Dropping pilots

I paid a fleeting visit to Rascals HQ in October, something I really must make more of a habit of. They had two new beers from their pilot series.

#118 Scarlet's Ale is in everyone's favourite/least-favourite beer style, Irish red. She's a big girl for that, at 5.4% ABV. The brewery describes it as "simple", and I was expecting to disagree, and I do -- Rascals is not the sort of brewery that makes Smithwick's clones. The aroma is quite roasty, and there was something else going on, which I couldn't quite identify. Maybe it would become clearer in the flavour. That did all the things typical of microbrewed red, with bright and meadowy floral notes from presumably English hops; a light caramel sweetness, turning chewier and more toffee-like on warming. The darker roast from the aroma returns in the finish, as does the other thing. It's phenols: subtle, but I think I have a strong sensitivity. I'm rarely able to tell whether it's from the glass, the lines or an infection in the beer itself, just it wasn't quite right. That's extremely unusual for Rascals. There is a very decent beer here, one than transcends boring old Irish red and heads towards Scotch ale territory. Those without the unfortunate predisposition to picking up bleach notes will find much to enjoy.

Next in the sequence was something much more orthodox and without any unpleasant surprises: Pilot #119 Weisse was, I guess, created as part of their Oktoberfest line-up. I know this is merely cosmetic, but the lack of a proper weissbier glass let it down a bit -- I wasn't immediately in weissbier mode when it arrived at the table. Beyond this, it was a straight up example. 5.2% ABV gives it the right amount of heft, and there's a satisfying density with a pillowy softness. The colour is on the darker, more wholesome, side: orange rather than yellow, and completely hazy, although Rascals rarely shies away from that. A huge waft of clove opens the flavour, followed by sweet brown banana and a layer of smooth, gooey caramel. This isn't one of your crisp and summery weizens, being much more involved and sippable. It's well made, though, and I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a genuine Bavarian example.

This arbitrarily chosen pair go to show that, even at Rascals, small-batch experimental beer isn't all candied silliness and high ABV lunacy. They're quite capable of keeping to established parameters, though taking them in interesting directions.

The red with the green

It was a surprise to find Reel Deel's Mayo Red in a local off licence. We don't really see much from the Crossmolina microbrewery over here, more's the pity. The beer has been around for ages and this was the first time it crossed my path, so even though I don't usually go to bat for reds there was no question of letting this one get away. 

Independently brewed examples which are weaker than the 3.7% ABV archetype are extremely rare, but here we have a mere 3.5%. Still, it doesn't look watery, being a dark copper shade, and slightly murky with an off-white head. The texture is light but not thin: in my hypervigilant state I was on the lookout for flaws but I would never have known it's the strength it is.

And it goes on to match the style's other attributes very well. The aroma deftly balances softly sweet caramel with dry coffee roast, plus a fruitier hint of apple. The initial hit on tasting is fizzy, but it settles and turns surprisingly creamy. To the toffee and coffee, the flavour adds a little chocolate and a tang of crunchy green veg.

I don't know if Marcus the brewer-patron is a fan of red ale, but this comes across to me as a carefully thought-out example, drawing in all the important elements and ensuring they each get a say. Myself, I won't be rushing back for a second bottle but I commend it to those who complain that Ireland lacks a sufficient range of quality red and brown beers.

Canned witch spread

They've been busy at The White Hag. Every time I thought I had a handle on their new releases, another popped into view. Here's the most recent four to come my way.

Róc Helles shares a name with the brewery's pilsner but I hoped it would be softer and fluffier, as befits the style. It's a bigger serve too, going for the 440ml can. The strength is a little underdone at 4.5% ABV which I'm not sure would get the Bavarian seal of approval. The appearance is spot-on though: pale and clear, with a jolly cumulus of pure white froth on top. The aroma has the wholesome sweet biscuit appropriate to Helles, but there's a sharper green-pepper vegetal note there as well. Sure enough that's also present in the flavour. It doesn't taste sharp and grassy as I expected, but quite soapy: a tang of lemon washing-up liquid and a sharp astringency. This is not the smooth and easy experience that Helles ought to be. The body is there, but I think it's the sweet malt fighting with an overload of hops that creates the twangy clash. Helles is one of those styles that doesn't suit microbrewing. Leave it to the Bavarian giants.

This year's Púca next, Ginger & Lime being the latest attempt at improving the quite wonderful base beer, seeking to do what hibiscus, mint, matcha, and apricot have all so far failed to do. It's 3.5% ABV, like all the other Púcaí, and a white-gold colour, hazy like a glassful of lemon juice. Sour lemon on the aroma, with just a dusting of candied ginger. The balance tilts dramatically towards sour on tasting, with an almost vinegar-sharp tang right at the front. Lemon is there to add a little balancing sweetness (!) and the thicker lime citrus brings up the rear. The ginger is hard to detect, left as a residue in the aftertaste, and very much the flavour of ginger, without the spice. I'd like some spice. Don't let the low strength or craft ingredients fool you: this is a serious mixed-fermentation mouth-tingler for grown-up palates. It's just a little too busy and loud for me though. "What if it was stronger?" I found myself thinking, "What if they barrel aged it?" while never quite appreciating the beer for what it actually is. Straight lemon Púca, which I'm delighted to see is back in the shops now, is still the better beer.

Two lacklustre offerings in a row is very atypical for The White Hag. Maybe the third one will bring things back on track. Oh. It's a red ale. Warrior Queen was previously brewed for export only and, if only for the sake of completeness, I'm glad they've begun selling it in Ireland. Designed more for session pints than small cans it's 4.5% ABV. The colour is a dark garnet-red and there's a very trad topping of healthy foam. The aroma is intriguingly smoky, with a floral rosewater complexity. So not a Smithwick's clone then. The flavour switches things up again, showing a firm old-world hop bitterness to the fore: earthy, a little tinny, but assertive and not bland. The body helps there, being very decently full, avoiding the pitfall of wateriness that besets mainstream Irish reds. That smoky caramelised sugar wafts through next, while the finish brings my favourite feature of the style: a basket of summer fruit; raspberries in particular. There is a slight soapy twang, a function of the bitterness, which spoils the party a little, but overall I enjoyed the depth of flavour here. Maybe the flaw is less obvious when it's gulped down by the pint.

