Bumper amber nectar

Ever since I met Speakeasy Prohibition, American amber ale has been one of my favourite beer styles. And happily it's a fairly straightforward sort of beer to brew: a generous helping of dark crystal malt and lashings of lovely C-hops for a medium-strength beer that's big on flavour but well balanced too.

So it's always a welcome opportunity to try a new example of the style, as well as variations. Tröegs Nugget Nectar is one of the latter, being an "Imperial Amber": 7.5% ABV and hopped to 93 IBUs with a heady combination of Nugget, Warrior and Tomahawk.

I think I prefer my ambers a bit darker than this: it's a beautiful shade of polished copper but could pass as many an English bitter on the visuals. Surprisingly, and a wee bit disappointingly, it's rather a subtle beer: the aroma is fresh and soft, with elements of juicy peach and honeydew and perhaps a slightly more intense jasmine perfume undercurrent. Nothing striking jumps out on tasting -- the palate is served with several sensations at once: there's definitely an astringent, almost metallic, bitterness but it sits next to smooth creamy toffee and fruity mandarin zest. Written down it sounds more full-on than it is, but the flavours all work together creating an experience that isn't really suited to pulling apart into its constituent elements.

It's impossible to argue with the quality of Nugget Nectar, yet it leaves me hankering for something similar but more assertive in one direction or another. Balance isn't everything.

Glass tip to Richard for supplying the bottle.

Rogue blooper

It's a few years since Rogue -- the Oregon brewery big on blue-collar branding but not so keen on blue-collar attitudes -- was last seen in Ireland. However, a few of theirs have just started appearing on our shelves, a welcome bit of freshness in the otherwise declining range of American beer available in Ireland.

I chose Rogue American Amber Ale as my starting point, being a fan of American ambers, with Speakeasy Prohibition as my benchmark. This doesn't have the beatings of that, however. It's watery at first, but given a bit of time some waxy bitterness comes through but no real hop flavour, which is disappointing. The finish is pleasantly sweet, with lots of biscuit and maybe even a little marzipan, but the harsh sharpness never quite goes away. It leaves me wondering if this was once a hop explosion but time has taken away its charm. I dunno, but I was expecting better from the centre of American hop country.

I suck it up and move on to Rogue's Juniper Pale Ale. I like a bit of juniper but this hazy anaemic-looking chap has a slight air of infection in the aroma, a kind of acrid sourness. It's not really there in the flavour, but neither is much else: a touch of orange pith, a background tartness which I'm guessing is the juniper in action but that's about it. It's not unpleasant it's just kind of... muted.

In contravention to Irish consumer law, neither bottle sports a date or an ABV (5.6% for the amber; 5.3% for the juniper) and I'm left with the sensation that these are a job lot of elderly bottles. Fresh or not, I won't be running out in search of the other new Rogues straight away.

Amber gamble

I do love a good American amber ale: gentle but assertive hop fruitiness based on a firm and biscuity malt base and a middle-of-the-road ABV, between 5 and 6%. It's the best of all possible worlds and great fun to just drink through without giving it too much thought.

Anderson Valley's Boont is a relative newcomer to these parts, hailing from California as all the best amber ales do -- Speakeasy's Prohibition, for the record, is my benchmark here. It's certainly amber, a deep shade of orange, darkened further by a suspended haze: it's not amber if there aren't things trapped in it, I guess. Sherbet lemons and gingerbread on the nose, and a flavour dominated by toffee malt. The hop notes are rather muted, dialled down from bitter, below fruity, and only just hanging on as floral, though a little bit of citric tang kicks in cheekily at the end. And I wouldn't change a thing about it. At 5.8% ABV it's light enough to drink freely, but with enough weight to carry the different flavours and aromas. End-to-end tastiness.

And with this canary still happily chirping in its cage, I deem it safe to explore the rest of the Anderson Valley range in due course.

Fall forward

The new autumn seasonal from Sierra Nevada, Tumbler is a medium-strength brown ale, 5.5% ABV and a dark mahogany in the glass, topped by thick off-white foam. The nose gives fresh, lightly mandarin, hops and a hint of caramel sweetness. It's quite understated in the flavour department, though what's there is nicely balanced between burnt treacley caramel and punchy hop fruits. The hops come out on top at the end, finishing bitter with a hint of saccharine.

I can't help being reminded of lighter, the punchier American and American-style amber ales like Speakeasy Prohibition or Brewdog 5am Saint: they do this sort of thing better. Tumbler is much heavier and creamier in texture, perhaps intended to be a softer, more huggable beer. But those typically Sierra Nevadan hops are just sending me the wrong signals: begging to be taken out for a wild time. A draught version is currently on tap in a couple of Dublin pubs and the hops are even more subdued there, to the point of invisibility.

