Q4 results

Today I'm wrapping up my coverage of Open Gate Brewery's 2025 output, with the late autumn and winter offerings from Diageo's Dublin microbrewery at St James's Gate. 

Marking Halloween, presumably, they produced a pumpkin-spice beer, with no actual pumpkin, called Spicy Friars. The latter part of the name is because the beer is based on Smithwick's, albeit at a much higher gravity than that flagship red ale, finishing at 6.2% ABV. It's a clear dark garnet colour, so darker than Smithwick's too, I'd say. The menu tells us that nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom and apple have been added, though one of these completely dominates the others. The aroma is like warm Christmas cookies, huge on cinnamon, plus what I perceived as a menthol effect, however that was generated. Unsurprisingly, that's all the flavour does too, leaving little room for any beer character. While it's quite sweet, there's a tannic finish that helps dry it out, and as long as you can tolerate the exceedingly unsubtle spice, it's not a bad beer. I noted they hadn't given it a Halloweenish name, and couldn't help wondering if the intent was to migrate it seemlessly into being a Christmas seasonal. That would work, though it was gone from the taps before the tree went up.

In the half-pint beside it, Dublin DIPA. I guess the name is meant to be a pun on "double"? It's 7.5% ABV, murky ochre in colour, and very typical of the sort of IPA Open Gate tends to produce. That is to say, it's really not very good. Instead of bright and fresh hops, the flavour is muddy and imprecise. Gloopy lemon curd and chemical perfume leads to a slightly toasted finish which doesn't belong in the style. There's no bite to it, and neither west-coast sharpness nor east-coast softness. Just like the Nitro IPA and Citra IPA produced at the big plant across the street, this tastes overly processed and industrial, though I suspect that the hop-killing Guinness yeast may be the real culprit. It's a disappointment, but at least it's a predictable one.

I'm not usually a fan of the various stouts that the brewery produces, but they hit me just right with the Pistachio Choco Stout which arrived at the same time as the above, and did stay for Christmas. This has been beefed up, but not excessively, to 5.3% ABV, and it is absolutely packed with milk chocolate, smelling like a children's breakfast cereal. Although it's carbonated, the texture is nicely smooth, and the flavour offers plenty more chocolate, in a kind of a fluffy and truffle-like way, plus a bonus nuttiness which must be the pistachio but tasted more like plainer hazelnut or peanut to me. There's a parallel richness of alcohol and coffee, like the liqueur-drenched sponge of a tiramisu, as well as a floral rosewater effect and enough vanilla to bring Baileys to mind. So although the chocolate is its dominant characteristic, and lasts long into the finish, there's plenty more besides. Those who miss Porterhouse's Chocolate Truffle Stout would do well to get hold of this before it disappears. I think it's an even better beer than that one, and one of the best dessertish by-the-pint stouts I've ever had.

Staying dark but switching styles, we also got a new Munich Dunkel, and Open Gate generally knows what it's doing with dark lagers. This one is a very dark brown and was served a little too cold for comfort, but I wasn't in a rush with it. The first sip was a bit bland, but that's cold beer for you. Given a bit of time it reveals itself to be quite a modest and shy Dunkel, low on bitterness and roast. It's still pretty good though, mixing sweet milk chocolate with bitterer cocoa in a expertly balanced way, and holding back on the fizz. That allows one to appreciate a body which is beautifully full for a mere 5% ABV. One wouldn't mistake it for something served from a counter-top holzfass, but the level of smoothness makes it the nearest you'll find in Dublin on a winter afternoon. My final thought as I finished the pint was that I would be very happy to settle into another.

But there was another beer to be ticked: Espionage, a pale ale. There's a story with this one. They say that the brew didn't go according to plan, and the recipe includes squid ink, so maybe it was an attempt at a black IPA. It looks very far from that, being pale orange and mostly clear. Crispness is promised in the description and, OK, it's not flabby like Open Gate pale ales generally are, but it's more bland than crisp. There's a plain white toast base, spread with a thin layer of hop marmalade, and that's it. There's plenty of substance from its 5% ABV but it fails to do anything with it. I'm all for owning one's mistakes, but what is this for? It presents as a pale ale, but hasn't the hops to make that interesting. I'm left thinking of pale milds I've unenthusiastically chewed through in England, but they at least tend to be low strength. This is one of those beers which is unpleasant not because of how it tastes, but because of how much of my time it wastes. It passes as saleable beer, though this brewery could have discreetly disposed of it instead of putting it before the jaded and cynical drinking public, or at least this member of it. Pour one out for the utterly wasted hops.

The Christmas decorations were up when I popped in to try the Winter Cherry Ale. I don't know what makes this wintery, other than the calendar, but cherry it has, being pink and strongly fruit-flavoured. The aroma hints it might be overly syruped but there's a balancing tart zing in the foretaste, more sherbet than jam. It still doesn't taste like real cherry and has a lot in common with the more lurid sort of Belgian cherry beers, the ones where if there's any lambic component it's purely tokenistic. The bite does mean none of it hangs around, leaving a clean albeit watery finish. For 5% ABV there should have been rather more substance, but as-is, it's accessible and fun. As it's essentially a tourist attraction, not many of Open Gate's clientele have much interest in beer, and I can see this suiting that cohort nicely. It's a valid niche, and poorly served in Irish beer.