A double IPA to finish: Malafemmena, created for Johnny's Off Licence in Rome who, I assume, sell a lot of White Hag beer. It's 8.5% ABV but is no one-dimensional booze-bomb. The aroma is a stimulating blend of tropical fruit: pineapple first, then ripe juicy peach and a spritz of citrus. The last element is missing from the flavour, which is a little unfortunate as it would have provided a useful bitter balance. What's there is still good: apricots, red apple, mandarin -- quite a fruit salad. There's an over-riding alcohol heat, intensifying the fruit flavour rather than fighting with it. The whole thing is a sweet bruiser that makes for some enjoyable sipping. I'm just not enough of a double IPA fan to be head over heels about it, but there's little to complain about here.

Four very different beers but I think the red is the one I'm most likely to drink again. Strange times indeed.

Bog standard

Bog Hopper Brewery of Muff, Co. Donegal has been on the go for a couple of years now but the beers have landed only recently in Dublin and I picked up a set at DrinkStore.

To start, their pilsner Dirty Chick. I got a clean and clear glassful as I began to pour it but this was spoiled just at the end when the bottle-conditioning dregs fell in. It still looked good: a wholesomely hazy orange-gold with a handsome fluffy white head. The aroma is more that of a weissbier than a pils, sweet and fruity. It's quite sweet to taste as well, a fruit salad of banana and pear, plus a spicier smoky incense thing. All of which is the yeast at work, and the resulting esters make it thick and greasy. While quite pleasant to drink, it absolutely does not meet the crisp and hoppy spec of proper pilsner. If given it as homebrew I'd be advising the brewer that their brewing practices just aren't up to doing the style properly. I was immediately on guard for a rough and rustic set of beers.

Horny Ram did little to dissuade me of that when it began escaping the bottle as soon as the cap came off. This is a red ale at 4.4% ABV. It's clearer than the pilsner, a handsome strong-tea shade of red brown. It smells of caramel, as one would have every reason to expect of a red ale, and the flavour is all that too: a light burnt sugar sweetness, a trace of smoke, and finishing on a gentle roasted note. What it lacks is any distinguishing features. The better sort of red ale from Ireland's micros tend to put a bit of a twist on the style: extra hops, summer fruit, darker grains. This one doesn't bother with any of that and is quite bland as a result. Its decently full body means it's definitely a step up from any red ale offering from the industrial breweries but there's nothing to mark it out as exceptional or different. Still, providing an alternative for the local Smithwick's and Macardle's drinkers is probably a viable commercial strategy and a noble calling.

You need to try harder with a pale ale, however, and Hairy Bullocks is certainly a bit different. Like with the pilsner, the yeast makes a major contribution to the flavour, its nutmeg and clove combining with a gentle citrus bitterness to create a rather fun spiced cider sort of effect. The bitterness is low and the overall flavour quite dry. I've certainly never encountered an actual American pale ale that tasted like this and it's much more along the lines of an orangey English bitter. While interesting it's not very polished and I detected a slight wet cardboard burr at the very end. This is another one that calls to mind the more homebrewish side of craft brewing, with all the charms and flaws which come with that. Again, it would be fun to have this as your local beer, made by people you know, but at a time when Irish breweries are starting to make a name for themselves on the world stage it's not in the same league.

To finish, Cold Turkey, a collaboration Bog Hopper created with YellowBelly, down in the opposite corner of the country. No style is given on the bomber bottle but it's 6.9% ABV and a dark mahogany red. It smells rich and wholesome, of ripe strawberry and dark chocolate. Savoury yeast is right at the front of the flavour. It seems to be covering up the sweeter malt underneath: milky coffee and floral rosewater. There's the makings of a very nice porter in here but the rawness and the roughness spoils the whole party. Even moreso than Hairy Bullocks this tastes like the sort of bottle-conditioned English beer where the purity of the process is far more important than the purity of the flavour.

Fun, silly, but could benefit from cleaning up their act: as true for Bog Hopper's beers as it is for their branding.

On the downlow

Careful what you wish for. I complained about how palate-clogging the beers were at The Irish Craft Beer Festival and then the next two Irish ones to come my way were, well, not exactly flavour powerhouses.

The Thursday after the festival saw the launch of JW Sweetman's latest: Indian Summer. It came with zero explanation of its style or strength, but that's always fun. If I had to guess I'd be calling it an English-style bitter: clear copper in colour, light of texture and of flavour. There's a hint of strawberry, as is often found in decent Irish red, and more English tannins and metallic hop notes. Nothing else really distinguishes it and it ends up rather forgettable. There's nothing wrong with this beer, it just doesn't sit at all comfortably next to Sweetman's excellent Porter and Pale Ale.

This freebie bottle of 9 White Deer's Saor was handed to me by the brewer with a warning that it's not for the likes of me. It's Ireland's first purpose-brewed gluten-free beer and designed to be accessible, for those who just want a beer and not be challenged by it. And non-challenging it is: dry, fizzy, with a Ryvita graininess and just a slight bubblegum fruitiness by way of balance. The haze is probably its most interesting feature. Nothing wrong with it, but not one to choose if your intestinal villi are fully functional.

The Drumlin series by Brehon Brewhouse has been confusing me since it appeared. At first I thought it was a straight re-branding of the red and blonde and left them alone, but the originals haven't gone away and now there's Drumlin Irish Pale Ale which doesn't have a parallel in the main range, as far as I know. This is an approachable 4.6% ABV and a slightly murky pale copper colour. The aroma is interesting: sharp orange zest, leafy green bitterness, but also a worrying stale burr. There's a certain juiciness in the taste, but not a lot, and not enough to cover a stuffy, dry, cotton-wool fuzz from oxidation, and a substantial yeast bite too. There's a good beer in here, but the drinker doesn't get to see it. Brehon has made some excellent strong beers but I don't think they've quite got the quality under control for the session-strength ones.

