... and the rest

Galway Hooker isn't the only brewery I've been getting in the way at lately. I attended the brew day for Beoir#2 at Trouble Brewing last month, nosing around the sizeable facility they now have in Kill. As well as their own beer, Trouble does a bit of contract brewing and a look at their whiteboard reminded me of a few available in Dublin that I had yet to try.

And so on coming back from Galway the other week I dragged Séan and Ronan into Pantibar on Capel Street. As I'm sure is usual on a Saturday night it was heaving and there was just about space to stand at the bar. Panti's Pale Ale is the one Trouble produces for the place, on sale for just €4 a pint. On the dark side for a pale ale, shading towards amber, it's not exactly as flamboyant as its patroness. There's a solid malt core and then a vegetal green bitterness on top for an English bitter effect, though much tastier than bitter tends to be on keg. Overall it's easy drinking and not a beer that's going to interrupt the conversation. Coupled with the price, that's pretty much exactly what you want from a house beer.

Trouble has been brewing the revived Revolution Red Ale for Big Hand since 2010 but I only recently became aware that it has a stablemate now too: Augustine Dublin Steam Lager.

I dropped by the shabby-chic bohemian hangout that is Dice Bar, Big Hand's only outlet these days, to give it a go. It's 4.7% ABV, a bright pale gold and has a strange corn husk sort of flavour. This grows into a buttered popcorn effect which may perhaps be typical of the steam beer style but just didn't work for me. The overall impression was of a wonky, adjunct-laden mass-market industrial lager, even though that's not what it is. Revolution is a much better bet if drinking at Dice Bar.

There's also a new one in the O'Shea's range of budget ales that Carlow produces for Aldi: O'Shea's Traditional Irish Golden Ale. You know, like all those other golden ales Ireland is traditionally known for. It's 4.1% ABV and yes, definitely golden, so at least they got that right. The aroma is rather dry and husky with sweet golden syrup overtones which isn't very promising. But - surprise! - there's a lovely spiciness in the flavour, really taking the edge off the sugar. The grain husk remains, so we end up with a rather dry and serious golden ale, with a little marmalade shred bitterness, and I liked it for that: none of your bubblegum or fabric softener here. Very nicely put together for something that costs buttons.

Five Lamps is also at the contract game now, producing a house beer for the Pitt Bros barbecue joint on South Great George's Street. House Brew is a very straightforward Irish red ale of 4.7% ABV, comedically overpriced at €5.80 for a 33cl bottle. Of course it makes sense to have this kind of thing in this sort of place: the toffee and caramel really do complement the roast meats, and pulled pork in particular, but a big trayful of barbecue delights requires, I think, at least a pint of beery backing. They should have this on draught. Sipping it to try and make my €5.80 last to the end of the meal wasn't a fun experience. A fun experience was going straight to The Beer House afterwards where they had pints of Five Lamps Blackpitts Porter for €4 a throw: same brewery, nicer beer, well under half the price.

I was back at The Beer House on Friday at the end of Saturday's cross-town bimble in the company of Wayne, Janice, Ian, Sarah and Steve. It was a pleasant surprise to find the newest Five Lamps beer, a late winter seasonal called Phoenix Dark. It's a rich dark brown and tastes as luxurious as it looks, full of sumptuously smooth chocolate and caramel with a roast edge to prevent it from getting sickly or cloying. There's no sign of the strength either so I definitely could handle this a litre at a time, Munich-style.

Two more beers released under their maker's mark to finish with and the latest in a sequence of strong special edition beers from Offaly's finest is Bo Bristle Milk Chocolate Stout. It's all of 7% ABV but hides that well, especially when arriving cold from the keg. I had to leave it perched on one of 57 The Headline's radiators while I soaked up the atmosphere. Even with the flavours masked, the texture is appropriately rich with a real creamy feel of milk chocolate. And while this is present in the flavour (eventually), it's understated -- a light sweetness rather than, say, the full-on Dairy Milk effect of Porterhouse Chocolate Truffle Stout. There's a distinctly stouty dry bitterness too so don't expect a candified sugarbomb. In short, a damn decent strong Irish stout with a lacing of chocolate that may not be strictly necessary.

Wild Irish is something of a curveball. A modest 4% ABV, red-gold in colour and quite thin, which isn't surprising given the strength. The flavour opens with a firm bitter bite and finishes on a long, slow acidic burn. Rumours abounded that it's unhopped, but Dave the brewer has cleared that up: a bittering addition of hops was added, but the rest is all locally foraged elderberry, hawthornberry, ginger and rowanberry shrub. These are all active at the centre of the profile as a tartness and light meadowy herbal notes, no ginger heat though. The low gravity means it doesn't taste full of residual sugar as can sometimes happen with low-to-no hop beers. Wild Irish is an absolutely solid beer in its own right and not just a gimmick.

