Hazy recollection

It's the season for pointless time-consuming traditions and dull end-of-year lists: yes, The Golden Pints are upon us once more. 2018's deliberation beer is one I acquired at the Mikkeller takeaway bar in Copenhagen airport with my final fistful of kroner. Hazy is a New England IPA of 6.6% ABV, an opaque orange-yellow, topped by a thick white head. In the minus column there's a pinch of dreggy yeast and a rising garlic note as it warms; the principal plus, however, is a massive juiciness -- mostly sweet orange but there's a balancing citric bitterness too, from the Simcoe, I'm guessing. Three months on from canning and this was still a perfect example of this style done well. It does need to be consumed cold, though: I was only half way through deliberations when it warmed up to the point of losing juice. A lesson for me to make my decisions quickly. Anyway, without further review, here are...

The Golden Pint Awards 2018

Best Irish Cask Beer: O Brother: The Whippersnapper
This cask-conditioned Berliner weisse ran a close race against another oddity, Third Barrel's Raspberry Stout, but just pipped it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Barrel-aged pale farmhousey beers rocked my world this year. Extremely honorable mentions go also to Rascals for the Chardonnay Sparkling Ale and DOT's Dainty Wood. This one, while perhaps not the most complex, had the best mix of classic wild-fermented and wood-aged flavours, very like an authentic Belgian gueze. I hope they can recreate it, and that there are customers in the local market who appreciate this sort of thing.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Larkin's: Baltic Porter
This award is based not solely on the quality of the beer -- though that is consistently excellent. It's almost as much the availability: this one has been there for me at regular intervals throughout the year; occasions when I just want something unfussy but great to drink. It looks to have been renamed now, as "Dark Matter", but it still tastes perfect.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Hope: Hop Hash DIPA
My standout from The Big Grill Festival this year translated perfectly into canned form. Citric hoppy deliciousness.

Best Overseas Draught: Purpose: Smoeltrekker #68
Another one of those barrelled sour blondes, hailing from Colorado but showing up on tap at the Leuven Innovation Beer Festival back in the spring. All the oaky spices.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Sierra Nevada: Tequila Barrel Otra Vez
I've been a bit grumbly about Sierra Nevada's harmless gose-alike but I was genuinely wowed when I happened across a bottle of the tequila-barrel-aged version.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Collective Arts: Ransack the Universe
In Ireland, "Overseas canned beer" is mostly going to mean "some murk from England with an abstract design on it" -- there are a hell of a lot of those on the market at any given moment and I don't bother trying to keep up with them. So instead I'm picking some murk from Canada with a sort-of abstract design on it, and very nice it was too.

Best Collaboration Brew: Jester Zinne
This one from De La Senne and Jester King -- barrels, funk, sour: you get the picture -- could equally have been awarded Best Overseas Bottle but I'm slotting it into the collaboration bracket where there's less competition instead.

Best Overall Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Scouring the above for the most memorable, pupil-dilating, beer experience of the year, and I think this is the one.

Best Branding: Kinnegar
The Donegal brewer switched its minimalist monochrome designs to the new busy cartoon bunnies and their associates. I haven't seen it on a label yet, but I loved the design for Rustbucket, featuring the late eponymous doggo.

Best Pump Clip: Beerbliotek: Shakes Fist Angrily
Still amused by the sheer daftness of this.

Best Bottle/Can Label: YellowBelly: Covert Operation
The Molloy's guys and YellowBelly are up to something. With a fox.