And finally a look-in for the macros. C&C quietly launched the second beer from their new Clonmel brewery, a red ale called Roundstone. I found it on tap when I visited Bodytonic's new sports and games pub, The Square Ball, on Grand Canal Street where it was the cheapest pint on the blackboard at €4.80 a throw. For some reason I was expecting nitrokeg, but it's served on CO2 and it was immediately obvious from the first look and taste that they're chasing the Smithwick's market here. There's the same slightly sweet red fruit with a mild toastiness, the same thin body and a very similar metallic hop tang in the finish. And, like Smithwick's, it's not really good enough to even be a distress purchase. Oddly enough, the last beer to really remind me of Smithwick's was Heineken's Cute Hoor. It seems very strange that the Big Three are slugging it out on this minority-interest style. And with precisely zero marketing being done for C&C and Heineken's offerings, you have to wonder how they hope to gain any market traction.

Anyway, enough blandness. I'll cover some more interesting Irish beers on Thursday.

Getting a rise

Yesterday's post was about Diageo's attempt to take advantage of Ireland's growing appetite for new beers. It's far from the only major player in the country to do so. In fact, they're all at it. Forever nipping at Diageo's heels is Heineken, and the Dutch behemoth has taken a very different approach with its latest offering.

While the new Guinness porters were released with huge fanfare and saturation marketing, Rising Road Pale Ale is almost a stealth beer. Only for the fact that it seems to mostly show up in bars where Heineken has a foot firmly in the door -- the places that have Tiger and Paulaner on tap already -- there's no way of even beginning to guess where it comes from.

My first impression on ordering a pint is that it's not "pale" by any stretch of the imagination, but is resolutely copper coloured. Tastewise it has a lot in common with its Diageo lookalike Smithwick's: a similar crispness and the slightly metallic tang of English hops. At the centre there are lots of very clean and quenching tannins, and hiding behind this a toffee base that gradually comes out of its shell as the beer warms.

The low-level hopping, and flavour generally, is certain to disappoint those drinkers who have just started associating the phrase "pale ale" with bold citrus bitterness. It certainly disappointed me. That said, it's technically flawless and perfectly potable. Though if it's priced higher than Smithwick's on the same bar, on account of being a pale ale dontcherknow, it's not worth paying the premium.

Edited to add: Rising Road appears to have been subsequently rebranded as "Cute Hoor". The tap badge still doesn't mention Heineken.

More pours

Day two of catching up on Ireland's recent new and special release beers in honour of Irish Craft Beer Week 2014.

Usually ahead of the game for such things, The Norseman in Dublin was an early adopter of Smokey Bacon, a new special edition strong ale from Bo Bristle. This arrived a murky brown-amber colour and exhibits lots of Belgian-esque alcoholic warmth from its 6.8% ABV. The smoke makes its presence felt right from the start: a harsh and heavy acridity. Lots of caramel malt comes in behind it and the two elements battle it out for control of the palate, well into the long finish. While I'm sure it'll have its fans, it just didn't work for me, lacking in the balance and cleanness I enjoy in German rauchmalz-based lagers and also in the fun flavours found in peated dark beers. Reddish ales with a minority percentage of smoked malt just don't float my boat.

Beoir's 2014 AGM happened in Kilkenny a month ago and coincided with the first appearances of a new local beer brand, Costellos. Mr Costello himself invited us along to Billy Byrne's pub after the meeting to try it out. Diageo recently closed the landmark Smithwick's brewery in the city and this is an attempt to bring the local element back into Kilkenny beer, though for the moment it's brewed two counties over at Trouble. Still, a 3.8% ABV red ale can't but attract parallels with Smithwick's, and it does combine several of that beer's better elements, showing lots of lemon-tea-like tannins for superior thirst-quenching power. As it warms there's a sizeable amount of buttery diacetyl added to the mix, which wasn't to everyone's taste but which I thought sat quite comfortably with the cleaner parts of the flavour.

Thanks to Gerald and the team at Costello's for the hospitality, and check out Billy Byrne's if you're in Kilkenny: the Bula Bus kitchen parked out back does excellent street food.

"No new Galway Bay beer yet?" I hear you cry. Of course there is. Before the brewery packed up and shipped itself across town to a new standalone facility it produced a 6.6% ABV IPA called Goodbye Blue Monday, in collaboration with Begyle Brewing of Chicago. It's got oatmeal in it. I don't know why and I couldn't detect any effect it had, but I thought I should mention that it's in there. It is thickly textured, but so are lots of non-oatmeal IPAs so I doubt that's oatmeal alone. The colour is a bright copper and its flavour is immensely complex from just the hops: spicy and greenly bitter; weedy and dank, but also zesty and juicy. Basically it's a walking tour of new world hop flavours. Malt? Keep walking, stranger. If you want something with a bit more impact than Full Sail but smaller than Of Foam & Fury, here it is. But otherwise I don't really see the point of trading up or down from either of those perfectly enjoyable beers.

Last month there was much fooferaw around the launch plans of Sligo's first brewery, The White Hag, at the Fleadh Cheoil. What got lost in the kerfuffle about licensing and strongarm tactics and whether craft beer is a fad was any mention of the beer. White Hag's first release was a special edition created specifically for the event: Fleadh Ale. Fortunately a stray keg managed to roll as far as L. Mulligan Grocer where I got to try it. I'll admit I'm a little prejudiced when it comes to the beer from new rural Irish breweries. "Safe" is a word I may throw out from time to time, and no criticism is implied in it. But Fleadh Ale is not safe. Quite the opposite, I think. It's the clear dark red of an amber ale and starts with an innocent aroma of toffee and oranges. Mandarins flash past on the first sip, then stronger hop resins and incense spicing leading to thumping great dank earthy pine flavours set on a thick toffee stickiness. That hop-blasted chewiness is an effect I associate most with big US double IPAs and I'm not sure I entirely believe the Hag's claim that this is a mere 6.8% ABV. It is a stunning beer and though brewed for a summer music festival it would make a magnificent winter warmer. I hope we'll see it again.