Bo Bristle seems to be having fun while everyone else is playing things pretty straight, by the looks of it.

Double Trouble

I've been drinking it fairly regularly all month, so apologies for only getting round to telling you about Trouble Brewing's Dark Arts porter now. It made its first appearance at the Food & Wine Magazine fair in the RDS a few weeks ago, followed by an official launch in the Bull & Castle on 30 November.

It's an unfiltered dark brown session porter of 4.4% ABV which starts out quite roasty and dry but follows this with a long-lasting chocolate and caramel sweetness. Just on the end there's a nip from the hops adding a bitter, slightly sour complication.

Dark Arts is a beer of marvellous balance: light enough for session drinking, but properly warming as well. It's on tap at the Bull & Castle and L. Mulligan Grocer for the next while.

In addition to this and Ór, a third beer comes to us from the Trouble kit, though its origins are rather more obscure. Last year Dublin pubs Sin É and Dice Bar began selling beers badged with old Dublin Brewing Company brands: D'Arcy's Stout and Revolution Red, names that hadn't been seen since DBC went under in 2004. Word around the campfire was that these were Young's Double Chocolate Stout and Bombardier, imported from the UK. And then, just a few months ago, I spotted a new poster outside Sin É proclaiming that Revolution is now brewed in Ireland. Investigations led to Trouble where, I'm told, the management rent out the kit to Revolution's owners and leave them to it.

The beer is quite good too: very sweet, with lots of toffee and smooth caramel. There's a nice roasted element to the flavour as well and just a tiny bit of hop aroma. A well-rounded Irish red, basically: not going to set the world alight but quite enjoyable to drink. And while it's quite possible that it's not terribly different from the kegged Bombardier, I really like that they see "brewed in Ireland" as a significant enough selling point to actually go to the bother of arranging it. Well done them.

Loved lager: The Session round-up

Thanks to everyone who got down and clean-tasting for my lager-themed Session last weekend. 49 participants is a very respectable showing and I think between us we really covered the topic -- one which I hoped was usefully broad, even if some of you disagreed.

I've spent the last two evenings going through the posts and have thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I couldn't help but start categorising them into those who gave me the mass-market beers I wanted, and those who just couldn't bring themselves to do it. So, without it being any measure of the quality of the posts themselves, I give you the Fails and Wins of Session 25:

The Fails
First fail, of course, was me. Some microbrewed lager and then a rare specialty? I really didn't represent my home country's crap lager very well, though neither did any of my fellow countrymen and countrywoman for that matter, as we'll see below.

Thom at Black Cat, for instance, tries to hide his fail behind science, picking an African import, and rather liking it. Hop Talk's Al also went for an import because he happened to be mostly drinking Samuel Smith's last week and far be it from me to change that.

Ray of The Barley Blog reckons he's found the "the perfect beer for this month's Session, both in terms of style and relevance." It's an ale. That word again: Ale. Maybe I didn't make the theme clear enough in the title. At Musings Over A Pint, David tells us there's enough good lager out there for us not to be concerned at the reputation of the mass market stuff, but gives us nothing on whether that reputation is deserved or not.

Paul of A Flowery Song is among the conscientious failers: denying that his beery exploits began with pale lager, and refusing to go mass-market just this once. His Frugal Joe's Ordinary Beer is just a bit too knowingly cheap to count, I think: classless beers are only fun when they're trying to be something they plainly aren't.

Mario would like us to believe that he had to make do with a Lagunitas Pils, because every other beer he saw for sale was a powerful and/or hoppy ale. Maybe that is what "Sonoma Joe Six-Pack" goes for when he wants a lager, but by the sounds of it he doesn't have much time for the style at all. Up in Portland, Bill has similar trouble and opts for a retro-styled local craft lager. A World of Brews also goes craft on me -- Coney Island Lager -- but does put in a good word for Pabst Blue Ribbon when out with the Hash House Harriers. Rob of Pfiff! is another claiming the California Defence -- no crap beer to be found -- and refuses to go out and play with the other kids. Top marks for title punnage though.

Edmond of MMMM....Beer gives us Legends, a Virginian micro-lager up with the best Germany has to offer and therefore a total fail. At I'll Have a Beer, Couchand tells us that Millstream's Iowan pilsner is leaning more towards Bavarian than Czech influences this year. Well fancy! Fail. At least Tom has an excuse for his microbrewed Stoudts Pils: he works for the distributor. Cha-ching!

