End of the year content filling

Thank you to Alan for the title. And so, once again, it's time to take stock of the year in beer just gone, using an increasingly irrelevant template, last revised in 2013. Changing it now would be akin to re-making Dinner For One in colour HD -- completely missing the point. As usual, deliberations are aided by something from the fridge which is hopefully a bit special.

This year it's a Chardonnay barrel aged wild sour ale from Wide Street, called Réserve Spéciale. It's had two years in the casks and poured a bright golden, almost completely clear. The aroma certainly shows off the wine, and very much that Chablis Burgundy dry fruitiness. The oak is perfectly integrated into this, just like with good wine itself, and there's no tacked-on vanilla or butteriness. At only 5.4% ABV it's light-bodied and crisp, refreshing even, its flavour opening with an immediate kick of Golden Delicious apples, tart gooseberries, soft kiwi and real white grape. More typical oak vanilla arrives late, but doesn't last long, and it finishes on a light saltpetre spicing of which I would have liked more. The fruit is almost at the level of a grape ale, and I commend this in particular to my fellow lovers of that style. In the 75cl bottle it makes for an excellent special occasion beer, and ideal for proselytising the wonders of wild fermentation and barrel ageing. But there's only one special occasion on my agenda today. Time to get on with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2024

Best Irish Cask Beer: Hopkins & Hopkins Sitric
It's a beautiful pale ale, no question, but this award is in part for what it represents: it was the first beer to show up on the revived cask handpump at The Porterhouse on Parliament Street, and it has been a regular there ever since, though occasionally time-sharing with Lough Gill's beers. Neither The Porterhouse nor H&H needed to do this; it's totally out of keeping with trends in Irish pubs and beer, and I've never seen anyone but me order it. But it is massively appreciated by this drinker and adds a wonderful bit of diversity to a beer market that can feel a little samey betimes. A Golden Pint is the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Otterbank Oíche Mhaith
It's probably a lot more common bottled than draught, and the keg which went on sale at UnderDog in February was doubtless a rarity. Nevertheless it counts, and I don't see any reason why 9.4% ABV vatted porters can't be sold on draught in Irish pubs as a matter of course. Everyone just needs to grow up a bit.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Beoir Chorca Duibhne Leann Láidir
Honestly, the headline beer on this post is a contender, and I'm only having my second glass of it now. But on mature reflection, West Kerry's barrel aged rye porter was the Irish bottled beer that best delivered the goods for me this year. That was back in June, so finding it may be difficult at this stage, though I bet it didn't sell quickly and that there are still bottles to be had.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Third Barrel Hello Yes
Maybe it's because I'm quite jaded about IPAs in general, and that's what most canned Irish beers are these days, but it was a struggle to find a stand-out winner in this category. The one I picked is an authentic-tasting Czech style pilsner, though you'll have to wait until next week for my review. Take my word for it, however: cans of this one are still readily available and well worth picking up.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Uiltje Pomme Pressure
I'd say I drank close to a thousand different beers in 2024, though only a handful of them taught me anything new. This dark barley wine aged in Calvados barrels had a very special flavour profile and one that has stuck in my memory as distinctive and delicious. That's enough to mark it out for an award.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Den Herberg Geus Genereus
After a sizeable hiatus, the Toer de Geuze happened for me again this year, and included plenty of beers and breweries I knew little about. The specification of this complex geuze caught my eye from the brewery's temporary festival bar and delivered absolutely all of the implied complexity. Up top, I said that I would have liked more spice in the Wide Street beer. This one had spice enough for both.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
In the summer I went to Bulgaria, and while the beer I found there often wasn't the best, there were some stand-out moments. Those produced by a group of heavy metal fans on the edge of the Black Sea (possible beer/album name?) were among the most memorable, in a positive way. Metalworks is a barley wine with figs, dates and spices, but pulls off the trick of tasting balanced and integrated while still being a playful novelty beer. They compensated for the frustratingly tiny can with a huge and brilliant flavour. 

Best Collaboration Brew: Sofia Electric / Põhjala Väga Suur
And I'm as surprised as you are to find another Bulgarian beer at the races this year. In fact, this was originally picked for best overseas bottle, but with an absence of other suitable collaboration beers among the year's highlights, it made more sense to slot it in here. It's another complex barrel-aged barley wine which has been skilfully blended to create a unique drinking experience. Bulgarian brandy barrels get filed along with Calvados as ones to look out for. 

