Sibling rivalry

The lovely people who do PR for Aldi invited me to their Christmas drinks preview event thingy last month, which involved showing up to the swish function rooms at Fire on Dawson Street and wandering round with your Tom Doorleys, your John Wilsons and your Ross Golden-Bannons, sampling all the wines (46 of them) they're promoting for the upcoming drinking season. The beer offer was relegated to a side room with the port and dessert wine. Alongside the Irish beers below there was the solid Bateman's Rosey Nosey and the execrable Wychwood Bah Hambug which I swear is even worse now than it used to be.

But what really drew my attention was the two Kings of Tara beers that Aldi has commissioned from Alltech's Station Works brewery in Newry. Station Works has had a few personnel changes since it was bought over, not least the addition of Andrew Jorgenson who previously did some great work at Carrig. (Here he is chatting to Emmet about what he does.) The beers are sold in four-packs of 33cl bottles for a fiver, which I suppose is reasonable but I've never been willing to invest to find out. Now I don't have to.

So, Kings of Tara Lager first. Station Works has had a fairly serious diacetyl problem in the past, and it reared its buttery head on the first sniff of this. Mercifully I couldn't taste it, however. What you get is a pretty decent but unexciting budget lager: there's a firm waxy bitter bite up front and a quick clean finish. It's 4.5% ABV, intended to be served cold and I'm sure would work perfectly well as a party lager.

Its fraternal twin, Kings of Tara Pale Ale, is the same strength and has a similar busy fizz -- something that doesn't warrant comment in a lager but does kind of interfere in this. It opens on a sharply astringent note which mellows slightly into a hop bitterness complicated slightly with a bit of perfume spice. Everything is quite muted, though, and we're looking at something much closer to an English-style bitter than anything more modern, but the high carbonation takes even that credential away from it. There's nothing specifically wrong with it, but I can't see it thrilling experienced pale ale fans or newcomers.

Duty done, I went back to the tokaji -- the one Aldi have in for €25 is superb. But also on the table was the O'Shea's range, produced for Aldi by Carlow Brewing. Meanwhile, O'Hara's Winter Star is Carlow's own winter seasonal, and it returns this year as a 5% ABV "spiced rye ale". A bottle was sent to me by their PR folks, with a press release setting the RRP at €2.99. The O'Shea's beer range retails at €1.89 and for the first time there's now a Spiced Winter Ale. There's not much information on what they've added to it by way of spices, though we do know it's lighter than the O'Hara's at 4.3% ABV. So, if you're in the mood for a spiced winter ale, is it worth trading up? I thought it would be interesting to compare them side-by-side.

The pour revealed both to be copper coloured, though the O'Shea's is a deeper red, while Winter Star is brighter and more polished looking. Neither has much going on in the aroma but a deep inhale gives me a wisp of spices and brown sugar from Winter Star and a warmer caramel malt smell from O'Shea's. Carbonation is quite low in both, with Winter Star being particularly sluggish about forming and keeping a head.

I tasted O'Shea's Spiced Winter Ale first. A big pull immediately hit me with a blast of sweet cinnamon. There's not a whole lot behind this: a slightly harsh bitterness and some dry, shading to burnt, dark grain character. It's also quite thin. But the happy cinnamon keeps on coming and it's quite enjoyable for that. It's not overly sweet or overly spiced, and the light body means it works quite well by the pint. Cheap and cheerful, I guess.

O'Hara's Winter Star makes good use of its extra heft: there's a mature smoothness to the texture that the other lacks. The cinnamon is there again, but it's not as clear as in O'Shea's, competing as it does with quite a heavy and long-lasting grassy bitterness from the rye. We're told there's orange zest in here too, but I think that has been thoroughly drowned out by everything else. A second mouthful and that rye acidity is starting to bug me. I'm surprised to find myself writing this, but I think I'd prefer if the sweet cinnamon were more pronounced.

