Rathmines, CA

The busy beery weekend kicked off on Friday evening in the Bull & Castle and a pint of O'Hara's Stout from the cask. From there I made my way out to Rathmines where Colin and Jonathan of CWI were running a tasting in Deveney's off licence of some new beers they've brought in.

SommerBrau is Gordon Biersch's summer Kölschalike, not a genre I particularly enjoyed when I tried Sierra Nevada's version, and I've not been in any rush to give Goose Island's a go. Biersch SommerBrau is fruitier than I expected, and with only a hint of grainy crispness at the end. Decent, inoffensive drinking. I'd imagine a six-pack would go great with a barbecue or similar sunny day activity, but that'll only really work in places where there's actual sunshine and the six-pack isn't costing €13. Places that aren't here, basically.

A much better proposition was Blonde Frog, by Blue Frog -- a company whose Red Frog and (now sadly discontinued) Big DIPA I've enjoyed in the past. Blonde Frog takes that full-bodied blonde ale base and injects it with a healthy dose of characterful American hops. 6.75% ABV in a 22oz bottle makes it one to be careful with, but it's well worth a bit of considered drinking.

Welcome return visits to Red Frog and Blue Frog IPA followed, which might be why I enjoyed the Butte Creek Pale Ale so much. Last time I tried it I was quite shocked by the intensity of its bitterness, but here I found it lovely and smooth and sherbety. I can only guess that the hoppy beers which preceded it helped knock the sharp edges off. Butte Creek IPA, however, tasted quite charmlessly bitter -- with a big vegetal harshness. But perhaps I'll become attuned to that eventually too. Odd things, hops.

Quite a few of the usual suspects had shown up by 7.30, so we decamped to the pub. More on that next.

Some corner of a foreign field

"World Beer Freehouse" is an epithet to conjure with. I spotted Pivo, a three-storey pub in Tudor pyjamas, from the far end of the street. It was jammed last Saturday night, but we made a return visit on Sunday afternoon before leaving York.

The downstairs barroom is long and narrow with a walk-in bottle fridge at the far end. Casks on stillage behind the bar are marked with what's coming next, and on the counter there are several handpumps plus a range of keg fonts for beers from the Barbarous Lands. Upstairs, a spacious lounge gives drinkers a bit more elbow room so long as they don't mind navigating the narrow stairs down when they need a refill or the narrow stairs up for, er, the reverse.

Mrs Beer Nut passed up the opportunity to travel abroad, going no further than Somerset with Butcombe Blonde. It's a tasty little bittersweet number with a slightly vegetal hops bitterness, though lacking in legs. Unchallenging, but solid, I thought. I had spied the draught Sierra Nevada Blonde through the window the previous day and was itching to try it. It's full of those good old California hops found in the best Sierra Nevada beers, but places them on a tasty bubblegum sort of base. Very refreshing and moreish. I don't know why they bother with Summerfest when they have this up their sleeves.

Moreish or not, it was time to go. We'd allowed ourselves plenty of time to get back to Manchester airport, and I had given solid assurances, based on concrete experience, that there was Brooklyn Lager available airside and that all would be well.

All was not well.

Giraffe was clean out of Brooklyn. Disaster! Of course, any good ticker is capable of turning such crises into pointless opportunities, so while my wife opted for some Rioja, I requested a Cruzcampo. I'd never had it before. Won't be having it again, neither. My notebook says "clear corny mank" and I don't really have anything to add to that. The food in Giraffe was decent, though. And I discovered the joy of Chipotle Tabasco: truly there is not a food or drink on earth that cannot be improved by smoking it.

And next thing, we were home. Thank you for having us, England. See you at Earl's Court on the 4th.

The Outdoors? Great.

The theme for this month's Session is Atmosphere, and the ambiance in which one prefers to drink beer. For me, the key to really enjoying my pint is to be outdoors. Whether basking in the sunlight streaming through the chestnut branches in a Bavarian beer garden, or perched above a hyperactive neon metropolis on the rooftop bar of an Asian skyscraper, or just at a barbecue at a mate's house, beer is always best al fresco. Part of my fascination stems from the climate I live in, where winters are long and dark and the threat of rain is omnipresent year round. Drinking outside always feels like a treat.

Today the showers are coming thick and fast down from the Dublin mountains, but I've managed to grab a brief sunny spell to sit out back and blather about an appropriate beer. My find is Summer Lightning, a golden ale from England's Hopback brewery, intended for summer but always in production. It has a wonderful beery nose and pours quite clear, despite the sizeable sediment deposit left in the bottle. Although 5% ABV, it's quite a light ale, gently fizzy with little foretaste but a long and pleasing hops bitterness. One could hoist a few of these of a sunny evening with little difficulty. And like so many English craft beers, it's one I bet works much better on draught.

This afternoon, ensconced away from the rain in the medieval splendour of the Bull & Castle, I sampled another summer delight: Sierra Nevada Summerfest. The label gave me pause, proclaiming in block letters to be "Bottom Fermented", which I'm sure gives great encouragement to the brewing cognoscenti, but for an ordinary punter like me carried scatological connotations I'd rather not go into. Summerfest is ostensibly a lager, it seems based on something as smooth as the best of Munich. But on top they've roughed it up with that trademark Sierra Nevada hops explosion. A fantastic beer, but once again, Mr Nevada please can we have it in bottles sized for grown-ups?

And with that, the purple clouds are massing and heeere comes the rain.