Kiuchi cutesy coup

Until recently, the Hitachino Nest beers from the Kiuchi brewery were imported into Ireland by the Yamamori restaurant chain. That was fine, and I was glad they're around, but it did tend to limit their availability. Recently, however, distribution has moved to a full-time beer importer, Grand Cru, which has made them more accessible and added a couple to the range which I hadn't had before.

Hitachino Nest Amber Ale is one of them. It's a much deeper colour than most amber ales, a deep shade of mahogany, topped with lots of froth. It poured thickly, seeming denser than one might expect for 6% ABV. The doppelbock visuals are carried through into the aroma: it smells of liquorice herbs and chewy toffee. The flavour adds burnt caramel to this, and a lager cleanness. Very doppelbock indeed. As such, it's enjoyable: flavoursome, filling and warming. Maybe not the best choice for al fresco drinking on an August afternoon, and not at all like the American standard for amber ale, but quality is quality.

The next one calls itself a Real Ginger Ale, something that suggests light summer fizz to me. The reality is 8% ABV and dark red again, this time murky with it. There's a gentle spice in the aroma, though otherwise we're dealing with another malt-heavy medium-dark ale. And so it goes with the flavour: this is very sweet, an assortment of chewy caramels, buttery toffees and chocolate pralines. There's no kick from the ginger, and only the faintest of contributions to the flavour. If handed to me blind I would likely guess this is an English strong ale or barley wine: what heat there is is solely derived from the alcohol. Like the previous beer, this one confounds expectations, but doesn't do as good a job of it. Though without obvious flaws, it fails to deliver on its basic promise. That anthropomorphic ginger root on the label need not look so delighted with itself.

The Hitachino Nest range is extensive, and most of them have never arrived on these shores. I would love if Grand Cru's new arrangement means we'll be getting more of them. In the meantime, the also-highly-unorthodox Nipponia remains the best of the bunch. Try it if you see it.

A walk in the park

June Bank Holiday, as usual, brought the Bloom in the Park festival to Dublin. I hadn't been in several years but organisers Bord Bia very kindly sent me a couple of tickets so on the mostly-sunny Saturday morning I set off for Phoenix Park.

Bloom is first and foremost a garden festival, the centrepiece being artily constructed miniature gardens, vying for medals and a grand prize. Courtesy dictates that a token wander around this bit is mandatory before hitting the beer tent, but this year there was something specific I wanted to see: "Saison", a garden put together by Breffni McGeough with help from brewer Alex Lawes and incorporating a nanobrewery. And a couple of comfy deckchairs, obviously. Very cute, and it's great to see beer culture leaking out of the bubble occasionally.

To the Bloom Inn, then. The 2015 iteration wasn't quite as much fun as 2011's randomly deflating space domes, but leagues ahead of 2010's A Small Tent With Some Beer. It felt like a real festival, with a crowd still consisting of mainly the uninitiated, but with plenty of converted beer enthusiasts too. A dozen or so brewers and cider-makers pitched up, plus a handful of the new wave of Irish distilleries.

There were two beers I hadn't tasted before on offer. The first I noticed on entering was Wicklow Wolf's Arcadia, a straight-up Kölsch clone. Only the smoothness of cask serve is missing from the replication. It's a bright, rich gold and offers mouthfuls of crisp and crunchy grain backed by quite assertive waxy German hops. It may be top fermented but there is a spring-water cleanness to the profile as a reminder that Kölsch, done properly, really is a lager. Arcadia will do a number on more than a few thirsts this summer, I'd say.

Putting clean and understated to one side, we move to the Carlow Brewing stand. Last year we were promised a sequence of amber ales using different national hop varieties, under the "Amber Adventure" label. We're only now seeing a second outing, and a slight shifting of the goalposts. O'Hara's Hop Adventure Sorachi Ace is an IPA, for one thing, and a pale one at that. All you really need to know is that it tastes of Sorachi Ace in a big way, and it's up to you whether that's a recommendation or a warning. I enjoyed it, though. It's all oily coconut and lemon meringue pie, the pie effect accentuated by a light biscuity malt flavour. Other breweries who have made beer like this (Kiuchi's Nipponia springs to mind) have tended to pile on the alcohol to counter the hop pungency. I like that this one, at just 5% ABV, doesn't put anything in their way.

More summer festival fun to come next week.

The local news

Irish Craft Beer Week rumbles onwards, leading us to the final destination of the Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival, kicking off in the RDS tomorrow afternoon and running through to Sunday. The beer list is exciting and intriguing in equal measure, with lots of new beers to tick so I've been doing my very best to get to as many as possible beforehand.

As usual, the Bull & Castle has been doing sterling work in this department of late and is still my routine destination for new stuff from Irish micros. Although that said it seems like a lot -- a hell of a lot -- of new Irish beer is coming from the one plant: 8 Degrees in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. So with great fanfare last month we had the Dublin launch of Kinsale Pale Ale. Sam Black is in the process of setting up his own operation, with premises acquired and building under way. If you fancy getting involved in his project you can join in with his crowd funding effort on IndieGoGo. Meanwhile, he's brewing at 8 Degrees, though very much his own recipe.