On balance, I have to award winter's crown to the O'Shea's. Winter Star does give you more things for your extra money, but perhaps this is another one of those trite seasonal lessons about how the simpler things are better.

As a postscript, O'Shea's Spiced Winter Ale appeared simultaneously with O'Shea's Dry Hopped Amber Ale. It's also part of the O'Shea's Seasonal Series but it doesn't say which season, though I guess the fallen leaves depicted on the label are a clue. It's very sweet, with lots of chewy toffee dominating a lightly spicy and spritzy jasmine and satsuma hop character. Sitting in the middle of this is a weird coconut flavour that's bizarrely incongruous. Like the Winter Ale, it's a light 4.3% ABV and suffers from thinness for a beer that should be full and warming. To be honest, I was wishing for a dash of cinnamon all the way through.

Nevertheless, if you're knocking around Aldi looking for beer this Christmas, some Kings of Tara Lager is no shame, but the O'Shea's range is a better buy. I'd probably go for the Stout above any of the rest of them, mind.

Out to launch

The Irish Craft Beer Festival rolled in to the RDS in leafy Dublin 4 last weekend, the second time it has been held here. A combination of great weather and Leinster playing at home in the stadium next door ensured a brisk trade, with somewhere over 6000 punters crossing the threshold over the three days, easily accommodated in the spacious Victorian splendour of the Industries Hall.

Alongside a couple of the new-wave cider producers (McIvor's, Tempted? and Stonewell), some homebrew show-and-tell from the Beoir fermentationists and assorted ancillary food and drink retailers (Pieman Café, I bloody love you), most of the country's independent breweries had a stand. And lots of them were using the event to launch new products or limited specials. Lots of scooping potential, then.

There was one totally new beer brand in the form of Bo Bristle, the Co. Offaly brewery formerly known as BrewEyed. Bo Bristle IPA is the flagship, a big sticky-sweet 5%-er in something of an English vernacular. Lagery golden syrup is the heart, lightly laced with citrus and finishing floral. Bo Bristle continues to brew Carrig under contract and has produced a new beer to go with the pale lager: Rower, an Irish red. Yeah, I know: Irish red, yawn, but it's one of the better ones, with lots of toffee plus a solid hop bite. This extra oomph means it does get a bit heavy as it warms up, but overall a decent take on the style.

The O'Hara's range had two new additions, making appearances on draught: Natural Blonde is a dark golden ale loaded with weighty banana esters, far away from the thinner paler lagerlike blondes one normally sees. O'Hara's Winter Star is their first ever seasonal, a lurid orange-coloured winter ale of 4.3% ABV. Orange peel, cinnamon and coconut provide the excitement here, and while I got a hint of marmalade in the foretaste, the aroma and finish are coconut in a big way. The cinnamon has completely disappeared, and it's light on malt and hops, so a little bit one-dimensional, but simple and interesting.

And much as the new ones from Carlow were the centre of my attention, there was also an oak-aged version of Leann Folláin stout on cask. This was beautiful: massive vanilla wood in the aroma but with plenty of rich and smooth chocolate stout flavours still making themselves felt in the flavour. Great balance and one of the best oak-aged beers I've tasted in a while. Less convincing was one of the American guests at the festival: Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. It's not unpleasant, per se, it just tastes powerfully of whiskey, shooting its 8% alcohol right up the back of the nose. You'd be better off with an actual glass of bourbon, to be honest.

Whitewater were also at the barrel game, with a limited supply of their oak-aged Clotworthy Dobbin for sale in bottles. I sneaked a taste before I purchased and it really lives up to the hype: big Christmas cake flavours with sweet cigar tobacco, all on a very sippable lightish body. From their beer engine there was Down Pilgrim, a new cask ale. The USP here is all-local barley from a neighbouring farmer coupled, as the name suggests, with Pilgrim hops. You get a light-coloured pale ale which begins with a little bit of toasted biscuit, following it up with a sharp bitter finish. One of those sessionable beers with character that are always great to settle into. I wasn't so keen on Whitewater's McHugh's 300, a 3.5% ABV keg blonde brewed for the Botanic Inns chain, a big customer of the brewery's. I found it just too sharp -- pretty much acetic -- to be enjoyable.

