Where beer geeks fear to tread

Today it's another chapter in the ongoing history of Dublin's Smithfield Brewing Company, last seen in this post from 2024. Back then, a shiny new brewing kit had been installed at the old soap factory on North King Street but there was no sign of the brewery opening, nor indeed of any brewing happening -- I understand there is a well-established contract brewing link to JJ's in Limerick. I suspect that will be the case for a little while yet, as the soap factory has been earmarked for redevelopment into student flats, meaning the brewery will be on the move again.

Smithfield Brewing is part of a company which owns a small chain of central Dublin pubs, clustered around fashionable Fade Street, which are the only venues in which the beer is served. Finding out what they're pouring these days meant going undercover as one of the cool kids, to Drury Buildings, where four unfamiliar Smithfield beers were on tap.

Smithfield IPA looks a bit flag-shippy, leftmost of the tap array and with the least explanation of what it is. 4.7% is the ABV, and it's pale too: a pilsner-clear golden. The badge helpfully tells us its made with Cascade and Citra hops, and there's certainly an American vibe, presenting lemon and lime up front. After an initial spike, the bitterness is restrained, turning quickly to sherbet and chew sweets, finishing on lemon drop candy. That goes with a softness of texture, not like a pillowy New England IPA but more of a multivitamin tablet effervescence. A metallic aspirin tang is the only bum note, but otherwise it's a cromulent take on the Irish pintable version of American pale ale. Customers who just want to point at a badge saying "IPA" and order one of those are well served.

I'm sure Smithfield Lager has been out and about before under various guises. It's not great, but not offensive either. Again the texture is soft and rounded, much more like an ale, and I raise an eyebrow towards the brewery's "lager" brewing protocol. The flavour does the basics on the malt front: clean, with a Czech golden syrup feature. Hops don't manifest, but from the yeast we get a panopaly of pear, passionfruit and lychee which is quite tasty, but doesn't resemble lager as our continent understands it. Again, the non-beer-aligned customer spots lager and orders this, except those people don't exist in the brand-first Irish beer scene. Putting this on beside Moretti won't attract those people, nor the Heineken nor Rockshore people. It still wouldn't if it were a better beer either, so, *shrug*.

Fair play to Smithfield for making a Red Ale, the style that everybody loves but nobody likes. Theirs is on the pale side, and a little hazy. The aspirin twang I noticed in the IPA (which I suspect is a JJ's house trait) is here in spades. It sits next to big caramel and a mild fruitiness. As an Irish red: yeah, it probably qualifies. For independent brands, this style is probably only ordered by tourists, and it doesn't matter if they order another. I doubt they will. This lacks the easy lagerish drinkability of Smithwick's and Macardles but doesn't have the extra craft dimension of O'Hara's Red, say. A pub chain wanting to have their own red ale is cool; this example of it? Nah.

It's not like me to leave the weakest beer to the end, but the name Light Pale Ale didn't sell it to me. I would imagine that other breweries would call this 3.8% ABV job a "Session IPA". Still, when I did eventually chance a pint, the early signs were good. The spicy gunpowder aroma was delightfully unexpected, and the beer has plenty of body, despite the low gravity. The flavour was another surprise, showing lots of complexity, combining zesty orange, a floral bergamot bitterness, and then more of that spice, like a sprinkle of freshly-ground black pepper. It's a fantastic combination, however it's done, and even the return of the aspirin dryness doesn't come close to spoiling it. This is, above all, a fun beer; accessible but with plenty going on too. I'm glad it left me with something positive to say before I moved on.

I imagine these beers will change. Late last year, Dublin City Council granted permission for Smithfield Brewing to open a new brewpub at the bottom of Smithfield Square, beside the Luas tracks. If I'm correct in thinking that the current beers come from JJ's rather than North King Street, then the move presents an opportunity to get that aspirin tang out of them. In the planning application, the owners expressed an intention to open pub hours, which means that in addition to moving the brewing licence and the kit, a pub licence will need to be found and applied as well. All of that takes time, so I'm not expecting to be dropping in for a pint any time soon. Before settling on the name "Smithfield Brewing", the brand was called "Persistence". They've certainly shown that.  

As the owner says in this report, the new brewpub will fit nicely into the beer scene in this part of town, linked by tram to Carlow's Urban Brewing, Guinness Open Gate and Rascals HQ, though it's also all but adjacent to Whiplash's Fidelity pub. That puts it in a prime position to get the cool kids and the beer geeks too.

