End of the year content filling

Thank you to Alan for the title. And so, once again, it's time to take stock of the year in beer just gone, using an increasingly irrelevant template, last revised in 2013. Changing it now would be akin to re-making Dinner For One in colour HD -- completely missing the point. As usual, deliberations are aided by something from the fridge which is hopefully a bit special.

This year it's a Chardonnay barrel aged wild sour ale from Wide Street, called Réserve Spéciale. It's had two years in the casks and poured a bright golden, almost completely clear. The aroma certainly shows off the wine, and very much that Chablis Burgundy dry fruitiness. The oak is perfectly integrated into this, just like with good wine itself, and there's no tacked-on vanilla or butteriness. At only 5.4% ABV it's light-bodied and crisp, refreshing even, its flavour opening with an immediate kick of Golden Delicious apples, tart gooseberries, soft kiwi and real white grape. More typical oak vanilla arrives late, but doesn't last long, and it finishes on a light saltpetre spicing of which I would have liked more. The fruit is almost at the level of a grape ale, and I commend this in particular to my fellow lovers of that style. In the 75cl bottle it makes for an excellent special occasion beer, and ideal for proselytising the wonders of wild fermentation and barrel ageing. But there's only one special occasion on my agenda today. Time to get on with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2024

Best Irish Cask Beer: Hopkins & Hopkins Sitric
It's a beautiful pale ale, no question, but this award is in part for what it represents: it was the first beer to show up on the revived cask handpump at The Porterhouse on Parliament Street, and it has been a regular there ever since, though occasionally time-sharing with Lough Gill's beers. Neither The Porterhouse nor H&H needed to do this; it's totally out of keeping with trends in Irish pubs and beer, and I've never seen anyone but me order it. But it is massively appreciated by this drinker and adds a wonderful bit of diversity to a beer market that can feel a little samey betimes. A Golden Pint is the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Otterbank Oíche Mhaith
It's probably a lot more common bottled than draught, and the keg which went on sale at UnderDog in February was doubtless a rarity. Nevertheless it counts, and I don't see any reason why 9.4% ABV vatted porters can't be sold on draught in Irish pubs as a matter of course. Everyone just needs to grow up a bit.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Beoir Chorca Duibhne Leann Láidir
Honestly, the headline beer on this post is a contender, and I'm only having my second glass of it now. But on mature reflection, West Kerry's barrel aged rye porter was the Irish bottled beer that best delivered the goods for me this year. That was back in June, so finding it may be difficult at this stage, though I bet it didn't sell quickly and that there are still bottles to be had.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Third Barrel Hello Yes
Maybe it's because I'm quite jaded about IPAs in general, and that's what most canned Irish beers are these days, but it was a struggle to find a stand-out winner in this category. The one I picked is an authentic-tasting Czech style pilsner, though you'll have to wait until next week for my review. Take my word for it, however: cans of this one are still readily available and well worth picking up.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Uiltje Pomme Pressure
I'd say I drank close to a thousand different beers in 2024, though only a handful of them taught me anything new. This dark barley wine aged in Calvados barrels had a very special flavour profile and one that has stuck in my memory as distinctive and delicious. That's enough to mark it out for an award.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Den Herberg Geus Genereus
After a sizeable hiatus, the Toer de Geuze happened for me again this year, and included plenty of beers and breweries I knew little about. The specification of this complex geuze caught my eye from the brewery's temporary festival bar and delivered absolutely all of the implied complexity. Up top, I said that I would have liked more spice in the Wide Street beer. This one had spice enough for both.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
In the summer I went to Bulgaria, and while the beer I found there often wasn't the best, there were some stand-out moments. Those produced by a group of heavy metal fans on the edge of the Black Sea (possible beer/album name?) were among the most memorable, in a positive way. Metalworks is a barley wine with figs, dates and spices, but pulls off the trick of tasting balanced and integrated while still being a playful novelty beer. They compensated for the frustratingly tiny can with a huge and brilliant flavour. 

Best Collaboration Brew: Sofia Electric / Põhjala Väga Suur
And I'm as surprised as you are to find another Bulgarian beer at the races this year. In fact, this was originally picked for best overseas bottle, but with an absence of other suitable collaboration beers among the year's highlights, it made more sense to slot it in here. It's another complex barrel-aged barley wine which has been skilfully blended to create a unique drinking experience. Bulgarian brandy barrels get filed along with Calvados as ones to look out for. 