From the Odd Experience file, we have my first ever taste of Beal Bán from Beoir Chorca Duibhne. This blonde ale had a weird phenolic twang, and apparently a dash of smoked malt went into the recipe, which would explain things. There's also quite a bang of boozy heat from it, at 5.3% ABV: another golden ale that's anything but bland. And then there was a dry-hopped version of Dungarvan's Copper Coast. You know the ad for Best Western that they show on Dave? Where the brewer says his beer has "A hint of coffee with a nice green apple finish"? That.

Dungarvan provided three of my favourites from the whole gig, as well as a chocolate stout I could take or leave but seemed quite popular. Standout star of the show -- of the festival -- was Rye-PA. Normally I'd run a mile from rye in beer, disliking the harsh grassiness it normally creates. But there's only a hint of that in here, the cloudy orange beer being awash instead with massive succulent nectarine hop flavours. Of course there wasn't enough of it to keep the punters content and both casks sold out soon after being tapped. There were also limited supplies of a 6% ABV IPA which I only got a taste of (thanks Oblivious!), another mouthwatering full and fruity one. And briefly we had an unnamed dark beer with a wonderful bitterness to it. It's one of those where I couldn't tell it was dark when tasting with my eyes closed so could probably be safely badged as a B***k I*A, were the brewery so inclined.

The beer I heard most good reports about was the new one from 8 Degrees, a Märzen called Ochtoberfest: celebrating the number eight and in no way, shape or form connected to any trademarked seasonal German beer event. I was wary at first as it's quite a dark shade of orange, the same colour as all those undrinkably sticky American Märzens and Oktoberfestbiers. However the proper bready aroma set my mind at ease, and on tasting: wow! They've pulled the usual 8 Degrees trick of taking an established style and moving everything up just a notch. Or maybe two. So from a big dose of Saaz and Hallertau there's a nettle flavour rising to a rocket-like pepperiness, as well as all the rounded and filling Munich malt. Proof perhaps that you don't have to be VLB-trained to make kick-ass lager, but it helps.

Staying in Cork, another festival favourite of mine was Franciscan Well's Mi Daza. This stout is a commission from the owner of several pubs in Cork city so isn't meant to be seen elsewhere, and certainly not in the posh end of Dublin. But there it was, and splendid too: light of body but with a strong vegetal hop tang, like a lighter, more sinkable version of Porterhouse Wrasslers XXXX.

Time was, getting a new Irish beer onto this blog meant drinking a glass of it and writing down how it tasted. Increasingly these days it has become a multi-stage project. So it was with the latest one from Metalman: Moonbeam. The first version of it I tasted was served from the cask and had some bonus cranberries added dry. It was nice as it went: a smooth and dry dark ale with a tart finish and just a whisper of sweet red berries. Later I got to taste the unhacked keg version and found it quite different. The tart finish spreads throughout the flavour to become a full-on bitter hop tang. The hops also leap out in a wonderful spicy green aroma which is sadly absent from the cask edition. Another one the brewers could go calling a *lac* *P*, y'know, if they wanted to.

A bit of a dry account of the new beers at the gig there: such is the nature of this blog. I also had plenty of old favourites, including Hilden's Barney's Brew: first time I'd met it in Dublin, and some fantastic dry-hopped cask versions of Franciscan Well's Rebel Red. I haven't even mentioned the splendid new bottles from White Gypsy, due to hit the off licences in the next couple of weeks, but since I took one home with me (thanks Cuilán!), those notes will be coming later.

Above all, my abiding impression was that the Irish Craft Beer Festival was not simply a big hall with beers for sale, nor a three-day piss-up, but a proper celebration of beer in Ireland as it is now, with plenty to excite both wary newcomers and jaded old hacks like me. I'm looking forward to many more years of this event.