Lidl goes shopping

Lidl unleashed a plethora of independent Irish beer in an autumn windfall of generosity last month. I picked up the ones I hadn't tried before, of course, including relative newcomer 59 South Pale Ale. It's brewed in Dublin at Select Batch but claims a pretend brewery at the foot of Mount Leinster in Co. Carlow on the label. It's a middling copper colour and a middling 4.8% ABV. A solid west coast bitterness opens the flavour: sharp pine and grapefruit; not exactly fresh and zingy but with plenty of punch. The aroma combines this with balancing toffee, but that dark malt doesn't get a look-in in the flavour, which is (pleasingly) all hop. The initial pine fades to wax then tails off, leaving a dank residue. Maybe it's the Carlow connection, but I'm reminded a lot of O'Hara's IPA here: it has the same sort of combination of heavy body and uncompromising acidity. I liked this solid pale ale much more than I thought I would and am all ears for the next 59 South release.

12 Acres had two new ones in the line-up. I began with Shepherd's Warning, a red-labelled (oh I get it now) IPA of 5% ABV. And there's a distinctly reddish tint to the beer too. The aroma is a wholesome mix of lemon and tannin like, well, lemon tea. I have a lot of time for a beer that smells refreshing. The flavour is blander, and sliding much more into red ale territory than IPA. I got a jammy kick of strawberry and some harsher green cabbage notes. After this it finishes quickly, abruptly so for a beer of its strength, leaving an odd wisp of caramel smoke in its wake. While perfectly drinkable it lacks character and is certainly putting on airs by calling itself an IPA. More hops please.

The other was Lazy Meadow, a lager I opened a few days later. It's a dark gold colour with a fun lemon spritz aroma. Lemon tea is again a feature, this time in the flavour, leaving it nicely thirst-quenching if a little flat. Though a mere 4% ABV, it has quite a big and chewy texture, and could easily pass as a pale ale more than a lager, which is a bit of a shame. It is clean and lacking in flaws, however, which can't be said of every budget Irish supermarket lager. I didn't take too long over it, and I don't think it's designed to be savoured anyway, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it.

It was great to see a nordie brewery represented at Lidl too. There were three releases from Hillstown, and my first to try was Douglas Top, another lager. Though only 4.1% ABV it's a rich dark golden hue and the aroma gets full marks: a classic pilsner mix of crisp green veg and soft sweet biscuit. Both of these elements get turned to an extreme in the flavour, in a way that wasn't to my taste. The hops are tinny and tangy; the malt musty and stale-tasting. I've certainly had real German lager that has tasted like this so I think the fault is entirely mine here, though the beer is a little flatter than it should be, technically speaking. Otherwise it's a cautious thumbs up, unless you have the same weird aversion to intensely German lagers that I do.

Long Mountain was an altogether smoother affair, being a wheat beer in a broadly weissbier style, though with a dab of witbier lemon in it too. The low carbonation works better here, giving it a full and silky texture for ease of drinking. In place of banana there's a gentler lychee fruit sweetness, and a piquancy that may be the yeast, or is possibly down to the surprise inclusion of rye, according to the label. The more subtle fruit and spice does fight a little with a level of alcoholic warmth which suggests more than the 5.3% ABV, so this isn't one of your light and refreshing weissbiers. It's not one for hammering through anyway.

The trilogy is completed by Mid Hill, an IPA, though a modest one at 4.5% ABV. It looked unattractive while pouring, as flat and pale as a half-litre of white wine. It is a little bit darker in the glass, with a skim of white foam which doesn't last long. The aroma offers fun mandarin and candy, followed by a harder metallic edge. Oddly, my first flavour impression is of chocolate, coupled with oily oranges, like a Terry's confection, or the orange creme sweets that tend to be the last ones left in the tin. And then there's that bitterness: a harsh buzz of green cabbage and zinc, rising late and forming a long and insistent finish. Coupled with further thinness and flatness, the flavour did not endear me to this beer. It's nearly a decent, vaguely American-style, pale ale, but it misses the mark on texture and fresh hop taste.

No stand-out bargains here, but a couple of decent and unfussy efforts. It seems kind of strange that Lidl's core beer range is of generally better quality than this handful of specials, though that's not a complaint.

Not here just to take part

It's interesting to watch the milestones going past on the journey towards Irish craft beer becoming mainstream. A fairly major one went largely unnoticed last year and it was a happy surprise when I discovered that the country's largest independent microbrewery, Carlow Brewing, had joined the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland. ABFI is, after all, the Big Boys' club, representing the handful of major players that produces most of Ireland's beer: Diageo, Heineken and Molson Coors among them. It means something when Carlow, which brewed 25,000 hL of beer last year, is part of that. So it was an even bigger shock to learn last week that ABFI's new chairman is Carlow's founder and MD Seamus O'Hara. It's like David, rather than slaying Goliath, became his boss instead.

