For the wings of a dog

It's not a boycott, it's just boredom. While I am aware of the litany of controversies that BrewDog has attracted to it, and that it probably would have a chilling effect on my interest in its beer, the fact is that their Irish importer has been doing a disastrous job of bringing their more interesting wares into this country. But, there's a new(ish) flagship, and its been in my eyeline for over a year now. Time to see what it's like.

"A maverick of a session IPA" tells us that BrewDog is still doing the pisschimp thing after all these years. Wingman is 4.3% ABV and a clear pale yellow with a luxuriously thick head. The aroma is fresh and tropical, offering generous chunks of mango with a background of crisp pear. It's fizzy and light-bodied, which is perfectly acceptable for this kind of beer. Once the obstreperous bubbles get out of the way, the flavour follows the aroma, with sweet fleshy cantaloupe and pineapple, turning to a more chemically ester finish, where pear meets whiteboard markers. It's all quite subtle and understated, very clean and without an aftertaste. 33cl didn't last long, and this would work very well by the pint, but presumably I'd need to go to their Dublin footprint for that, in the part of the docklands which is half way to Wales.

BrewDog does still be Brewdogging. Whenever the discourse turns in their direction, there's always someone saying "yer, and thur beer is shit now too," but in my experience it's not, and never has been (unless you got one of those Punk cans). This beer is fine, leaning to good, but most importantly is what it's meant to be. I have no objection to it being on the market and can see it being the best available option in any number of circumstances. Now there's a slogan for them.

Ronbridge

Mr Ronald Pattinson of Amsterdam was in Dublin last month, as he has mentioned on his own blog. The hard taskmasters at the National Homebrew Club forced him to talk at length about brewing history in front of a crowd at UnderDog. The English visitor's presence was marked by the coincidental appearance of two new English beers on the taps, both single hop experiments from Thornbridge.

It felt like there was a bit of a deconstructed Jaipur thing going on, because the first on was Quiet Storm Ahtanum. Ahtanum is a fairly obscure American hop, and one I only really know from Jaipur and its subsequent clone, BrewDog Punk. The beers were that sort of strength too: 5.5% ABV. This one was a very pale yellow with a slight haze and lots of fizz, a carbonic bite disturbing the flavour somewhat. The flavour is very interesting and not at all what I was expecting from it, being a bowl of varied ripe fruits, including peach, apricot, white grape and red apple -- funky and foedtid, in a most pleasurable way. It's very sweet with it, and gets sweeter as it goes, having an element of strawberry too by the end. A tannic finish dries it out enough for the sweetness not to be a problem. I liked it. There's lots of complexity for a single hop beer, and it had a very modern profile: surprising for essentially a legacy hop. I didn't miss the lack of bittering.

When that ran out it was replaced by Quiet Storm Cascade, and I thought I would be on more familiar ground with this. Surprise! There was no earthy bitterness here, and no punchy grapefruit or resin. Instead, it's a rich and nutty dessert, suggesting nougat or almond paste. The fizz problem from the other one has been solved, as it was lovely and smooth. I searched hard for any familiar features, and only towards the end did I notice a very faint metallic rasp, like you get from Cascade's ancestor Fuggle. I'm guessing both of these were made using some class of fruit-enhancing IPA yeast, because I'm pretty sure Cascade wouldn't turn out like this from a neutral strain. Regardless, it was very tasty, if not quite as interesting as the Ahtanum one.

There are loads of Quiet Storms in this series and I'll be looking out for others. Single hop beers are usually about demonstrating the specific characteristics of an individual hop. These ones, conversely, appear to be putting a new twist on them.

Running dogs

Today it's one of my occasional glances at some of the many BrewDog beers coming and going on the local market at the moment. There's no particular pattern to the selection.

Pale Ale is first. Wot no adolescent garage band name? This is a recent addition to their core range, sorry, "Headliners", replacing the rightfully much-derided Indie from a couple of years back. This, too, is 4.2% ABV but it brings a proper hop game, with Chinook, Citra and Simcoe. It's a reasonably clear pale amber and has a decent level of thickness on the palate; not watery and with just enough fizz to propel the hop fun. The aroma is lightly spritzy; inviting without being loud, while the flavour neatly combines cloudy lemonade and grapefruit juice with a danker funky side, but also some juicy mango and peach. It's complex enough to keep this beer nerd interested, while also easy-going, unfussy and well suited to by-the-pint drinking. Not very rock 'n' roll, but solidly decent.

I didn't know what to expect from Jagged Edge "spiky India Pale Ale" but the name and description intrigued me. It's 5.1% ABV and in the glass it's almost clear, hazed up a little with floaty bits. The aroma is mild but pleasantly tropical, in a non-committal way. It commits on tasting but I'm not entirely sure what to. The tropical fruit is there to an extent, in contravention of the can's "to the bitter end" promise. Rather than bitter it's dry -- the intense tannins of over-stewed and undrinkable tea. Then there's kind of a sulphurous rubbery twang on the end: too much boing to be spiky. Whatever new vista of beer flavour they were trying to unlock with this one, it hasn't quite worked. It's all just a bit busy, with the soft fruity hops and the hard acidic ones pulling in opposite directions. You'd be better off with Punk.

Speaking of which, the latest brand extension of the brewery's flagship is Double Punk. Kind of amazing it's taken this long. 8.2% ABV is pretty standard for one of these, and I'm deliberately not going to go comparing it to Punk even though it has the same hops or whatever. Appearance-wise it looks identical to Jagged Edge, floaty bits and all. The aroma is pure American grapefruit: what I would regard as the epitome of classic west-coast hopping. It carries that through to the flavour, presenting dry and acidic on the tongue, with just a buzz of dank resins in the background to offer some complexity. I enjoyed how straightforward it was: big hops, no messing.  It's very clean for the strength too, and although it's quite weighty and built for sipping, it's not hot. The only thing that really slows you down is the bitterness. And if you can't handle that then you shouldn't have chosen a double IPA.

