Start as you mean to go on

Dry January? The chance would be a fine thing. Dublin's pubs have had plenty of new Irish stuff on the go for this supposedly quiet month. Here's what I managed to get hold of.

I paid my first and second visits to Idlewild during the month, a pleasant little bar tucked into George's Market on the Fade Street side. The first time was because they'd just released their first collaboration recipe beer. Strawberry Milkshake IPA was brewed at Rascals in an extremely small pilot batch which sold out entirely on the evening of its release. I'm told it will be back on a more permanent basis in due course. It's 6.3% ABV and takes its name from the use of real strawberries and lactose, alongside oatmeal and Hüll Melon hops. The aroma was worryingly sickly but there's none of this in its flavour as it delivers instead a big hit of tropical fruit: a cocktail of mango, passionfruit and pineapple juices. No strawberry, mind, though the "milkshake" bit is present in the slightly glutinous texture which I think actually enhanced the hop impact. Expecting pure gimmickry, I was pleased to find just a really good fruit beer.

That wasn't the first beer to feature Rascals and Idlewild's signatures; the brewery has been making the bar's house beer since it first opened. A Swingin' Affair is a light pale ale of just 4.1% ABV. Manager Dean told me the intention was for something easy-going and fruity but to my palate this is very dry and savoury, in that way that seems to be so fashionable at the moment. The Hüll Melon is allied with Mosaic hops here and I got crisp onion skin in particular from it, with just a little bit of fruitiness peeping out as it warms. It's refreshing and it is easy-going, but I found that flavour just a little too severe.

What brought me back to Idlewild was the launch of a new pilsner from The White Hag. Róc is intended to replace the brewery's Kölsch-a-like in the permanent line-up, and is a medium-strength 4.5% ABV. Despite this it has quite a substantial body, light in carbonation and a full mouthfeel more typical of helles or even märzen. The bitterness is sharp and green in the north German way, though I found it lacking the fresh punch you find in the likes of Jever. There's a slightly off-putting rubbery note in it as well. It's a decent effort, and the brewery clearly knows that beers of this sort are supposed to have character, which this does. I'm not ready to place it in the pantheon of great Irish lagers yet, however.

While I was in the neighbourhood, I nipped around the corner to Bar Rua where they had YellowBelly's Smoke & Oak on tap, a 5.5% ABV stout with cocoa nibs aged on scotch whisky cask chips. It's pure black in colour with a sappy rubber foretaste and an ashen dryness after. Given a few minutes to warm up, there's a nice and meaty texture, but the flavour just doesn't work for me: it tastes burnt rather than smoked and there's none of the softness I'd have expected from whisky and/or chocolate.

Another German-style lager next, Careen, brewed by Galway Bay as a replacement for their Dortmunder. This one is 4.8% ABV, the purest clear gold, with a pleasantly soft texture. The first sip presents a large perfumed bitterness on the palate, one that takes a bit of getting used to and which hangs around for ages. I like when flavourful lagers party in the mouth quickly and then clear out of the way, cleaning up after themselves. This one is a bit more unruly, and leaves you to deal with that intensely floral aftertaste yourself, grumbling over your resin-coated tongue. Careen is a bold beer, and might even change a few minds about how aggressive this style can be, but for me it's just a bit too busy for enjoyable quaffing.

Recent guest beers at Galway Bay's The Black Sheep have included White Gypsy's The Banker, described as a "rye wheat beer" which I figured would be an interesting combination. It's the ochre colour of many a rye beer but that's where I felt the grain's contribution ended. On tasting it reveals itself to be an absolutely straight-up Bavarian style weissbier. And a good one at that: softly full-bodied despite an ABV of just 5%, and with a gorgeous juicy-fruit bubblegum flavour, one that's lively without being over-sweet. There is a certain peppery spice as well, and that could be the rye, but it could just as easily be a flavour produced by the yeast also. I'm not sure what the point of this experiment was, but I did enjoy the beer, reminding me as it did that weissbier is a much overlooked style and can be very tasty when done well.

Meanwhile another rye beer was pouring on the cask engines: O Brother's Holden, badged as a Belgian-style rye pale ale at 6.3% ABV. It's a murky orange colour but has a fresh and clean mandarin zest aroma. There's a big and sharp rye bitterness at the front, followed by juicy jaffa hops in behind. There's enough time for a full toffee warmth to enter the picture as well, before the bitterness returns, bringing it to a hard, almost acrid finish. It's quite a ride. A few sips in I noticed there's a certain tannic quality too. Coupled with the orangey hops this lends it an English bitter feel which I rather enjoyed. In fact, it tastes far more like a bitter or barley wine than anything Belgian. I liked it a lot, mainly for its complexity. The trademark O Brother bitterness is there, but it's balanced and enhanced by lots of other things.