A second new Connacht brewery to finish on: Black Donkey from Roscommon. They've daringly opted for a saison as the first release and the official east-coast launch took place in 57 The Headline recently. Sheep Stealer is the latest of a growing sub-genre of quite sweet Irish saisons, packed to the gills with mouth-watering orangey fruit. There's some level of dryness and spicing in here too, in both flavour and aroma, but they're more akin to the kind of thing you'd find in a witbier rather than a continental saison. I get a definite poke of coriander in the aroma especially, though as far as I know, no spices have been used in the recipe. The lack of sharp edges makes Sheep Stealer an insanely drinkable beer, as witnessed by the first keg being drained on the night in about 40 minutes.

Another round of new Irish beers tomorrow? Ah go on then...

One tough old bird

My good friend Mr Gray is at the tiller for this round of The Session. He wants us to tell the story of a local brewery. During the nineteenth century there was no shortage of those in the south-western quarter of Dublin city. It seems that the city's brewing industry was exempted from the economic damage done by the 1800 Act of Union, which changed Dublin from national capital to provincial UK city. The toffs may have taken their furnishings, fittings and fine wines to London but the ordinary citizens still needed their pints of plain, I guess.

The Phoenix Brewery was one of seven along James's Street, on what became Dublin's industrial outskirts as the new Georgian city broke beyond its medieval boundaries. It claimed an establishment date of 1778 and grew to prominence under the ownership of Daniel O'Connell Jr., with O'Connell's Dublin Ale even warranting a mention in Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Phoenix's growth paralleled that of Guinness's across the street, and by the end of the century, when Guinness's was poised to become the largest brewery in the world, Phoenix was Ireland's second. Like its larger neighbour, Phoenix sprawled as it grew and when Alfred Barnard visited around 1890 it had just acquired the adjoining Manders Brewery site, thereby tripling its size. Barnard describes¹ a sequence of rooms with vast fermentation and maturation tanks, as well as an extensive basement complex holding upwards of 3,000 barrels of stout and porter, ready for market. Its position on the north side of James's Street gave the advantage of easy access to the Liffey quays, and consequently to Dublin port, Great Britain and the Empire.

The Phoenix Vat House, from Barnard's Noted Breweries

1897 saw Phoenix floated on the stock market². Perhaps the first indication that all was not rosy came two years later when the new owners sued the former proprietor, Charles Brenan, for overvaluing the company -- what had been sold for £265,000 turned out to be worth less than half that, they argued³. But Brenan stayed on as company chairman even as Phoenix continued to decline. Opening the 1901 AGM he told shareholders "I am much disappointed at the result, but our porter sales have fallen away, with the consequence that our gross profit has decreased, while our fixed charges remain the same." He pointed the finger of blame not at the competing brewery across James's Street, but at his own customers, adding "If all the ale sold in Dublin as O'Connell's ale was O'Connell's ale our trade would be much larger, and we can only hope that the good sense of the traders will prevail"⁴. An attempt by the shareholders attending the meeting to sell the company back to Brenan was rejected, a sign that this decline was most likely terminal. A similar tale of woe was trotted out at the 1904 AGM, this time explained by a general depression in the licensed trade across the UK, not any failing on the brewery's part⁵.

Matters reached a head in the summer of 1905 when the venerable D'Arcy's Anchor Brewery, another neighbour, acquired Phoenix outright, initially with the intention of keeping both plants and all beer brands⁶. That lasted until 1909 when D'Arcy's consolidated its production facilities at the Anchor and sold the former Phoenix and Manders site to Guinness's. Ironically, this act of consolidation was the saving of the Phoenix as a location for brewing. O'Connell's Ale limped along at the Anchor until 1926, at which point the company folded and the brewery later became council flats. For a brief period it was brewed at the Watkins Brewery on Ardee Street where the fires finally went out in 1937. But, as part of an expanded St. James's Gate, the Phoenix's legacy lives on and just this year has risen from the ashes once more.

During the recent property boom, Diageo planned to move all of its production to a new state-of-the-art facility outside Dublin. The James's Gate landbank could then be cashed in for a fortune at peak Celtic Tiger prices. The plan never materialised, but the consolidation and modernisation project continued. Brewing has now ceased at Diageo's plants in Waterford, Kilkenny and Dundalk and the new geometric Victoria Quay brewhouse has been constructed, as it happens, on some of the land once occupied by the former Phoenix Brewery.

So I'm guessing that it was here that the latest Smithwick's seasonal was produced. Fair play to the team writing the label copy for Long Summer: they're doing their job properly. "Brewed with noble hops" it says on the neck: that immediately tells me something about what to expect. The added notes on the back, concerning "caramel, green tea and tropical fruits" introduce a slightly confusing element, but plenty of intrigue too.

I was surprised to find on pouring that this refreshing hot-weather beer is actually quite dark: a similar burnished copper tone to regular Smithwick's. The aroma too is the same sort of stewed tea with a faint metallic tang, though maybe there is an extra trace of mango in the background as well. Though all of 4.5% ABV, it's every bit as watery as Smithwick's, though that at least makes it easy drinking, which I guess is the point. There's just enough sparkle to keep it lively without making it difficult. I don't get the green bit, but there is a tannic tea aspect to the taste. However, anyone expecting a rush of hops, noble or otherwise, will be disappointed. Other than the aforementioned aroma there's almost no hop flavour at all.

I guess it succeeds as being a thirst-quenching lawnmower beer, but then you could say the same about regular Smithwick's: a sniff of a mango is insufficient reason to trade up.