I do like a sour IPA so wasn't going to pass on Fake Empire, badged as a hazy version of same. It's not too cloudy; translucent rather than opaque. The aroma is juicy satsuma, with a hint of tartness, but no more than you'd expect from an actual citrus fruit. The flavour is clean and, yes, juicy again. Technically it's sour, I suppose, but very gently so. If the intention was simply to accentuate the hop-fruit effect, then that worked. There's a pinch of lemon zest with the orange, but it's still only a light bitterness. Overall, this is balanced, accessible and very drinkable, if unnecessarily strong at 6.2% ABV. While I enjoyed it, I prefer sour IPAs to have more of a bite than was on offer here. Juice fiends will lap it up, however.

A big stout to finish: Layer Cake. This is 7% ABV and sports a huge sticky pink marshmallow flavour, with a soft texture to match. Chocolate brownie, cocoa nibs and vanilla are also promised but there's really not much chocolate in here, and zero stout for that matter. I searched for nuance: some roast, a little coffee? No, just the vanilla beans, adding a different kind of sweetness. This is a pure gimmicky novelty and barely a beer. Thankfully it's not very thick, which goes some way to keep the cloying side in check, but it's still not easy going. A full can would be a big ask. I'm OK with silly dessert beers when they're fun, but this wasn't even that. Hard pass.

What have we learned? BrewDog is still out there even if they're not in the beer headlines every day. And they still brew some very decent beers, alongside a spirit of experimentation that doesn't always hit the mark.

Hope for some of us

The Hope Limited Edition series dropped another brace of cans recently, the first being No. 19: American Pale Ale. The USP here is that it's a collaboration with BrewDog's Dublin brewery, which as far as I know never got round to releasing any beer of its own in the few short months it traded.

Blue can, 5.7% ABV, misty yellow pour. Is this Punk? The aroma is a mix of tropical fruit and dank -- this IS Punk --- but the flavour is drier and more mineral-like. There's no sign of that initial fruitiness, replaced by chalk and grass; bitter to the core. It's a little unbalanced that way, rough and enamel-stripping, with a hard, Germanic, herbal bite on the end. Chinook, Citra and Centennial says the label: no Cascade, but this shows an earthiness I associate with that hop. I'm still thinking of Punk, but more the 2007 6% ABV Jaipur clone than the current iteration. Aaanyway, comparisons aside, this is a hard and pointy IPA of the sort nobody makes any more. Maybe you hanker after this kind of thing; I found it quite tough going now as much as I did a decade ago.

Meanwhile, as a two-finger salute to the anal-retentives out there, 19 in the sequence is followed by No. 1516: Unfiltered Lager. It's a nod to the Reinheitsgebot, of course, and the second unfiltered lager in the series, following no. 2. While that one was a burst of summer sunshine, this is darker and more serious. It looks awful, a muddy orange with little head. The carbonation is low, as is the aroma; only a medium-sweet syrup smell. That all gels together better on tasting when the hops kick in. It's still a bit flat and there's a burnt sugar aftertaste, but before that a buzz of spicy noble hops, bringing white pepper and rocket special effects. It's a kellerbier, then. Fresh, and a little unrefined, but with a raw and rustic charm. I could imagine drinking this in a German basement brewpub and that's something I could really use about now.

Finally, Hope's seasonal beer guy is back for Summer 2020, staying socially distanced on the beach. "An old-school American pale ale" says the can, and also "4.9% ABV", which doesn't sound like any American IPA I remember. It's also hazy and yellow. Lads, if you mean "bitter", just say "bitter". Chinook, Citra and Centennial are your hosts once again, this time bringing you a surprising amount of dank resins, building in intensity to a full-on grass and wax finish. OK now I get the "old-school" bit: there's earthy pine in a very Sierra Nevada way, and an oily jaffa-skin bite too. That said, the modern haze brings a softer side, with tropical mango, smoothie vanilla and maybe even a brush of garlic. Far from a relaxing summer sessioner, it's a beer I ended up arguing with myself over. My conclusion is that it's a modern hazy pale ale with the bitterness ramped up and as such doesn't really work. It ends up jarring and awkward. Where American-style IPA is concerned you need to pick a side: clear, amber and grapefruity or the soft yellow tropical dessert. There is no in-between.

That blip aside, I'm pleased to see special editions with no silly twists or weird ingredients. Hope might present as quirky and playful but I'm very glad that there's reliable brewing talent at the tiller, steering a course away from daft recipes. For now.

The beagle has landed

BrewDog Outpost Dublin opened its doors in December. This long-anticipated addition to the Dublin beer landscape has chosen a daring location, at the very far eastern end of the south quays, where the city is still very much developing. They're clearly hoping for a high enough concentration of wealthy young tech and finance workers to keep the large pub/restaurant/brewery in business. But this blog isn't where you come for speculation on the economic ins-and-outs of the local on-trade. This is where I talk about beer.

The line-up on opening night was pretty standard for a branch of BrewDog: their own headliners, spiced up with some specials and rarities; a smattering of local guests, and some other representatives of UK craft beer, brought over directly.

L: Sweet George, R: Mashtag

I began with one from English brewery Buxton, a collaboration with Eindhoven's Van Moll, called Sweet George Porter. Sweet is right, though not in a sugary way. Instead this piles on the floral perfume: all the violet and rosewater. What I didn't realise at the time was that they've done this using chai spice mix. It's charming to begin but turns a little too intense after a while. What saves it is the light texture -- it's only 5% ABV after all -- and a growing coffee warmth. I think this is one of those beers that survives in spite of the novelty ingredients rather than because.