It's safe to say Sam is comfortable around hops. Kinsale Pale Ale is a 5% ABV symphony in Citra. I wasn't all that impressed with the bottled version when I tried it at the Alltech Gathering -- and that's a bit of a theme with 8 Degrees beers for me: the bottles are very often duller versions of the draught, sometimes downright wonky -- but on keg it was powerfully flavoured, perhaps even a little too much for my taste. Masses of pine resin and freshly chopped mixed herbs form the vanguard; a little bit of the medicine cupboard and a little of the urinal cake. Once my palate adjusted -- which is why it really deserves to be served by the pint rather than the 33cl bottle -- it opened out into a more nuanced peach and pineapple experience, much more my sort of thing. I'm sure it'll change once production moves to Kinsale, but this first effort show that Sam knows what he's about and wants to keep the hopheads happy.

The Dublin-based 8 Degrees contractee is Five Lamps, who came out of the traps last year with a fairly plain but acceptable golden lager. The boat remains unrocked by their follow-up, Liberties Ale. In stark contrast to the super-sweet Sweetman's red reviewed on Monday, this is very dry, with an almost stoutlike roastiness going on. It reminded me quite a bit of the excellent Traditional Irish Red that Carlow brewing used to make for Aldi, though I've yet to find anyone who agrees with me on that observation. This swings a bit too far in the opposite direction from Kinsale Pale Ale for me; a few more hops would be appreciated, but I'm sure there's an audience out there for it. The rumour mill has it that Five Lamps have recently secured a premises in Dublin (embarrassingly on the other side of the city from the Five Lamps) and will be setting up a real live brewery in due course. (Late edit: In fact, the brewery was already up and running and Liberties is brewed there. The lager will continue to be brewed at Eight Degrees.)

With this lot going on it's hard to believe that 8 Degrees have time to brew anything with their own label on it, but the recent big news was the arrival of a competing pair of IPAs brewed to the same recipe only differing in the hops. The starting point for both recipes was the brewery's standard 5% ABV pale ale Howling Gale, so they have retained an anemological name for the new ones, though intensified to signify the higher 7% ABV. The northern hemisphere hops Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic went into Hurricane, while antipodean Motueka, Pacifica and Ella feature in Cyclone. I set them up blind to try them side-by-side.

The first thing that struck me in these supposed grist twins is that they're different colours from each other. What's going on there? The second is that for pretty strong brews they're both a little on the thin side. This does make for easy drinking, but it also leaves the hop flavours in both rather muted: I expected a much bigger punch on the first sip. The golden one to begin and it starts with a very floral perfumey nose, but turns sharply bitter on tasting, though not unpleasantly so. There's a lot of pithy zest here: orange rind and dried lemon. It was the one where I felt the understated flavour most acutely and I would have liked to savour it a bit longer than sharing a small bottle allowed.

Turning to the amber one, the hops were much more eager to please here, sending out keen aromas of mandarin peel and herbal dank. There's a little more to the mouthfeel here too: it's rounder and smoother and the flavour flashes a beautiful grapefruit and nectarine juiciness, but suddenly dies off leaving next to nothing in the finish. It tastes better than the first one, but not for long enough to make it a better beer. My vote went to the paler offering, which turned out to be the southern hemisphere Cyclone. A fun experiment, and two beers I'm really looking forward to trying in draught form.

And outside of 8 Degrees? Yes, there's plenty happening. The Porterhouse have bottled their stonking American style barley wine Louder and I suspect it'll be a great one to leave for a couple of years to age. Galway Bay have installed their new bottling machine and so far I've brought home their Full Sail pale ale -- my go-to when I'm in their tied pubs. It's quite a raw beer: cloudy and unrefined with lots of big citrus hops right in the middle of the flavour. A good return on one's hepatic investment too: all this hop power comes at a very reasonable 4.8% ABV. And Dungarvan's Comeragh Challenger bitter has re-emerged for another late summer run. It was showing a bit murky when I tried it on cask in the Bull & Castle. Does it ever drop bright?


We also have a new one from Metalman -- a rare full-brand beer rather than another Chameleon edition. It's a style-defying 6% ABV amber lager using (why not?) Sorachi Ace hops, called Sahara. On the strength and hop choice I really was expecting a clone of Kiuchi's Nipponia, but it's not that at all. It's a paleish red-gold and overwhelmingly dry (hence the name, I've only just realised): tannic and bitter like an old fashioned nut-brown bitter served in a dimpled glass by Bet Lynch. The signature lemon notes from the Sorachi Ace slowly unfold as the beer warms, and on that dry, almost astringent, base it acts as a grime-and-lime scrub for the palate. But even this bitterness gives way in the finish to those all-conquering tannins. It's an intriguing beer and one I'd be very willing to explore further if it were a more sessionable strength.

And with those cheery beery notes made it's head down for the big push and off to the RDS. I'm volunteering / getting in the way for all four days so give me a wave if you see me.

