And there you have it. Another year over. I can see the first of 2024's beer winking at me already. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for yet more of the same in The Beer Nut's forthcoming 20th year.

Thirteenth night

Coming off the back of the 12 Brewers of Christmas sequence which finished two days ago, 12 more breweries which didn't make that (completely arbitrary) cut.

Dundalk's Mo Chara pub / event space / whatever you're having yourself has collaborated with five different Irish breweries so far, on their "Ár gCairde" series. Now they've got a beer that's all their own, called Mo Chara, and look: stubbies! You don't see them very often here, especially not in the 33cl size, but it's an undeniably cool format. I felt self-conscious pouring this into a glass because it's clearly not intended with that in mind. "Brewed in Town" says the label, so I assumed that either Dundalk Bay or Pearse Lyons were responsible, but it's actually brewed one county to the left, at Brehon in Monaghan.

It's a flawless pale gold in the glass, with a properly Germanic head of fine white bubbles. The session credentials are sealed with its modest 4.2% ABV. The aroma is subtle and Helles-like, with a touch of grain or bread but not much else, and the texture is similarly smooth: half the glass was gone on the first pull. The flavour doesn't offer much for a reviewer to grasp upon, but of course that's absolutely the point. It's utterly clean and on the dry side, but not oppressively so. For hops, look elsewhere. Microbrewed lager can be luck of the draw, and Brehon, as far as I know, doesn't make one of their own. Here, however, they've avoided all the too-regular pitfalls and created a beer that may present as bland to the sad beer geeks, but it's not for them, and I would happily have chugged a second, and a third, in short order. 

Ballykilcavan switched to bottles for their latest, citing the hassle of the upcoming deposit return scheme for cans. I'm not complaining about the extra volume of beer, nor that the beer itself is a dark mild. Endurance is 4.2% ABV and an attractive clear garnet colour with a thin layer of ivory-coloured head. The aroma sets out its stall as sweet, offering up plum and chocolate vapours. Happily it tastes drier, not quite giving the coffee which my favourite milds have, but rather a porter-adjacent light roast. The sweet side of the flavour is not fruit but treacle, dark and sticky tasting, though not actually sticky in texture. Dry and sweet blend together harmoniously, laced at the edges with both dark and milk chocolate plus a very English metallic hop bite ahead of a neat and clean finish. This is excellent, and compares very favourably with Gob Fliuch, the quality mild from Four Provinces. I hope it finds a market, and I think the bottle format will help it to do that.

A brand new brewery for me next, and possibly the first time I've ever drank a beer brewed in my native county of Armagh. McCrackens is in Portadown and McCrackens Black their stout. The can says to pour it in one go so I thought it was going to be nitrogenated but it's not: no creamy white head here, instead a wholesome dark brown one. The aroma is bitter and tarry, suggesting this definitely isn't pitched at the mainstream stout drinker. It's fairly smooth and lightly sparkling, with lots of thick dark malt in the body. That contributes hugely to the treacley flavour, and the bitterness is back, tasting strongly herbal, like rosemary and grass clippings. It's certainly bold, though the big flavour tips a little into off-flavour with a touch of phenol on the end. Overall, it's pretty good, with the big hop character I always like to find in a stout. Though only 4.5% ABV it's no lightweight.

Neither is Screw Steamer, a California common from Lacada. I wasn't any sort of enthusiast for this style until its San Francisco flagship sank; now I see it as a rare heritage beer, deserving of recognition and preservation. It shows up infrequently in Ireland and I'm glad Lacada took a punt on it. The result is a deep copper shade with plenty of fizz. Dry crispness should be a hallmark, but this puts a rounded and quite sweet fruitiness at the centre, suggesting strawberry and red cherry to me. That's backed by quite a thick texture: not really something that could be mistaken for a lager. A more typical peppery spice flavour arrives late but doesn't hang around long, with the finish being estery; strawberry turning to banana and pear. In spite of the lack of crispness, I liked it. It's a sipper rather than a refresher but there's plenty of interesting things going on in it, and no technical flaws.

Another new brand for me, Hopsicle is a joint operation from Cork pubs The Bierhaus and Fionnbarra's, brewing in Dublin at Third Barrel, which is how their second beer, Is Citra Way To Amarillo, ended up in UnderDog just before Christmas. It's a pretty standard 5% ABV hazy pale ale, one with a particularly soft texture and lots of orange juice in the flavour. A balancing bitterness brings up the rear and ensures the sweet side stays under control. It may not be a very distinctive individual, but it's fine pub drinking, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Third Barrel themselves have something similar out under their own label: Eat. Sleep. Pale. Repeat., a 4.8% ABV double dry-hopped pale ale with Mosaic and Citra. This is another orangey-yellow job, and smells sweetly juicy, of jaffas and ice cream, with a minor herbal bite. The texture is light, coming across as a little thin, despite the best efforts of a haze-derived creaminess. There's very little assertive about the flavour: it's quite anodyne, bringing only light fruit flavours and a rough bitterness, all finishing quickly. The name is well chosen: this is a beer for drinking, not tasting. It's nicely refreshing, but don't expect depths of hazy complexity.