Haymarket House, Smithfield, Dublin 7. Future home of Smithfield Brewing.

Wild journey

Today's beer is a collaboration in the truest sense. It started life several years ago in Bagenalstown as O'Hara's Red Ale and was then shipped to Firestone Walker in California to be refermented in oak foeders with Brettanomyces and finished with late stage additions of thyme and honey. Then it came back across continental North America and the Atlantic Ocean, which I'd say makes some contribution to the €12 price tag on my 375ml bottle. It's called Fiáin.

The coppery colour of the base beer has survived everything it's been through, and the head stays put in a way that's unusual for wild fermented beer. It smells quite sharp, with the mild balsamic vinegar and tart cherry of a Flanders red ale. The texture is light, verging on thin, with little malt left behind by the Brett as it boosted the ABV to 6.5%. That's not a problem; it's not watery, and there's a pleasantly clean and refreshing sourness right at the front, not quite as full-on as with a geuze but subtly oaked in a similar way. That would be enough to make it a decent beer, but towards the end there's a bonus contribution of real thyme, still tasting bright and fresh after almost three years in the bottle. That flashes briefly, leaving the Brettanomyces to end proceedings with a peach or melon gumminess.

I don't know that it's a €12 beer exactly -- you can get 75cl bottles of beers as good and better for only a little extra -- but it's extremely well made, and has held up beautifully in its time abandoned on the shelves of the Mace on the South Circular Road. There's still some there if you want to try it.

Expand and contract

Brú has become the latest Irish brewery to begin making an own-brand beer for a large contractor. They've enlisted veteran distributor Cremin & Radley to sell their beers, a deal which gave them instant access to the nationwide chain of SuperValu supermarkets. It was there I found these two, brewed at Brú for C&R.

Hopes were uncharacteristically high for Kenmare Irish Red Ale, given the excellence of Brú's own Rua. This is 4.3% ABV and pours a handsome dark garnet colour, fizzing louchely to form a loose-bubbled off-white head. The aroma is as sweet as one might expect, but lightly spicy too and the texture reflects that low carbonation: wonderfully smooth and sinkable in a way that not enough beers of this strength are. Milk chocolate is the main element of the flavour: not unpleasant but far from typical of the style. There's quite a large discordant metallic tang as well, the occasional downside to using English hops. An almost sour sharp dry roast finishes off proceedings. Much as I love the mouthfeel of this beer, the flavours just don't come together properly. While it's not a run-of-the-mill Irish red and shows real substance and character, it doesn't quite go off in good and interesting directions the way that, for example, Brú Rua and O'Hara's Red do.

To the Kenmare Irish Pale Ale next. The same casky foam piles high above a medium amber body, before gradually collapsing away. Some light orange juiciness presents in the aroma, though I detect a worrying bleachiness as well. The texture is much thinner than the red, but that's not a criticism: the first pull offers instant quenching refreshment and invites a second. The orange theme continues, though it gets sweeter, turning more towards satsuma, or even Capri-Sun artificiality. The malt contributes an unnecessary layer of toffee. And that's your lot: no real bitterness and once the satsuma middle fades there's no real finish. I downed the rest of glass quite quickly, looking for something else going on, but this is very very plain fare. The best I can say is that it's accessible, drinkable and sinkable, though I was surprised to turn the label around and discover it's as strong as 5% ABV.

Several more Kenmare beers are promised. Hopefully they'll build on the good points of these two while fine tuning the flavours a little better.

Spotty Dalmatians

I hope y'all like consonants, 'cos I'm just back from the Balkans and there's nothing them fellas like more than squeezing a whole load of hard pointy letters into tiny spaces. Except possibly for shitty lagers. They like them too. Let's get started, shall we?

My introduction to Croatian beer was in the breathtaking surrounds of Dubrovnik's old port on a balmy September's evening. As in most of Europe, each establishment is contracted to sell one of the national brands of beer and variations from this model are rare. This particular place offered Favorit, brewed in Istria by a subsidiary of Dutch brewery Bavaria. It's a 5% ABV pale lager and smells of copper. The flavour is the sweet tanginess of cheaply made lager with some metal and some lactic sourness. A smorgasbord of awful not at all helped by the rather warm serving temperature. I didn't give it a second go in the hope of a cooler experience: Favorit-branded awnings and umbrellas meant a bar that didn't get my custom for the rest of the week.