I suspect this is just the beginning of the further diversification of what I'm going to continue to call Irish craft beer. Carlow Brewing started small, paying its dues playing the small clubs, as Seamus likes to say. But now we have the likes of Rye River and Boyne Brewhouse, setting out to be big-for-craft on day one, and there are other growers like The Porterhouse and Eight Degrees clearly heading in that direction. It's not a zero-sum game, of course. I firmly believe there's room for breweries of every size in the market, so long as they play nice and don't start pulling the same dick moves that earned the establishment their reputations as domineering bullies and the enemies of consumer choice. From the outside at least, I don't see any signs of that happening.

The Carlow Brewing Company turns 20 years old in 2016 and a series of special beers are planned to commemorate this. The first arrived last week at a launch event in The Bleeding Horse on Dublin's Camden Street. Notorious is a dark red IPA, brewed with a classic US mix of Columbus, Chinook and Centennial. I was a little disturbed by it at first: an intensely sharp and waxy bitterness is how it introduces itself -- harsh and blustery. After this it opens out to a fabric-softener floral character which reminded me a lot of the regular O'Hara's Irish Pale Ale, though it's definitely denser and more intense. The redness manifests as a roastedness that puts even more of an edge on the whole thing. This is a big, loud, mean beer that doesn't pull its punches. Or its roundhouse kicks.

I was half way through my second free pint before I decided I liked it. It takes a while to adjust and, for all its powerful flavour, it's not a beer for sipping. The ABV is a mere 5% and taking it in generous mouthfuls puts more of the fresh floral and citrus notes on the palate, and less of the acidic bitterness. It's definitely not one of your kiddywink tropical juicebox IPAs. This is serious stuff for grown-ups only.

Expect to see more Carlow specials over the coming months. There's an imperial stout on the way in a few weeks, with weissbier and unfiltered lager to follow. It's nice to have a few drinks when it's your birthday, after 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.

The week that's in it

We had a couple of goings-on of beery significance in Dublin last week. Thursday saw 57 The Headline host the local launch of St. Mel's Brewing. St. Mel's in Longford Town may be a very new operation but it's helmed by Liam Hanlon, previously the head brewer at Carlow and the creator of the beers that went on to become O'Hara's IPA and Leann Folláin. He's operating on a 15hL Irish-built brewkit now, producing three bottle-conditioned beers to begin with.

Funny thing, bottle conditioning. Staff at The Headline were handing out the half-litre bottles with a 33cl glass -- perfectly normal practice in the Irish pub, but not ideal when you have beers that work best in a single careful pour. The samples at the event were in small tasters and after the first round I thought somebody might have to take the brewmaster aside for a talk about quality control. It seems just to have been an unlucky pour of concentrated dregs, however. Another taster later on was much better, and enough to convince me to trade up to drinking entire bottles. So what's in the range?

Interestingly, St. Mel's have opted for a Brown Ale over a red or stout, possibly the only one in permanent production in the country. It's a substantial 5.2% ABV though the texture is light and the taste crisp, prickled by quite a busy fizz. The centre is all chocolate, of the dry cocoa-powder variety. It's also dry-hopped, which lends it not so much a fruitiness as a green vegetal bitterness which lasts long into the finish. St. Mel's Brown one of those quite serious, solid beers, but very enjoyable for all that.

St. Mel's Pale Ale is a little lighter at 4.8% ABV and pours a clear shade of deep orange-gold. Cascade hops are doing the heavy lifting here, imparting a gentle flavour of ripe juicy peaches and some light herbal grassy spicing. Its best feature is the texture: a pillowy softness with a sherbet effervescence which leaves it exceedingly drinkable. Overall a well put-together and accessible pale ale.

Finally for the first round of releases there's St. Mel's Helles Lager. Not exactly Munich-grade, but there's a wholesome grainy flavour and some pleasant fruit ester sweetness. Plenty for lager drinkers to enjoy here.

Liam says that distribution of draught beer is likely to remain mostly local once that's up and running, but bottles should hopefully be easy enough to get hold of all around the country.

Also on Thursday, The Porterhouse kicked off a ten-day festival of pale ales across the chain. The line-up includes much to like from British and American luminaries Thornbridge, Camden, Founders, Sierra Nevada, and the promised first appearance of Magic Rock beer in this country. The centrepiece, however, is a new permanent addition to the Porterhouse range: Dublin Pale Ale, essentially a re-working of last year's Pale Face special edition brew. (I'm probably the only one sad enough to note that the name "Dublin Pale" has been used previously, being the cask bitter produced briefly by Messrs Maguire in the late '90s). Dublin Pale is on keg, at least for now, and is 4.2% ABV, hopped with Admiral and Styrian Goldings. The flavour is unsurprisingly very English: big thirst-quenching tannins at the front and a coppery tang in the finish. The crisp bitterness reminds me a lot of its cask sibling TSB. For those occasions when TSB is absent and Hop Head would be just a hop too far, this is a welcome addition.

Among the early guest beers in Porterhouse Temple Bar was the new black IPA from Eight Degrees. It's named after the single variety of Australian hop it uses, Vic Secret, and is 6% ABV. It arrived a dense black colour, showing hints of red at the edges, and density is a theme. It's very thick and extremely tarry, with lots of bitter roast coating the palate. Set against this is a gaudy galah of bright tropical flavours, starting with mango and pineapple in the aroma, bursting out into bitter grapefruit and concentrated peach nectar on tasting. It's an incredible experience and it's hard to believe that all that colour comes from just one hop variety. The finish is long and bitter, and I honestly couldn't say if that's a result of the big hops or the roasted grains, or both. Either way, it's another hoppy winner from the Mitchelstown brewery.