Seppuku

A couple of months back, I caught up with Dave for a pint or two in town and suggested Yamamori Izakaya as a venue. I've written about this pub a couple of times in the past and I'm a big fan: there's a combination of quirkiness, cosiness, excellent food and unusual beers from Kiuchi, imported directly by the owners.

I arrived first and, as always, ordered a pint of Nipponia. I'm rather fond of this strong, loud-and-proud single hop Sorachi Ace pale ale. The barman had it half poured when one of his colleagues pointed out "We don't do Nipponia by the pint any more; that'll be the last one". Oh. Well, after handing over my €6 I was determined to enjoy it. And I did. When Dave arrived he got his Nipponia in one of the dinky handled glasses they use for the Kiuchi bottles. They're a decent sized measure, I'd guess about 400ml, but a) we're not supposed to be guessing: there's a legal obligation to say what the measure is, and b) it was €5 a glass, so a bit of a jump in price, taken pro-rata. Poor form, and it left a bitter taste that had nothing to do with the sackloads of Sorachi Ace.

A barman came to the table later to take another round. As well as making scary noises about how difficult it was to get hold of any Nipponia at all, he was quite keen we try their new draught tap, Kirin. I was reluctant, but Dave insisted and he's bigger than me. I didn't check but I assume this is Kirin Ichiban, a beer I'm sure I've had before but don't have any notes on. It's horrendous: thin, gassy as hell, and with a nasty banana off-flavour erasing the cleanness that makes even boring Asian lager worthwhile.

There's still an O'Hara's IPA tap in the Izakaya, but this visit left my enthusiasm for the place severely sapped. For quirky and Asian there's always Indie Dhaba instead.

Flipping the birds

I made a special return visit to the Yamamori Izakaya when I heard they'd got the Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale in. It's brewed using a mold-dyed rice known as "red rice koji" and the Kiuchi Brewery claims on the label that this turns it pink, but it didn't look that way to me: more of a hazy orange, I thought. There's an interesting sort of strawberry flavour to it, the sort you find in the better class of Irish red ales. The texture is smooth and wheaty and it's all very jolly up to a point. It finishes abruptly, however, with no proper aftertaste: an unforgiveable sin in a beer of 7% ABV.

I had heard disparaging comments about it from various sources but having tasted it now I can't agree with them. It's just not really as interesting as the vital statistics ought to make it.

The way the beers are listed on the Izakaya blackboard leaves it unclear whether the Pale Ale is a separate beer or just a description of one of the others. Turns out it is a beer in its own right: 5.5% ABV and dark gold in colour with a large fluffy head. No half measures here: it starts out with a blast of bitter and pithy orange, overlaid with an intense waxyiness I associate most with English bittering hops in large quantity. And then in the middle there's a surprising acrid funk, almost lambic-like in its vinegary sharpness and a long way from the flavours best associated with pale ale. It's not that I didn't enjoy it -- it's definitely a beer that makes you take notice -- but it was just one of those that's a bit too confusing to really impress.

Kiuchi's Japanese Classic remains my go-to in this line-up, with an honorable mention for the Nipponia.

Hitori

I feel it's one of the world's great injustices that being "not a morning person" is socially acceptable while exhibiting the same sort of misanthropy at hours later than 10pm is frowned upon. Well to hell with that: I'm proud of being a morning person, I'm happy in the pub before noon and if I decide in the evening that it's too loud and crowded to be enjoyable then I'm out of there. You can stay and enjoy the "atmosphere", a term which as far as I can tell means "nowhere to sit and you can't hear what anyone is saying". Grrr.

All of which means I'm no stranger to drinking alone. The afternoon pint is my favourite one and while you're very welcome to join me, I won't be waiting around for you to be ready. I may even have moved on by the time you arrive. The joy of solitary drinking is this month's topic on The Session, hosted by Nate of Booze, Beats & Bites.

I had a spare hour in Dublin city centre recently and used it to check out a relatively new bar, Yamamori Izakaya below the Oriental Café on South Great George's Street. It was early evening and I had the place to myself, taking a stool at the bar because I always feel a bit guilty occupying a table if I'm on my own. What brought me in was a tip-off (thanks again Richard!) that they had a Hitachino Nest beer on draught in addition to the three bottled ones stocked across the Yamamori chain and reviewed back here. And there it was, two taps over from the O'Hara's IPA: Nipponia.

I was presented with an innocent-looking golden coloured pint. Casting my nose over the surface I received just a hint of sourness, reminding me that getting the first pint from the tap is one of the hazards of early-day drinking. Nothing hint-like about the flavour, however. There's an intense foghorn blast of orange-peel hops which I am reliably informed is Sorachi Ace in full voice. It lingers oleaginous on the lips and soft palate as this is a heavy beer much more suited to accompanying food than session pinting. (Research afterwards suggests it's 6.5% ABV; research at the time revealed it goes great with a teriyaki burger and side dish of noodles.)

By the half way point I was accustomed to the bitterness and the hops became more nuanced, with notes of mandarin and lychee thrown in. I rushed things a little at the end as I found it was getting heavier and stickier as it warmed. Overall a very interesting beer in a bar that brings something delightfully different to the Dublin pub scene.

Next time I might just bring a friend.