Be cute, rebrew it

A promise of botanicals is where I left my last visit to Open Gate Brewery, and that materialised in late February as a beer called Ancient Gruit. Details of what they've used instead of hops would be nice, but as usual, there's no mechanism for finding that out once they've decided not to put it on the menu card. It's 5.2% ABV and a cloudy yellow-gold, the paleness suggesting the malting techniques are very modern indeed. It doesn't taste like other gruits I've had. They tend to be spicy and herbal, usually with a strong sweet side due to the lack of hops. This is bitter, centred on a raw vegetal effect, like the thick white stem of a red cabbage leaf. A rasping acidity and weedy, dandelion tang give it a medicinal quality: it feels like something you drink for solely health reasons. I quite liked the oddness, but it won't be for everyone. Some darker malt and some brighter flavours might make it more accessible.

There was also another flavoured stout, following on from the pistachio one last winter. Sarsaparilla Stout is heftier, at 6% ABV, though is just as smooth and easy drinking. There's a vaguely herbal tone to the aroma, suggesting some novelty but nothing too loud, and also plenty of properly typical stout roast. There's lots of chocolate in the flavour, followed quickly by a raft of herbal complexity (where was that in the gruit?) including clove and the unmistakable root beer character of sarsaparilla. A different sort of spice -- dry and cedarlike -- finishes things off. Just like the Pistachio Stout, this is first and foremost a fun beer: sweet and a bit gimmicky, but extremely quaffable. Keeping the gravity up and the chocolate malt level high is the key, I reckon. If they have embarked on a whole new series with these stouts then I'm very interested in what they try next (details below).

The new Kristalweizen hadn't gone on sale yet, but had just been tapped up so I got a sneaky advance taster. This is one of those beer styles it's hard to impress anyone with, and indeed this example has modest aims: brewed to provide easy refreshment, albeit not exactly low in strength at 5% ABV -- a 2021 version was 6%, mind. The clear golden appearance shows they got the crystal part of the spec right, though any typical weissbier flavour appears to have been filtered out with the Trüb. Rather than banana and clove, it has toffee and butterscotch, which is rather less appealing. A green bite of celery-like noble hopping saves it somewhat, but it's not a beer for me. Now finished, I'm sure it found its audience among those who have been dragged reluctantly to Open Gate by their beer-enthusiast partners when visiting Dublin.

For the St Patrick's Festival, the brewery turned out an Oyster Stout. This is the second one they've done, having covered this ground back in 2024. As tends to happen with re-brews, the ABV has come down, to 4.9% from 5.5. They serve it carbonated so there's a lot of crispness, the fizz complementing its roast grain foretaste. Beyond that, there's... well, not very much, actually. I was expecting at least some sort of saline tang from the shellfish, but damned if I could find it. Unlike the recent pastrified Open Gate stouts (see above) there's no chocolate side, and nothing you could call coffee. Instead, it's the hard char of bottled Guinness and nothing else. I can manage a pint of bland fizzy stout without complaint, but I think I'm within my rights to expect more when oysters are involved.

It was nice that the next two were both dark beers, although I don't think West Coast IPA is supposed to be this brown. Or murky, or only 5.9% ABV, for that matter, although the strength is an improvement on 2017's version, which was only 5.2%. I know better than to judge a beer by its looks, however, and the fresh and zesty hop aroma told me that they had got this one at least in the west-coast ballpark. The hop-phobic Guinness yeast does take its toll in the flavour somewhat, resulting in marmalade shred rather than sharp grapefruit, set on a toasty, bready background with a pithy finish. There's a bit of an English cask IPA vibe to it, and one that has perhaps not been kept well, as there's some slightly dreggy interference. Only slight, though. It's a bit of easy-going fun; not pristinely perfect, but still enjoyable. It's perhaps noteworthy that, within a month of being tapped, it was quietly re-named "Old School IPA" by the brewery. That yeast really is no friend to the hop.

By the half pint beside it is the latest Open Gate Barley Wine, and down goes the ABV again: 9.4% in 2023 and only 9% now. Only. The cola-brown colour is very close to Guinness-black, and there's not much aroma beyond a broad and undefined dark fruit effect. Plenty happens in the flavour, however, with the fruit front and centre: identifiably plum and damson, as befits a barley wine when it's not made to be hopcentric. Complexity comes via a brush of corky oak and a pinch of roast grain. A hint of buttery diacetyl emerges as it warms, but that's tolerable. Overall, this is a clean and tasty effort, using the alcohol to deliver a smoothness without any unwelcome heat. Refined barley wines of this sort are a rarity, with too many breweries simply using it as a base for something outré, which ironically makes them commonplace and less interesting. I'm all in favour of this one coming back at a later stage, though maybe keep the ABV up where it is.