And there's yet more new Irish beer to come later in the week.

The wild geese

As the Irish beer market continues to grow, it's inevitable that contract brewing forms a big part of it. Of the Irish breweries who facilitate other brands, Eight Degrees in Co. Cork and Hilden in Co. Antrim are probably the most prolific. A few brands have opted to look outside Ireland altogether, either for reasons of cost and convenience or to avail of the expertise abroad. I'm looking at two of those today.

Brown Paper Bag Project have been going a couple of years now and Trinity is their fourth beer, and the third to be brewed in Belgium. The 75cl bottle badges it a tripel, and it's appropriately strong and golden, though rather brighter and clearer than most tripels I've met, with lower carbonation: all points in its favour. The aroma is more about fresh tropical fruits than yeasty spices and it tastes distinctly of pineapple juice. There's almost none of the complex earthy murk one often finds in tripels, nor the alcoholic heat, nor the golden syrup sweetness. Only a hint of cereals, hop bitterness and a very light spiciness in the finish hints at the style. As a frivolous, fun, cartoon version of a tripel I loved it. It's the sort of thing that would set Brouwer Van Klomp's teeth on edge, however.

One of the newest brands around is Stone Barrel, based in Dublin though the first batch of the first beer was brewed in the UK. It's called Boom and is badged as a "session IPA". It's not just the modest 5% ABV which backs up this designation: the carbonation is low, adding to the drinkability, and the flavours are a little muted too. The brewers were somewhat disappointed in how it came out, wanting more late-hop impact from the Simcoe, but it's perfectly decent as-is: there's a kind of herbal green flavour in the middle, backed by light biscuit malt. On the Irish hoppy beer scale it falls somewhere north of Galway Hooker but beneath O'Hara's IPA. It's a good first effort and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with next. Anything that gets more hops onto the Irish beer market is all right by me.

Duck à l'ananas

Dropping in to L. Mulligan Grocer one sunny Friday recently I noticed that they had a damn near perfect selection of summer's evening cask beers. On the handpumps were O'Hara's IPA and Dungarvan Helvick Gold, the latter being the perfect accompaniment to beer garden relaxation. It's very rare that I pass it up, but down the bar squatted the new gravity cask which was serving Gold by Dancing Duck, a Derbyshire brewery which regularly features at LMG's sister pub W.J. Kavanagh's. I decided I'd chance a pint.

It arrived rather darker than expected, more orange-amber than proper gold. There was a mere speckle of white on the surface in lieu of a head, but it definitely wasn't flat, providing more of an insistent prickle of fizz than is normal for cask, so no complaints here. The aroma is that of an old fashioned sweetshop, with alluring but indistinct sticky candy delights. On tasting, this becomes a massive hit of pineapple: fresh, wet, sweet and juicy. Other flavours don't get a look-in until the finish when it turns nicely tart, with a bit of rhubarb acidity lending it a pleasant mouth-watering send-off.

Oddly, nobody I was with thought it was any good, and even proprietrix Seaneen wasn't sure if it was fit to be served. I wouldn't say I'm the fussiest drinker in the world, but I fail to see how anything could have been wrong with this just the way it was. Gustibus non disputandum and all that. Me, I was looking out for it again on the next sunny day to roll round.

When it did, I found myself in W.J. Kavanagh's, inspecting the handpumps. No Gold, but there was Dancing Duck Ay Up instead, and it was no hardship. 3.9% ABV, a very pure pale golden colour and with the mild waxy bitterness softened by ripe jaffa orange that are the hallmark flavours of English hops doing what they do best. Summer sessionability defined.

Seems like it's weather for ducks whenever the sun shines.

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.

Coming on strong

The Irish Craft Beer Village is still going on at Dublin's IFSC. I was down a few evenings late last week, mainly to see what's new and interesting in the line-up. It's probably not the best environment to get to grips with an unfamiliar beer, what with the persistent chilliness of the liquid, not helped at all by the flimsy plastic receptacles. But howanever: the headliners were two strong beers, both ideal for counteracting the mid-March chill.

First up, Kindred Spirit, a 7% ABV whiskey-aged stout by Eight Degrees. Yes, I know, another whiskey-aged beer. I'm always a bit apprehensive approaching these as it seems to be a very easy style to make a mess of. The lads in Mitchelstown have done a great job, however, combining the best elements of whiskey and stout without any of the unpleasant side effects.

So you get a layer of rich milk chocolate to begin with and this is complemented by a subtle honey flavour, a taste which is the main reason I enjoy Irish whiskey but is so rarely present in beers that are whiskey-aged. There's some lovely vanilla oak as well, but again: just enough to add an extra dimension to the taste. The strength is well hidden with no hot alcohol flavours coming out. All-in-all a welcome addition to the range of stouts produced by Irish brewers.