I wonder what the late Mr Brenan would have made of it. Is plain-but-accessible Long Summer the kind of beer that would secure the future of his troubled brewery? Perhaps. It's sad that no trace of the Phoenix, Manders or Anchor breweries remain for the visitor today. Phoenix's front office at 89 James's Street still stands, though like many of the surrounding buildings it looks rather neglected. A bronze plaque with a line from Ulysses hangs on the building next door where more of the brewery's offices were, but even it only mentions Guinness's across the way. Someone behind the walls knows the story, though. At the rear of the Diageo complex, just next to their new brewhouse, a sign over the gateway greets visitors:

Out of the embers, she flies!

Notes⁷:
1. Barnard, The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland (1889-1891), Vol. 3, pp.78-80
2. Coyne, Ireland: Industrial and Agricultural (1902), pp.473-474
3. The Irish Times, 27 June 1899, p.3
4. The Irish Times, 1 January 1902, p.3
5. The Irish Times, 2 January 1905, p.10
6. Weekly Irish Times, 17 June 1905, p.13
7. Added following the realisation that I'd be really cross if I read the above and there weren't any

Ten beers and four provinces

We're travelling the country but mostly staying in for this new Irish beer round-up. Galway Bay are, of course, an exception, with their Chinook Pale Ale arriving on keg in the tied pubs. From the swift half I had one idle half hour in Against the Grain, this -- the second runnings from Of Foam and Fury -- appears to be a bit of a rush job. It's disturbingly opaque, for one thing, and lacks any kind of subtlety or finesse. The harshly spicy Chinook is laid on thick and is big on hard acidic bitterness. The finish is quick, hastened by a lack of body or malt character. Like Full Sail and Voyager, it's refreshing in its own slightly watery way, but otherwise unremarkable.

I had high hopes for Trouble Brewing's new Galaxy Pale Ale which appeared on cask in The Brew Dock last week. Now it wasn't by any means my first beer of the evening so I may not be giving it a fair shake but I was underwhelmed. Another cloudy one, it lacked the punch I enjoy from Galaxy hops. It's smooth, there's some light orange notes, but not much else. I should probably come back to it on a clean palate.

I paid my first visit to The Beerhouse in Dublin recently, which is situated on a corner-of-death by Bolton Street College. I hope the current incarnation does better than the predecessors as it has quite a fun bohemian vibe, with a decent beer selection at reasonable prices.

The attraction was Blackpitts Porter, the first dark beer from C&C-owned Five Lamps Brewery in Dublin 8. A big yay for the lack of nitro in this, though it is somewhat overgassed and it took me a while to punch through the ivory afro to the beer beneath. The dryness from all that fizz actually performs a useful task in counteracting some uncompromising chocolate and treacle notes, backed up by a vaguely lactic tang. More than anything it reminded me of Czech dark lager, balancing the sweet molasses against a bitter bite. I liked it, though I can't imagine drinking a lot without bloating up.

We continue the Five Lamping at home with Honor Bright, a red ale. More garnet than red, if you ask me, not that that's any sort of real criticism. There's an attractive candy-caramel aroma with enticing fruit chew hops in the background. And it's that candystore sweetness that is the centre of the flavour, a combination of mildly citric hops and crystal malt, plus an odd sort of acidic apple tang. Interesting hops notwithstanding, it was quite true to its stylistic roots by being a little watery and somewhat overcarbonated -- forgiveable in the likes of Smithwick's at 3.8% ABV but not what I'd expect at the full 5% ABV we have here. The story behind the name, incidentally, can be read here.

Kinnegar Brewing have eschewed their usual bright and cheery branding for this intriguing special edition: Long Tongue. It's a pumpkin and ginger rye ale: don't they know pumpkins are exclusively an October ingredient? Cuh! It's an appropriately autumnal dark amber but smells much more Christmassy: figs and plums; cinnamon and clove. It's the sort of thing that could easily be a spicy mess but is actually beautifully smooth while getting full value out of the ginger and allowing the dry rasp of the rye do its thing too. 5.3% ABV gives it enough of a fullness to be warming and satisfying to drink but without any trace of overdone heat or stickiness: a refreshingly balanced winter warmer.

Its companion beer is called Yannaroddy and is a coconut porter. It pours an opaque dark brown and smells crisp and roasty: the dry crunch of raw black malt. Dryness is the main feature of the flavour too, making it a simple, straightforward example of a porter. Only at the very end is there a hint of unctuous coconut flesh. If it's unorthodox flavours you're after it's probably best to stick with the Long Tongue.

And while that's what's on offer from breweries in Connacht, Leinster and Ulster, we have to move to Munster, the crucible of Irish microbrewing, to find a brewery that's really pulled the stops out this season.

Eight Degrees has had a winter seasonal for the last two years, but it didn't come back for 2013, replaced instead by three winter seasonals grouped under the "Back to Black" series.

The first is Zeus Black IPA. It's a black IPA, hopped with Zeus and seems to have skipped past the Imaginative Naming Department at the brewery. It took a bit of coaxing to get a head on this, pouring flat black and just foaming desultorily at the end. The aroma is fresh, but hard and bitter, like a noseful of raw hop pellets giving an intense mown grass smell. The low fizz translates into a beautiful smoothness in the mouth, and there's plenty of opportunity to enjoy the texture as there's very little by way of forward flavour, just a light kind of spiciness. That grassy character from the aroma looms large in the finish, blooming dramatically in the mouth and producing a bitterness that's powerful without being acrid or harsh. On fading there's a little hint of treacle as the sole nod to the dark malt. Very drinkable, despite the 7% ABV. This is worth the price of admission for the nose, but could stand to be more complex flavourwise in the bottle. Just a taste of the draught version showed it to be a much better beer, with all the resinous dank that's missing from the bottle present in full force.