The biggest national brand is Ožujsko, owned by MolsonCoors, brewed in Zagreb, and associated everywhere with the national football team. Though the same strength as Favorit, it's paler in colour, arrived cooler, and is mercifully more boring to taste. It's still a bit heavy, though I'll take that as an acceptable alternative to watery, and shares a certain tanginess, except this time I think I can detect the light presence of hops being involved here, rather than just a brewing flaw. While it wasn't a beer I'd ever go running to, I was at least content that there was drinkable beer in Croatia.

Beer three was the hot country lager I had been holding out for: Karlovačko. This is Heineken's local offering and is once again leaning to the sweet side of the house, but does it subtly -- nearly akin to the way a Munich helles works. Simple and refreshing, it did exactly what I needed from a holiday beer.

That just leaves Carlsberg in this corner of Europe's macrobrewing tug-of-war, and their representative is Pan. Not a very Croatian-sounding name, but since one rarely needs to order a beer by brand name there's no real consumer advantage to its easily graspable handle. Plain Pan is 4.8% ABV and there's that metal again, this time accompanied by a kind of aspirinish mineral soda quality. There's some saccharine and apple in the mix too. It's effectively an advertisement for trading up to the posher Pan Zlatini, an ironically-named 5%-er which isn't gold at all but an almost amber colour. I wish I'd spotted the cans before I bought my bottle of it because it was badly skunked, but at least this indicated the presence of hops. Hops are indeed quite a big part of the flavour: sage and grass come through in particular, balanced less by the taste of the malt as the weight it brings: this is heavy drinking.

I'm not sure if it's a trade up or down from Zlatini, but the beer I probably drank most of in Croatia was Pan Hajdučko. There are some lovely dark grain flavours in this medium-gold beer; almost roasty. The middle is hollow and watery, but we can skip past that to the gentle grassy finish. Definitely not as strongly flavoured as Pan Zlatini, but a more pleasant overall drinking experience, I thought.

Most of the breweries have a dark lager in their line-up you'll be glad to hear, though getting hold of them in the on-trade was very nearly impossible. Even in off licences they were relegated to the lower shelves and backs of fridges. Karlovačko Crno is a healthy 6% ABV and all about the liquorice: mildly sour with some light chocolate and coffee at the centre, then finishing with yet more liquorice. MolsonCoors takes it up a notch with their Tomislav at 7.3% ABV. It's a less complex offering for all that, though: a bit of liquorice but mostly big heavy molasses making it difficult drinking and showing the aspects of Baltic-ish porter that I don't especially like.

That's it for Croatian beer, but the neighbours get a bit of a look-in too, former Yugoslavia being not quite as broken up as events of the early 1990s might have suggested. Slovenian Laško Zlatorog is quite commonplace around Dubrovnik: a mix of skunkiness and melted plastic. Laško Dark is far better, being 5.9% ABV and mixing in sweet chocolate and metallic molasses with some smooth and creamy milk stout lactic qualities. There's even a touch of coffee too. Still a bit heavy going, but the best dessert beer I found.

An excursion into Bosnia-Herzegovina brought Sarajevsko to the table, a very pale 4.9% ABV lager with major apple off-flavours dominating the taste. Beneath this there are some pleasantly bitter herbal notes -- fennel and sage -- but nothing that really makes it worth drinking. Down in Montenegro, meanwhile, they drink Nikšićko, and maybe it was the beautiful surrounds of Kotor or the €2 price tag, but I really enjoyed this. It's a medium gold and the hop oils in the foam are immediately apparent in its aroma. Beneath that it's a little sweet, saccharine perhaps, but not at all outwith the bounds of decent pilsner. There's a growing floral quality to the taste and a satisfying bitter finish.

My bottom line for Dubrovnik, if you're going, is The Gaffe Irish Pub in the Old Town. It does O'Hara's Stout and Red on draught, for less than a fiver a pop in the early evening: a life-saver in a city otherwise saturated by medium-to-poor lagers.

The Tykely Lads

Three from that Yorkshire today, part of the ever-expanding range of English bottled beers currently knocking around Dublin's offies.