While stouts may be ten a penny (plus excise and VAT) round these parts, double IPAs are somewhat rarer. The hophead lobby at Beoir has been getting quite vocal on the subject, so Carlow Brewing have stepped in to try and shut them up with O'Hara's Double IPA. For this type of beer, 7.5% ABV seems rather modest and the style Blueshirts at the festival had some forthright opinions on how justified the D-word is here. But none of that bothers me: if Carlow want to call it a Double IPA then that's what it is.

Of much greater importance than the badge is the beer itself. It presents as an enticing dark amber, not at all surprisingly, given the full body and smooth texture. I didn't get much of an aroma from it, less perfume than the brewery's 5.2% ABV pale ale. I don't know if this has been dry-hopped like the pale ale but I wouldn't be surprised if it hadn't. The real action kicks in on tasting. While not extremely bitter and citric like many a DIPA from the US, it makes up for any lack of unsubtle wallop with complexity. There's a sizable amount of orange pith in the mix, as well as some lighter peach and satsuma. The malt element lends a toffee base which harmonises beautifully with the hop fruit and makes for a smooth, dangerously drinkable experience. I don't give out "This Tastes Like Odell IPA" plaudits lightly, but this tastes like Odell IPA.

Before we leave, just a quick note about Bo Bristle IPA. This was launched at the Irish Craft Beer Festival last September and received a fairly unenthusiastic reception. Heavy, brownish and muted it had nothing wrong with it, but was hard to like. It's a reformulated version on sale at the festival now and it's much improved: crisp, golden and with a striking bitter grapefruit punch to it. A beer that's well worth taking another look at, and at 5% ABV a handy one to trade down to after the big-hitters.

The Irish Craft Beer Village is open today from noon and closes at 10pm this evening for another year.

A spanner in the works

Different: that's my main assessment of the new IPA from Trouble Brewing, Sabotage. It's the Kildare-based brewery's third regular beer and they launched it a fortnight ago in Against the Grain, serving both cask and keg versions to the shower of freeloaders who showed up, alongside the respected members of the totally legitimate electronic media. Head brewer Paul is doing the honours on the right there and you can see the results below. At 5.5% ABV it's that little bit stronger than the nearest rival O'Hara's IPA and in a different bracket to the rest of Ireland's hop-forward craft pale ales.

However, where O'Hara's has opted for bold and tart American hops to mask its strength, Sabotage is altogether mellower and fruitier, eschewing citrus for more of a soft peach and mandarin sensation, the summery juiciness I've come to associate with Galaxy hops in particular.

The orange grove aroma is much more apparent in the cask edition (left, foreground), though I think the one we were served on the night suffered a little murkiness having not been left to settle fully. The clear keg version hasn't by any means had all the hops stripped from it, but it's not quite the same 3D experience.

But the oddest most striking thing about Sabotage is the weight: a massively full body laden with unfermented sugars. It unbalances the hops a little but makes for a very filling pint.

I suspect we'll be seeing that balance somewhat restored in the next batch of Sabotage, but that's on the other side of a brewery move. Meanwhile, give this a go if you fancy something out of the ordinary.

The zymurgist as epicure

Usually, when The Session rolls round, I try and twist the theme to whatever I'm currently interested in or am already thinking of blogging about. Hey, it's totally within the rules. But this month's suggested topics for conversation are so interesting by themselves that I'm inclined to take the questions literally and answer them methodically. You'll find them here, on John's announcement post at Home Brew Manual, where the topic is titled "Brewers and Drinkers".

• Do you need to brew to appreciate beer? 

No, obviously. But I think you're missing out on a level of appreciation if you don't. I've certainly learned a lot from devising recipes and tasting the results, and there are things I've perceived in beers which I don't think I'd ever have noticed if I didn't brew.

• Do you enjoy beer more not knowing how it’s made? 

Definitely not. Get a bunch of homebrewers around an odd commercial beer and the topic of conversation inevitably turns to "I wonder how they did that". How it's made is always interesting to find out, and enjoyable to hypothesise. People wouldn't go on brewery tours if things were otherwise. It's not necessary to pick every beer apart forensically, and it's certainly not something that makes a beer more enjoyable per se, but it can be a fun extra alongside the main feature.

•  If you brew, can you still drink a beer just for fun? 

Of course! I'd have quit years ago if this weren't the case. Mind you, I'm not a proper brewer. I'm a dabbler, a messer, and I've no interest in hardcore brewing science in theory or practice. Perhaps the deeper you get into brewing the harder it is to relax into a beer without trying to dissect every element of its flavour, aroma and texture. But I don't really believe those people exist. I've never been drinking with them. I don't think I'd want to.

• Can you brew without being an analytical drinker? 

You can, but you're not going to make very good beer. The whole point of brewing for me is to brew the beer I like to drink, and especially the types that are hard to get. Dry-hopped pale and amber ales in grown-up bottle sizes were pretty much unheard of where I live when I began brewing four years ago, and are still relatively thin on the ground. If I wasn't able to figure out what it was I liked about the genre, trying to recreate the effect would have been a non-starter. But making beers of the sort you like for yourself is just one side of the equation -- I'm often troubled by the way some people seem to be starting commercial breweries without being committed beer obsessives beforehand. It shouldn't be allowed.

