Unshore

This blog turns 13 today, and anyone who has been reading it for a while will doubtless have noticed that I write more about Diageo beers than I used to. The reason, of course, is that there are simply more of them these days, since the Open Gate Brewery came on stream. For the record, I have always sought out and written about anything the multinational has released locally: you'll find reviews of The Brewhouse Series from 2005/6, Guinness Black Lager from 2010, Smithwick's Pale Ale from 2011, and so on. Hell, I've even taken notes on Harp. It's easy to think that The Brewers Project and Open Gate represented a turnaround in how the company sees the market, but of course they weren't, merely an extension into another segment of it.

And so it is that the latest Diageo release, Rockshore, is pitched at a whole different audience. It was developed at Open Gate Brewery, just like all Diageo's beers, but it doesn't bear its name, nor even that of Guinness. It's a 4% ABV lager of unspecified style. I haven't yet seen it for individual sale in the off trade -- eight cans or six bottles seem to be the only options. A pint it was, so, at the airport. "Best served ice cold" said the branded glass, and the bar definitely tried to optimise my experience, nearly giving me frostbite in the process. That produced a sensation very similar to the Coors Light experiment I ran a few years back: the beer is thick; syrupy and sweet. The first hit of flavour was ripe red apples, a lot like a sugary alcopoppish cider. That does fade quickly, but there's absolutely nothing behind it, for good or ill.

In its favour, it's not watery, it's not harshly carbonated and it does taste of something. In the minus column what it tastes of is not beer, isn't pleasant, and the thickness strips it of refreshment power, which I'd have thought would be one of the aims.

Two thirds of the way down my pint I discovered I had grown accustomed to the apples, and by the end I could see how someone would be happy to drink another straight afterwards. Not me though. Not when there's Galway Hooker on the bar and 40 minutes before my flight is called.

Cherishing the children equally

When you spend a lot of time watching the doings of small breweries, the behaviour of big breweries can seem a bit weird. Diageo, for instance, has two new beers out but looks to be treating them in very different ways even though they're quite similar to each other, on paper at least.

Smithwick's Blonde I learned about via my ancillary hobby of peering in pub windows at what they have on tap. The first place I noticed it was The Norseman, but the bold yellow font was also to be seen leering across the bar in The Boar's Head and neighbouring Slattery's on Capel Street. It was in the latter that I finally caught up with it. A simple substance, it's dry and crisp with lots of fizz, a watery heart and a rather stale malt husk finish. The gas and water makes it nicely palate cleansing, which is about the best I can say for it. Why they made it and who it's for is anyone's guess. I've seen no related PR and not even the Smithwick's website recognises its existence. As soft launches go, this one is downright soggy.

Compare it, then, with its almost-twin Hop House 13. This was launched with a thumping audiovisual fanfare at a media event in St James's Gate last month. Here's Nick Curtis-Davis, Diageo's Head of Innovation for Guinness, explaining the rationale behind the new beer, followed by the soundtrack of a short video they made to introduce it:

Sounds great, eh? The show-and-tell was followed by a taste down at the pilot plant with Peter Simpson, the young brewer fronting this release. It was cold in there and the little sample even colder so I didn't get much of a chance to assess it. I caught up with it again in the wild at Slattery's a few days later.

Diageo has branded it a lager even though it's made using standard Guinness ale yeast, and there's definitely an extra ale-like body to it rather than the clean blank slate of a pale lager. Hopwise they've employed a prestige combination of Mosaic, Galaxy and Topaz which creates an immediate fruity spicy buzz on entry with even a hint of naughty dank and some dry but fun pomegranate and cranberry. These are mere nuances, however, and the main thrust of the beer is a simple and sessionable English-style golden ale, putting me a little in mind of the likes of Hopback's Summer Lightning. At a piddling 16 IBUs and high-gravity brewed in huge quantities it's not going to displace any Irish micros, but like another of its siblings, the Amarillo-laced Smithwick's Pale Ale, it's the sort of beer I'd happily drink when it's the best available option.

The new brewhouse at St James's Gate has allowed Diageo to design and launch new beers faster than ever before: Hop House 13 was an unprecedented seven months from first draft to first draught. That makes four brand new recipes out the gate of the 'Gate in the last six months. At this rate, and with access to all those increasingly scarce hops, they're bound to hit on something really good at some point soon, right?