It's hard to fault it, though. Tasty, smooth and filling it's a nice one to have on hand on a chilly evening, and there's no shortage of those round here right now.

Beer in the park

I've been going to Taste of Dublin for the last three years. It's an annual highlight on my calendar and generally involves a large group of friends and some superb food. I don't think it's just my perception that the event has been getting beerier -- appropriate, perhaps, given that the venue was once the Guinness family's back garden. As with previous years, many of the country's big importers were there, but there were some interesting new additions. The Porterhouse were sporting their new design livery, plus a bigger range of beers than before: I was very happy to be able to get a pint of the marvellous Wrassler's XXXX. They also had some very cool looking mocked-up bottles on display, a hint that we may not have to wait much longer for bottled Porterhouse beers? None of the other Irish micros had a presence, though I did meet Kay and Seamus O'Hara from Carlow Brewing, there in an unofficial capacity.

The biggest beercentric event was the Beer Naturally Academy, organised by the macrobreweries' campaign to promote beer and food matching. They had flown in beer guru Marc Stroobandt to run the half-hour seminars, and he did a pretty good job of it, especially considering the tasteless materials he had been given to work with: Carlsberg, Heineken, Paulaner, Smithwick's and Guinness, matched with cheddar, chili prawn, smoked sausage, cheese tartlet and Belgian chocolate tart, respectively. Thom gives a full run-down of the gig here. It's easy to be cynical at this sort of thing, but there's a lot to be said for driving home the message of beer and food, and the emphasis on cheese and chocolate was particularly welcome. Stroobandt knows his stuff and is well able to deliver it in an entertaining way.

I missed getting to taste the Mexican chili lager one of the stalls was enthusiastically pimping, but I'm sure I'll get round to it eventually. It looks horrible. Instead, I hot-footed it from the Jaipur stall to California Wine Imports and announced "I have curry; give me beer!" Jonathan presented me with one of his newer arrivals: Black Diamond Amber Ale. "British Inspired" it says on the label, which explains why it's not as incredibly citric as the likes of Speakeasy Prohibition, say. What the English hops lend it is a gentle, tannic, very slightly metallic bitterness, sitting on a beer that's very much malt-driven: smooth, big-bodied and well-balanced. Jonathan also gifted me a jar of Sierra Nevada Stout Mustard, something else he's bringing into Ireland. I look forward to trying that -- it sounds brilliant. He also raised the possibility of adding the Stone beers to his range. That would be nice. Very nice.

And that was Taste for another year. Thanks to Jim and Liam from the Porterhouse, Dan from Beer Naturally, and the California Wine Imports team for their generosity. The variety of beers available was truly heartwarming, and here's hoping for even more beer goodness next time round. Perhaps another Irish micro might want to take a stall?

Gone commercial

ICB's monthly amateur night at the Bull & Castle recommenced on Thursday last, with a difference. We had the usual interesting variety from the home brewers -- a fascinating dampfbier; a passable bitter; a cracking red ale; a powerful coffee stout and a tasty winter warmer -- but the larger-than-usual crowd also included several representatives from our favourite trade, including a bar manager, an importer and, best of all, a brewer.

I've already mentioned Jonathan the importer of Californian beers. His website is now online, though it seems oddly preoccupied with a weird grape juice by-product I know very little about. Along with news of new stock he has on the market here, he brought a couple of samples of Speakeasy's Double Daddy -- the souped-up version of their Big Daddy IPA. To me (not a fan of Big Daddy) it tasted more like a double version of Prohibition. It had that same superb finely-tuned balance between the dark caramel malts and the American bittersweet citrus hops. I spent a fair bit of time with my nose stuck in the sample glass because it smelled divine. It tastes pretty good too, and the 9.5% ABV adds a marvellous warmth to it after swallowing. Absolutely magnificent stuff.

Our hosts had promised us a sneak preview of the new stout from Carlow Brewing, and were true to their word. Leann Folláin (pictured left, resisting Laura's telekinetic powers) shares the label colours and ABV (6%) of the limited edition 10th anniversary Celebration stout they made last year, but is a different animal. Instead of the classic Irish roast barley dryness, this appears to have been oaked up in a big way [edit: actually, no, it's not oaked], creating a heavy, sticky, sweet stout, filled with that lactic, vanilla-ish barrel flavour which I'm never sure how to take. I decided this wasn't a beer for me. Carlow probably agree, hence the packaging is a 355ml bottle intended for the North American market [edit: wrong again -- they just had leftover bottles; this has not yet been exported to the US]. Mind you, if it's being pitched at people lucky enough to have never sat through an Irish class it probably would have been worth mentioning somewhere that Leann Folláin means "wholesome ale". Thanks to na gaelgoirí of ICB for the translation -- I dropped Irish like a proverbial superheated root vegetable after just three years of half-arsed study.