I sympathise with, and apologise for, the crisis I induced in Damien when he just couldn't bring himself to buy a full six-pack of crap as his beer shop didn't do singles, and opted for something more interesting instead. Similarly, my attempt to lay the smack down on Ted of Barley Vine failed as he avoided the beer equivalent of Kraft Singles and steered a middle course for something decent, local, but generally avoided by serious beer-drinkers for no good reason he can see.

Beer-O-Vision's Dan manages to avoid telling us much about drinking beer, with no mention of any actual brand of lager, but then he was judging a homebrew competition.

I missed talking to Thirsty Pilgrim Joe at the Cantillon open brew day on Saturday, and I also totally forgot to pick up a bottle of the Slaapmutske Dry-Hopped lager while I was in Belgium, even though I meant to. But Joe skips past Jupiler to get to this, so it's a fail, I'm afraid.


The Wins
Velky Al and Adeptus, living in the Czech Republic and Germany respectively had fishes in barrels for this one. Al gives us a run down of the Czech Republic's legendary lagers, and why they should be stripped of their status (corn syrup!), then shows us where to look for the good stuff. Adeptus really went above and beyond with the theme this time round, staging a blind tasting of five common German lagers for his pilsener-loving workmates. It looks like Jever isn't the German classic it's often made out to be.

From the Acceptable Uses For Bland Lager file, we have Steph's game of frisbeer and Jimmy's moving-day philanthropy. Leigh goes for the sun holiday -- several, in fact -- but comes back home to big up Yorkshire's Moravka lager as still enjoyable even in the heart of Real Ale country. Brad, meanwhile, goes far beyond the lawnmower to list a variety of mileux where crap lager is acceptable, nay, desireable. The Cellarman gives us some alternative uses for mass-market lager other than drinking the wretched stuff, and his suggestion of slug-bait gives me an excuse to post this wonderful practical experiment.

Boak and Bailey creep in under the wire with a review of Skinner's Cornish Lager. Yes it's an independent English brewery trying to ape a Mexican giant, but it seems to be getting ubiquitous enough, they say, to count for the Session. It's certainly bland enough.

We welcome Beer Sagas from Norway to the Session and he can find no greater pleasure after a long flight than a plastic cup of Heineken. Too right. Extra points for being the only participant to mention the world's favourite lager.

On Beertaster.ca, Devoid gives us two down-home world-famous Canadian beers, and notes the universal truth of industrial lager: they all taste the same. Alan also stays local with some Keith's and associated memories in the hope that it'll make me happy. It did, Alan. It did.

Beer Sage keeps it short and sweet on My Beer Pix, summing it all up with a picture of some recently-pounded cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in a sunny back yard. That'll do. The multimedia PBR carnival continues at Geek Beer's podcast about it and a couple of other American macros -- the first Session podcast there's been, I think.

Wilson of Brewvana has never had Schlitz before, and believes he may have found himself a new lawnmower beer. So we achieved something on Friday.

Mark at Pencil & Spoon gives us the full lager-based biography from helping Dad with the lawn, through teenage rebellion, to the background noise of any beer drinker's life. Conversely, Todd at Krausen Rising was denied the proper lager education most of us receive in our youth but does manage to recall a brief encounter, later in life, with some Hamm's. He gives us at least 60 degrees of the macrolager flavourwheel: "swamp water, despair, trailers, warehouse shows, barbecues where things go horribly wrong and end up with helicopters circling the house". Beautiful.

At Red, White and Brew, Brian says he hasn't touched the bad stuff since his student days, but avoids failing by whipping out Colin, the trusty lagerhead he keeps on his spare bed. Every home should have one.

Buttle struggles a bit with the notion that "fancy-pants imported beer" is a relative term depending on where you happen to be. He opts for Genesee Bock anyway and as it's a local mass-market affair I'm happy to let it pass.

Even though I'm sending Jon of The Brew Site back over old ground, and even though he lives in Oregon, he still takes the time to tell us about Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors Original and defend their existence. Wonderful dedication to the daft topic. D M goes one further and heads undercover to a dive bar to seek a kind of full immersion in macrolager culture. Captain Hops has his own personal macrolager culture, an active outdoorsy one he expresses, of course, as Beer Haiku.

Jay Brooks straddles the Win/Fail border with Reading Premium. Certainly there's no arguing with his account of it as the cheap and available beer of his youth, but when he veers into the recently re-introduced micro-version "updated to modern sensibilities" there's a danger we may be talking about something special, and therefore verboten for this Session. I'll let it pass, however. Similarly, Laura tells us about an ordinary everyday lager on Aran Brew. It just happens that it's the ordinary everyday lager in Jamaica rather than Ireland -- a win on a technicality, that one. Stan does the same for Germany. Mmmph.