Aztec Stout is the second in the series, another reluctant head, and one which sank without trace almost instantly. The spec makes big promises: 5.5% ABV and brewed with chilli and cocoa nibs. And vanilla. And cinnamon. The aroma has a latent spice in with the roast that I recognise from my own chilli stout experiments which is rather enticing, but it falls a bit flat after that. Literally flat, for one thing: barely a pulse of gas about it, and rather thin of texture. There's a mild tingle from the chillis, and a nice back-of-the-throat dryness. I get a bit of powdery cocoa, but not full-on chocolate, while the vanilla and cinnamon completely passed me by. I'm not complaining that the chilli is the most noticeable of the special effects in here, and the base oatmeal stout is pretty decent, but I think it's another underperformer, certainly compared to the last two years' Eight Degrees Winter's Ales it has displaced.

Last of the set is their Russian Imperial Stout, a style that's known to improve with age so I may not have done this one any favours by drinking it after just two days in the bottle. The aroma is powerful, with an alcoholic heat suggesting all of its 9% ABV and more plus a distinct smell of winegums. This artificial fruitiness leads the flavour, and is followed quickly by a putty taste I associate most with oatmeal in stout (though it's absent from the Aztec) and together they add up to an odd but not unpleasant medicinal flavour. There's a more typical imperial stout finish: mocha, treacle and a little honey too. On the whole it's an odd sort of a beast: bitter hoppy imperial stouts are something I'm well used to, but one that's seemingly late hopped with fruit-forward antipodean varieties is an entirely new experience. While it's probably best consumed young I'll be interested to find out what happens to it after a year or two of cellaring.

We nip back to the pub -- Farrington's this time -- for one last pint: the first beer from the newly-formed Rascal's Brewing Company, a Ginger Porter brewed at Brú in Meath. It pours out very dark and thick, with a thin tan-coloured head. The ginger leaps out immediately on tasting but it's not at all overdone: there's just enough spice to lend a Christmassy feel to the beer but behind there's a very solid unfussy porter, heavy and smooth with some old-fashioned, slightly metallic, molasses flavour and the accompanying stickiness. My biggest criticism is that it was served far too cold in Farrington's, so I'd recommend sitting over it a while and letting it warm up to get the full benefit.

It looks like we're well sorted for dark and spicy warmers in Ireland this winter.

Life after death

With Diageo winding up operations at the Smithwick's St. Francis's Abbey Brewery and moving all brewing to Dublin, Kilkenny's native beer looks to be getting a new lease of life. I suspect that the company is extremely wary of experimenting with the Guinness brand -- one of the world's strongest, but one which works best as an immutable monolith in its home country. Smithwick's, on the other hand, is nowhere near as precious. It has long been a minority interest, playing third or fourth fiddle in the portfolio, and when the other brands were given expensive makeovers over the last decade, Smithwick's was last in the queue and I was half expecting it to be quietly retired. I mean, who drinks ale these days? But the run-up to the brewery's tricentenary in 2010 saw it finally get a revamp, all hinged on one concept: craft.

Smithwick's ale was now a craft beer, crafted by craftsmen for centuries. In 2011 the first new brand extension came out: Smithwick's Pale Ale. Not at all a bad effort, and a beer I've occasionally been very glad of in pubs with nothing better. And very much pitched at the new demographic of "craft beer drinkers", about the only growing segment of the industry in western Europe. There's even a new Smithwick's poster campaign arguing that centuries of experience is required to make properly crafted craft beer. For the independent breweries of Ireland it must seem like we're at stage three on the Ghandi scale of conflict.

That Smithwick's is now being pitched as a niche product is certainly borne out in the press release for the latest new addition: Smithwick's Winter Spirit. It's only 260 words, but Diageo makes sure to tell us the new beer "is set to impress craft beer drinkers" and "will be enjoyed by craft beer lovers", while that TV ad with the squirrel "grabs the attention of craft beer drinkers". It would seem that if you're not a "craft beer drinker" you can go to hell as far as the Smithwick's people are concerned.

So I took my craft beer palate out of the deep freeze and carefully fixed it in place, knowing full well the dangers of experiencing craft beer without being fully prepared in advance. Some of those flavours would take the head clean off a novice, so they would. Winter Spirit is a very dark garnet, very nearly brown. It smells like regular Smithwick's: that mix of sugary malt and gently metallic hops which for me always invokes the adjective "beery" -- it's how I remember beer smelling when I was very young. The malt is the main driver of the flavour -- "brown sugar" says the label, and I get that, but only a little; "biscuit" and "roasted nut" are also promised, but it's nowhere near as complex as that. The finish is provided by those understated hops: vegetal and lightly peppery. This is very plain fare indeed, reminiscent of a million bottled brown English bitters. At 4.5% ABV it's slightly stronger than regular Smithwick's but delivers pretty much nothing extra for that, and I don't see why anyone would trade up to this.

The blurb says this is the first in a series of new Smithwick's seasonals: a worthy project and one I hope they keep running with. Anything that serves to make Ireland's beer scene a more interesting place to drink is all right in my book. But, all sarcasm aside, they are not going to win over the craft beer market with beer like Winter Spirit. It just doesn't deliver the taste. The market research bods would do better to spend less time looking at who the craft beer drinkers are and more on what they like to drink, why they like to drink it, and how the brewer achieved that. Until they get the hang of that, Smithwick's will just be another macro brand in the Diageo portfolio, next to Bud and Macardle's. The makers of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout can and should be giving us better.

Start-ups and upstarts

Once more, early September brought the biggest showcase of Irish craft beer and cider to Dublin, with the third annual festival at the RDS. For 2013 the gig expanded to four days and incorporated a number of new arrivals and returnees to the main floor.