I owed my admission on the evening to Reuben, who was drinking Mashtag 2019. I hadn't had an example of this crowd-sourced recipe since 2015. Last year the chosen style was a 9% ABV red double IPA, and I guessed the latter part from the big fresh-hop aroma. It was a dark beer, though, and the flavour was much more malt-forward, based on sticky treacle and hopped malt extract. Still, it managed to stay mellow, the big hops and big malt coalescing after a minute or two into a smooth and genteel sweet vermouth effect. Red IPAs aren't usually my bag but somehow they've got this one spot on.

The other new-to-me BrewDog beer on the night was Cosmic Crush Peach. After ordering it I immediately felt regret in anticipation of another over-sweetened supposedly-sour fruit beer, but no: this is properly sour. That starts with an aroma like cap-gun smoke, leading on to an invigorating bitter tartness: peach skin meets gunpowder. There's more than a hint of lambic about this one, certainly compared to most breweries' sour efforts. It's mouthwatering, complex and, above all, fun. A little severe, perhaps, but very interesting with it. There's an excellent lesson here in how, if you must have fruit syrup in your sour beer, it should complement the acidity, not drown it in sugar.

The next BrewDog beer to come my way was a couple of weeks later in Shelby's, the new Peaky Blinders theme pub in The Hague. It has Punk and a rotating BrewDog tap, which on this occasion was pouring Origami Outlaw, a 5% ABV pale ale with hibiscus and yuzu. It tastes like an apricot smoothie, though not too sticky, thankfully. There's a spicy jasmine perfume quality, which I'm guessing is down to the hibiscus. This is tasty and unfussy; close to being the sort of over-sweet novelty beer I dislike but successfully avoiding it with a deft lightness of touch.

We'll finish with a couple of cans acquired closer to home. East Coast Crush is a New England IPA, a very unAmerican one at 4.8% ABV. Still, it walks the walk at session strength. Cloudy and yellow, it smells of fresh late-added hops: lime and grapefruit with grassy overtones. Fans of vanilla and garlic flavours in their IPAs will find their needs met in this, and there's even a hit of alcohol heat in the finish. Dankness and more citric qualities also feature. Pour carefully from the small can, however: it doesn't get better with the soupy dregs added. Sure, it's a little samey, but isn't that the point of a beer style to some extent? There are no off flavours; no thinness or compromise: here is everything NEIPA in a tidy little package.

Another one promising on-trend craft idiosyncrasies under a medium-strength flag is the 5% ABV Zombie Cake "praline chocolate porter". And again you pretty much get what's promised. Chocolate is front and centre, sweet and milky with a little salt, and this is balanced by a gentle roasted bitterness. That's about it. It's understated for a novelty and I think needs something else. A little chilli, maybe? As-is, it's accessible and uncomplicated but still provides a respectable level of interest.

A decent bunch, this. BrewDog, for me anyway, continues to shout about how outrageous they are while making steadfastly reliable and well-engineered beer.

The cask task

JD Wetherspoon Real Ale Festival: are any words more stirring to the human soul?  Late October means it's time for my annual ritual of cycling out to the South County coast and seeing what's on the pumps in my two locals. I usually stop in Blackrock first but decided to start in Dún Laoghaire this year, to catch the cavernous Forty Foot before it got loud and crowded. As in recent years, English hops was the theme, with every one of the 30 festival beers using nothing but.

An awkward five new ones were on the wickets and I began with three thirds. Banks's Gold Ingot certainly looks the part: a perfect blingy gold colour. Spicy and citrus is promised on the clip but that's a bit of an exaggeration. It is plenty bitter though, the grass and metal of down-home English hops, with East Kent Goldings, First Gold and Flyer being the varieties billed in the programme. A light biscuit malt sits behind this but that's about your lot. The galvanic pencil sharpener metal is the last bit to fade from the palate. It's certainly punchy and invigorating, but very much in an English way, a flavour which precludes modern fripperies like citrus.

Bigger things were expected from the first of the international collaborations, Hop Session, brewed at Everards with Afro-Caribbean Brewing of Cape Town. It's a slightly darker gold than the previous one, though the same 4.3% ABV. There's a little bit of a tropical buzz here, achieved with Bramling Cross, Challenger and Cascade. Not quite pineapple and passionfruit, but definitely something approaching a mango, set against harder grapefruit and spinach. The malt is an afterthought but there's just enough of it to keep the hops buoyant and, if not in balance, at least not harsh. While almost passing for a new world beer, its roots show at the end, however, with an earthy metallic twang.

And thirdly of the thirds, Theakston Vanilla Stout, ratcheting up that ABV to a hulking 4.5%. It tastes like more, though: thick and rich and sweet. A bitter treacle overtone shows the hops working in the background while the main action is a dialectic struggle between sticky vanilla and dry roast. While I enjoyed it, a third was plenty.

The last two weren't actually part of the festival line-up, but that's no reason not to tick the buggers. Next is Blondie by Nottinghamshire's Grafton Brewery. Closer to copper than blonde, by the looks of it. It's sweet and tart, like sour candy with a hint of strawberry shortcake. Summer fruit is definitely what I found in the aroma when I'd sipped down far enough to smell it. An out-of-keeping putty bitterness is where the flavour ends. Not a bad beer overall, and rather more interesting than I was expecting.

We stay in the Midlands for the last round: Sadler's Peaky Blinder black IPA, brewed with today's craft-beer-inclined Brummie gangster in mind. It's fully black and smells powerfully of cabbagewater, molasses and sherbet: a combination which promises complexity, if not actually a good time. And so it is in the flavour. It has a soft effervescence and strong herbal-floral taste that probably looked lovely on paper but ends up tasting like old bathwater. There's an intensity which I'm sure comes from the hops but which doesn't deliver proper hop-like flavours. It's extremely rare for me to be saying that a black IPA needs extra bitterness but I think this one does. I love black IPAs that are sweet and tropical and also enjoy the extremely green and vegetal ones. This takes a third path and I don't really want to follow it.