Best Overall Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
I look at the eight champion beers and try to think of the one that made the strongest impression on me; the one I can still taste and react to, just by reading its name, and that's the Metalheads of Burgas this year.

Best Branding: Kestemont
Back to the Toer de Geuze, and a visit to a brewery I'd never been to before, nor tried any of their beers. Kestemont has only been going since 2022 and doesn't try to pretend to be a vintage institution making old-timey beers. The branding is clean and modern, though also conjuring a more primitive age, for example the woodcut-like dashing hare on their Oude Geuze.

Best Pump Clip: Fat Cat House Ale
I remarked at the time that the house bitter at The Fat Cat in Sheffield is better than it needs to be, and the artwork on the clip is also a cut above. I don't know if it's based on a real cat or, if so, if said cat actually wears a monocle. I just enjoyed his stoic reaction to the shite Yorkshire weather, as seemingly rendered by Frank Miller. 

Best Bottle/Can Label: Lacada Out On A Shout
Lacada cans are always beautifully designed, but the one that stood out for me this year was a beer I've never had, a pale ale produced as a fund-raiser for the RNLI and making wonderful use of the beneficiary's particular turn of phrase. There's something about how it brings the reality of lifeboat work to the prospective beer purchaser that made it instantly memorable to me. Maybe I'll get to drink it at some point.

Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay
While the company's pub end took something of a battering through 2024, the work done by the folks on the production side has been excellent. They've cornered the market in Irish-brewed Catharina sours and also rocked the dark and strong styles with Baltic porter, pastry stout, doppelbock and imperial porter of superb quality. And the schedule has been delightfully relentless, with new beers for me to try at The Black Sheep every few weeks. Throw in some excellent lager, which they did, and that's nearly everything I want a brewery to do.

Best Overseas Brewery: Dok
I had some fantastic beers at this Ghent brewpub when I visited last month, particularly the cherry and grape ale, and the black IPA. They narrowly missed out on the individual beer prizes so I'm happy to award this one for their output collectively. Their whole approach is cheerfully upbeat, and the creativity is matched by the quality of their beers. 