One brewery was making its official début: Brú, from Trim in Co. Meath. So new are they that their lager recipe is still in development so instead of an officially badged version, they had two "experiments". Experiment X is the result of a cooling failure on a conditioning vessel. The end result isn't the clean crisp lager they wanted but, in true homebrew style, they reckoned there might be a market for it so slapped a badge on the tap and brought it along, with its superhero like origin story. They were right to do so by the sounds of things as it was quite popular among those who care little for brewing technicalities. Massive butterscotch flavours, of course, but the hop bite isn't completely lost and peeps out pleasantly from behind. Not the sort of 4% ABV lager you'd scull pints of, but far from undrinkable by the half pint.  Experiment Y, also 4% ABV is much more on the money: a big grassy aroma balanced by some properly Teutonic bready flavours and a decently full texture. It's unchallenging but balanced and quite drinkable.

From the more conventionally warm-fermented side of the house there was Brú Stout (later renamed "Dubh"), a sweet and creamy 4.2% ABV sessioner that's bigger on the chocolate than most Irish stouts, but the star of the show was Brú Rua: an evolved Irish red. It looks like a normal enough Irish red, and the nitro serve does little to dispel this, but while the backbone is conventional caramel and red berry it's overlaid with some much more progressive new world hop flavours: juicy peach and tangerine. In fact, if this was being passed off as an American-style amber ale I wouldn't have blinked. That this is being passed off as Irish red delights me. Please let it me the next phase of development for this tired style. Might be an idea to drop the nitro though, eh?

The second-youngest brand at the festival was Black's, still with just the Kinsale Pale Ale I mentioned the other week. To keep things interesting, the brewery had set up a randall and was getting through several different hop varieties each day. I stopped by when it was Galaxy's turn and found it added a lovely fruit softness to the aroma, though leaving the flavour largely as-was. Randalls look set to be the Next Big Thing in Irish beer, having been acquired by a number of specialist beer pubs. I can't help but feel that running already-hoppy beers through them is missing the point. Kinsale Pale Ale is not the sort of beer that needs punching-up. Attach it to the Smithwick's tap and we might be on to something.

Eight Degrees stablemate (for now) Mountain Man was using the festival to launch its second beer: a 4.5% ABV IPA called Hairy Goat. I liked it a lot, but that's largely because I found it incredibly similar to their first beer, Green Bullet. It has the same dry spiciness and the same light and sessionable lawnmower beer texture. To be honest I'm not sure whether this counts as a criticism or not.

Also launching its second permanent beer was Offaly's Bo Bristle brewery. Bo Bristle Amber Ale is 4.5% ABV and served bottled. It pours a lurid Lucozade orange and presents candy sugar up front followed by some strange spicy-sweetness complexities, like old fashioned confectionery: humbugs, clove rock and popping candy. I was quite taken with it and will be on the lookout to try this again. Bo Bristle's third beer was a festival special, dubbed an American Brown Ale by the pretty improvised signage. This is 6.2% ABV and starts with a brown-porter-like coffee effect. So far so brown, but then there's a sudden grapefruit pithyness showing off its American style credentials. I don't think it offers full value for the high strength but enjoyable nonetheless.

One of my festival highlights was catching up with Rick from Kinnegar Brewing. I had been following with great interest his brewery's expansion and am looking forward to seeing a lot more of it out on the market. The move from essentially commercial homebrewing to a near national brand in the space of a few years is nothing short of inspirational. I was long overdue a taste of his 4.7% ABV pale ale Lime Burner. Despite the style designation there are some serious German credentials here, the beer having been brewed with Hallertauer Mittelfrüh hops and fermented by a Kölsch yeast strain. It came from the tap a cloudy shade of blonde with a slight sourness on the nose and a touch of smoky phenols. The hops give it a mildly vegetal celery note. Above all, though, it's light simple and refreshing. It's bigger brother is Scraggy Bay IPA: 5.3% ABV and with much more front. Orange candy and sherbet start it off sweet but there's a significant bitter kick on the end, that greenness showing itself again, only more so.

Those were the brand new brewers. Next we'll take a look at some of the special beers produced for the festival.

Just another winter's ale

I only barely escaped snowy Dublin last week to spend the holiday in frozen Hertfordshire, so my Christmas drinking was mostly along English lines, with just a couple of exceptions. One sister gifted me a bottle of Saint Landelin Spéciale Noël, a seasonal from Gayant, the Douai brewery perhaps better known for Goudale. It's a yulified Belgian-style blonde -- 6.8% ABV and quite sticky with it, piling in the honey on top of gentle pot pourri spices. While warming, it's light enough to stay drinkable and sharing the 75cl bottle is entirely optional, fully subject to one's personal levels of seasonal goodwill.

The other non-English Christmas ale came from another sister (they know me so well): Merry X-Moose by Porthmadog's avant garde Purple Moose brewery. This poured shockingly flat but redeemed itself with lovely big chocolate flavours, finishing on some intriguing lavender high notes. Similar-but-different was Three Tuns Old Scrooge. A bit more condition to this, though not much. It's a dense black beer with lots of treacle spiced up by cinnamon and liquorice: an excellent warmer.

On to less seasonal fare, and Dorothy Goodbody's Imperial Stout: a boxed-up limited run of 6,000 bottles. Advice was that this is best left a few years to mature, but the air travel liquids ban left me with no choice but to pop the cap almost immediately after taking it out from under the Christmas tree. Immature imperial stout can be an unpleasant experience, often spiked with harsh metal-and-cabbage hop tones. None of that here, though. At 7% ABV it's perhaps on the light side of the genre and the flavours are quite gentle: lots of sweet and slightly sticky dark malts, a touch of roasted grain and a balanced grassiness from the hops. It could well be that it gets more interesting with age, but really there's absolutely nothing wrong with this beer right now.

A bottle of McMullen AK XXX fell across my path at one point during my stay. A fairly plain brown bitter, this. Crisp with a touch of toffee, it immediately called to mind Bailey's observations on the substituting of London Pride for altbier. This hits a lot of the same places as alt, finishing with a dry hop bite and being a little over-fizzy for English bitter. Close your eyes and think of Düsseldorf. (For more on the historical brewers' code "AK", including McMullen's use of it, see Zythophile's analysis here.)