Time to turn the ship around and make for Blackrock. The Three Tun Tavern had its new Cask Marque cert propped on the bar. Well done to them and, with the system seemingly live in Ireland, I hope some of the non-Wetherspoon cask-serving pubs will take advantage of it.

Another round of thirds, starting with Tring's Warrior Queen, a 4.6% ABV pale ale. Not much of an aroma from this but the flavour is a weird squeaky green bean thing, all sharply tangy with a chalky mineral backdrop. It's very odd. The literature tells me that Fusion is the hop what done it. Use with caution, I guess.

Next it's Epic Brew from Wadworth, a golden ale brewed with Epic hops. It's only 4.5% ABV but very thick and sweet with a floral sort of spice. After a few minutes of trying to place what it reminded me of I came up with honey: it's that specific mix of summer meadow pollen and sticky sugar with an edge of waxy bitterness. It finishes quickly, adding a lager feel. Epic is an overstatement but it's decent stuff, for one at least.

Old Crafty Hen is next, a Greene King brand extension I've seen many times in clear glass bottles and would normally have passed over except the programme mentioned it includes Greene King's near-mythical 5X strong ale in the blend. I'm in. This occupies the madman slot in the Wetherspoon festival line-up: there's always at least one big strong beer, though at just 6.5% ABV OCH is lighter than usual. It's lovely, though: a big juicy tannic raisin thing, soft and sumptuous. I expected building sweetness but it doesn't do that, staying dry and clean all the way down. I'm really surprised at how much I enjoyed it, but the chances of me buying it in a clear bottle are still basically nil.

Right, next set of thirds. Evan Evans Autumn Frenzy. Copper-coloured, with a maple syrup sort of sweetness. The watery finish has this weird savoury mushroom quality making me wonder if they're going for a full-on forest floor leafmold thing. So, OK, it's autumnal, but nobody wants to drink a third of a pint of fungal maple syrup. I think I get what it's trying to be, but there's still a really dull brown bitter at its core, dragging down all the seasonal bells and whistles.

In the middle is Titanic Brewery's SEA ("seriously enigmatic ale" -- if ever a name suggested a batch of something else that went wrong), another brown one, at 5% ABV, and another odd one. The flavour is more muted than Autumn Frenzy, but it's thicker, almost like a gloopy nitrokeg bitter. That mushroom thing is there again but this time there are no brighter notes to lift it off the forest litter. There's a bit of cleansing tannin but it doesn't do enough to keep this beer from being heavy, cloying and difficult.

The day's second and final international collaboration was Braddon Bitter, produced at Wadworth in association with BentSpoke of Canberra. Brown again, and with some nice burnt caramel and a sharp dark fruit thing, all blackberries and sloes. I had to check if Bramling Cross was in the house but turns out it's all Admiral and Cascade. It's pretty dry, sucking moisture off the palate and finishing tight, sharp and astringent. This is another one of those beers I'm really enjoying a third of but more than that would probably get difficult.

OK, enough cask. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been eyeing up the new Wetherspoon can all afternoon. Treason is an IPA from Windsor & Eton, 5.8% ABV and a hazy orange colour. There's a balanced orange fruit bitterness and a hint of dank in the aroma. It tastes fresh and fruity with distinct overtones of Punk IPA and Bibble. Citrus! Resins! Cool! Acceptance! It is very nice, and top marks to the brewery for putting it together, but it does taste like quite a few other beers to me. It's just as well that quality and flavour trumps individuality every time.

Overall, quite a good festival this year. No stand-outs, but the beers I didn't enjoy were at least interesting. And that, in general, is the best any blogger can hope for. The festival continues until Sunday and I'd imagine that several in the line-up will be around for a while after that.

Press pass pilsners

Camden Exchange has been open since the beginning of the summer. It's the latest addition to the strip of bars running down Camden Street in central Dublin, already known for its late-night pack-'em-in superpubs. It's big but not huge (have a walk round) and a bit of money has been spent on the faux-industrial interior. The best feature is probably the generous beer garden out back. The food is good and the beer choice extensive, with a mix of craft and macro, Irish and imported, spread across 20 or so taps. But, on my first visit, a €6.50 pint of Metalman Pale Ale left a bitterness that had nothing to do with Summit or Cascade and meant I wasn't in a rush to go back.

In August, Camden Exchange held its gala opening and the management kindly invited me along. The beer was free and the food was free so it was all rather jolly. I started with a beautifully refreshing pint of Camden Hells and left on a fabulously juicy Punk IPA, but in between, in the hope of getting a blog post out of the freebie, I scoured the taps for something I'd never reviewed before. There was just one: Birra Moretti. I'll have a pint of that, so. Stick it on the boss's tab.

Heineken's headline Italian offering is definitely doing its job up against arch-rival Peroni: it has the same watery core and the same unpleasant metallic tang, though is perhaps not quite as gassily vapid. It's still pretty terrible and certainly a totally different species to the Hells which preceded it.

If you're going to Camden Exchange on your own dime -- and do give the food menu a go -- it's probably best to pick your beer a bit more carefully than I did here. Cheers to the team for inviting me.