My first is Thoroughbred, a pale ale from Hambleton's. I confess I wasn't expecting much, the brewery being better known in these parts for its lacklustre gluten-free efforts. Thoroughbred is all of 5% ABV and a hazy shade of light orange. There's not much by way of aroma but the flavour more than makes up for that. You get lovely big, ripe juicy mandarins followed by a stimulating sandalwood spice all set on an assertively waxy bitter base. Subtle it ain't, but I really enjoyed the combination of tastes. Harvey's Best in hobnail boots, as well as one of the closest-tasting beers to draught Timothy Taylor Landlord that I've met. And I'm including bottled Landlord in that.

Wold Top's Mars Magic next: a dark red-brown beer, looking not far off some of the Irish reds, and Carlow's in particular. It's the dose of roast barley that does it. There's a thick boozy, beery drip-tray aroma, though the taste isn't as sweet as I expected from that. The roast barley jumps in early with quite an assertive dryness. In the middle there's just a flash of black cherries or blackberries, and then its dryness as usual at the end, with a dash of dark chocolate and more than a little bit of metallic bite. It's heavy going and quite fizzy with it: one of those beers I found myself wishing was over before I was half way through.

And finally Against the Grain, another one from Wold Top. This beer caused a bit of a nine-day wonder when it was launched here at the end of last year, sharing its name as it does with one of Dublin's top beer pubs. The name comes from the fact that it is gluten-free, and lists maize and lager malt on the ingredients. Lager malt is gluten-free? Really? (Sort of.)

Behind the punky distressed lettering (yawn) is an exceedingly pale yellow beer with a sharp and citric smell: quite a wake-up call after the boozy bloaty dark beer which preceded it. And the taste is... convincing. Yes it's a bit thin for the serious hopping it's been given, presumably to cover up for flaws in the compromised grain bill, but it's genuinely enjoyable to drink. I'm reminded of crappy pseudo-lagers I've made from kits and then loaded with dry hops to render them drinkable: it's a very easy and cheap way of making palateable beer. Were I to be sentenced to a gluten free lifestyle tomorrow I would definitely view this as a welcome comfort, depending on what the doctor says about lager malt.

The living dead

We had an hour or so to kill on a Sunday evening in Dundrum recently. I'd heard that one of the new bars in the shopping centre had Carlow beers on tap so went in on spec, in the hope of a pint of O'Hara's Red.

Ruairi Maguire's is a run-of-the-mill superpub: multiple mezzanines, lots of open floor space for cattle-shed drinking plus a few nice little quiet corners decked out in dark wood and fake leather: not the sort of place I'd make a beeline for, but needs must when there's craft beer on the go.

Alas it appears that O'Hara's Red has left the building, leaving Curim Gold as the only craft tap in the place for the moment. We were actually on the way out when herself spotted the specials blackboard by the door advertising bottled beer of the month White Lady for €3.80. Well how bad can it be?

I was actually really seriously expecting it to be cider. But it is a beer: an organic bottle-conditioned lager from North Yorkshire (both the region and the brewery of the same name therein) titled after an undead milkmaid who haunts the premises.

Sadly, it's a bit of a ghost lager. Massive attenuation has sucked all the character out leaving a wan, thin and rather cidery beer behind (so I wasn't too far wrong in the first place), very pale and with a mountainous weissbier-like cap of foam on top. There's none of the big bittering or flavour hops you might expect to compensate for the lack of body. I can't see too many committed lager drinkers turning to this, regardless of whether their normal tipple is Bavaria or Budvar.

Nevertheless, props to the pub for at least having something different and cheap available. I'll be checking that blackboard next time I'm through.

No more heroes any more

Mark of Clanconnel Brewery has a very acute sense of Place and Time. His branding is carefully chosen to reflect the real life and history of where he brews. So, on his first outing, there was a tribute to Co. Down's former lifeblood, the linen industry, in the fine blonde ale Weaver's Gold (I've just noticed recently that between Weaver's Gold, Helvick Gold and Ór we are living through the golden [hahaha] age of Irish blonde ales -- long may it continue). The long-awaited second beer is named in honour of Co. Armagh's greatest sporting legend: the Lurgan greyhound Master McGrath (1866-1871). It seems my home county's humans are a little behind the canines when it comes to sporting prowess. That certainly explains my abilities at least...