Best Overall Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
I look at the eight champion beers and try to think of the one that made the strongest impression on me; the one I can still taste and react to, just by reading its name, and that's the Metalheads of Burgas this year.

Best Branding: Kestemont
Back to the Toer de Geuze, and a visit to a brewery I'd never been to before, nor tried any of their beers. Kestemont has only been going since 2022 and doesn't try to pretend to be a vintage institution making old-timey beers. The branding is clean and modern, though also conjuring a more primitive age, for example the woodcut-like dashing hare on their Oude Geuze.

Best Pump Clip: Fat Cat House Ale
I remarked at the time that the house bitter at The Fat Cat in Sheffield is better than it needs to be, and the artwork on the clip is also a cut above. I don't know if it's based on a real cat or, if so, if said cat actually wears a monocle. I just enjoyed his stoic reaction to the shite Yorkshire weather, as seemingly rendered by Frank Miller. 

Best Bottle/Can Label: Lacada Out On A Shout
Lacada cans are always beautifully designed, but the one that stood out for me this year was a beer I've never had, a pale ale produced as a fund-raiser for the RNLI and making wonderful use of the beneficiary's particular turn of phrase. There's something about how it brings the reality of lifeboat work to the prospective beer purchaser that made it instantly memorable to me. Maybe I'll get to drink it at some point.

Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay
While the company's pub end took something of a battering through 2024, the work done by the folks on the production side has been excellent. They've cornered the market in Irish-brewed Catharina sours and also rocked the dark and strong styles with Baltic porter, pastry stout, doppelbock and imperial porter of superb quality. And the schedule has been delightfully relentless, with new beers for me to try at The Black Sheep every few weeks. Throw in some excellent lager, which they did, and that's nearly everything I want a brewery to do.

Best Overseas Brewery: Dok
I had some fantastic beers at this Ghent brewpub when I visited last month, particularly the cherry and grape ale, and the black IPA. They narrowly missed out on the individual beer prizes so I'm happy to award this one for their output collectively. Their whole approach is cheerfully upbeat, and the creativity is matched by the quality of their beers. 