• Do brewers get to the point where they’re more impressed by technical achievements than sensory delight? 

I don't think we can pin this exclusively on the brewers, but I think it does happen. "Ohh, it's a lot harder to get good flavour into a 3.5% ABV cask mild than a oak-aged brett-infused stout at double the strength". Yes, that is true, I'll grant you that. But you know, it doesn't make your pint of mild necessarily a better beer than this export stout just because it requires more skill to produce. Sorry, it doesn't. Which leads me on to:

• Does more knowledge increase your awe in front of a truly excellent beer?

Quite the reverse. Once you know which cuff had the ace of hearts tucked into it, it's much harder to be impressed by the act. Yes, you may always appreciate a magician at the height of his skills, but as soon as you can spot a faro shuffle and a false cut, you're experiencing something different from the rest of the audience, and awe is less likely to feature. Beer is mostly just water after all: no brewer will forget this.


I get a lot out of my half-assed brewing efforts. I think I appreciate beer better and I think I'm better at writing about it too. And, as an added bonus, I also get beer, cheaply, twenty litres at a time.

Before I began brewing, I generally had a designated house beer: something that I would stock up on in quantity and could just open and drink whenever I felt like a beer but was unfussy about the sort. Home brewing changed that, and when I'm after a beer that doesn't necessarily need thinking about it'll come from my own stash. Previously, my house beer was usually a cheap and cheerful pale lager, but my taste for hoppy ales -- one of the main drivers behind my taking up home brewing -- changed that, and a light and fruity pale ale is my usual go-to style. If I hadn't become a home brewer I wonder what would have happened to the whole house beer thing. Would I have stuck it out with the lagers (still nothing wrong with a decent, cheap, lager), or would I have traded up to something hoppier by now?

Recently I came across a possible answer in the form of O'Shea's Traditional Irish Pale Ale, brewed by the Carlow Brewing Company exclusively for Aldi. 4.3% ABV and a mere €1.79 a bottle makes it a very likely contender for fire-and-forget refreshment. I do think the word "traditional" in the title is stretching an already-overused beer term well past its breaking point, however.

Anyway, it pours out a clear pale gold and the aroma gives more of a lager malt golden syrup effect only lightly infused with citric bitterness. I confess I was expecting something akin to the hop hit of its big brother O'Hara's IPA but there's none of that: just a breeze of grass 'n' grapefruit across the tongue, backed by a gentle graininess. The end result isn't at all punchy, but is fresh, easy-drinking and well worth the money.

Best of all, with just a short soak in warm water the labels peel off completely cleanly.

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.

Loaded at the docks

Finally, the event space down at George's Dock in Dublin's financial quarter has been given a use worthy of its potential. I've reported before on the so-so Oktoberfest that happens down here, and last weekend Irish beer got a look-in for the first time as the Carlow Brewing Company put together the first St Patrick's Craft Beer Festival.

Most of the independent Irish breweries were represented at the long festival bar, with a mix of regular and seasonal beers. I was along on Thursday, Friday and Sunday with my hit-list, as well as to represent Beoir and talk to punters about Irish brewing history whether they wanted to learn about it or not.

First and foremost we had the welcome return of Porterhouse Chocolate Truffle Stout after a two-year absence. And it's in superb form: bursting at the seams with smooth real chocolate sweetness, tempered by just the right level of dry stoutiness. I'll be having plenty more of this before it runs out, and earnestly hoping we won't have to wait as long for it again.

Knockmealdown Porter

This was also the first I'd seen of Eight Degrees Knockmealdown Porter on draught. With low-to-no nitrogenation it was every bit as good as the bottle. All of the liquorice bitterness, sticky burnt molasses and the tangy hop bite were present and correct, made all the better for coming in a grown-up serving size. (There's now a tap at the spanking new WJ Kavanagh's on Dorset Street: get down there).

Other familiar favourites included the all-too-rare cask editions of O'Hara's Leann Folláin and Curim Gold, plus the dark amber hop epic that is Messrs Maguire American Pale Ale. The latter was badged anonymously as "Seasonal Special", which hopefully kept the riff-raff away from it and ensured it was available all weekend.

MM APA's moment in the sun is fading, I believe, and they also had its replacement lined up: the new version of Messrs Maguire Porter is a decent and quite dry effort, but not terribly exciting. It probably warrants some closer analysis when it eventually shows up in its home pub.

The hosts made much fuss about their new ale, billed as a "dark IPA" and named, following a public competition, "Perfect Storm". This is an experimental blend of Leann Folláin and O'Hara's IPA (how very Mikkeller!) and it's a battle that the stout is winning: a big sweet chocolate hit dominates the taste with only a mild fruitiness backing it up. For the next iteration I'd suggest seriously ramping up the IPA levels in the blend, and then dry-hopping in the cask (but I would say that).

It was great to see Hilden's Twisted Hop making one of its first appearances south of the border -- it was also on at The Black Sheep where I snapped its picture on Friday night. This pale ale started out as a special but has become a regular, the way good specials often do. It's a golden-coloured pale 'n' 'oppy affair, offering a light white pepper piquancy rather than a full-on alpha-acid burn, as well as some gentle peachiness in both the aroma and flavour. Very sessionable, all-in-all, and I hope we'll be seeing more of it.