Anyway, McGrath's Irish Red is the name, and once again we're looking at a half-litre bottle, brewed for sessionability at 4.3% ABV. The colour is a little paler than one would expect for an Irish red: it's more the dark amber of brown English bitter. The flavour is a tick-list of what the style does at its best: heavy toffee in the ascendant with a lighter, sweeter caramel middle, topped by ripe strawberries and fading out with a mild dry roastiness. Ireland's other microbrewed reds twiddle these dials to varying degrees, but this has most of them turned up quite high, especially the fruit elements. And yet it's still very light and sessionable with nothing cloying or difficult about it. A break with tradition and a bit more of a hop profile would have been nice, but otherwise this is a tasty and quite complex quaffer.

You can argue the toss as to whether Ireland really needs another beer in this style. But there's no doubt that McGrath's Red can hold its own against the top flight of O'Hara's Red and Copper Coast.

Thanks for the sample, Mark. When's beer number 3?

By royal disappointment

Last week the Franciscan Well released its 2009 Christmas ale, under the jolly seasonal name of 3 Kings. Having adored last year's mad maple syrup and ginger confection, Phúca, I was well up for what Russell and the Cork gang had for us this time round. When I heard there was rauchmalt involved, I was off to the Bull & Castle at the earliest opportunity.

Unfortunately the reality didn't live up to expectation. Yes, there's smoke there, but rather than the hammy goodness I love, it's the rather harsh iodine-like smokiness you get in the likes of Laphroaig scotch. The late great Messrs Maguire Imperial had this as well, but it was balanced against the sweetness of dark roasted malts. Here there's just more bitterness and no cheery seasonal spices or warming sweetness. It rounded out a little as it warmed, and I did manage to get through two mugs of it -- Mrs Beer Nut not able to handle more than a mouthful -- but it was a disappointing experience.

Thankfully, Colin and 9 Bean Row of California Wine Imports were on hand to whisk us us away from all the pain. It was Colin's birthday and celebrations were in full swing at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art -- celebrations which included a keg of the fabulous Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA. When this ran out it was replaced with Gordon Biersch Märzen, just as solid a lager on draught as it is from the bottle, and nice to get a full pint of. Thanks for a fun evening, guys.

And back to Irish beer to finish. Carlow Brewing now have an Irish red -- Traditional Irish Ale -- in Aldi's own-brand line-up. When I first heard of it I assumed it was rebadged O'Hara's Red, and the ABV is the same, but anyone I know who's tried it has said it's different. Only one thing could settle this (well, I could of course have asked the brewer, but where's the fun in that?): a taste-off.

They're both the same colour, and I got a better head from the Aldi one, though I put that down to it being at a slightly higher temperature when serving. First impressions confirmed that these are not the same beer. They're similar, though, and it took me a while to figure out how. The Aldi ale is heavier and warmer than O'Hara's, and finishes drier. It might not look darker, but it tastes it. The O'Hara's compensates with a bit more spice shining through the sweetness.

Interesting that Carlow have opted for the world "traditional" on both beers. This is a tradition that doesn't date further back than about 1960, when Guinness finally took complete control of Irish ale brewing and set about downgrading the national pale ale to appeal to a wider audience and extend its shelf life. As a result, beer that was probably indistinguishable hitherto from English bitter, became what Michael Jackson in the following decade dubbed "Irish red". It follows that when English breweries followed suit -- kegging and blandening their beers -- they'd end up with the same thing. I got to put this theory into practice recently when Dave set up a blind tasting of red ales that I went along to, with Mrs Beer Nut, Laura and Séan.

O'Hara's came away as the favourite of most -- that signature piquancy comes out far more in the keg version than the bottle. Just about no-one in the group was able to express a preference between Smithwick's and kegged Bass, and it was a 50-50 for who could guess which was which (they're both watery rubbish). They are, essentially, the same beer, proving my theory. One of the upshots is that if one were foolish enough to decide that "Irish red ale" is a beer style all its own, then you'd have to include John Smith's Extra Smooth, and the keg versions of beers like Worthington's in there too. Probably kegged London Pride and Bombardier, for that matter. Daft.

Nevertheless, I hereby claim Watney's Red Barrel as the sovereign territory of Irish ale. Where's my flag?

Call and Bustle

The number of pubs around Dublin which carry at least some drinkable beer is getting bigger. Our national microbreweries are doing a great job of getting out there and convincing managers and owners that their product has something going for it. Yet the city's Beer Central remains on a pedestal, and is the subject of this month's Session.