Best New Brewery Opening 2024: Smithfield Brewing
I mean, the beers aren't brilliant, being very much designed for mainstream pub-goers at the venues run by the brewery's owners. Rather, this award is for the project: the return of brewing to the old Dublin Brewing Company site in Dublin's north inner city. It looks like they're planning to open for visitors, being centrally located not far off the tourist trail with a bar just inside the entrance. And the old redbrick soap factory they're in is a lovely bit of Dublin's historic industrial architecture. In short, there's a lot of promise, and I hope to see it realised in 2025.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
Ho hum, right? Where else would a thirsty person go for a quality selection, constant turnover, and an opportunity to rub shoulders with the cream of Dublin's beer geekery? UnderDog is the place and that's all there is to it, really.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024: The 108
Strictly speaking this is a change of management rather than a new opening, but enough changed after Galway Bay vacated their Rathgar footprint that I'm counting it as a new opening. While there's a more mainstream appeal to the offer these days, there's still a good choice of quality beers (hello Kinnegar), and getting that out in the D6 boondocks is a rarity to be treasured. I'll throw in a most honourable mention for Bier Draak in Norwich which opened in May this year. It's an extension of the Sir Toby's market stall, but with worthwhile innovations such as a roof and a toilet. The beer list is impeccable.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It's been a while since De Molen's two-day shindig has troubled my Golden Pints, and nothing much has changed with it in a few years now. But it's my call, and I had a wonderful time at this year's gig. I'm sure the great weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact that I missed last year. It's still a bit overcrowded and some breweries are overly fond of making punters queue for timed special releases, but mostly it works brilliantly, the exhibitors are well chosen and the whole thing is a quality affair. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
This year, it's an award for reliability and dependability. Aldi had the turnover of beers, but I bought more in Lidl because they have such solid reliables on the shelves permanently: fridge-fillers like their Crafty Brewing IPA and American Brown Ale, but also modern classics including Little Fawn, Scraggy Bay and Rustbucket. Grabbing a handful for a weekend of unfussy drinking has become a regular habit.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Molloy's
Specifically this goes to the Francis Street branch which has done best at offering me beers that I didn't see anywhere else, and all without having to go outside the canals. Yes, your Martin's and your Redmond's and your Blackrock Cellars have better ranges, but for the convenience/price/selection criteria, Molloy's on Francis Street covers things best.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
And Captain Obvious's Retail Recommendations continue here. Just as UnderDog is the place where gobdaws like me sit in to drink, Craft Central is where we get our cans of whatever was just released or imported. I don't (often) touch the stupidly expensive ultra-rare imports, because haze is haze and they don't make it magically better in Illinois or wherever, but CC has a proper devotion to Irish beer and even stoops to selling Irish breweries' bottled beers on occasion. As well as this award, I present them with the encouragement to do more of that sort of thing.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Devil's in the Draught Lines
We have two books in contention this year, but I think the prize has to go to this wide-ranging, deep-diving and wonderfully person-centred account of women's place in the beer world, past and present, commissioned by CAMRA and written by our own Dr Christina Wade. It's a story that needed told and a document that will stand witness for future writers on the subject.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Belgian Smaak
My runner-up book was Breandán Kearney's Hidden Beers of Belgium, which is genuinely excellent, so I'm very happy to award this equally prestigious Golden Pint to Breandán for his website. Output isn't exactly quickfire but the quality is worth waiting for. Claire Bullen's delving under the skin of Brouwerij Boon, and Breandán's own telling of the Eylenbosch/Boerenerf saga, were literally my two favourite pieces of beer journalism I read this year.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @articnead
I think Simon would have been quite happy for us to include Bluesky under the remit of this award now, and although I'm doing that, and Sinead does have an account on The Nice Place, this is still mostly a Twitter thing for probably the last time. Our winner does a marvellous mix of nordie snark, righteous outrage and old-school good-time bants, often within the same 280 characters, and generally gives proper vintage-era Twitter vibes, the way Bluesky is supposed to but doesn't. I very much doubt she reads this, so you can pass on the good news for me, Sean. Thanks.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Ballykilcavan
And also in the fractured social media space, we have Ballykay shining a light of positivity, interesting happenings, more righteous outrage, and fleeces, into the swirling maelstrom that is today's beer internet. More Irish breweries should be telling us what they're up to and what's on their mind via a held up phone in a working brewhouse. Casting a new Cleo the spaniel will be a tough task, however.


Is that it? Have we only 25 categories? Cuh! I could have gone on all year. Congratulations to all 2024's deserving winners, and shame on you who got nothing: you've seen the bar, now get planning how you'll raise it. Me, I'm still very slowly getting through the tail end of 2024's Irish beer releases. You can expect opinions about them arriving here well into January. No rush with whatever you breweries have in store for us in 2025.

On automatic

I've almost reached the point where I don't bother looking for flights home from Brussels now. There are better options from Schiphol and, oh yes, you get to spend a bit of time in the Netherlands. After the 2024 Toer de Geuze ended we had an overnight in Amsterdam to round things off.

I brought train beer for the journey, of course. In a Carrefour I found a bottle of something I had been looking for since I read Eoghan Walsh's Brussels Beer City: The Book, Scotch CTS. There we learn that it had its origins in the post-WWI craze for British beer and, with a twin stout, was created by the Brussels brewery Wielemans. In the late '70s Wielemans was bought by Artois of Leuven, which went on to form Interbrew, and latterly AB InBev. And yet the beer has survived all the corporate machinations: Belgium's answer to Macardle's ale. Today it's 7.2% ABV and dark brown with a highly treacly aroma. It's boozier than expected, there are much stronger Belgian beers which hide their alcohol better. But then I think the alcohol is intended as the beer's personality, because it has little else going for it. Poking around I found some lacklustre banana esters, a bit of caramel and a pinch of burnt roast, but even writing that out longhand is doing the beer a favour. It's hot and dull, more like a badly-brewed dubbel than my understanding of Scotch ale. Still, that's it ticked off the list, and it passed the time between Mechelen and Breda.

On then to Amsterdam where we had no particular plans, nor will to do anything out of the ordinary. Standard operating procedure landed us in Beer Temple first, looking for items of interest on its international beer menu. Herself went with a 10.5% ABV coffee stout by Perennial of St Louis called, charmingly, Barrel Aged Sump. This is very black and massively sweet, beginning with a sticky Tia Maria aroma. Subtlety is not a feature, but there is a certain complexity: hazelnut or praline and a long coffee cream finish. American beers of this sort aren't cheap at Beer Temple, but this one managed to be good value all the same. 