More recently, I was invited out to a launch evening at Box Burger in Bray. This venue, from the owners of Platform Pizza next door and the Harbour Bar across the way, is situated in part of what was once Bray railway station and has been lovingly stripped out to reveal lots of the original brickwork. The burgers are damn decent and there's a distinct Wicklow tilt to the drinks offer, with beer from Wicklow Wolf and O Brother plus cider by Craigie's. But there are imports too, so my tick of the evening was Camden Town Pils. As I mentioned on Monday, straight-up good-quality lager is something of a stock-in-trade at Camden Town so I was expecting a sharp and refreshing pint here, but that's not what I got. For one thing it was hazy, looking an unhealthy wan yellow, though thankfully the taste was not upset by any yeast interference. But its flavour isn't exactly the profile I associate with pils, being full of soft lemon sherbet rather than grass or herbs. It's smooth and very tasty, just not especially pils-like in my estimation.

Thanks to all the Box Burger crew for the evening's hospitality. It's well worth checking out if you're down Bray way, and that's not just the free truffle-oil-and-parmesan burger talking.

Britscraft

Yes yes: I know I covered a gose in my previous post about pub-hopping in Newcastle, but for this concluding piece we're going even deeper into the craft.

Where better to start than BrewDog? A branch of the proliferant chain clings to the slope of Dean Street, where the city curves dramatically down to the Tyne. The marquee menu board divides the draught selection into house beers and guests, and on the BrewDog side there were two I didn't recognise so I gave them both a go.

Having asked what Deaf Mermaid is, I was, of course, given a sample. And immediately I knew it was for me. This is a very pale 5.2% ABV pale ale, a lightly hazy shade of yellow in the glass. I'm no good at playing guess-the-hop but I'd hazard that Nelson Sauvin plays a big part here: it has that fresh tropical fruit aroma that the New Zealand variety often does so well, and at the centre there's a beautiful sauvignon blanc softness without any of the catty flavours this sometimes brings. The bitterness levels are wonderfully low, yet it's not sweet either: Deaf Mermaid is all about that hop flavour. For something this happy and refreshing, the ABV is a little high, but then if you want a similar effect at lower ABV there's always Dead Pony a few taps over.

Hop Fiction is the same style at the same strength and does a lot of the same things, but exists more as a concept beer (or gimmick, if you will). No kettle hops or dry hops were used: all additions were immediately either side of the boil. You wouldn't know anything funny was going on: it's a straight-up quality pale ale, offering yet more tropical fruit vapours and, while it's a little sharper and oilier than Deaf Mermaid, it's still light enough to be refreshing, especially cold from the keg. If Deaf Mermaid is looking over its shoulder to Dead Pony, Hop Fiction is wearing some of Punk IPA's wardrobe. Both beers are worth trying but don't really offer much that you can't get from the core BrewDog range.

I neglected to mention one of the first-rate Newcastle pubs in my last post, and that's because I only paid it the briefest of flying visits. Bacchus is up towards the centre of the city so was a bit harder for me to get to. I dropped in late on my last afternoon to find it very quiet, an atmosphere that doesn't really suit the big, banking-hall-like open space. The beer selection is probably Newcastle's widest, with about a dozen each of cask and keg. I did a swift skirt around the handles and opted for Saudade, a berliner weisse brewed by two of my favourite British brewers, Siren and Fyne Ales. That's got to be a recipe for brilliance. But, sadly, it's not. There's nothing wrong with it, per se: it's an acceptable strength at 3.2% ABV, and an acceptable blurry gold colour, and there's the wheaty grain and there's the tangy vinegar. But that's it. No distinguishing marks, no interesting twist, just straight-down-the-line and by-the-book. It's refreshing, I suppose, but very very plain.

Down at the Bridge Tavern they had a cask of Siren's Odyssey 001 on the pumps. This 12.4% ABV multi-barrel-aged imperial stout had been there a while and, unsurprisingly, was moving very slowly. Happily I was able to deliver the coup de grâce and the tap ran dry just before my third was filled. It looked like a candle-holder filled with soy sauce. It smelled like vanilla-infused espresso liqueur. And it tasted heavenly. Coffee is the main feature, but as well as the oily beans and the burnt edges there's that gorgeous warming cherry fruit flavour some coffees impart. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of savoury umami, doubtless for the autolytic processes happening at the bottom of the barrel, but they simply added character. I have a lot of time for autolysis in powerhouse beers like this. One sip and any number of boring berlinerweisses are forgiven.

Back in The Free Trade Inn, just before I left, one beer caught my eye from the tall beer fridge. I remember Baby-Faced Assassin when it was a homebrew being tweeted about in hushed tones by many an industry playa. It has since grown up commercial and is now a part of the canned range from Yorkshire-based craft beer godfather Rooster. And it's still regarded by all who comment as an excellent IPA. So there was no question of me not buying a tin. It pours out a hazy pale orange and there's a mildly dank aroma but no real hop fireworks in the smell. On tasting... no, they're not there either. Instead you get lots of that crystal malt toffee effect that plagues (or used to) American IPA. It's barely even bitter. On warming there's a bit more of a resin thing going on, and some pleasant spicing, but a complete lack of zingy fun of any kind. I was surprised and disappointed. So surprised, in fact, that when I happened across a can which was a month fresher in top Newcastle offy Glug, I snapped that up to bring home and give the beer a second chance. And this one was better, certainly in the aroma where a luxurious waft of fresh mango juice met the nostrils. But it's still not terribly hop forward on tasting: dry and bitter rather than fruity, with the sticky malt still very much in control.

While in Glug, I noticed they had one of BFA's companion beers in the fridge, Fort Smith, so I took one of those home with me as well. It's a 5% ABV American-style pale ale using a mix of Citra, Chinook, Amarillo and Crystal hops (as opposed to BFA's 100% Citra). It's a mostly-clear orange-gold and smells gorgeous: the satsuma burst of Amarillo is there, alongside edgier lime but also a hard-candy sweetness. The malt is similarly front and centre as with its stablemate but the hops are working much harder: a gentle dank, juicy jaffa flesh and a subtle pinch of sugared grapefruit. It's beautifully put together, and the kicker? This is dated a month older than the first Baby-Faced Assassin can. It's just a better beer.