Warning: may start spraffing
about Manders Brewery

Irish accents seemed a bit thin on the ground when I was at the festival, and I met a fair few serious beer geeks from the US, the UK, Italy and Sweden. Having an event like this to show the diversity of Irish beer to the visitors who have come to Dublin for our National Day is not just nice: it's important. I really hope this becomes a permanent feature despite the seemingly endless red tape the authorities appear to have put in its way.

And the festival calendar rolls on, with little over a fortnight to the Easter festival at the Franciscan Well. If you're planning a visit to Ireland this spring, it'll be worth your while to fit that one in. No-one will even try to talk brewing history to you.

Thorn on my side

Inevitable, really. Only a year ago I passive-aggressively ask the trade where the Thornbridge stuff is, and now there's more of it coming in than I can keep up with. So, this is a clearance of some stuff that's been sitting in my fridge for too long, plus some more recent acquisitions, all from the über-classy Derbyshire brewery.

I didn't get Kölsch until I went to Cologne. From the bottle and keg it had always just tasted like a dry pilsner to me, and a very plain one at that. What's the fuss about? That changed when I got to drink it closer to the source. The smoothness offered by the version served from wooden barrels in the better Cologne pubs adds a vital dimension to the Kölsch experience you just don't get any other way. So I was intrigued and more than a little suspicious when I got hold of Thornbridge's bottled take on the style. Would bottle-conditioning make that all-important difference?

Tzara pours a clear limpid gold. I was careful to avoid any sediment, but really there was very little to be found. The mittelfrüh hops are very apparent in the aroma: the heady fermented grassiness of warm silage. The flavour is sweeter, though, making the most of the carapils malt to balance the green flavours with a bit of residual sweetness. And most importantly of all, the carbonation is light. Not cask-smooth, but far from being pale yellow burp-water. I think they've done a good job here, and are showing the joy of Kölsch much better than, say, bottled Früh does.

Raven, Thornbridge's black IPA, doesn't mess about. From the opaque black-brown body comes a bolt of pithy aroma preparing the way for intense bitterness on tasting. Dominating the proceedings is flinty Nelson Sauvin in its dry, less fruity, incarnation. I get a lot of the harshness I associate with Sorachi Ace in large quantities but none of the fruity peachy fun that I feel the Centennial ought to be supplying.

The wife really enjoyed it, and got a good roasted dark ale flavour from it. I couldn't detect that under the citric punch: it's another one of those black IPAs I would swear is pale when drinking with my eyes closed. There's no doubt Raven is complex and interesting, but I just feel a bit abused by it. Too much of a workout for my weak and feeble palate.

Next up, Versa, the puntastic weissbier. It comes out a lovely, almost red, shade of gold and only slightly hazy given the style. At 5% ABV it's on the weak side, and offers very little other than wateriness on the nose. What it loses in welly, however, it gains in drinkability. No overpowering banana esters or other heavy flavours. Instead it's mildly zesty with an easy-going sherbet effervesence rather than full-on fizz.

I'm sure it's a perfect summer refresher but I've no objection to it in the depths of winter either.

For the proper chilly evening sipper I've reserved a bottle of Bracia, Thornbridge's super-limited strong dark ale brewed from a whole host of malts, including brown and peated; a plethora of hops including Sorachi Ace and Pioneer; and with a bonus addition of Italian chestnut honey. It's a beer to take very seriously indeed.

It pours slowly and unctuously, lazily forming a dark tan head. The aroma is odd: lots of roast, but the dryness is sweetened by a floral character which I'm guessing comes from the honey.

It tastes weird. Intense perfume pervades the whole thing and makes it hard to get at the beeriness beneath. I can just about detect the peat, and the roast barley is present on the finish. There's possibly a bit of chocolate buried in there too, but overall it's quite difficult to take. Still, I suppose when it's €10 for half a litre you don't want to be charging through it. I'm not at all sure I'd buy another bottle, and the price is only part of the reason.

And that concludes the beer reviews for 2011. All that remains for this the last post of the year is the handing out of...
The Golden Pint Awards 2011

Looking back on the 2010 awards (2009 is here), I think I can safely say I achieved my ambition for 2011: to travel. 12 countries and 4 of them new to me is a personal best. And the beer scene in Ireland has moved on quite a ways in the past year. I'm excited at the thought of similar progress over the next 12 months. Anyway, here's how it's all panned out:

Best Irish Draught Beer: Metalman Windjammer
A brewery that was no more than a logo this time last year stormed out of the blocks with a kickass flagship ale and this stunning summer seasonal. All kiwi hops made it a pineapple and mango flavour grenade. I'm limiting the award to the cask version, however. It all fell a bit flat when filtered and kegged. Caskless Irish pubs: start your engines.