Best New Brewery Opening 2024: Smithfield Brewing
I mean, the beers aren't brilliant, being very much designed for mainstream pub-goers at the venues run by the brewery's owners. Rather, this award is for the project: the return of brewing to the old Dublin Brewing Company site in Dublin's north inner city. It looks like they're planning to open for visitors, being centrally located not far off the tourist trail with a bar just inside the entrance. And the old redbrick soap factory they're in is a lovely bit of Dublin's historic industrial architecture. In short, there's a lot of promise, and I hope to see it realised in 2025.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
Ho hum, right? Where else would a thirsty person go for a quality selection, constant turnover, and an opportunity to rub shoulders with the cream of Dublin's beer geekery? UnderDog is the place and that's all there is to it, really.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024: The 108
Strictly speaking this is a change of management rather than a new opening, but enough changed after Galway Bay vacated their Rathgar footprint that I'm counting it as a new opening. While there's a more mainstream appeal to the offer these days, there's still a good choice of quality beers (hello Kinnegar), and getting that out in the D6 boondocks is a rarity to be treasured. I'll throw in a most honourable mention for Bier Draak in Norwich which opened in May this year. It's an extension of the Sir Toby's market stall, but with worthwhile innovations such as a roof and a toilet. The beer list is impeccable.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It's been a while since De Molen's two-day shindig has troubled my Golden Pints, and nothing much has changed with it in a few years now. But it's my call, and I had a wonderful time at this year's gig. I'm sure the great weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact that I missed last year. It's still a bit overcrowded and some breweries are overly fond of making punters queue for timed special releases, but mostly it works brilliantly, the exhibitors are well chosen and the whole thing is a quality affair. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
This year, it's an award for reliability and dependability. Aldi had the turnover of beers, but I bought more in Lidl because they have such solid reliables on the shelves permanently: fridge-fillers like their Crafty Brewing IPA and American Brown Ale, but also modern classics including Little Fawn, Scraggy Bay and Rustbucket. Grabbing a handful for a weekend of unfussy drinking has become a regular habit.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Molloy's
Specifically this goes to the Francis Street branch which has done best at offering me beers that I didn't see anywhere else, and all without having to go outside the canals. Yes, your Martin's and your Redmond's and your Blackrock Cellars have better ranges, but for the convenience/price/selection criteria, Molloy's on Francis Street covers things best.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
And Captain Obvious's Retail Recommendations continue here. Just as UnderDog is the place where gobdaws like me sit in to drink, Craft Central is where we get our cans of whatever was just released or imported. I don't (often) touch the stupidly expensive ultra-rare imports, because haze is haze and they don't make it magically better in Illinois or wherever, but CC has a proper devotion to Irish beer and even stoops to selling Irish breweries' bottled beers on occasion. As well as this award, I present them with the encouragement to do more of that sort of thing.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Devil's in the Draught Lines
We have two books in contention this year, but I think the prize has to go to this wide-ranging, deep-diving and wonderfully person-centred account of women's place in the beer world, past and present, commissioned by CAMRA and written by our own Dr Christina Wade. It's a story that needed told and a document that will stand witness for future writers on the subject.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Belgian Smaak
My runner-up book was Breandán Kearney's Hidden Beers of Belgium, which is genuinely excellent, so I'm very happy to award this equally prestigious Golden Pint to Breandán for his website. Output isn't exactly quickfire but the quality is worth waiting for. Claire Bullen's delving under the skin of Brouwerij Boon, and Breandán's own telling of the Eylenbosch/Boerenerf saga, were literally my two favourite pieces of beer journalism I read this year.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @articnead
I think Simon would have been quite happy for us to include Bluesky under the remit of this award now, and although I'm doing that, and Sinead does have an account on The Nice Place, this is still mostly a Twitter thing for probably the last time. Our winner does a marvellous mix of nordie snark, righteous outrage and old-school good-time bants, often within the same 280 characters, and generally gives proper vintage-era Twitter vibes, the way Bluesky is supposed to but doesn't. I very much doubt she reads this, so you can pass on the good news for me, Sean. Thanks.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Ballykilcavan
And also in the fractured social media space, we have Ballykay shining a light of positivity, interesting happenings, more righteous outrage, and fleeces, into the swirling maelstrom that is today's beer internet. More Irish breweries should be telling us what they're up to and what's on their mind via a held up phone in a working brewhouse. Casting a new Cleo the spaniel will be a tough task, however.


Is that it? Have we only 25 categories? Cuh! I could have gone on all year. Congratulations to all 2024's deserving winners, and shame on you who got nothing: you've seen the bar, now get planning how you'll raise it. Me, I'm still very slowly getting through the tail end of 2024's Irish beer releases. You can expect opinions about them arriving here well into January. No rush with whatever you breweries have in store for us in 2025.

Tropic of chancer

Time for another round-up of the pale ales of Ireland. Here, randomly, is what's new over the last couple of months.

Hopkins & Hopkins has spread its wings a little, though still strictly local, with a new pale ale which went on cask at The Porterhouse in Temple Bar, the first employment that beer engine has had since Covid. It delights in the pun-tastic name of Sitric and is quite a deep amber colour once it's settled. Though definitely citric, the aroma is English to my mind, smelling of orange peel and marmalade. This intensifies in the flavour, adding fresh and zingy satsuma and a crisp cookie base. After the English oranges fade, there's a much more American lemon and lime bite. And while I'm describing these elements separately, really they're all perfectly integrated into a single harmonious whole: bright, clean and expertly balanced, smoothed out neatly by the gentle carbonation. It's a magnificent work of understated beauty, a superb advertisement for cask beer done with a proper buzzy hop character, and I hope it gets further afield. Though within walking distance from the Smithfield brewery which produces it, of course.

It's been a while since we had a canned special edition from Ballykilcavan, and I think we can blame the new deposit return scheme for that. Here at last is Clancy's Cans #14: Batchelor's [sic] Day IPA, named for having been brewed on 29th February and nothing to do with baked beans. It's described as a "tropical IPA": a light 4.8% ABV and contains top-notch hops Citra and Nelson Sauvin. I was apprehensive when I found it poured an unattractive murky ochre, and prayed that the oxidation fairy hadn't come calling. The aroma assuaged that worry, giving some lovely fresh white grape and general fruit salad notes. The flavour isn't anything quite so clean. There's a distinctly untropical toffee malt taste, and a savoury earthiness from the thick pall of suspended proteins. Not that the hops get buried: there's still the high-octane fuel oil side of Nelson and a certain amount of pithy citrus, but it's not the best use of these varieties I've encountered. I guess if you're looking for something along dark English bitter lines, this would fit that better than it fits new-world IPA. What it's definitely not is tropical.