The Reluctant Scooper succumbs to the inevitable Underworld reference, begins with a run-down of own-brand UK supermarket lager (including the joy of polyvinylpolypyrrolidone) but gradually becomes a soapbox piece on the importance of crap lager in the life of the conscientious beer drinker. I think I struck a chord with this one.

It's certainly a factor for the distracted Lew of Seen Through A Glass: Narragansett offers something to drink when you just don't want to have to pay attention, whereas Tomme Arthur prefers a Mickey's Malt Liquor in similar circumstances -- something that started as an April Fool's joke but stayed with him. Generik, meanwhile, finds macrolager just the ticket once palate-fatigue creeps in after a night on the tasty stuff.

From Peter at BetterBeerBlog we get a deeply personal story of love, loss and light lager. Ally also reminisces, over on Impy Malting, and continues her education in British culture by learning a new (lager-related) word: ladette.

In California, Craig of the Beers, Beers, Beers team reports on the erratic Truman pils, brewed in Berkeley by an Austrian brewery. Quite poorly, as it happens. Chris at Pint Log, finally, gives us some superb thoroughness, right down to the essential brown paper bags -- a great first Session post.


And that's your lot. Thanks everyone for participating. If your link got lost in the flabby folds of my inbox, or I've linked you up wrongly, or misspelled your chosen ersatz pilsner, drop me a line. On April 3rd we're doing something called rauchbier (?), courtesy of some yank called Bryson (?)

But before I go, another lager and some good news. Local readers may remember the late great Dublin Brewing Company of Smithfield which went out of business back in 2004, just as the progressive beer duty law kicked in. Well, it looks like they're getting back in the game: same logo, same font, but Big Hand Brewery is the new name. No beers of their own yet, but they've started by importing three from Van Steenberge in Belgium. One, of course, is a lager -- an unpasteurised pils called Sparta. I sampled it in Sin É on Ormond Quay last week. It's rather different from the beers I covered in my own Session post, being much sharper with an uncompromising but tasty bitter bite. The first own-brand product out of Big Hand will be a revival of DBC's Wicked Cider. Can we expect it to be followed by D'Arcy's, Beckett's, Maeve's and Revolution? Here's hoping.

Between these new imports, my recent weekend in Brussels, and current shape of my stash, I've a feeling things are going to be fairly Belgian around here for the next while. Oh well...

For the day that's in it

The supermarkets have knocked a few cent off the price of the Carlow Brewing Company's three beers, so I thought a reappraisal was in order.

O'Hara's is their stout: a straightforward, easy drinking, traditional black beer with no fancy texture or flavour. It's quite pleasant and refreshing for all that, very much a pint of plain and your only man.

Moling's red ale is the best of three, and a contender for Ireland's best ale now that Revolution is sadly out of the picture. It has a caramel-candy sweetness coupled with a mild smokiness adding up to a complex and interesting flavour that keeps you turning it over on your palate the whole glass through. Porterhouse Red probably still has the edge on it, but in the take-home stakes, Moling's is the bottle to beat.

Finally, Curim Gold is the brewery's wheat-beer-in-place-of-a-lager. It certainly is gold: a deep amber hue and slightly cloudy. Like its red brother, Curim has a complex taste, with hoppy bitterness to the fore, but tempered by a soft wheat flavour. It's a little bit cloying, and therefore maybe not the best session beer, but ideal as an accompaniment to spicy food.

So that's the round-up. Support your local small brewery and happy St. Patrick's Day.

I say I want a Revolution

The current unavailability of Revolution red ale by the Dublin Brewing Company has gone on too long. It disappeared around the end of last year and hasn't been seen since. When it went, there was the sudden reappearance of Maeve's Crystal, which had similarly been off the shelves for ages. And now, horror of horrors, that batch of Maeve's seems to be selling out and there's no sign of the red stuff back. It all makes my life very difficult indeed.

Anyway, another new beer to report on is Schöfferhofer which, despite the name, is not a joke. It's a German weissbier, of a rich orange cloudy hue. The label suggests that it's brewed mainly for export to the Czech and Slovak republics, and there's certainly a hint of that Czech-pilsner-crispness at the back of the taste, behind the typical weissbier banana flavour. I found this stuff to be a pleasant change from my usual Erdinger, but it ultimately lacked the full-on fruitiness that this sort of beer typically should have.