I had never been to Murphy's in Rathmines before, but made a point of stopping by when it became the first Dublin pub to have O'Hara's Hop Adventure Styrian Wolf on tap, the latest in Carlow Brewing's series of 5% ABV single-hop IPAs. A previous version included Sorachi Ace, and I found this to have a lot in common with it. Coconut is the main feature of the flavour, though rather than Sorachi's lemons, there's a softer fruit accompaniment, something like lychee. I see one description of the hop which mentions an elderflower characteristic, and I can understand why. Amongst all the fruit and flowers there is a serious bitterness here too, but it's restrained enough to let the other flavours out to play. Much like Sorachi Ace, I expect this beer will divide opinion but I'm definitely a fan of its up-front boldness.

Finishing up with a couple of trips to 57 The Headline, Trouble Brewing's latest is a "fresh & juicy" pale ale called Ambush. It seems to be pitching a little at the New England segment of the market, with its cloudy yellow stylings. At least some of that must be hop haze because there's a full-on smack of pineapples and weed in the aroma, while the flavour has not a trace of yeast bite. There's a slight savoury greasiness, but no allium or caraway, I'm happy to report. Instead, the first flavour is a spicy peppery resin thing, pure dank, after which comes softer mandarin, pineapple and lemon candy. Fresh, yes, and a little bit juicy, but it's mostly about that weedy, spicy bitterness. Beautiful stuff, and at 5.01% ABV, very sessionable.

Finally, another fast-moving Rascals special. Vacuum Boogie IPA is an award-winning homebrew recipe, scaled up and sent out into the world, starting at The Headline. The Capital Brewers homebrew club had descended en masse to clear the first couple of kegs and I was fortunate to secure one of the final pints. It's another murky one, and once again dankness is the signature move. There's less of a tropical character than in Ambush, instead having a more bitter and spicy grapefruit skin thing going on. A teeny bit of onion starts to develop as it warms, but nothing significant, and not enough to upset the basic delicious spicy premise. There are about 18 kegs of this floating around, I believe. Grab it while it's fresh.

Not a bad start to 2017, all-in-all.

While I was away

In between my excursions to Lithuania and the Netherlands which have been occupying this blog of late (and the one to Belgium on the way) the Irish beer scene has been chugging along as usual. I've long since given up trying to get hold of every new Irish beer, but I have managed to get my hands on...

Rascal's Rugby World Cup special was a pale ale called Holy Schmidt. At 4.5% ABV it's clearly designed to accompany big-screen sports though it's not lacking in substance: the inclusion of oatmeal in the grist lends it a nice weight and a certain pleasant stickiness. Pleasant because of the lovely fresh candied orange imparted by the El Dorado hops, alongside the earthy bitterness of Cascade. Classic flavours and a very enjoyable, sessionable pint.

In other pale ale news, the second beer in Carlow Brewing's single hop IPA series, O'Hara's Hop Adventure Galaxy, arrived last month and a couple of samples were kindly sent over by the PR squad. They've stuck to the 5% ABV spec, brewed pale to get the maximum impact from the hop. It bears a striking resemblance to the Irish Pale Ale from the core range: a similar lemon biscuit aroma and a crisp dry flavour, with maybe a little juicier passionfruit where the other has grapefruit but this is still plenty bitter, a refreshing acidic bite that lingers long. I can't help feeling that a bit more balancing malt would have enhanced the juice-giving properties of Galaxy, and this certainly isn't the hop showcase that the Sorachi Ace one was, but then Sorachi Ace is a very showcaseable hop. Still, a decent beer but if you can't find it, an O'Hara's Pale Ale will do just as nicely.

Galway Bay's sour beer project produced two new ones in recent months. The first is Godspeed, 5% ABV and with added peach and mango. Like its predecessor Maybe Next Monday, there's an unsettling fruit yoghurt aroma but the fruit almost disappears in the flavour. Instead, the foretaste is all about the funk: a gritty spiciness that almost resembles the saltpetre effect found in proper geueze, with  a pinch of added pepper. The tropical fruit floods in after this but doesn't really add anything useful to the overall flavour and then it finishes on a really quite nasty oxidised cardboard twang. It's a cut above Maybe Next Monday in terms of complexity, but it's not a beer I'd choose to drink again. I think I'm pretty much done with these sorts of fruited sour beers.