Wicklow Wolf celebrated its head brewer's 40th (aww!) with Barberhop Quartet, an IPA with Amarillo, Bravo, Galaxy and Strata CGX, the latter of which I believe to be a kind of motor oil. It has WEST COAST IPA in all caps on the label and then pours yellow-orange and hazy. Lads. There's a fun peppery spice in the aroma, which was unexpected, alongside the standard gentle citrus fruit. In the flavour, that spark is still there: a strange mix of cap gun smoke, lemon meringue pie, earth, funk and toast. It doesn't really have any brightness, however: neither zingy grapefruit nor softly slick juice. Everything seems a bit processed; at a remove. The ABV is only 5.5% ABV, so maybe I'm being unfair by expecting fireworks. I would have wanted something brighter and bolder for my 40th birthday, not that I'll be seeing it again.

With Sidechain, Wide Street is offering us two beers in one. It's a West Coast IPA fermented with Brettanomyces, and they say that fresh it shows off the American hop character, while ageing will bring out the Brett complexity. My can was a fresh one. In the glass it's quite a dark murky orange, suggesting an extended ageing in the brewery, perhaps. The aroma is a tangy orangeade and sherbet thing, calm and subtle. It's big bodied, and doubtless the 5.7% ABV has something to do with that, but maybe some of it is the thick gummy character that goes with Brett. Flavourwise there's nothing terribly special: more of that orangeyness and a waxy bitter side, making me think, again, of English hops rather than American ones. There's no deeper complexity and the finish is quick. Fine but unimpressive is the verdict here. I'm sceptical about the idea of ageing it to see what happens, but I may just give that a go: look out for it on the other blog.

A malt-driven pale ale variant next: White Hag's Mullán, an Extra Special Bitter, for once not referencing the Electricity Supply Board, which most Irish beers in this style do. It's Extra Very Special at 6% ABV and is a dark mahogany colour; almost, but not quite, garnet-clear. The aroma suggests treacle, Black Forest gateau and just calories in general. Early summer seems an odd time to put it out. Hops barely feature in the flavour, present in the background and very English, offering a mere tang of flowers and minerals. For the rest, it's rich and sticky dark malt: more treacle, burnt caramel, and a growing cocoa character as it warms. The hops make their biggest contribution to the finish, adding a cleansing bite that balances the sweet malt nicely. I was dubious about that high strength but by the half way mark I understood why they did it that way. There's an extra complexity deriving from it; a bigness and boldness that wouldn't feature with a lesser gravity. While, yes, this would be a classic on cask, in the can they've captured a lot of what I think it would be. Buladh bos, Mullán.

I've reached the stage where the word "tropical" on a beer label gives me the fear. There are lots of beers that do taste of tropical fruit, but somehow the ones which put the word front and centre rarely do -- see Ballykilcavan above, for example. Lough Gill is the latest to try their hand, with Gone Surfing, a hazy IPA created in collaboration with Dutch brewery Baxbier. It's the sunset colour of mango flesh and does smell of a mixed fruit purée, incorporating guava, cantaloupe and tinned peaches. So far, so tropical. It's a little more dry and pointy on tasting, bringing peppercorn spice, oily garlic and peach skin rather than flesh: bitterer than the aroma promised. All of this is heavy and dense, feeling all of its 6% ABV and more. Final assessment: not tropical. This lacks the smooth and cooling effect that the word implies. It's absolutely fine as yet another hazy IPA, but unless they're your favourite thing in the world (which might explain their ubiquity) this doesn't have anything new to offer.