Best Irish Bottled or Canned Beer: Knockmealdown Porter
Lots of Irish beers made an appearance in bottles this year, including old favourites such as Trouble Dark Arts and Galway Hooker. I give the prize to another brand new brewery for 2011, however: Eight Degrees and their hefty-yet-drinkable porter Knockmealdown, though Franciscan Well's Shandon Century was a close second.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Wild Esra on Cherries
Even at a festival where imperial stouts, barrel-aged rarities, sour one-offs and weird fruit beers abounded this one from De Molen had enough character to stop me and make me pay attention. It's the whole picture. The world of beer geekery in a single glass.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Great Divide Smoked Baltic Porter
They say Great Divide ain't gonna be exporting no more. I'm willing to donate one of the last bottles of this in the country to a local brewery for cloning purposes.

Best Overall Beer: Wild Esra on Cherries
No question. It's not a drink-all-year sessioner. It's an unforgiveably room-dividing one-off of the sort that shouldn't get awards from people who aren't insufferable rarity-chasing spoogebeerians. But it's just too damned tasty not to take the prize.

Best Pumpclip or Label: De La Senne Equinox
The wife spent a fair few days in Brussels on business this year, which meant a Belgian beer bonanza for me. Ordering by remote control can be a dangerous game but I've never had a problem in saying "Just anything by De La Senne. You'll know them by the labels." From a brewery with a wonderful eye for design, brooding Equinox is one of my favourites.

Best Irish Brewery: Metalman
You want to know what I think is missing from Irish beer? Bravery. With just a few exceptions, mostly from the established companies, we're still stuck in the Stout-Lager-Red Ale Beermuda Triangle of traditional Irish styles, only now we have a hoppy-but-sessionable pale ale thrown in too. Metalman, while sticking to a solidly reliable pale ale to make a name for themselves, haven't been afraid to play around with other ideas for the limited editions. So we had the antipodean-hopped not-quite-amber ale mentioned above for one, and second up was a peppered witbier made with saison yeast: Alternator. Beer is all about diversity and Metalman get this gong for giving us that from the very start.

More of this sort of thing, please, Gráinne and Tim.

Best Overseas Brewery: 1516
Back to the very top of the year for this one, and one of the highlights of my trip to Vienna. Breaking the lagerland mould with hoppy pale ales and plenty more besides. Bravery and diversity once again.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Bowe's Lounge
I haven't ventured too far from my usual local haunts in 2011: The Bull & Castle, Against the Grain, The Porterhouse, L. Mulligan. Grocer: chances are, that's where you'll find me. But we've seen an interesting development in Dublin pubdom this year. An increasing number of "normal" pubs -- some of them guidebook classics -- have started stocking beers from the independents. The bright green light on the O'Hara's IPA keg font is the most welcoming sight in any Dublin pub. It says "Yes, you can stay here for a drink".

The Palace on Fleet Street has long been ahead of this curve, but this was the year they went cask and got a Dungarvan beer engine installed. The Long Hall now has Hooker; there's Carlow bottled and draught beers in The Church on Mary Street. But one of the most enjoyable evenings I had all year was the Sunday night session in Bowe's Lounge. O'Hara's IPA on tap, Fuller's ESB bottled, and a casual yet wonderful trad session in the corner.

Bowe's is a decent, untouristy, unpretentious boozer that happens to take its beer a bit more seriously than most. We need dozens more like it in this town.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
I think the local highlight was Bloom in Phoenix Park back in June, but the geektastic Borefts festival at De Molen in September was something else entirely.

World-beating beers aside, it was the most enjoyable drinking session I had all year. Thanks to Derek, Ron, Lexie, Mike, Chris, Dom, Evin, Menno and Her Outdoors for making it so.

Supermarket of the Year: No-one
Looking back, I realised I've bought next to no beer in the supermarket this year. None of the offers have really caught my eye. The only one giving us any decent amount of diversity is Marks & Spencer, and their stuff is just too expensive for what it is. I've been pleased to see off licence chain O'Brien's really raise their game beerwise this year, with Carlow, Dungarvan and Eight Degrees all now in stock. But really, only the independents have been meeting my needs in 2011.

Independent Retailer of the Year: The Beer Club
Partly because it's headquartered on my doorstep, but mainly because manager Stephen has shown an incredible enthusiasm for the whole speciality beer segment. It has been a delight to deliver the tasting sessions in the basement (and if you were at one of them over the past few months -- thanks for being such a great crowd) and even more of a delight to be at the sessions where other people did the talking. I'm looking forward to more of those in the New Year.

And extras like this aside, I love that I can just nip around the corner to buy beers I've never had before. I never thought I'd see the day.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Oxford Companion To Beer
Simply for existing, and being a huge sign of beer's growing stature in the culinary world. The errors and ommissions, while they should never have happened, provide a new opportunity to help right the historical wrongs that have been done to beer. As such, The Oxford Companion to Beer is the antigen in the beer writing system, and Alan's wiki shows a healthy immune system.

Best Beer Blog or Website: DrinkStore
Yes, it's a shop that sells beer online, but I'm giving it this award for its role as a  reference source. New beer comes and goes on the Irish market quite quickly, and not everything gets reported by drinkers in the field or the responsible retailers like Bradley's in Cork and Jay at Hollands of Bray. When I'm wondering where my next blog post is going to come from, DrinkStore's beer section is where I look first. Where did I find out that, at last, Ireland had Thornbridge? DrinkStore's website.