Newcastle has a reputation as a late-night party-hard destination for people who don't feel the cold, but there's plenty of good beer for us day folk to sip as well.

Woof!

It's the sense of energy that is my lasting impression from visiting the BrewDog brewery: a relentless dynamism and a restless drive towards change and improvement in all things. I'm used to breweries as being cold and quiet spaces but BrewDog is hot and -- with two simultaneous bottling lines running -- very loud. The brewhouse is enormous but densely packed with brewkit, the fermentation vessels spilling out beyond the walls and roof into the back yard. The plant runs 24 hours a day, five days a week and even though it's mostly dedicated to the production of a single beer, Punk IPA, there is change everywhere. More tanks are on the way; a corner of the warehouse has been set aside for a still; the endless parade on one Punk bottling line was showing the new pale blue livery, the other the tail end of the classic version. Co-founder Martin Dickie brought our group around and everywhere was action, activity, energy. Employees over 40 are thin on the ground.

Adjoining the brewery is DogTap, a recent addition to the complex which includes a bar, giftshop and even a 1000L pilot brewkit, though the whirlwind of change had yet to blow through here and commission it. For a pub situated in a remote Scottish industrial estate, DogTap was doing quite a bit of trade. Normal people too, not like the group of 17 writers the company had invited to its Aberdeenshire locations for the day. And it was a normal people's beer that was my first choice to drink.

Fake Lager is a mainstay in BrewDog's chain of pubs, designed I suspect for the reluctant member of the party who was dragged in by more enthusiastic friends. I held out a little hope that some of the BrewDog magic had been sprinkled over it, but it's really quite average: golden, a little grainy, showing more than a touch of diacetyl butteriness and without any of the high notes that can make good pilsner really stand out. The name is only half joking, I reckon. And of course no sooner than I'd finished my pint, the beer was retired permanently. I haven't tried its replacement -- This. Is. Lager. -- but it talks a good game.

The other new tick on the DogTap bar which I needed to scratch was Magic Stone Dog, a three-brewery collaboration where San Diego meets Huddersfield in Ellon. It's a bright and happy gold and has an approachable 5% ABV. I did zero research into what sort of a beer it is before lifting the glass and was a little surprised to find the estery aromas of a Belgian blonde ale. They say there's some saison pedigree in here but it was all luscious sweet fruits for me: apricots and honeydew melons in particular, making me think of a junior edition of Flying Dog's magnificent Raging Bitch. Lots of fun and very pintable.

We were summoned from the bar back to the meeting and media room in the administrative wing of BrewDog HQ. Here, James and Martin took us through a selection of their beers, beginning with Punk, of course. The newest addition to the brewery's "Headliners" family is Brixton Porter. It's quite a dry offering, even a little ashen, and would have little difficulty passing for an Irish-style stout. The grain bill includes chocolate, brown and amber malts but I was unable to detect much by way of coffee or chocolate flavours in here. A more severe liquorice sharpness is the only real complexity. It's good that there's a dark malt-forward beer in the core line-up, but why couldn't it have been Zeitgeist? That's the downside of running business in a constant state of renewal: old farts like me want stuff you don't make any more.

Presented, oddly, before Brixton was Black Eyed King Imp, an 11.8% ABV imperial stout which started out as a test batch of Cocoa Psycho before getting two years in two different whisky barrels. It's thick and smooth and luscious, as all the best of this sort are. The aroma strongly suggests that some autolysis has been going on: it's a savoury umami air, with a pinch or two of salt. While not tasting of oak per se, there's a slightly tannic red wine edge to it, but the main act is a huge hit of Irish coffee: extra creamy with lots of brown sugar and a billow of boozy fumes up the back of the nose. It tastes a lot stronger than it is, so very much a sipper. When the tasting broke up I mineswept what was left on the tables and session-sipped my way through as much as I could. The autolytic Bovril quality does build as it goes but it's still a magnificent example of how complex recipes and expensive processes can leave wonderful results.

We reassembled down in Aberdeen itself at BrewDog's city bar, standing room only at 6.30 on a Friday evening. I grabbed a very quick Blitz, one of a series of Berliner weisses with added fruit, this time redcurrant. It's a lot cleaner than any Berliner weisse has a right to be with a clear, sharp, puckering acidity singing out and not a trace of wateryness, despite a piffling 2.6% ABV. The currants are more than an afterthought, adding a very distinct summer fruit flavour to the whole. Beautifully refreshing and I could drink a lot.

But a lot wasn't an option. We were off to the third BrewDog establishment of the day, their restaurant Musa. Here we were treated to a fantastic beer-paired tasting menu of pig's cheek, salmon, grouse and whatnot, again with Martin and James doing the intros and musical-chairing around the tables so everyone got spoken with.

New beers in the line-up included Russian Doll IPA, part of a four-pack of sequential brews using the same ingredients but in different quantities to create four different styles of ascending strength. At 6% ABV the IPA is second from the bottom of the pecking order but still gets full value out of its Simcoe, Citra, Cascade and Centennial, particularly the first two. A big grapefruit bitterness opens its account, followed quickly by a rich and funky dankness. I guess it's supposed to be appreciated next to its dollmates but it works perfectly well by itself.

A baltic porter to finish, the new BrewDog / Victory collaboration U-Boat. This black lager is a massive 8.4% ABV but, like its namesake, is very good at concealing the danger. Baltic porters can be a bit severe with their liquorice bitterness and chewy malts but this is a much lighter and sweeter affair with milk chocolate at its centre, plus bitterer cocoa powder at the edges. It's no Black Eyed King Imp but it is a very nicely nuanced dark beer.