I had a rauchbier from Bamberg, from a brewer that appears to have been named by that Elon Musk guy: Blech.Brut 8 Bit. What? Rauchbier Special is the name: 5.7% ABV and a surprising, but nice, rose gold colour. The sweet lemon aroma was another unexpected pleasure, suggesting that some class of modern-hopped lager is the base (Cascade and Strata, says their website). Then it was a shock to meet the smoke side, a dirty, plasticky kippery effect I've tasted in plenty of attempts at smoked beer, but none of them from Bamberg. It did grow on me, becoming less severe as it went. Maybe with a full German measure I'd have actually enjoyed it by the end. The beer under the smoke is very good; I found myself wishing they hadn't tried the smoke gimmick at all.

The following day we paid one of our occasional visits to In de Wildemann where I was, believe it or not, hunting rauchbier again. Herself wouldn't go past the Cantillon on the menu, since we hadn't had any of theirs in Brussels. This is Sang Bleu, a geuze made with haksap berries, aka blue honeysuckle, aka yeah whatever, just pour it. This is 6% ABV and glows with purply goodness. The aroma is all cherry sherbet, that sweetness meeting some very ripe fruit. This is even more intense in the flavour, where squidgy mango allies with full-on damp farmyard, finishing with a cleansing tang of berry acidity. For all that, it's quite restrained and tastes very young: light-bodied and spritzy. It's a casual sort of serious fun, though still very much up to Cantillon's usual high standard.

She was back on the imperial stout after that: one from Uiltje called The Algorithm Pt 3. It's a frankly excessive 14.5% ABV and is another sweet one, smelling of vanilla, milk chocolate, fig paste and the sweet spices and herbs of Turkish coffee. Still, it's not too hot considering the strength, though appropriately full and smooth. There's a generous kick of espresso bitterness to balance the sweet excesses and the whole thing is really quite approachable -- a bit of a gentle giant.

Rauchbier. It's a disgrace that its taken me this long to try the new ones from Schlenkerla. I thought I might find them in Austria last March, but didn't. I was certain that De Bierkoning, central Amsterdam's top off licence, would have them, but it didn't. And it was a few days before I found one of them on the shelves at a local shop in Dublin. Groh. But Wildemann had them both, and that's what I drank.

First up was Weichsel which is a rotbier, the red lager style most associated with Nuremberg. In the glass it's a disarming clear copper colour with lots of stiff foam on top. The caramelised malt makes it smell of candied bacon. On tasting it's pure Schlenkerla magic: a fantastically clean savoury smoke with no hard edges. Indeed, it has a lot in common with the flagship Märzen even though it's only 4.6% ABV. And while I appreciated that, I felt I was diddled a bit as regards the base style. I'm on record as not really liking Nuremberg rotbier very much, but I still thought there should be a bit more of its caramelised malt and red liquorice in the flavour. As is, this might suit those drinkers who enjoy the flavour intensity of Schlenkerla Märzen but find it too heavy.

The other mainstream German beer style to get the Schlenkerla treatment is schwarzbier, with Erle. This is lighter again in alcohol at only 4.2% ABV and isn't really black; more of a cola brown with red edges. The aroma offers a wisp of beech smoke but not much else. It's surprisingly big-bodied and soft textured, to the point of feeling creamy and stout-like. Sadly, it has no real dark grain flavour that I could detect. It's possible that schwarzbier's delicate toasty dryness has been totally obscured by the irrepressible smoky phenols which are the long and the short of it. Even as a Schlenkerla superfan, I wasn't very impressed. It must be possible to make a smoked schwarzbier which balances both sides of the equation. Oh well. Curiosity is satisfied and Schlenkerla does not have two new classics on its books.

