Late to the party

This is day eight of Indie Beer Week 2018 and I'm rounding off my series of posts with the beers I discovered during the week itself.

I'm picking things up where I left them yesterday with Praetorian, new from YellowBelly and as far as I know exclusive to its beer club subscribers. "Polaris hopped blueberry weizen" is the unlikely style statement, and it's 5% ABV. It looks like a smoothie, pouring a murky dark purple hue, without a proper weissbier head. There's not much aroma, while the flavour is odd and perfumed: a mix of miscellaneous spices and non-specific fruit. There's a sharpness which could be attributed to the berries, but nothing that really says blueberry flavour. On the other side it's a weissbier by texture for sure, but that's it. I get the Polaris, though: a sharp herbal mint. So one out of three. For all the wowee craft innovation it's quite a plain beer, a lot less interesting than any standard weizen you care to name.

That backed up my notion that weissbier isn't one of the traditional styles amenable to craft hacking, a prejudice which was further confirmed by Lemondrop, just released by Carrig Brewing. The hacking is apparently no more than dry hopping with the titular hop and Denali, but my pint arrived clear and gold in a straight-sided glass, the attempt at a big weiss head making it look like an underfilled pint of lager. The mere 4.6% ABV is further evidence of inauthenticity, but it really kicks in from the aroma: sweet and sticky like a lemon meringue pie. The flavour is pretty much the same, adding a touch of banana foam sweets. The whole thing is weird and artificial. Contrived; and bound to upset any Germans who come to Bar Rua looking for a weissbier. This experiment didn't work out.

Staying in that pub, owner Carrig's other new guy was Basil Blast, a gold-coloured Centennial and Simcoe pale ale of 5.5% ABV, with a purported large helping of basil in the whirlpool. There's definitely something other than the usual in here, but I'd swear it was ginger: that slightly woody, chewy, spice you tend to get from real fresh ginger. It certainly shouts over the hopping, and I am assured that no ginger was involved in the recipe. There is a slight herbal tang on the tail, but it's not the oily green richness of real basil. A dry and tannic finish complements the spicing. This is definitely a refreshing beer, and was much appreciated on a warm sunny afternoon; it's just a little confusing.

Around the corner, last Friday, Stephen Street News hosted the third beer release from Liam, aka Dead Centre Brewing: Seeking Sunshine IPA. He kindly donated a can for me to bring home where I drank it in the last rays of Sunday's sun. It's 5% ABV and brewed with Citra and Amarillo, pouring a pale yellow shade with little head. The aroma is quite dank and funky, though with a little bit of juice thrown in. Its flavour, then, is disappointingly savoury, piling in the caraway taste I associate most with Mosaic-gone-awry. There is a faint juiciness as well on the very end, a tantalising echo of mandarin, hinting at what this could have been without all the honking caraway. The texture is nicely full thanks to the oats in the grist, and the carbonation is low enough to make it easy drinking. It's still a passable IPA, but in need of punching up, I think.

I covered Third Barrel's goings-on on Tuesday. Their last-minute contribution to the week, in UnderDog yesterday, was Juice Bigalow. And yes: juice. Big juice. Mega juice. It opens on a giant bag of mandarins, rendered extra juicy by an effervescent sherbet quality. There's bitter kick on the end, a growing dankness, a metallic tang and... waaaait a minute: this bears a striking resemblance to Tuesday's sensation Two Yards, from the same brewery for someone else. Is it wrong of me to suspect this is a very small variation on it? Very small? It doesn't matter either way to me: I get great beer regardless. Pleasingly full-bodied at a super-sessionable 4.1% ABV, it's properly complex and juicy as all hell. You can call it what you like, sure. (And I am completely wrong to be suspicious; see comments).