A big thanks to James, Martin and the rest of the crew of the BrewDog mothership for letting us get in their way for a day. And a special thanks to Sarah who put in all the hard work organising and herding a ragtag bunch of misfit beer writers. Thanks also to said ragtag bunch of beer writers for adding to the fun and allowing me to tick off a few more entries in my I-Spy Book of Beer Bloggers.

No rest for the ticker

Irish Craft Beer Week is upon us once more as the nation girds its collective loins for the craftquake that is the Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival, now in its fourth year at the RDS Industries Hall, from Thursday.

To whet your appetite for that I thought I'd run through a few of the recent releases from Irish breweries. Bear with me: this may take a while.

The Porterhouse's Pale Ale Festival ended in late July but nobody seems to have told Eight Degrees who had yet another beautiful hop monster on tap at the Temple Bar branch -- and several other pubs besides -- shortly afterwards. Simcoe Rye Ale is the latest in their single-hop series, 6% ABV once again. It's a hazy dark amber colour and the aroma offers a heady cocktail of grassy rye and weedy, spicy hops for the overall effect of a summer meadow on steroids, or getting your head stuck in a pile of damp lawn cuttings. First in the queue on tasting is a dry and punchy bitterness, sharp at the front and then with a longer resin finish, plus just a modest burst of juicy mandarins coming into it as it warms slightly. Behind these is a dense crystal malt base, though the caramel sweetness is felt more than tasted, if that makes any sense. It's a sort of heavy smoothness and brings balance and drinkability to what's an unmistakeably intense hop-forward beer.

International booze behemoth C&C invited me to the launch of their first Irish beer, Clonmel 1650, brewed at the plant best known for turning out the world's supply of Magners. They rented the entirety of swish Dublin superpub The Church and packed it to capacity, adding insanely loud music for extra atmosphere. Still, two free pints is two free pints. First impression of the first pint was of a very dry lager, the flavour evolving into an earthy, mushroomy, dusty, musty unpleasantness. I guess that's why they gave us two. The second was better, with more of a fruity estery vibe, though still pretty dry. Already in C&C's portfolio there's Tennents, Staropramen, Heverlee, Stella Artois and Beck's Vier. Regular drinkers of any of those will find little to surprise them here.

Clonmel 1650 will not be available at the RDS this weekend.

Before the 1650 gig I dropped into the nearby Twisted Pepper to try a new house beer in their Brewtonic series. I missed the first one, brewed last year at 5 Lamps, and this new one came from Rascal's (here's the official making-of blog post). It's a golden ale utilising Magnum, Summit and Cascade, and they've called it Relax the Cacks, for summer and that. It arrived very cold, which I was glad of that particular July evening, showing a slight craft haze in the gold. There's a sweet nectarine aroma, powerful enough to almost pass for Belgian. You get a massive whack of tropical fruit on tasting: peaches mostly, some pineapple, a bit of mandarin. The body is full enough and there's sufficient alcohol heat to keep the Belgian thing in mind, with definite elements of the first-rate sort of Belgian blonde ales. I got the impression it might start to get a little sticky if allowed to warm but there was little chance of that on this occasion.

The Brewtonic guys also had a bar at the first Big Grill barbecue festival which happened in Herbert Park a couple of weeks ago. As well as imported beers, it was serving some welcome leftovers of another one-off that Rascal's did for them, for a different event earlier this summer. Brewtonic Belgian Wit, said Rascal Emma, is a close relation of their own Wit Woo but utilises a little extra Munich malt. Wit Woo is fairly big on the citrus orange notes and while there are definite echoes of that here, this one drops the bitterness levels and adds in masses of extra soft and fleshy tropical fruit, mangoes in particular. There's a small burn of sulphur and the coriander spice levels are low, but they're really not missed with all the juice action going on. An ideal outdoor summer beer, this, and the festival wasn't long in being cleaned out of it. Brewtonic's boss says they're planning a brown ale next. It has a tough act to follow.

Rascal's doesn't have the monopoly on house beers for yoof-oriented Dublin pub chains. The Cassidy's/P. Mac's/Blackbird group have commissioned their own from Trouble Brewing, a 5.5% ABV pale ale called Vietnow. I explored it sitting among the junkshop furniture on Blackbird's terrace. This hazy dark orange beer smells very dank with heavy sandalwood notes as well. Expecting a dense resinous affair I was very pleasantly surprised to get a burst of mandarin on the first pull followed by a dankness that only comes from fresh hops in quantity. There's a thick mouthfeel and lots of that incense-like spicing. While a certain amount of resin lingers late, most of its hop action happens right up front. It was created as a cheaper alternative to Punk IPA, though at €5.40 a pint in Rathmines it's not exactly going for a song. Much as I enjoyed it, I felt my fiver in the Twisted Pepper above was better spent.

Meanwhile, under their own brand, Trouble have released Oh Yeah!, badged as an "American Black Ale". It's an inky black-brown colour with a fairly sedate aroma of spiced oranges and crunchy green veg. It's lightly textured with lots of prickly fizz, something that complements the spicy bitterness which is the centrepiece of the flavour. There's little by way of fruit complexity, in marked contrast to Eight Degrees's recent Vic Secret, instead it's veg and spice all the way. The dark malt contributes a little bit of chocolate and a little bit of roast, but not huge amounts (in the keg version at least; on cask it's understandably smoother and richer). At 5.8% ABV my liver felt somewhat cheated by the lack of complexity, but it's still a very tasty beer, and at just €5.10 in Against the Grain, my wallet was of the opinion that my liver could shut the hell up.

More pint action tomorrow, including a couple of brand new breweries.