Not a skull to be seen.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
2016's winner returns to the top spot, though for different reasons this time. It still does excellent contract-brewing work, and the Brown Ale and Saison for Lidl were two very strong new strings to its bow, but the five limited edition seasonal launches really marked out the progression of 2018, and we got hints too of a pilot series a few weeks ago. The Rye River brand has come of age, and attached itself to some very fine beers.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Exchange
In a busy and diverse drinking year, no single overseas brewery stood out for me. This award is going on visitor experience, then, and the smart, bijou taproom of this place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, visited in September. It brews good stuff too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2018: Four Provinces
OK technically this was a 2017 launch, but it was 2018 before the new range started getting out and about. Láidir in particular was the best new regular-production Irish beer of the year, but there's no Golden Pint for that.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
In the grand tradition of the previous year's Best Newcomer winning Best Pub this time round, UnderDog takes the prize. Anyone who's spent any amount of time there will know why. It's always entertaining and only a small part of that is because of what's on tap. Shout-out to Paddy, Barry and Chris who make it what it is.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2018: GIST
I think I'm right with the timing here: I don't see any reference to its existence prior to last January. Anyway, Brussels has a new star in its pub firmament; a lovely blend of traditional cosy brown-café vibes with a bang-up-to-date modern beer list. A most honorable mention goes to the Metalman bar in Waterford which opened just over a year ago, pouring great beers and hosting fun events on the city's quayside.

Beer Festival of the Year: Hagstravaganza
The only Irish beer festival that people talk about; the centre of the calendar for the last two years; performing stellar geek-service while also being just a fun day out. After a few hiccups in year one, the 2018 outing nailed it.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
Time was this was a back-and-forth between the supermarket near work (Fresh in Smithfield) and the supermarket near home (SuperValu Sundrive) but both have lost crucial staff resulting in the loss of elite status. I'm going with Lidl instead this year, largely because of the Rye River commissions above, as well as the exotic oddities from the summer. More tickworthy exotic oddities please!

Independent Retailer of the Year: Stephen Street News
Unlike the supermarkets, Martin's and DrinkStore have done nothing at all wrong, but here comes the disruptor, jumping on the aluminium bandwagon and making exemplary use of price-points and social media to corner the poorly-served ubergeek end of the Dublin beer market. Long may it continue.

Online Retailer of the Year: YellowBelly Brewery
I don't usually award this because I don't buy beer on the internet, except this year I did: I joined the first outing of the YellowBelly Beer Club which meant four six-packs in the post. As I mentioned in relation to the last one, they weren't all brilliant beers, but there's still a bit of fun in parcel-post beer delivery, especially when it's a local outfit rather than a, say, Scottish or pseudo-Danish one.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Good Beer Guide To Belgium, 8th ed.
The mostly-annual award for The One Beer Book I Read This Year goes to Joe and Tim for this one. It is genuinely good. You don't get Golden Pints, or any pints, for putting out dreck.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Every Pub In Dublin
I've mentioned in previous years how I'm a sucker for a grand project. Dublin has two which came to my attention this year, attempting to visit all the pubs in Dublin (for a given value of "Dublin"), so shout-out to Dublin By Pub, but for sheer indefatigable doggedness, and regular laugh-out-loud pen portraits, this one goes to Cian.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @Bill_Linane
It was well worth keeping a blackboard record of how many times each Twitter account amused me during 2018. The final tally shows Bill to be out in front. Well done Bill.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
The most frequent winner of this category takes it again and godammit it shouldn't be this easy for them. It's not rocket science for breweries to put information about their new releases out on the internet so customers can see what they're buying when they're buying it, yet Eight Degrees is the only one that has the information to hand when I want it. A spirited, and much appreciated, attempt was made on Instagram by Whiplash but they still didn't manage to document all their own releases (Love is Lost? Hello?). Meanwhile, every other Irish brewery: pleeease do this better.

And there we are. Can you believe that that's ten whole years of Golden Pints? Madness. Big thanks to Mark and Andy, of course, who originated the categories, ones which are looking a bit clunky for the current beer scene, but my unhallowed hands shall not disturb them, or the beer world's done for. See you in 2019!