At Western Herd they've swapped their usual big bag of hops for a big bag of coffee, creating Beerista, described as a "coffee blonde pale ale". I've never seen the like. It is more or less blonde, with a polished-copper pink tint. The pour seemed a little flat, only reluctantly forming a head and offering no more than a gentle sparkle. There's an aroma of coffee of a certain kind; a cold pouch of ground beans, with nothing warm or inviting about it. In the flavour it's predominantly a pale ale: they didn't go too far away with those hops and there's quite an old-school American, or even English, tang of earthiness, which tastes like Cascade to me, even though there's Strata and Amarillo in here as well. I couldn't taste any of their fruitiness. The coffee is surprisingly complementary to this, again not heavy on the roast, or concentrated or oily; little more than a seasoning, in fact, adding a different sort of dryness to an already quite dry base beer. At only 5.1% ABV there's not a lot of complexity on offer, and while it's no revelatory taste experience, the experiment does work, giving you something interesting and worthwhile for your trouble.

Trouble Brewing itself, some months ago now, released a bitter of the extra special sort, brewed in collaboration with Italian brewery Railroad, and named Catenary. I doubt it would pass muster over in Britain as it arrived decidedly hazy, making the amber colour appear quite muddy. The aroma does say old-school Kentish bitter to me, smelling zesty and pithy like big jaffa oranges. The flavour continues in that direction, the mild citrus joined by a more metallic sort of bitterness. It's a convincing enough take that I found the cold and fizzy keg serve unsatisfactory: this does deserve to be on cask. 5.4% ABV but don't even think about drinking it in small measures: it's very much not that sort of beer.

WhiteField continues to be a pleasant surprise on the rare occasions I see its beer for sale. This time it was in the Mace on the South Circular Road and the beer is the 2023 edition of Harvest Ale. The description is intriguing: a blend of sour beer and weissbier with added Tipperary raspberries. Some of you may remember this recipe, or one very like it, as White Gypsy Première Framboise a few years ago. You also get a reminder that WhiteField runs the only cork-and-cage machine in the country. It's doing a fine job. The cork comes out with a pleasing pop and the beer behind it is crisply fizzy. It's a hazy orange colour, with a barely-there pinkish tint from the raspberries. There's an oaky spice to the aroma, reminding me of geuze, even though it's not barrel aged. The flavour is balanced, and integrates its component parts well. The dry sour side is at the centre, genuinely tasting like a decent Belgian oude geuze only slightly softer. The raspberries have a gentle sweetening effect, not the sort of pink foghorn you usually get from raspberry beers. I don't get where the weissbier fits into the blend, but I'm guessing it's helping take the edge off the sourness. It's very tasty and surprisingly refreshing for 5.8% ABV. I hope the experiment gets a third run out soon.

At the same strength is the new Cold IPA from Rascals, the last in their three-part Outbreak series. Cold IPAs taste like onion and this is no different, even though they've done it with all southern-hemisphere hops: Motueka, Galaxy and Pacific Sunrise. I would never have guessed. It's a clear sunset gold and a little spicy with a big side order of cooked vegetables. That resolves into predominantly white onion in the flavour, with only a faint lacing of lighter citrus. I know it's the whole point of the style, but the highly attenuated malt base makes this less enjoyable for me, taking away the platform which the hops need to work from. While it's not actively unpleasant, it does seem a bit washed out, lacking the hop heft I want from a 5.8% ABV IPA.

This year's winter seasonal from Hope is Seasonal Red Ale, a bit of a whopper at 7% ABV. It pours out thickly, forming a head slowly but expansively. It's quite dark, on the brown end of red, and with a brothy murk. It smells beery: a concentrated mix of sticky malt, old-world hop bitterness and fuggy booze vapours. The flavour really leans into those hops, bringing a tangy vegetal bitterness from the use of Challenger. That runs in parallel with a cake-like sweetness, suggesting cherry pies and marzipan. Strong and red doesn't usually float my boat, but I liked the heft of this one. Beer can bring wintery comfort without needing a double-digit ABV. 

This year Lineman has significantly slowed its output of new beers. Perhaps created before that strategic decision was made, Kismet is a dark strong ale, having had "extensive wood ageing". In what, we are not told. It finished up at 11.5% ABV, is a dark brown and cost €11.25 for a half litre bottle. The aroma is sweetly dessertish, conjuring tiramisu, affogato and chocolate torte. Chocolate dominates the flavour but has a slightly twangy oxidised sherry note in, suggesting things might not have gone exactly as planned. There's a vague spirit heat, but without knowing in advance I couldn't tell you which brown spirit previously inhabited the barrels. I tried hard to like it, and the formula is sound, but the vinegary poke to it means it fails to live up to its price tag.

Lots to take stock of there, and indeed over the past twelve months. Luckily, I know just the format in which to do that. Stand by.