Best Beer Twitterer: BoakandBailey
One of the best things about their blog is the way it acts as a sort of clearing house for informed and mature commentary on all things beery. Their long overdue arrival to Twitter has extended that to the microblogging world and we get wonderful links and observations that we would otherwise miss. They get this award despite the unfair tweeting advantage of having four thumbs.

A dishonorable mention, of course, goes to SimonHJohnson. If you're into beer, on Twitter, and not following him, you're doing it wrong.

Best Online Brewery Presence: Eight Degrees
Dungarvan got the gong last year for sheer busyness. This year, for the same reason, it goes to Eight Degrees (not that Dungarvan have slowed down or shut up or anything). Great outgoing support for the local businesses that stock their beers, and by extension great support for the customers who want to find and drink it. Howling Gale on draught is a rare beast: it's great when Scott and Cam give us the coordinates to find it.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Cheese, generally
I'm no wiser about the principles of beer and cheese matching than I was in January, despite the government dedicating an entire long weekend to teaching me. However, I've had an enormous amount of fun this year just picking random cheeses and beers and seeing what happens when they're put in close proximity. I'll be doing lots more of this in 2012.

In 2012 I’d Most Like To: Try going pro
I've had fun this year trying my hand at the whole public speaking malarky. Together with Stephen at The Beer Club I've discovered that there are people out there willing to give up their evenings to be talked at by me about beer (previously it was just a question of picking the bar stool next to me) and having a receptive audience and a bit of back-and-forth is very rewarding. So, more of that for 2012, until I decide I hate it and don't want to do it any more.

Which leads effortlessly into a shameless plug for the gigs I'm doing at The Carlyle Institute starting in January. Two hours; six beers; small classes; lots of cheery-beery banter and only limited quantities of awful puns.

Open Category: Most Exciting Beer City
By all accounts London has really got it going on at the moment. But I wasn't there in 2011 so can't comment. My award goes to Prague for its ale revolution sitting atop a well-deserved reputation for kick-ass lagers. Well worth a weekend if you're anywhere in the vicinity.

I wouldn't say no to a return to Vienna or Amsterdam, mind. It has been a good year.


But here endeth 2011. I'm off to the beer fridge to begin putting 2012 into some sort of drinking order.

I know why the lizard croaks

All of a sudden it seems like there's loads happening on the Irish beer scene. For one thing, Franciscan Well have a new seasonal out which I caught up with in the Bull & Castle recently.

Croaking Lizard is a brown ale of the murky reddish variety. Where one might expect a certain sweetness, this is incredibly dry with lots of roasted grain, almost akin to a stout or schwarzbier, in fact. At the end there's a little kick of vegetal hop bitterness. But no coffee, no caramel: none of the flavours I'd consider important in a brown ale. I did have a second one, just to get my head around it, but I don't think it's for me, really. If you're looking for something light, crisp and quite fizzy, however, this could be the dark beer you're after.

Meanwhile, the most hotly-anticipated new arrival finally made its debut at the end of June, with the appearance of Galway Hooker in bottles. I'm actually a little surprised by how hotly-anticipated it still was. Irish drinkers have been clamouring for bottled Hooker since the time (up to a mere three or four years ago) when it was the only Irish beer in permanent production and distributed widely that had any kind of hop character to it. Since then we've been able to take home Porterhouse Hop Head and O'Hara's IPA, yet still the cry has been "We Want Hooker". Now that I've had a bottle -- a half-litre resplendent in its county colours -- I think I can see why the attraction is still there. Though lacking the punch of Hop Head and the strength of O'Hara's, it's doing its own thing: very sessionable at 4.3% ABV yet rounded out with a crystal malt sweetness that the others haven't matched. For me, the real bonus has been a whole glassful at cellar temperature. The anticipation of a dry-hopped cask version is almost unbearable.

Also fresh off the bottling line is Eight Degrees's Howling Gale. Bottle conditioning in 33cls makes this an even more complex affair, with a bit of yeasty grittiness in with the intense hop bitterness, plus some sweet biscuit malt just peeping through at the end. The guys say the second batch was done with an adjusted hop schedule so I'm looking forward to comparing the two, pathetic geek that I am. In the meantime, keep inspecting the fridges for Howling Gale. The second in the Eight Degrees series -- Sunburnt Red -- should making an appearance soon too. (Oh, today, as it happened. Now on tap at L. Mulligan Grocer.)

And finally a whole new brewery has brought its wares to Dublin. BrewEyed is based in Co. Offaly and met the public at the Brewers on the Bay festival in Galway last April. I happened across BrewEyed Lager when out for a few leisurely Sunday beers in The Village on Wexford Street a couple of weeks ago. This is their first release and as such I wasn't expecting much from it. The tang of cider in the aroma immediately put me on guard for a poorly constructed lager. But beyond it I found a remarkably well-made pilsner. There's a decent amount of sweet candyfloss malt forming the base, and then some lovely grassy Czech hop notes, including a touch of asparagus, rounding it out. Maybe there's a slight oxidised note in there too: another flaw one can expect to find in a first-run beer. But overall a promising start and I look forward to trying the blonde ale when and if that appears in these parts.