The Bull & Castle has changed a lot since it converted from being a scummy inner city boozer to being the epicentre of Ireland's tentative craft beer revolution. The range of draught beers continues ever upwards, with the wonderful O'Hara's Red being the latest permanent addition to the line-up, while the capacious fridge now includes the two bottle-conditioned Porterhouse beers, Plain and Hop Head. Best of all, earlier this year the management installed a beer engine, whence has poured some great Carlow beers, including two new draught-only dry-hopped ales, Malty Bitches and Goods Store IPA -- both raising the bar for the quality of Irish beer generally.

Any wonder, then, that the Bull & Castle is the headquarters for Dublin's beer aficionados. If this wasn't enough, the home brewers get some fairly special treatment, with the upstairs beerhall hosting a tasting night every month where all-comers can bring their own beers, share them round, and generally geek out on zymurgy.

Of course no proper beer connoisseur is ever completely happy with what pubs do, so it's only fair that I throw in a few criticisms. Top of my list is the halbe glass: a German-style half-litre mug that's the preferred vessel in which most of the beers (though not the cask ones) are served. Aside from not being a proper pint, the tall narrow glass is terrible for bringing out aromas. The restaurantiness of the downstairs bar during the evening is also a bit irksome -- once you have a please-wait-to-be-seated inside the door, you've stopped being a pub. Ordinarily I don't mind nipping up to the beerhall instead, but at weekends that gets impossibly crowded, and with the DJ in full flow it's not the place for a pint and a chat.

But these are minor issues. I remember all too well what Dublin was like in the days when looking for decent beer meant either drink in the Porterhouse or stay home (and of course I still enjoy both). There are beers available today which I doubt would have an outlet but for the Bull & Castle.

This month's Session is called "Stumbling Home", with an emphasis on the transport aspects of beer connoisseurdom. Fortunately the Bull & Castle is a mere three miles or so from my gaff and well served by buses. Dublin's noble city fathers have also seen fit to position a municipal rental bike depot right outside the front door. Even were I possessed of my own motorised transport, I doubt I'd be bringing it the pub.

On one recent stumble home, I brought back a bottle of beer the manager on duty, Declan, had donated to me. It was a sample left by a wholesaler and I had spotted it from my barstool by its unusual bottle shape, but that doesn't seem to have been enough to win it a place on the stocklist. Viru hails from Tartu, though appears to have been commissioned by a UK importer. It's not too bad, I thought, being sweet and smooth, in the style of a Munich helles. I don't know how long it had been sitting in that fridge, but it could definitely benefit from being fresher. This one had started to unravel a bit at the edges and turn unpleasantly stale. Still, far better than I expected an Estonian lager in a novelty bottle would be.

Cask beer; rare beer; home-made beer; free beer. And people to talk to about it. The Bull & Castle is pretty much as good as it gets around here.

Roll in the barrel

The Bull & Castle's commitment to Ireland's craft beer has reached new heights in recent months with the addition of a beer engine to the downstairs bar. Yeah, the counter-mounted barrel is a bit of an eyesore, squatting on the bar in its black jacket like an undercover warthog, and the handpump is rather hidden out of the way, but the succession of cask beers we've had from it have been worth all of this and more.

The set-up was put in place through the good offices of the Carlow Brewing Company, and although there's no tie arrangement all of the beers have been supplied by the Carlow team. On the stout front we've had plenty of their fabulously chocolately Druid's Brew -- normally a festival special only -- plus their normal O'Hara's Stout which is so much more multi-dimensional on cask than in any other form, even when the immersion cooling system broke down.

So content was I with the stouts that I never batted an eyelid the first time a cask of O'Hara's Red was delivered in an unsaleable condition. I changed my tune when the second one arrived and I got a taste: nastily vinegary, sure, but underneath there are some quite wonderful raspberry and redcurrant flavours. When they eventually get this one right I'll be first in line. The last of the three core bottled Carlow beers is Curim Gold, their light lager-like wheat beer. It's dullsville normally, but when it appeared on cask it blew me away: jam-packed full of lemony citrus notes it was all kinds of quenching and the single cask drained away over the course of one balmy weekend last month.