My hop nemesis

Though they've been a regular feature on this blog for most of its (exactly) eight years, I had sort of lost track of what BrewDog were doing, beerwise, these days. Outside of the mostly on-trade-related news feed there seemed to be an endless line of hyper-expensive limited editions, none of which really interested me. Now things seemed to have calmed down, with a couple of beers I've been hearing great things about. Time to see for myself.

First up was Dead Pony Club. This is a 3.8% ABV pale ale and so immediately invites comparison with the excellent Jarl by Fyne Ales. Both make extensive use of Citra for a mouthwatering zestiness, but BrewDog couldn't help taking a big scoop from the Simcoe sack, and while this pungent hop just about works in fuller beers like 5am Saint and Punk IPA, it completely takes over here. My experience was of a sharp cheesey foretaste, followed by burning, followed by watery fizz, though I have to give props for the sweet lasting peachiness in the aftertaste.

I'm well aware that I'm in a minority when it comes to my problem with Simcoe. Without its influence I imagine I'd have enjoyed Dead Pony Club more. As it stands, however, it's another reason why I'm rarely minded to run out and try new BrewDogs these days. So it was with trepidation that I popped the next one.

Libertine is nearly double the strength and a very dark but clear red. "Let the sharp bitter finish rip you straight to the tits. Swallow hard - this slut bites" according to the ten-year-old who wrote the label copy, but while the aroma is mostly citrus with a bit of Simcoe funk (it's 100% Simcoe), the flavour puts dark chocolate at the centre, made sticky with a lacing of treacle. And then the Simcoe comes out, held in check by the dark malt which gives us a bit of biscuit to go with the cheese.

Libertine reminds me a lot of 5am Saint, with its mix of heavy malt and funky hop. A pint would probably be too much, but 33cls was enjoyable.

I'd hoped I'd be able to get a bottle of Jack Hammer to go with these but it seems to be in very short supply. I just had a taste of this at the Voyager launch (thanks Alex, and welcome to the blogosphere!) and was very impressed. It's 7.2% ABV and BrewDog claim it's the bitterest beer they've ever brewed. So it must have been the Voyager I was drinking beforehand which left it tasting soft and fruity, packed with mango and passionfruit, reminding me of the exquisitely balanced pale ales put out by Stone. And best of all: no Simcoe, just Centennial and Columbus. Good doggie.

Cry havoc

What is it about craft beer branding and canines? We have those well known American breeds Flying Dog and Dogfish Head, and now there's the Scots terror: Brew Dog. The Aberdeenshire microbrewery opened just last year and is already producing an impressive range of beers, bottled and on cask (my notes on cask Hype are in this post). Reviews have been generally positive, so I requested a mixed case as a Christmas present from a UK-based family member (cheers, sis).

Because the brewery is new, I'm not terribly upset about what happened next. In small business terms it's probably classified as an oversight or teething troubles: the dozen 33cl bottles were shipped without any protective wrapping on them. As a result, one of my Rip Tides arrived in several pieces, with the cardboard box receiving the full benefit of the imperial stout within. I trust the brewery will be rectifying this dispatch issue soon, if they haven't already.

I started with the "laid back amber beer" The Physics, immediately struck by the cuteness of a best before date written in biro. It's a dark amber colour, reminding me of American lagers like Old Scratch and Boston Lager. Not much aroma, just tiny sugary sweetness and even tinier hops if you inhale deeply enough. The first sip delivers a big, and quite unexpected, hoppy punch: brimming with a very heavy vegetal bitterness of the sort found in the more full-on English bitters. Think Landlord. The bitterness lingers and is joined by a rich caramel sweetness and the overall sensation is like sucking on a candy-coated hop cone. Er, probably. The Physics is tasty, complex, and not at all laid back. With all those hops in this one I moved on to the IPA with trepidation.

The first shock of Punk IPA was from the colour: a very bright, pale yellow and suspiciously clear for a handcrafted beer. Yes, I know that my suspicions are unfounded and that craft brewers can make clear beers too, but I like a bit of cloud in my ales. There's probably a chemical additive you can get... Anyway, second shock was that Punk isn't an aggressive hop monster. The aroma, again, is slight and has a citrus quality which is carried through in a big way in the flavour. It's very zesty, with lemony overtones, and also quite smooth and more-ish. Punk isn't about being smooth, but it is about being shocking, I guess, so the name can stay.

Rip Tide was a bit more normal, in a special sort of way. It pours a very opaque black with just about no head. There's a bit of a prickle in the mouthfeel, but mostly it's rich and thick. The taste is quite subtle, and nothing leaps out immediately. Rolling it around the palate it's quite dry, but there's just a hint of chocolatey sweetness in the mix there too. It leaves a bitter taste at the end as a prelude to the next sip. I think my preferences lean towards the caramel-and-coffee school of imperial stouts, which left me intrigued as to what happens when you send Rip Tide off to live in a whisky cask for a while.

It gains two ABV percentage points and turns into Paradox, is the short answer. The one I have here is from an Islay cask: batch 8 -- Bowmore. The smoky peat is apparent even from the narrow neck of a slightly cold bottle, and even more so when poured into a wide-bottomed glass, where a tawny head makes a brief appearance but is gone in an instant. The fullness of the Rip Tide mouthfeel is there, as is the lasting bitter aftertaste, but before that there's the earthy scotch buzz dominating everything. The 10% ABV is well hidden among the smooth and balanced whisky flavours. Its Laphroaigishness reminds me a lot of Messrs Maguire's fantastic, but now heart-breakingly gone, Imperial which I raved over back in the autumn. Paradox is a superb beer: uncompromising, innovative and chock full of the Brew Dog spirit. Well done, lads.

I look forward to trying some of the other beers Brew Dog have out. And I look forward even more to being able to buy them in Ireland where I can be fairly sure I'll get them home in one piece.