Of Saints and Rascals

There's much to catch up with as regards new Irish beer in recent months. Going all the way back to early October, St. Mel's were in town, occupying some of the taps in The Beerhouse for an evening. The new kid was St. Mel's IPA, which came with the warning that it's made to be sold in Longford. Which is fine: Longford people need IPA same as the rest of us. It's 5.2% ABV and a dark red colour. There's a wholesome density to it, warming, with an autumnal dark fruit kick on the end plus a touch of tannin. So an IPA in the strong English bitter mould then? Very much so. I happily downed a couple of pints of the kegged version but would love to try it on cask.

The guys had also brought the last of this summer's Beer Garden Wit, a seasonal I completely missed last year. There's elderflower in this and it features in the flavour in a big way. Alongside it there are big and warming Belgian yeast esters which I wouldn't have marked down as particularly summery, but maybe they're less intrusive when the beer is served cooler. It left me looking for the clean refreshing edge that witbier can usually be relied upon for.

From an out-of-season beer to one that was right on time: Rascals Social Hops #1 débuted in The Square Ball the following night. Social Hops is a community-based hop growing project, supported by the Bodytonic pub chain. The harvest was in mid-September and three weeks later there was a 4.5% ABV blonde ale on tap. The hops were all Prima Donna (except for a token bittering addition of something commercial) and the signature soft lemon flavour of this variety really shone, set on a lightly effervescent body and with a dry finish. It's, understandably, a subtle beer, but very drinkable and refreshing with it.

When not putting crowd-sourced hops to good use Rascals has also been continuing the sour beer series it began in September with The Hoppy One. Project Sour No. 2 is subtitled Seriously Saison and is very saison. Peppery vapours drift up from the hazy gold beer, and it tastes very fruity -- I get plum and lychee in particular -- plus a spicy edge in the finish. There's only the briefest pinch of tartness in amongst this before the fruit esters take over the flavour once again. It's a decent saison but I wanted much more from the sourness.

I hoped I'd find that in Project Sour No. 3 aka Forest Fruit Sour, and I sort-of did: there's a big punchy lactic sourness in the flavour of this clear purpley-pink beer. But in front of it there's an unsubtle candy-sweet syrup flavour which brings the blackberry, dark cherry and even blueberry notes into the equation. It really reminded me of the cheapo fruit lambics made by the industrial brewers of Belgium: they were what first interested me in sour beer and I have a soft spot for how they operate, but they're not exactly sophisticated. This beer does deliver what it promises: it is sour and really tastes of forest fruit, but I was looking for something more substantially complex.

More recently, Rascals has also released an updated version of the Mint Chocolate Stout they were pouring at the RDS in September. The specific item of confectionery they're attempting to mimic is signalled by the name: 8:01, and they've raised the ABV and general flavour levels. The end result is 6% ABV and has a lovely oily mint twang. At the launch event in (where else?) The 108, I got to try it nitrokegged side-by-side with the straight-carbonation canned version. And while the nitro one hasn't been stripped of its flavour, the dry roast crispness and fun milk chocolate sweetness are much more apparent in the cans. Like the Ginger Porter on which the brewery was founded, this never loses sight of the classic beer style at its roots, which is very much to its credit.

And a footnote from Rascals: their Aussie-hopped Flamin' Red double IPA from last winter has been tweaked, rebadged and relaunched as Big Red DIPA but is still pretty much the same jammy spicy warmer it was before.

That's it for now, with much more Irish beer to come next week.

Get into the party mood

There's a new festival on the beer calendar this week. Franciscan Well has appropriated the moniker "The Great Irish Beer Festival" (last seen here) and is using it for a new gig taking place in Cork City Hall, starting Thursday. I won't be there, unfortunately, but since the event is so close to the Irish Craft Beer Festival which happened at the RDS a bit over a week ago, and since several of the same beers and brewers will be there, I thought I would dedicate the days running up to it to the beers I tried at the RDS.