The procedure dictates that Arendsnest is the final call and it was a beautiful day for sitting out by the Herengracht, watching the world cruise by. I noticed some weeks ago that this pub, whose gimmick is an all-Dutch beer list, had added a cask stout to it, seemingly as a permanent fixture. I had to give that a spin, though was a little disappointed it comes in a small Dutch measure instead of a proper pint. It's only 3.1% ABV so is called Little Stout, brewed by Poesiat & Kater. It's another cola-coloured one, maybe more red than brown, but certainly not black. And it's no bog-standard roasty session stout neither. The taste is a psychedelic kaleidoscope of bright flavours, in which I found rosewater in a big way, but also marzipan, bergamot, chocolate and fresh lemon zest. It could almost pass for a black IPA, only for a grounding roasted bite in the finish which is unmistakebly stout. Spectacular stuff given the spec. My only quibble is a typically Amsterdam one: €6 for 25cl is extortion.

Somebody else decided they wanted a double-digit stout, and chose It's A Sin, a collaboration by Kees with well-travelled Estonian brewer Pühaste. It doesn't seem to have any claims on novelty, other than the huge 13.8% ABV, but it smells and tastes of chocolate in a big way. That may just be the Kees house style, now that I think of it. We begin with a fudge or chocolate fondant aroma: calorific before it even gets near your mouth. The flavour opens on a salty chocolate tang before moving on to sticky molasses, and then finishing surprisingly quickly with no heat to speak of. Maybe I should be grateful for small mercies but I thought it would have more impact -- that's certainly what was sought. A beer of this style and strength which caused me to write the word "unexciting" has gone wrong somewhere.

Gose has become such a debased style that I now buy straight and pure ones whenever I see them. Gooische has one with the no-nonsense moniker of Salty Sour. It's a beautiful bright gold colour though doesn't taste very sour. Instead it's built around a spritzy lemonade sweetness with no more than a broad and basic tang of acidity. The coriander is missing, as is the salt, so as a straight gose it's a complete failure. Still, it's pleasantly refreshing and only 4% ABV. Relabel it as a radler and we're away.

What's that next to it? Could it be a stupidly strong imperial stout? This one is from Kees again, but with Moersleutel: two Dutch breweries where I assume imperial stout flows from the watercooler and fills the fishtank in reception. It's called Smeerkees and it tops out today's selection of mad yokes at 14.9% ABV. Again it's not hot but you do get some proper complexity with all the alcohol: a crisp hazelnut aroma and a flavour of high-end chocolate, dry peanut shell and a gradually building liqueur warmth, one which never tips over into being uncouth. It's a calm and classy sipper, exactly what I want from a Dutch imperial stout. The only gimmick is that ABV: behind the numbers is a beautifully engineered beer.

For the final round I thought it was high time I chose something crazy for myself, and one is rarely stuck for choice at Arendsnest. What caught my eye was one from Uiltje called Pomme Pressure: a barley wine aged in Calvados barrels. This is a trifling 14.8% ABV and dark brown in colour. It must be just the apples which made me think of cinnamon and cake when sniffing it. The texture is off-the-charts thick and that dovetails with a very jammy flavour, sweet but with a kind of prune-ish tang and enough spice to pass as incense. The prune gave me more of an impression of quadrupel than barley wine, but either way it's an excellent beer, and shows a lightness of touch and subtlety despite the overall biggness. I assume the spicing came from the barrel, in which case I'll be looking out for more Calvados-aged beers of this ilk.

A mere bagatelle of a stout sits beside it: the 10% ABV Ze Smelten de Paashaas. A translation of "They Melted the Easter Bunny" tells you exactly what to expect here: chocolate, and lots of it. There's the salty flavour of milk chocolate in particular with a little wafer biscuit crispness. A surprisingly assertive hop bitterness manages not to clash with the chocolate and adds a useful extra dimension to what might otherwise be rather dull. Dutch Bargain is the brewery, and they seem to know what they're doing.

We left Arendnest and went to Schiphol. After two days of Toer de Geuze and some light shopping in De Bierkoning, redistribution of baggage weight was necessary at check-in and something had to give. The something ended up being The Sky is Grey, a vanilla imperial milk stout. Apologies to X-Brewing for not giving their beer the treatment it doubtless deserves. Swigged from the can landside at Schiphol it was still very good: not one-dimensional but with some red berries on the chocolate and candy, smoothly textured yet not hot, even at 11% ABV. I'm sure it's even better when poured into a glass.

And that's where the weekend concluded. My principal observation when sitting in the sun outside Arendsnest is that we should do this more often. Everybody should do that more often. Let me get my calendar...