Those dreaded words appear too on the label of Tiki Trail, brewed for Aldi, again by Lough Gill. It's a pale yellow colour, fairly clear, and a sizeable 6.3% ABV. The aroma is quite pithy, reminding me of peach skin and mandarin peel. I suspected I was in for a bit of bitterness and indeed I was. There's an almost smoky savoury element before it reverts to pygmy oranges: satsuma, kumquat and the like. And that's your lot; a rapid finish ensues. It's not a bad beer for a supermarket cheapie, and those familiar with the tall cans of IPA the brewery does for Aldi will find it has a lot in common. It's real middle of the road stuff, the name and concept seeking to lure punters in, but then giving them none of the fruity party fun they might have felt entitled to expect.

Also via Aldi is Nasc, a session IPA of 4% ABV from O Brother. Dammit, I shouldn't have read the label: it does say it's tropical, though also citrus. It's quite hazy in the glass, a pale shade of orange and topped by a handsome stack of white foam. The aroma is certainly more citric than tropical, a sharp kick of lime suggesting that Citra herself might be in the house. They've added oats and got great value from them, giving it a lovely smooth body and greatly enhancing the sessionability by removing any sharp edges. The flavour is quite simple, but enjoyable too: a clean zestiness, of lemon and jaffa orange, delivering just enough bittering to pinch the side of the tongue. There's a certain lighter juiciness as well, but nothing I'd specifically call tropical. At least they didn't put it in huge letters on the front of this one. As a straightforward session IPA in the softly modern style it works well. Am I imagining the existence of IPA tropicality?

Third Barrel seems to be persisting with the terrible can artwork. I don't know what thought process gave rise to the prompt which rendered six-digit zombie brewer Dolly, but I know shite when I see it. One might think that Cup of Ambition should be a coffee beer but it's a hazy juicy IPA of 6.5% ABV. And it's a very good one, a demonstration of why even the most ardent of haze sceptics should give one a go now and again. The brewer says it tastes of wild berries, passionfruit and mango, and it's the last of these I get most: definitely and delightfully tropical. It's all (unspecified) New Zealand hops, but subtly done, adding side notes of tart gooseberry and rich coconut to the fruit. There's a tiny scratch of grit in the texture but mostly smooth and juicy prevails, as it should. I found it delightfully gluggable, and neither the high ABV nor woejus label would put me off opening another.

Is O'Hara's trolling me by calling their new one Sub Tropical IPA? Ahhh, we never said it was tropical. It's a 4% ABV session job, draught only at time of writing, and a lightly hazy golden. I don't think it's sweet enough nor full enough to be properly tropical, but there is fruit. There's a kind of dankly bitter feature in the aroma and at the centre of the taste so it's not lacking in character. A soft citrus -- tangerine and candied lemon peel -- follows. The herbal bitterness is solidly enjoyable and lasts into the finish, longer than might be expected with so light a beer. Overall, it's a jolly, punchy thirst-quencher, arriving at just the right time of year.

Dead Centre does not say Machine Learning is tropical. They do say it's a New England-style IPA, and it's one of the clearer, oranger ones, which is rarely a good sign. And it tastes fantastically tropical. Idaho 7 and Eldorado give it a multicoloured flavour of mango, guava and pineapple. On a different run-through I might bemoan the lack of bittering balance and the indecently quick finish. Not today though. I was happy to welcome the sweet and tangy fruit, as well as the soft base they've set it on. Maybe 5.4% ABV is a little on the high side for something so quaffably undemanding, but I'm not complaining. Dead Centre is a brewpub and is therefore well within its rights to produce this sort of pintable beer. It was a pleasant surprise to see it turning up in Dublin on draught.

There's also a new double IPA -- unapologetically West Coast -- from Galway Bay. It sets out its stall with the name Beyond the Pines. Pale and golden, it smells more dank than piney, with an almost sweaty sort of funk. It is oily, however, with lots of tongue-coating resin. I don't know that I'd call it piney as such: there's a lack of sharpness. The flavour sticks, literally, to the leafy, sticky dankness, adding a softer peach or apricot juiciness. I was never a fan of the more extreme sort of dry and bitter American IPA -- hi Sculpin! -- but now that they're a rarity I have a better appreciation of the novelty. This is one of those, and it doesn't quite sit right with me. I need a bit more citrus or else some balancing crystal malt. By going all-in with the dank they've produced something too cheesey for comfort. Fun for one, but I'm glad I turned down the upselling opportunity to buy a pint of it.

That's all for now. Tropical-watch will no doubt continue indefinitely. Be vigilant!