And then the direction changed. Carlow, to the best of my knowledge, don't have a pilot plant. In fact, they're in the process of moving out of the Carlow goods store by the railway station into a bigger site. They don't do small runs (I'm sure someone can tell me their minimum batch size; I keep forgetting) and yet the latest residents of the Bull & Castle beer engine appear to be just that. First up was the charmingly-monikered Malty Bitches, a full-bodied red-brown bitter which looks like it ought to be malt-driven but has been dry-hopped to give it a fabulously citric juicy-fruit bitterness, as well as bits of hops in the bottom of the glass. It's interesting to compare it with Ireland's other copper-coloured bitter cask bitter, Porterhouse TSB. It lacks the intense harshness I generally find with TSB, making it easier for one pint, but the second pint of TSB always goes down a treat as the tannins come out and I'm not sure this sort of complexity exists in Malty Bitches. I can't be sure though, as all I got was a half pint from the fag end of the cask. You snooze you lose. For more ruminations on MB v TSB, see Reuben's Tale of Ale.

Next day, it was replaced with an IPA called Goods Store, a name derived from it being the last beer to be produced at the old brewery. Woah! What a beer! A bright and hazy orange colour it resembles nothing so much as a Bavarian hefeweizen. If there isn't a very generous dose of Cascade at the tail end of the hopping schedule then I don't know hops, but we're talking massive zesty mandarin orange flavours. There's a touch of the chalky dryness I tend to associate with, and quite enjoy in, Hilden Ale, but the body is really quite thin with the malt just providing enough of a stage for the hops to sing on. And sing they do. Goods Store IPA is without doubt one of the best Irish beers I've ever tasted, and I'm actually a little worried about what might happen to the rest of the batch.

Obviously, we need more pubs set up for cask. But what are the chances of that?

Fasting and abstinence

With a handful of exceptions, sales of alcohol are illegal in the Republic of Ireland on Good Friday. It's a social policy which has led to Holy Thursday becoming one of the biggest drink-buying days of the year, and there was certainly an atmosphere of panic in my local supermarket last Thursday evening, with almost everyone in the queue in front of me laden with cases of Heineken and Miller. I was just picking up a couple of bottles of O'Hara's Red for an engagement the following morning.

A friend had invited a few people round for a late breakfast at his place. I said I'd bring the beer and was carrying a bagload of Schlenkerla Märzen from DrinkStore, figuring it would go great with the full Irish that was planned. The O'Hara's were for anyone who wasn't up for the smoky goodness -- it's a beer I know works beautifully with the porky delights of a cooked breakfast. As it happened, they didn't get opened as the Schlenkerla was consumed with gusto. Comments from the newbies included "seawater" and "disinfectant", though in a good way, of course.

With the plates scraped clean, we were off home, where a beautiful afternoon was shaping up. We sat out of the bank of stones which will, some day soon, be a patio. Mrs Beer Nut opened a bottle of Weihenstephaner Tradition dunkel that was in the fridge. It's quite tasty, though very thick, sweet and treacly, making it perhaps not the ideal garden beer. I don't do sunshine so I was in the shade with a Westmalle Dubbel, a case of which I received recently through the kind offices of RealBeers.ie. Cool and sharp, this is a much better sunny day sipper.

As afternoon turned to evening, it was time to eat again. Business was booming down at the local chipper, with fish being the obvious fried dead thing of choice. To go with mine I picked the Amberley Pale Ale from New Zealand's Brew Moon. It's a cracker of a beer, this: a very pale yellow and only 4% ABV but absolutely loaded with fresh citric hop flavours. There's quite a bit of sweetness to it as well, so the end result carries juicy notes of melon and peaches on a full and satisfying body. As an accompaniment to battered cod it's absolutely perfect, but even as an everyday sessioner it would still be great. The 64cl bottle is the ideal serving measure too. It's quite a while since I bought it in Redmond's, but I'll be looking out for it again.

And that's where I left my Good Friday drinking. By 9pm I really was fasting and abstaining, ahead of the following day's trip to Cork for the main event of Ireland's beer calendar: the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival.

The best fest in the west

The Black Box is a slightly shabby theatre/function room in a retail park on the edge of Galway city. Yesterday it played host to the first Great Irish Beer Festival, an event viewed with no small amount of scepticism by the Irish online beer community, mainly because so few of the country's brewers signed up for it. The Porterhouse and Galway Hooker had their own stands, but most of the rest were run by importers and distributors. With the emphasis on bottled product, then, it was clear this wouldn't be in the style of a UK real ale festival. It was still highly enjoyable, however.