The latest addition to the line-up arrived last week: Czech Amber Lager. I think this is Open Gate's first time making polotmavý, a style I'm not a huge fan of, having not quite enough of the attributes of dark or pale Czech lager. This was decent, however. It's on the dark side, which brings a degree of dry roast to the foretaste. That dovetails with the greenly bitter noble hops, telling you you're definitely in the Czech zone. Crispness abounds and there's no sweet malt. Such a dry take may not be what the polotmavý cognoscenti are after, but it suited me. Another great lager from Open Gate.

I don't think there's any in the forthcoming summer line-up, alas. Haze, radler, orange Berliner weisse, fruited double IPA and rum-coconut stout will be coming your way in due course, I'm told. Stand by.

How's it hanging?

Meat! That was the theme of the Meatopia event which set up at Open Gate in early July; meat and smoke -- I came home reeking of both. The event has been running for some years now, in New York and then London, and this was its first time in Dublin, invited by Diageo to take over the yard outside their experimental brewery and brewpub for two days.

The format involved six barbecue stalls, managed by people whose names may or may not be recognisable to those who move in foodie circles, each with a single signature dish and a matched sample of beer. Admission (Diageo's PR folk kindly comped mine) got you one of each pairing, plus a bonus pint from the bars: as well as the Open Gate's current selection, The Porterhouse, 5 Lamps, DOT and London's 40FT were also pouring.

We'll begin with the beer created especially for the event: Open Gate's own Meatopia Smoked Lager, a 6% ABV pale bock, created with the assistance of Melissa Cole, who also ably MC'd the beery-talky bit of the event. This is yet another classically-styled down-the-line lager from Open Gate. It shows absolutely the right balance between golden syrup sweetness and a green celery bite, set on a body that's chewy and substantial without being thick. The smoke is deliberately (sez Melissa) subtle: just a small phenolic burr at the back. I don't know that it contributed a great deal to the picture, but it does no harm either. I'm not the person to ask about the beer's suitability for pairing with barbecued meat, but I have no complaints in that department. The greasy lens through which the subsequent photos were taken is a testament to my not letting the beer get in the way of the grub.

And there was a new bonus Open Gate lager pouring inside: Helles Yeah. The 5.8% ABV gave me momentary pause: that's a bit more welly than helles is supposed to have. However, it seems that they've used this additional heft to ramp up the other elements too: it still has the smoothness and cleanness that make helles such a great beer. The grassy noble hops are fresh-tasting and even a little spicy, and then there's a crunch of dry grain as well. It does lack the quaffability of good helles -- one pint was plenty -- but here again I can't argue with the taste.

Finally from the house, Open Gate's West Coast IPA. Unlike lager, the brewery's record with IPA has been pretty poor. I blame the yeast: there's a tendency to use the Guinness strain, and the esters it produces just aren't compatible with clean-and-hoppy. So sticking the words "west coast" in there is just asking for trouble. And yet... It is only 5.2% ABV, which means points off for style accuracy, but it is properly pale and clear. And the opening sip delivered a bright and ringing hit of bitter grapefruit. That the first beer to spring to mind was the style-defining west-coaster Ballast Point Sculpin speaks in its favour; that I've never really liked Sculpin probably doesn't. There isn't much behind that initial blast of citrus. While the body is indeed heavy, it's not as greasy as the other Open Gate IPAs and I did begin to enjoy it once I got used to the bitterness. More importantly, perhaps, the brewery is starting to get the hang of IPA. I won't be as apprehensive about the next one.

40FT Brewery of Dalston had been guests at James's Gate before but this was the first time trying their beers for me. I started with Street Weiss, a densely opaque and luridly orange weissbier. It's nerve-janglingly sweet, tasting almost as much like a smoothie as it looks. The flavour shows more summer fruit -- strawberry and raspberry -- than standard weizen banana. By way of balance there's a harsh plasticky bitterness in the finish which is completely out of place for the profile, as well as being unpleasant in itself. Maybe they're trying to be creative with a staid old German style, but it really hasn't worked.

On my way out I nabbed a quickie pint of 40FT's Hoppy Pale Ale. On a different day, I'd have been quite happy with this. It's fairly inoffensive; 4.1% ABV with a flavour profile that leans more towards the savoury than the fruity, again with the sharp bitter kick in the finish. But after a couple of decent lagers and a super-citric IPA, it just felt like a regression, like this brewery didn't have their recipe game quite as together as the Open Gate did. Maybe there's an observation to be made about the relative merits of craft vs. macro brewing, I dunno. But on the day it was a second thumbs-down for 40FT from me.

Meatopia was a hugely fun event. When in non-ticking mode I got reacquainted with DOT's delicious summer saison and applauded the first time I've seen Porterhouse Wrassler's out at an event. The food was great and, unlike several other food festivals, you got a very solid feed from the admission tokens alone. The theatricality of the cooking and the serving added to the joyous caveman feel of the whole gig. And it was particularly good to see the space outside Open Gate, narrow as it is, made use of this way.

Cheers to the organisers and promoters, and congratulations on a job well done.