Fresh from Whiplash is Shades of Marble double IPA, at the standard Whiplash ABV of 8%, hopped with Galaxy, Vic Secret and Lemondrop, and both looking and smelling like pineapple juice. There's a bit of yeast grit in with the tropical fruit, though that doesn't come through in the flavour. It's still pretty soupy-tasting, however: glutinous floury protein blocking any hop brightness. There's a green veg foretaste, then the bitter liquorice of Vic Secret, and a buzz of alcohol. It's all a bit harsh and unfinished-tasting for my liking, and yes I know that's the style. Clean this one up and it would be very decent.

I finally got to tick off the last of the Hopfully trilogy brewed for the Klaw restaurants (you can find the other two here). Auntie Arthur's is a porter, modestly strong at 4.8% ABV. The presentation was poor: a dirty glass leading to dodgy head retention, but that didn't interfere with the flavour. There's a light and easy-going chocolate foretaste, followed by medium roast and a slightly metallic tang on the end. A long aftertaste brings endless cups of strong filter coffee. This is dry rather than creamy, yet still full-bodied. Solid; by-the-numbers. It went very well with my sweet and spicy prawn poke.

Hopfully also released a new seasonal, described as a "white India Pale Lager" and named California Uncommon. This has the pale and hazy appearance of a witbier but puts delicious fresh and juicy peaches at the front of the flavour. The expected herbal spicing comes after, a little jarring at first but settling out to rosemary and lemon zest, like a slightly adventurous stuffing. While not particularly lager-like with all this going on, it is at least clean and devoid of unpleasant yeast interference. You could just consider it a decent pale ale and be happy with that.

Rascals came out with a sequel to last year's Strawberry Vanilla Shake IPA in the form of Raspberry Sundae IPA. While the former did manage to preserve a considerable proportion of its IPA character, this one throws it all up in the air and runs away giggling. It tastes exactly like raspberry ripple ice cream, warming to lean more towards a jam-and-cream spongecake. There's a certain beery bitterness buried right at the back, and a touch of actual hop flavour on the reflux, but otherwise this is all dessert. It's clean and drinkable despite this: fun, silly and hard to dislike.

A late-evening call to The Hill in Ranelagh yielded a pint of Dolmen. This whiskey-barrel stout is from Western Herd, a Clare brewery whose wares are rarely seen in these parts. It's 7.6% ABV and sweet without tasting hot. Black cherry is at the centre, laced with coconut cream around the edges and given a dusting of cocoa. But there was something else, something not part of the confection construction, and it took me a while to figure it out. Autolysis. A jarring meaty flavour -- Bovril or gravy -- that hovers in the background and comes to the fore at the very end. It's too late to spoil anything, but it does take the shine off an otherwise calm and balanced beer.

Here endeth the week's festivities, for this blog at least. Got your plan ready for the closing weekend of IBW18? Good.

Start as you mean to go on

Dry January? The chance would be a fine thing. Dublin's pubs have had plenty of new Irish stuff on the go for this supposedly quiet month. Here's what I managed to get hold of.

I paid my first and second visits to Idlewild during the month, a pleasant little bar tucked into George's Market on the Fade Street side. The first time was because they'd just released their first collaboration recipe beer. Strawberry Milkshake IPA was brewed at Rascals in an extremely small pilot batch which sold out entirely on the evening of its release. I'm told it will be back on a more permanent basis in due course. It's 6.3% ABV and takes its name from the use of real strawberries and lactose, alongside oatmeal and Hüll Melon hops. The aroma was worryingly sickly but there's none of this in its flavour as it delivers instead a big hit of tropical fruit: a cocktail of mango, passionfruit and pineapple juices. No strawberry, mind, though the "milkshake" bit is present in the slightly glutinous texture which I think actually enhanced the hop impact. Expecting pure gimmickry, I was pleased to find just a really good fruit beer.