While waiting for the doors to open, I noted with trepidation the Macnas van in the car park. It must have been there in some other capacity, however, and there were mercifully no giant papier maché pints dancing in formation through the venue. You just never know in Galway. Inside, attendees were issued with a starter pack of beer chips and a surprisingly decent plastic beer receptacle. This could be rinsed between drinks at the various water coolers around the room, which was just as well since a burst pipe cut off the building's mains water supply for a couple of hours in the middle of the event. Some time after it came back, the slops bins all disappeared from the floor, making glass rinsing very difficult indeed.

As I mentioned, just two Irish brewers were running stalls, though there was also Moling's and O'Hara's on tap. Lithuanica, distributors of the Švyturys range, were handing out mini-basketballs and guides to Vilnius: European Capital of Culture 2009. InBev had the best swag, though: Leffe glasses and Beck's hats. In fact, the InBev stand had an extensive range of glassware on display. Play to your strengths is the lesson here, I guess...

The entertainment was mercifully acoustic, and the only Heineken and Guinness taps on show were for display purposes only, as part of a keg hire company's exhibit.

To the beer, then. I mentioned on Friday that the promise of Budvar Dark was one of the major draws. It took some concerted searching to find it, the relevant barman having at first denied stocking it. Thankfully one of my ICB colleagues persisted, and there was a brief roaring trade in the Czech black lager. Like most of the bottled beers, it was being served inappropriately cold and I was at first surprised by how sour Budvar Dark is. After a few minutes of warming this mellowed and an almost stout-like roasted grain flavour came through. The other eastern European I tried was Švyturys Baltas, a wheat beer. It's served with lemon and is quite sparkly: hallmarks of a Belgian wit, but the flavour is fruity, not spicy, with distinct banana notes, edging it closer to the German weiss style. An odd and interesting beer.

Aussie beers seem to be growing in popularity in Ireland, though as yet we have few decent ones. I tried a Boag's Strongarm at the festival: a powerfully sweet and malty golden lager with a dry bitter hops bite at the end. Surprisingly, given the taste and the name, this weighs in at only 5% ABV.

Most of the rest of what I drank was English. I have little to say about Wychwood's Goliath: it's rather sugary and not to my taste. BeeWyched gives off a pungent hops aroma, though this doesn't come through in the strong perfumy taste. Interesting, but you couldn't drink a whole lot of it. Finally, Bah Humbug is Wychwood's Christmas ale and is much lighter than a Christmas ale has any right to be. The flavour is sweet, but there's not a whole lot else going on. I wish now I'd spent more time sampling the beers on offer from Black Sheep, which are rare in Dublin but apparently quite common in Galway's bottle shops. The only one I had was Riggwelter, a marvellous black ale, with a strong caramel aroma and a complex taste full of sticky malt and bitter chocolate.

Everything else I tasted I'd had before, though it was the first time I tried the reformulated Árainn Mhór Rua, now down to 5.2% from 6, due to a tendency to knock punters on their arses rather too quickly, which in turn was adversely affecting sales. It was great chatting to Aidan and Ronan of Galway Hooker as well. Thanks for your hospitality, guys.

All-in-all, a few organisational wrinkles to be ironed out, but generally a positive start to what will hopefully become a regular event. And here's hoping the next Great Irish Beer Festival will properly be a festival of great Irish beer.

For the day that's in it

The supermarkets have knocked a few cent off the price of the Carlow Brewing Company's three beers, so I thought a reappraisal was in order.

O'Hara's is their stout: a straightforward, easy drinking, traditional black beer with no fancy texture or flavour. It's quite pleasant and refreshing for all that, very much a pint of plain and your only man.

Moling's red ale is the best of three, and a contender for Ireland's best ale now that Revolution is sadly out of the picture. It has a caramel-candy sweetness coupled with a mild smokiness adding up to a complex and interesting flavour that keeps you turning it over on your palate the whole glass through. Porterhouse Red probably still has the edge on it, but in the take-home stakes, Moling's is the bottle to beat.

Finally, Curim Gold is the brewery's wheat-beer-in-place-of-a-lager. It certainly is gold: a deep amber hue and slightly cloudy. Like its red brother, Curim has a complex taste, with hoppy bitterness to the fore, but tempered by a soft wheat flavour. It's a little bit cloying, and therefore maybe not the best session beer, but ideal as an accompaniment to spicy food.

So that's the round-up. Support your local small brewery and happy St. Patrick's Day.