Speaking of over-fizzy bitter, I was unable to resist the opportunity to try Whitbread Bitter when I spotted it on keg at a hotel bar near Luton. You have to try the local specialities when you travel, right? It lends further credibility to my grand theory that Irish red ale and English keg bitter are the same ill-starred creation. Whitbread Bitter is monstrously watery, generally sweet, with just a tiny shade more hopping that you might find in the likes of Smithwicks. My other guilty pleasure came on an excursion to the pub near where I was staying. Ignoring my own rule about going for something good rather than ticking off new beers, I couldn't resist a swift pint of Wells & Young's Eagle IPA. Brewed very much to hit the same market segment as Greene King IPA, this is 3.6% ABV and every bit as light, plain, uncomplicated and inoffensive. After one pint it was over to the far superior St Austell Tribute on the next tap.

I got to do very little by way of beer shopping -- just one trip to Sainsbury's, yielding the new IPA from Fuller's: Bengal Lancer. I was really quite careless in how I poured this 5.3% ABV bottle conditioned beer, but it still came out a perfectly limpid shade of dark copper. Despite the gung-ho branding it's quite understated all-in-all: I needed a few nosefuls of the aroma to pick up anything much, eventually identifying jaffa, or possibly mandarin, oranges. The malt drives the taste, leading the hops behind it, creating a not unpleasant effect of marmalade on thick-cut toast. The tail end veers almost tragically towards the metal and puke of Fuller's execrable IPA but just manages to avoid it by finishing quickly. The texture is perhaps the beer's best feature: big and satisfying. It would be nice if there was just a bit more substance to it, but as a straightforward well-constructed English IPA it can't really be faulted and I would buy it again.

And that's where we leave things for 2010. By the time you read this I should be somewhere in central Europe, gathering material for a post or two in 2011. Happy New Year!

Back to black and back again

Session beer is the subject of this month's, er, Session. It seems to be a bit of a preoccupation among the brighter sort of American beer enthusiast: why is all our good stuff ABV'd up to the hilt? Why can't we have top-notch flavoursome beer that you can stay with for a whole night's drinking and not end up bladdered before bedtime? I can't really speak to that motion, but am very happy that it's not an issue here. In fact, I wish the reverse -- that there were more beers outside the 4-5% ABV range available on the bar in Ireland. In both directions. I suppose I could write about Porterhouse TSB and Smithwicks, representing, respectively, the best and worst of sub-4% Irish beer. But that would bore me. Instead, I'm writing about stout because you can't beat a good stout session. Last night's Dungarvan shindig at the Bull & Castle, featuring sumptuous Black Rock on cask proved that beyond any doubt.

Much as I'd love to have more Irish session stout to write about, I'm looking across the Irish Sea and a couple of British ones that have crossed my path lately.

We kick off with Hopback Entire Stout, a case of which landed with a friend (hi Peter!) recently. It's 4.5% ABV and carries the hallmark of a good session beer: balance. The main flavours are sweet caramel and dry coffee, but not too much of either. The body is quite hefty -- entire, you might say -- but nowhere near filling enough to make you think twice about opening a second bottle. It's just the right level of chewwiness to show the flavours at their best.

Since I rarely have the attention span for the same beer twice in a session, next up was Night Beacon from the Breconshire Brewery, a company I've had an unpleasant encounter with previously. This started off worryingly by pouring almost completely flat. There's a very slight tingle of carbonation, but otherwise it's a pancake -- a dud bottle, perhaps? So the flavour compounds are not in any hurry to create an aroma and it doesn't smell of much as a result, just a hint of dry roast. The flavour is also dry, but in a crisp and minerally sort of way, with a slight background of chocolate and tobacco. The lack of condition leaves it on the thin side, but that adds to its sessionability: not exactly a lightweight at 4.5% ABV but definitely good for more than one if the flatness doesn't put you off. Redemption of a sort, then, for Breconshire. (I should add also that I tried their Golden Valley golden ale too a while back and quite liked it -- another understated plain sessioner).

Low ABV, balance, light fizz: all these elements go in to make beer properly sessionable. Any colour and flavour profile will do. Getting this right without making the beer dull is one of the challenges for the brewer. I reckon the guys at Hopback and Breaconshire have it down, however.

Suffolk 'n' tasty

Of the plain brown bitters commonly served in the pubs of London, Adnams is my favourite. There is, I think, a distinctive flavour to all Adnams beers. It's a crisp, dry, almost sulphurous mineral quality which I'm guessing comes from their water. And I love it. Late last year I noticed how it carries over into the winter session beer they make for Marks & Spencer. And then my local supermarket began carrying Adnams beers in bottles. I was all over that.

First up, Lighthouse, and props to whomever decided to put a 3.4% ABV beer on the market in Ireland -- a country where light lagers have to make it clear that they're at least 4.2% ABV or no-one will buy them, and where the only mainstream sub-4% ale goes to great lengths to hide its lack of intoxicating power (today's challenge: go to the swish new Smithwicks website and see if you can find out how strong it actually is). Lighthouse is indeed light, and the lack of body leaves it just a bit on the gassy side. The flavour is mild toffee and caramel, with that signature mineral character, perhaps just fading to soapiness at the end. All-in-all I found it very similar to the M&S one. On the far side of €3, however, it represents similarly poor value. Someone's having a laugh with the pricing gun here, I reckon.

For the same sort of money you can get a bottle of Innovation, much better suited to the ABV-conscious Irish palate at 6.7%. And in conjunction with Lighthouse we get an excellent lesson in the role alcohol plays in flavour complexity. The cloudy orange-amber ale isn't at all boozy -- the aroma is all alluring and exotic spiced citrus fruits. The base of the flavour is a light tannic tea layer, with a sweet and perfumed Riesling level above it, and then a topping of zingy orange sherbet. Wonderful sophistication and utterly perfect balance. Amazingly for a beer this strength it's fantastic as a cooling refresher and one I'll definitely be keeping in mind for sunny summer evenings.

Remember those? No, me neither.