Arrivals, Departures

Our one daytrip from Montréal took us up the St Lawrence to Québec City. It's a solid three and a half hours by train so obviously I brought train beer: a handsome half-litre bottle of Sour French Kiss by Microbrasserie Charlevoix. Two mouthfuls in, our friendly Via Rail conductor came by to tell me to chug it. Turns out train beer, or at least drinking your own beer on board, is illegal in Canada. Yes it said that on my ticket so yes I should have known, but it's still downright barbarous. No wonder passenger rail is underused. What's the point if you can't have train beer? A quick impression, then: I had bought this thinking it would be something like a Flanders red. Nope. It's very thin and gassy with a carbonic sharpness giving the palate a vigorous scrub. Once that subsides the fruit arrives, and when I say fruit I mean just strawberry, in a concentrated sweet and jammy sort of way. And that's your lot; one of those beers where "sour" means nothing other than "over-attenuated". I can be thankful it didn't turn out to be a complex sipper, I suppose.

Québec is a pretty town with lots of interesting sites, laid out in a very charming French style, complete with mairie and château. About half way through the day it occurred that we should have made a weekend of it. Lunch was in a bistro called Bello which had a house lager called Bière Bello. I've no idea where it's from. It's only 4.5% ABV but is heavy and sweet, offering a spongecake base spiced up with white pepper and chicory in that slightly fusty Germanic way. It's well made and far more interesting than it needs to be.

We nipped into one local brewpub later: L'Inox. It's in that rustic-cabin bare-planks style that seems to be the preferred design mood for Canadian beer bars. I opted for Saison Lilikoï, a 5%-er brewed with passionfruit. The crisp saison dryness is very faint in this, absolutely smothered by the passionfruit juice. It ends up being too neutral a base and the fruit runs riot over the top of it. This is one for people who want their passionfruit beer to taste like passionfruit and not beer.

Guest beer on the day was Davy Jones by Le Corsaire Microbrasserie, just across the river. This is an export-style stout of 5% ABV, appearing dense black with a head the colour of old ivory. A wheaty chocolate aroma leads to further chocolate in the flavour and a creamy smooth texture. A metallic bitter tang in the finish balances it and keeps it from being a total dessert. I see no mention of the use of lactose but it hits the flavour points of a milk stout exactly. A very decent effort overall.

Later, with half an hour to kill before our train back to Montréal, we stopped in at D'Orsay, an uncharacteristically American-style bar, all dark wood and cocktails. I was pleased to find a selection from Unibroue on tap, having missed these since they disappeared from the Irish market almost a decade ago. I picked an unfamiliar one, À Tout Le Monde, a light saison brewed in collaboration with Megadeth, because why not? It's all spices and oranges, a not-very-metal combination of ginger, nutmeg and tangerine with a classy hint of cedar. This manages to be smooth and warming while also juicy and refreshing. Without knowing the style or strength I mistook it for a big tripel; at the strength it's very impressively complex.

I picked up a handful of other Unibroues while I was in Montréal, happy to see the familiar 75cl bottles with exactly the same label design as back in the day. I resisted returning to old favourites to bring you opinions on some new ones.

Éphémère Pomme is a wheat beer flavoured with Granny Smith apples. It pours a crisp golden colour and smells sharply acidic, exactly like real green apples. That continues on tasting: a strong and authentically appley flavour, sweeter than the aroma, like apple jelly or a Mr Kipling bramley pie. There's a smooth wheatiness forming a neutral base, but not invisible: this is definitely a beer rather than an ersatz alcopop. Bright and fresh like a sunny October morning in the orchard, it's very well constructed and classy, entirely without gimmickry.

Presenting, I guess, a negative image to Unibroue's Blanche de Chambly witbier is Noire de Chambly, a dark ale. It's a clean and quite lager-like affair with spicy cola phosphorus and a dark fruit blend of raisin and plum. Only a very slight stickiness indicates the 6.2% ABV. An oily black pepper pop finishes it satisfactorily. I was expecting a stout but got something far more interesting.

I didn't know what I would be getting from the bottle of Raftman I carted all the way to Toronto, since it says no more than it's a smoked ale on the bottle. It poured a murky ochre colour with lots of foam. "Wholesome" is my verdict. It smells and tastes like fresh crusty brown bread. There is precious little smoke and just a faint tang of old world hop fruit. But malt it has in spades: sweet rich grains which almost but don't quite tip over into syrup. At 5.5% ABV it's quite easy going and certainly undemanding: a beer for sharing while your attention is on something else.