Then with much fanfare the next Galway Bay sour beer arrived in bottles. The Eternalist was created under the direction of Enda Cleary who was a home brewer when the beer was brewed but has since gone on to found Wild Bat Brewery. 24 months in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, brettanomyces, lactobacillus, pediococcus and raspberries are all part of the vital statistics here and the end result is 5.5% ABV. While I was expecting something pink it's more of a murky orange-brown. The aroma is the first indication that this supergroup is being fronted by the fruit and the brett: tart and funky. The body is thin and fizzy and the raspberries jump in first but there's not a whole lot behind them. There's a kind of savoury rye bread flavour which I think is masking the sourness, a dirty yeast effect which I'm used to interfering with hoppy beer but it's the first time I've met a sour beer that could do with cleaning up. It has a lot going for it, but like the other sour Galway Bay beers it's merely a point in the journey towards making these styles as good as the Belgians do. I'm not at all convinced that the complicated biochemistry involved here, with its attendant price tag, was worth the effort. If you have an unopened one, I suggest leaving it to settle for a winter or two.

Last but by no means least, the second release from young James Brown, a follow-up to his award-winning Chocolate Orange Stout, and brewed once again at Brú. This time it's American-style IPA that gets the fruit treatment and, by his account, Rhubarb Tart IPA has a lot of fresh rhubarb added to it. By way of beery balance it's a big 7% ABV and hopped with Cascade and Chinook. It's a dark orange colour with maybe a slight pinkish cast and the aroma is all about the hops: classic American grapefruit. The texture is very light for such a strong beer and there's a lot of fizz to begin, though it actually becomes quite smooth when that fades. The hops dominate the flavour too, at least when the beer is cold. As it warms, however, the rhubarb acidity builds, adding a gentle refreshing green sharpness to the finish as well as a slight metallic aspirin tang. The fruit and hops work surprisingly well together with neither dominating the other. At its heart it remains a US-style IPA, but with just that slight twist making it more interesting than most. I've certainly never encountered anything like it before.

That's all for the moment, but I can already feel the next backlog starting to build.

Beers without borders

You have to admire the international outlook of Carlow Brewing. Following on from a Japanese-themed Sorachi Ace IPA earlier this summer, two new beers produced in collaboration with brewers from abroad invited to the international crossroads that is Bagenalstown.

I met both beers at an event in 57 The Headline, to celebrate the visit of Virginia's Starr Hill brewery, but before those proceedings commenced I had a pint of Lublin to Dublin Milk Stout, the second in a series with Poland's Browar Pinta. Anyone expecting a janglingly sweet milk stout is in for a surprise. At 6% ABV this is serious business, and while the lactose sugar is certainly present, it combines with the dark malt to create a sumptuously smooth milk chocolate effect yet still maintaining a roast bite on the end. It pulls a surprise special move with the hop additions, bringing at first a floral Turkish-delight element which then builds into a proper hoppy juiciness as it goes down. This is all stout, but I really liked how it touches on a few amber ale buttons too.

At the main event, Wayne "Irish Beer Snob" Dunne hosted a panel discussion between Seamus and Conor from Carlow and Brian and Robbie of Starr Hill, comparing notes on their respective breweries and beer scenes. The visitors had brought a couple of examples of their work to taste, so I got to try Little Red Roostarr, Starr Hill's "coffee cream stout". The coffee isn't mucking about in the aroma here: a massive waft of fresh-brewed hits the nostrils straight away. Underneath, it's a very sweet and creamy beer. There's a proper roasted-grain edge to it but overall I found it just a little too sweet to be enjoyable.

And also floating around there was Starr Hill Reviver, which is a red IPA with a huge grapefruit aroma. The flavour is more malt-driven, with a sweet and almost meaty caramelised crystal malt character, but plenty of citric bitterness as well. Brewer Robbie says that when he brews established beer styles he does it by the book, but I don't know if red IPA is in the book yet. Something a bit like American amber ale, only a little bitterer is possibly how it would be described, and this certainly meets that specification.

The guys also brought along a pitcher of their collaboration brew, then just a couple of days in the fermenter but already showing promise.

A little over a week later the beer was finished, and Carlow Brewing's PR folk kindly sent me a couple of bottles. Foreign Affair is also badged as a red IPA and is a modest 4.8% ABV. It's a perfect clear shade of copper, topped by a loose-bubbled head from what proved to be pleasantly low carbonation. The aroma doesn't exactly leap out, but there's good stuff present: peaches, shading to grapefruit, and just touching on heavier piney dank, all done using the Falconer's Flight hop blend. These are joined by a generous dose of coffee in the flavour, but that's really all the malt does: there's none of the toffee or marzipan one often finds in American-style amber ale and the texture is light. I like it. That dry and citric hop bitterness is complemented nicely by the dry coffee roast, and while it's assertively bitter it remains quite easy and refreshing drinking. One to enjoy young, I'd say: the 14-month best-before date printed on the neck is perhaps ill-advised.

Conor and the guys at Carlow Brewing certainly seem to be on top of their game at the moment. How generous of them to share their acumen with others.

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.