The main event of the evening for me was a tasting of the first beer from Ireland's newest craft brewery. Based in Co. Down, Clanconnel is starting with something safe -- a blonde ale called Weavers Gold, in honour of the trade which accounted for most of the industrial revolution in Ulster. It's only available bottled and is pitched squarely at the middle ground, with 4.5% ABV. But it's no lowest-common-denominator mass-market clone for lagerboys: it starts with a hefty whack of Saaz aroma, and the first sip couples this with a striking bubblegum maltiness, with the Styrian Goldings making themselves felt at the finish. It's a complex blonde ale, but still eminently sinkable -- a great one for introducing wary drinkers to the joys of properly-made beer. Nice one Mark, I hope it sells well, and I look forward to the next one from Clanconnel.

Coincidentally, the Bull & Castle management had a couple of bottles of Morrissey Fox Blonde Ale available on the same evening. It's not sold in these parts, but Richard Fox had been in town for an event before Christmas and had left them lying around. Oh dear. It's really not very good, and next to the Weavers Gold it fared very badly indeed. In an attempt to attract starstruck lager drinkers they've managed to create (or commission, rather) something almost indistinguishable from mass market yellow lager. It's bodiless, flavourless and overly fizzy. Maybe it works better in draught form, but from the bottle it just failed to deliver anything worthwhile.

All this sampling was punctuated by a hefty halbe of Phúca, still on tap at the Bull & Castle and still highly recommended, with a couple of Hookers to finish on a lighter, hoppier, note. It was one of those evenings when it becomes very easy to forget that I live in a city where good beer is really quite thin on the ground: it takes brewers, importers and bar managers of a very high calibre to make that possible. Thanks all.

My NoCal life

Thom has beaten me to the punch on this one, with his account of how we spent Friday night in Lilac Wines on Dublin's northside. I introduced him to Jonathan, the American I met a couple of weeks ago who is bringing the Gordon Biersch and Speakeasy beers into Ireland, and taking a very hands-on approach to promoting his business. Along with a couple of other members of the already-converted, Thom and I stood about drinking free beer and trying not to distract Jonathan too much as he attempted to convince innocent Heineken-buyers that they could be doing so much better.

I'd never before spent three hours in a Dublin off licence on a Friday night, despite what my wife might tell you. It was fascinating to watch how the post-work crowd between six and seven were amenable to trying something new, and even buying a six-pack of it in some cases, but as 10pm last orders approached, the customers were much more focussed on grabbing cans of rubbish and legging it out again, paying scant heed to the chirpy yank offering them a sip of nectar (I'm still very much in love with Speakeasy Prohibition, incidentally).

Aside from the seven beers I've already reviewed, Jonathan had sample bottles of a couple of other Californians he's thinking Ireland might be interested in. Well I certainly was. Two were from the Blue Frog brewery in Fairfield, both served from 75cl bottles. Blue Frog IPA is rather thinner than one would expect from a 7% ABV American IPA. It puts all its resources into the hopping, going for a tangy, almost astringent, character. Bizarrely, the double version -- The Big DIPA -- cranks up the malt levels, and although it claims a big 83 IBUs against the single's 60, the end result provides a much fuller, rounder and better balanced experience. Big DIPA is the one I'll really be looking out for if and when it hits the open market.

Continuing in Opposite Land, the bitterness of Blue Frog's single IPA was topped yet further by Butte Creek Pale Ale (that first word is pronounced "beaut", by the way, which means it's not as much of a companion to Knob Creek bourbon as I'd hoped, in my own puerile little way). This stuff tastes green: an intense earthy vegetal hoppiness which reminded me of nothing so much as Timothy Taylor Landlord. A little bit of firm malty body peeps in behind, but mostly this is a beer that assaults the side of the tongue and pierces the sides of the jaw. I doubt I could drink a lot of it.

Jonathan wasn't happy with the few bottles of E.J. Phair Pale Ale he'd brought over, and with good cause: the one we shared was intensely vinegary and undrinkable. I trust he'll be getting a refund on that. Or preferably another batch of samples. For the last beer of the evening we returned to Speakeasy for a go of their White Lightning wheat beer, remarking on the unfortunate decision to go for a name already used by a legendary tramps' cider. Frisco's White Lightning is better but I couldn't recommend spending actual money on it: the wheat is really, well, wheaty, with none of the fruit or spice one expects from European wheat beers. It's a fairly typical US-style wheat beer, in fact, and as such best avoided.