I  mentioned on Wednesday another brewery that likes its handsome large bottles: Brasserie Les Trois Mousquetaires. My wife picked the Maibock to bring back to the room. It's not a style I would choose, and this one is a shining example as to why. Though an innocent lemon barley water colour, it is insanely thick and sweet, tasting simultaneously of porridgey wort, boiled sweets and candied popcorn. Yes there's a little nibble from the herbal noble hops but that's brief, coming just ahead of a finish that's pure Sugar Puffs. While well within the style boundaries and probably exactly as the brewer intended, it tastes unfinished to me, and that's despite a full 6.8% ABV.

Though Granville Island is no longer the trailblazing brewery it was 20 years ago I still wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to try its beer the first time I saw it, at Montréal station on the afternoon we departed for Ottawa. Infamous is certainly like an IPA from the olden days. It's a dark copper colour and 6% ABV. Sweet and sticky crystal malt dominates the flavour while a soapy bitterness forms the other side, contrasting without actually balancing it. Overall it's like a failed mutant version of Sierra Nevada pale ale. If that's your bag, go for it.

Other cans acquired and consumed at our lodgings in Ottawa and then Toronto included this one from Muskoka, one of the Canadian breweries whose wares occasionally show up in Europe. Shinnicked Stout is new to me, though. It's coffee-infused and 5.2% ABV, a dark brown colour with a perfect cream coloured head. While there's definite after-dinner filter coffee in the flavour, I got a creamy and boozy dessert vibe: not pastry but not all coffee either. It's just a genuinely tasty, medium-strength, roast-forward stout; balanced and satisfying.

Amsterdam's Boneshaker describes itself as an unfiltered IPA, though that's hardly unique and there are hundreds of IPAs of its hazy deep copper colour in North America alone. It smells zesty: sweet orange pith meeting spicy sandalwood. The ripe orange -- satsuma and mandarin -- is the cornerstone of its flavour, with just an edge of caraway and sesame on the finish. It's all very clean and bright: the 7.1% ABV being very well hidden. Consider also the balancing pine bitterness and a certain weedy dank and you have Canada's neat answer to Sierra Nevada Torpedo. I approve. Isn't it good to know that "unfiltered" doesn't have to mean mucky? More from Amsterdam when we visit their Toronto outlet next week.

Another reddish IPA to follow, IPA 9 from Duggan's: a little bit lighter at 6.2% ABV. This time the aroma is strongly toffee-infused with a hint of red apple. Flavourwise it has the tea-like tannins of a good English bitter and while it's missing any full-on new-world citrus punch, it's at least clean, dry and unsticky. Like many of this sort, especially the stronger ones, it does get a little astringent towards the end. I'd say the ABV needs to be roughly halved for it to work properly.

Pumping the ABV up to 9%, and feeling no shame about it, is Immodest by Nickel Brook. It's a hazy orange colour and smells powerfully of booze and orange cordial, like the vodka mixers I remember from the 1990s. The flavour is an absolutely classic west coast blend of citrus and pine, coupled with big alcohol and finishing on a warming glow. It's a flavour profile I haven't tasted in a while as I think it's thoroughly out of fashion, but which reminds me of Russian River's Pliny the Elder in particular. If you want your DIPA hot, punchy, unsubtle, but with a certain clean and fruity charm, the LCBO has you covered with this.

Chosen by the other half solely for its awesome name, Ransack the Universe is an IPA from Collective Arts which uses Galaxy and Mosaic hops. It's the medium hazy yellow of old-style lemonade and smells both juicy and sharp; mandarin meets lime, but all cool and fresh. The flavour continues this beautiful tropical double act, offering notes of pineapple, guava and mango up front before bringing in a tight and almost astringent bitterness on the end. There's lots on offer for those who think IPAs are best when acting as surrogate juiceboxes, and those who think no punch, no point. My only gripe is a very slight caraway hit on the end but that's minimal. Overall an absolutely benchmark modern IPA.

Enough cans, it's back to the pub next. Find out on Monday what Canada's capital city had in store for us.