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.

Diageo with a human face

It's a rite of passage for the Irish beer drinker to be able to reminisce on a failed Guinness brand extension. You're not fit for a bar stool if you can't bore innocent people senseless about your memories of Breó, or the St James's Gate series, or the Brewhouse series, or (the holy grail of failed Guinnesses) Guinness Light.

I've tasted most of these (yawn, yeah, whatever, grandad) and in several cases they weren't bad beers: they just weren't ready for that time and place. Diageo are currently pushing out a new brand extension -- this time to the venerable Smithwick's marque -- and, in the opinion of this amateur market analyst, it's in a much better position.

Smithwick's Pale Ale is a very pale -- blonde, really -- beer being launched on keg and in half-litre bottles around the country this month. It's 4.5% ABV and has been late hopped, including dry-hopping, with Amarillo. And it shows. While light of texture to the point of wateriness and a little on the gassy side, at least from the keg, there's no mistaking the flavour of proper hops: a sweet and juicy peachiness is given an empty stage to sing its heart out.

Cleary, a lot of thought has gone into this product, and it owes its existence to more than Diageo's general revitalising of the Smithwick's brand and the flatlining of mainstream beer sales in the developed world (though I don't doubt both those things had a lot to do with it). Why, of all things, a hop-forward pale ale?

Five years ago such things didn't exist here. Microbreweries made red ales, and lagers, and stouts and wheat beers. Then Galway Hooker came along and changed the parameters, eschewing the mainstays of Irish beer and going for high doses of Saaz and Cascades. Established craft breweries followed them and the hoppy pale ale is now in the repertoire of most of the nation's micros. It's an accessible style of beer and just different enough from the other taps on the bar to make it worth investigating. But most importantly it just tastes nice. You don't need a slick brand identity to shift this stuff, nor countless centuries of brewing heritage, nor suggestions of sophistication or the exotic. It's the sort of beer grown-ups like to drink and it stands on flavour alone.

There are apparently several more to come in this Smithwick's series, but I reckon they've started in a safe and sensible place, and my perspective on the beer offerings in the Typical Irish Pub is certainly brightened by its existence.

However, I also think there's a darker lesson for Ireland's independents. Medium-strength hoppy keg ales are done. Diageo make one now, and unless you can play the local card or have some other unique selling point I imagine it's going to be a much harder thing to flog. Time to make something else.

Arrivals, departures

Last week's launch of the new Messrs Maguire Doppelbock was tinged with sadness. Not that there was anything wrong with the beer, you understand, it's a supremely complex 7.5% ABV dark lager, intensely sweet at first with bourbon biscuits and treacle, following through to a citric pithiness with hints of puckering sourness.

No, the sad bit is that Mel, who has been in charge of the MM brewkit for the last year or so, has been called home to the US. Mel has been hugely supportive of the beer geeks and -- far more importantly -- has taken an active role in bringing the unconverted into the city centre brewhouse to show them what beer is and how it's made. She will be missed and we selfishly hope that someone worthy of her mash paddle will be taking up the reins at the brewery before long.

And with one exit, a new appearance. From the pictures I've seen, the Dingle Brewery is an impressive operation, taking over the abandoned creamery site outside the west Kerry village and converting it into a working brewery and visitors' centre. While I'm all in favour of local beer for local people, and don't begrudge the fact that Dingle already has a brewery providing this, I was still pleased when a keg of Dingle's first lager, Crean's, showed up in Dublin's Against The Grain last week.


Rather darker than advertised, it's a deep rich gold colour. The texture is quite heavy and I think the solid dose of diacetyl might have something to do with it. I'm not one of those people who regards diacetyl as a fatal flaw in lager, but if you object to the buttery flavours it imparts then this might not be the lager for you. All in all it's a decent beer and while not a stand-out example of what Irish breweries produce, I'd be happy to drink it ahead of the other likely options in Dingle town's pubs.

A couple more new Irish beers are on the horizon and I'll hopefully get to try them in the coming weeks. Metalman débuted their third recipe, a witbier, in Waterford at the weekend. Meanwhile Diageo Ireland are about to launch their first new beer in several years: a pale ale, no less. While I'm chasing these, more on Argentina's beer, starting tomorrow.