The season was fully inaugurated with the arrival of Plum Pudding Porter, apparently in its fifth year of brewing. The strength keeps going up, hitting 8.4% ABV this year. The recipe is a convoluted one, with currants, sultanas, two kinds of cherry, vanilla, mixed fruit peel, prunes, pistachio, nutmeg, star anise, cloves and allspice. I can't imagine that's all necessary, though the chocolate and cherry aroma is highly enticing. It's suitably heavy and has a good bitter kick to balance what's otherwise quite the confection. Up front it's the chocolate and cherry again, and really that's plenty by itself. The spice takes a moment to come through and is rather dry and acrid, tasting like dusty beige powder in the jar at the back of the cupboard, which tends to be nutmeg and allspice's destiny, round my place. I understand why they added it, but it doesn't really work. The end result does not taste like a Christmas pudding. It is, however, bloody lovely. The rich combination of big portery chocolate with succulent cherry is a winner and I'm really not bothered about the accuracy. Our national dearth of strong seasonal beers on draught makes this a welcome tradition.

I don't know if Open Gate will be taking its customary extended January break, but I'll be back in the new year regardless, to find out what they put on next.

Arthur's Last Christmas

Just before the Christmas holiday I dropped in to the Open Gate Brewery to see what the Guinness crew were offering for the season.

Paddle one began on a Chocolate Milk Stout, the sort of thing Guinness has produced from time to time but rarely to any great aplomb. This one is fine, but unremarkable. It has all the creamy Guinness texture but a little too much of the signature Guinness bitterness. I could barely taste the powdered chocolate behind this, nor did I get any of the vanilla effect which often results from lactose. Overall, it's maybe a smidge denser and sweeter than Draught Guinness, but little more different than that.

The next one gives this post its title: Arthur's Last Ale. The claim is that it's a recreation of the last batch of ale brewed by Guinness before it became an all-porter brewery in the late 18th century. My "beer specialist" server couldn't tell me what it's made from, but it's a dark garnet colour, so I'm guessing some combination of roasted malts is involved. The aroma gives little away but the flavour leaps in with Scotch-ale levels of sticky toffee. It's only 5% ABV but feels more, almost like a barley wine. The flavour finishes with a bite of burnt caramel. A very slight leafy green tang is all that the hops, presumably English, have to say. As historical recreation beers go, it's accessible and pleasant. I don't get the point of putting something like this out as a promotional piece for the brewery without making all the background information available, however.

Finally for this paddle, Plum Pudding Porter: not the most original idea, but nobody else around here is doing one, so why not? It's properly black and a sizeable 8.3% ABV. The spice and plum is immediately apparent from the aroma; enticingly so. The mouthfeel is surprisingly light, in that it's full but not heavy, and very drinkable. What also helps there is that the novelty flavours are restrained and quite balanced. You definitely know you have a novelty beer: its flavour is the gustatory equivalent of wearing a silly festive hat. But the clove, the cinnamon, nutmeg and sultana all taste like the real thing, not some homogenous sludge of industrial "Christmas pudding flavor". This is the classiest gimmick beer I've had in a while.

The second flight began with a palate cleanse called Lyre Lager, a bit stronger than your standard at 5.5% ABV. As is absolutely standard in this place, it's a flawless gold in the glass with a perfectly formed white head. The body is substantial but there isn't really the flavour to justify it. It tastes very generic, with only token hops -- all bittering -- and a sickly malt sweetness that's half way to tramps' brew. I have to wonder what the intention was. Regardless, this one isn't up to the usual high standard of Open Gate lager.

The final two are in those rare beer styles that make high turnover taprooms like this so much fun. Who else would be making 90 Shilling? Open Gate's is 6.8% ABV. This is a heavy fellow, dense with unfermented malt sugars, while also laced by bitterly vegetal hops: serious stuff. There's a definite Highland Toffee element to the centre, and it's enjoyably warming and chewable. On adjusting to the bitterness I found a more nuanced red-liquorice side to it. I'm no expert on what 90 Shilling is meant to taste like, either historically or whatever American homebrew culture has since turned it into, but this is quite a good beer, and was well suited to the cold and drizzly evening on which they served it to me.

Our big finish is Open Gate's Black IPA, brewed in collaboration with giant, mostly-independent, Kildare brewery Rye River. It's certainly black, showing only dark brown at the edges, and it's a sizeable 6% ABV. On the red cabbage to bath bomb scale of black IPA flavour profiles, this leans Lush, sparking with zesty lemon and oil of lavender. The bitterness is harder even than cabbage and spinach, heading for rubber and yeast dregs, but this isn't very prominent and can be ignored. Overall, it's a slightly off-kilter interpretation of black IPA, perhaps taking its cue from the current fashion for fruity ya-yas in IPA hopping, rather than a stern smack. It works, though. Black IPA being a wonderful and under-valued style doesn't mean they all have to taste the same.

Open Gate is closed at the moment but scheduled to reopen on 23rd January. I don't know if any of the above will survive the furlough.