Exhibitor numbers were down this year, but there was, as always, plenty of interest over the three days. I'm kicking off this series of posts with the breweries around Dublin's periphery.

First up is the capital's own Rascals who brought some of their signature wine barrel magic in the form of Pinot Noir Brett Ale. The non-bretted version of this beer, which started life as their red ale Big Hop Red, was one of the highlights of the March festival at the RDS. Now they've taken the lees from a Belgian beer and popped them into the barrel to see what that does. The end result is a beautiful amalgam of the red grape flavour with classic farmyard brett as well as a balsamic sharpness and a flawless quick finish. Immensely complex yet dangerously easy to drink.

At the other end of the bar was Project Sour #1, a 4.5%-er hopped with Amarillo, Citra and the hop blend TNT. It's a pale orange colour and smells of juicy oranges too. That turns more towards peach on tasting and the sourness, while present, definitely takes a back seat to the hops. While lightly tart it's also quite dry, leaving it very refreshing and extremely sessionable. A perfect warm-weather drinking beer: sour and hoppy wins again.

There was just a single corny of Rascals Mint Chocolate Stout, a style I've attempted, and failed, to get right in the past. But while my mint all dissipated somewhere during the fermenting process, this one is quite thoroughly minted, with a piercing toothpaste effect right at the centre. There's some very light roast but the complexity is rather offset by the dulling effect of nitrogenation, while the chocolate is barely perceptible and there's no real sweetness. Fun, in a kind of silly way, and it would be interesting to try a carbonated version.

Rascals were far from the only brewery taking its first steps into sourness. Trouble Brewing had one on offer too: Weisse City, a 3.8% ABV Berliner weisse. The story goes that they had intended to hack this with a fruit addition of some sort but when it came out of the fermenter they changed their minds, deciding it was too good to mess with. I can totally see why: there's all sorts of complexity here, for a style that's usually quite simple. The aroma offers funky pineapple while it tastes sharply fruity, like rhubarb mixed with green apple skin. It never loses sight of its wheatiness either, with a pleasant grainy crunch and a beautiful soft pillowy texture. It's another one of those light tart beers I could drink rather a lot of.

I wasn't so keen on the other two new ones at the bar: Crosswalk and Gunslinger, respectively an east coast and west coast style IPA, Expecting big murk from 5.8% ABV Crosswalk, I found it merely hazy. The big surprise was how malt-forward it was: toffee on the nose and in the taste. The hops eventually come through as a crude grass-stalk bitterness, leaving a resinous burn in the finish, along with a big dollop of savoury yeast. It all tasted a bit rough and raw for my liking. Gunslinger is an ABV point higher, murky brown and funky smelling, musty like old crepe paper. The flavour goes lots of different ways at once: napalm hops, weedy dank, and the metallic grassiness of beer that's been dry-hopped for too long. It's hoppy, I'll give it that, and I did kind of get used to it as I sipped, but it needs a bit of tweaking to become an accomplished US-style IPA, in this drinker's opinion.

Trouble is also still brewing for its neighbouring pub, The Dew Drop in Kill. They had a separate stall for their own-label beers, as they did at Killarney, this time including a rooibos-infused job called Bushwhacked. It's a red ale at heart, one with a nicely crisp roasted character. The special addition brings a gentle floral hibiscus element to this, not dominating or showing off, just an extra calm complexity. Nicely done.

And the last call for now is Wicklow Wolf with a bunch of new releases, but I was especially keen on trying the new session IPA Easy Lover, with its daring ABV of just 3.8%. It only misses the mark on a couple of minor points -- a slight yeast bite and a bit of a watery finish -- but looking past these there's a beautifully breezy floral aroma and a flavour which pulls out some serious hop oil density before reverting to meadowy flowers again in the finish. It's probably not designed to be taken apart like this and works perfectly well as a down-the-hatch low-alcohol refresher. Such beers are always welcome in the midst of a three-day all-out beery shindig.

We'll move further afield tomorrow, and meet a brand new brewery too.