After paying my respects to the house (and its frankly excellent beer selection, half of which is displayed left) I hopped on mo rothar for the 40 minute cycle south to Beer Nut Towers. Cheers to Ronnie and the rest of the Lilac Wines crew for letting us get in the way of your Friday business, and of course to Jonathan for the... well, for the free beer.

Who'd have thought handing out free beer in Dublin off licences would prove so popular?

Serious cojones

O the serendipity. One of the lads on ICB (hi Kevin) spotted that Deveney's in Rathmines were offering a free tasting of American beers last Friday evening. It's not far out of my way and I'm always good for a free thimbleful of Goose Island IPA, so I went along.

But this wasn't an attempt to hock the tried and tested US beers we know and (mostly) love. Instead, we met Miles and Jonathan, two guys from over there who have just set up their own drinks import business, of which beer is a part. Their aim is to undercut the distributors who are using multiple middlemen and routing through importers in the UK, the Netherlands and the like. Instead, they're concentrating solely on Californian products and shipping direct, which knocks nearly a euro off the RRP of each bottle. Up against the conservative tastes of the Irish drinker, a biting recession and a government determined to make life as difficult as possible for the off-trade, it's a bold move.

The pilot offerings are seven Californian microbrews: four from Gordon Biersch of San Jose, and three by San Francisco's Speakeasy. After sampling them all we moved on to the ciders and meads, but you'll need to go to someone else's blog to find out about them, though I will note that the meads are, as far as I know, the first and only real meads to be available commerically in this country.

Gordon Biersch specialises in styles from Germany and environs. We started with their supposedly Czech-like Pilsner. It's a lovely golden hue with a good malty nose, smelling much stronger than the 5.3% ABV the website says it is (no strength is given on the label of most of these -- naughty). The first sip delivers a slight apple and butterscotch flavour, almost reminiscent of a dry cider. It settles down after that into a decent and workmanlike pale lager, though not really possessed of enough flavour to pass as Czech, in my opinion.

Raising the strength quotient we come to the 7% ABV Blonde Bock. I expected that if this is true to style then I wouldn't like it. It is and I didn't. Sugary nose, sugary taste, syrupy texture. Blech. Not for me, but if you like horrible German bocks then this is right up your straße.

I was similarly wary of the Märzen, having been previously bitten by the sickly monstrosities of Samuel Adams Octoberfest and Winter Lager. This dark gold fellow was rather better, though. Still sweet, but with a tasty and warming fresh bread character and a solid chewy body. Not mind-blowing, but decent, and pretty much the only märzen on the market.

Best of the lot, however, is the Hefeweizen. I haven't complained about the Yanks putting European-style beer into kiddie-sized bottles in ages, but this one deserves it. It doesn't really taste like any actual German weiss I know -- it's much sweeter, with the emphasis on the bubblegum-and-bananas end of the flavour scale, and rather thinner than I'd have liked, but it's still a tasty drop and enjoyably chuggable. But I just don't get that proper quaffing sensation without at least a half litre in front of me.

The other three beers are much more what one would expect from the western US. The marketing literature didn't say what variety of citrus American hops were being used, but they're being used all right. Staggeringly, Speakeasy's Big Daddy IPA, the last one I tried, isn't the massive IBU-fest I was expecting. It's a beautiful pale amber hue and gives off surprisingly subtle fragrant hoppy aromas. The foretaste is quite strong and sweet, from the Munich malt providing 6.5% ABV, but despite the dry hopping I get very little by way of bitter flavours at the end. Having felt the bitterness building in the other two beers, I was secretly relieved that this one let me off lightly. Though I can't help but wonder what the souped-up double version of it is like.

Slightly down the alcohol scale, at 6.1% ABV, Prohibition amber ale is well up the flavour scale in comparison to Big Daddy. The nose provides a lovely, oily, resinous overture, but surprisingly, once again, it's malt at the forefront. The slightly dark, toffee-and-marzipan notes are topped up with a quite gorgeous sharp orange-grapefruit bite, and the resulting exquisitely balanced flavour just runs and runs. I have a feeling this is going to be one of my regular beers for the next while.

Finishing on a lighter note, there's Untouchable: named, I assume, for the fact that it has a superb aroma of citrus hops but loses its way somewhat once it's past the lips. The distinct west-coast hops bitterness is there all right, as is the toffee malt base, but they are shadows of the same thing in Prohibition. In the unlikely event that Prohibition doesn't do it for you, then here's a lighter, friendlier blander alternative that's still well-made and tasty.

So that's it from this strange and exciting new shipment. I've nothing further to add except to wish the boys luck in their ballsy attempt to make money out of Ireland's beer drinkers by selling them quality product. I won't say it can't be done -- of course it can -- but it's not going to be easy. I've heard already that the management of one of Dublin's well-reputed beer off licences has tried the beers, liked them, but won't stock them. Up against that, what do you do?