That wasn't the first beer to feature Rascals and Idlewild's signatures; the brewery has been making the bar's house beer since it first opened. A Swingin' Affair is a light pale ale of just 4.1% ABV. Manager Dean told me the intention was for something easy-going and fruity but to my palate this is very dry and savoury, in that way that seems to be so fashionable at the moment. The Hüll Melon is allied with Mosaic hops here and I got crisp onion skin in particular from it, with just a little bit of fruitiness peeping out as it warms. It's refreshing and it is easy-going, but I found that flavour just a little too severe.

What brought me back to Idlewild was the launch of a new pilsner from The White Hag. Róc is intended to replace the brewery's Kölsch-a-like in the permanent line-up, and is a medium-strength 4.5% ABV. Despite this it has quite a substantial body, light in carbonation and a full mouthfeel more typical of helles or even märzen. The bitterness is sharp and green in the north German way, though I found it lacking the fresh punch you find in the likes of Jever. There's a slightly off-putting rubbery note in it as well. It's a decent effort, and the brewery clearly knows that beers of this sort are supposed to have character, which this does. I'm not ready to place it in the pantheon of great Irish lagers yet, however.

While I was in the neighbourhood, I nipped around the corner to Bar Rua where they had YellowBelly's Smoke & Oak on tap, a 5.5% ABV stout with cocoa nibs aged on scotch whisky cask chips. It's pure black in colour with a sappy rubber foretaste and an ashen dryness after. Given a few minutes to warm up, there's a nice and meaty texture, but the flavour just doesn't work for me: it tastes burnt rather than smoked and there's none of the softness I'd have expected from whisky and/or chocolate.

Another German-style lager next, Careen, brewed by Galway Bay as a replacement for their Dortmunder. This one is 4.8% ABV, the purest clear gold, with a pleasantly soft texture. The first sip presents a large perfumed bitterness on the palate, one that takes a bit of getting used to and which hangs around for ages. I like when flavourful lagers party in the mouth quickly and then clear out of the way, cleaning up after themselves. This one is a bit more unruly, and leaves you to deal with that intensely floral aftertaste yourself, grumbling over your resin-coated tongue. Careen is a bold beer, and might even change a few minds about how aggressive this style can be, but for me it's just a bit too busy for enjoyable quaffing.

Recent guest beers at Galway Bay's The Black Sheep have included White Gypsy's The Banker, described as a "rye wheat beer" which I figured would be an interesting combination. It's the ochre colour of many a rye beer but that's where I felt the grain's contribution ended. On tasting it reveals itself to be an absolutely straight-up Bavarian style weissbier. And a good one at that: softly full-bodied despite an ABV of just 5%, and with a gorgeous juicy-fruit bubblegum flavour, one that's lively without being over-sweet. There is a certain peppery spice as well, and that could be the rye, but it could just as easily be a flavour produced by the yeast also. I'm not sure what the point of this experiment was, but I did enjoy the beer, reminding me as it did that weissbier is a much overlooked style and can be very tasty when done well.

Meanwhile another rye beer was pouring on the cask engines: O Brother's Holden, badged as a Belgian-style rye pale ale at 6.3% ABV. It's a murky orange colour but has a fresh and clean mandarin zest aroma. There's a big and sharp rye bitterness at the front, followed by juicy jaffa hops in behind. There's enough time for a full toffee warmth to enter the picture as well, before the bitterness returns, bringing it to a hard, almost acrid finish. It's quite a ride. A few sips in I noticed there's a certain tannic quality too. Coupled with the orangey hops this lends it an English bitter feel which I rather enjoyed. In fact, it tastes far more like a bitter or barley wine than anything Belgian. I liked it a lot, mainly for its complexity. The trademark O Brother bitterness is there, but it's balanced and enhanced by lots of other things.

I had never been to Murphy's in Rathmines before, but made a point of stopping by when it became the first Dublin pub to have O'Hara's Hop Adventure Styrian Wolf on tap, the latest in Carlow Brewing's series of 5% ABV single-hop IPAs. A previous version included Sorachi Ace, and I found this to have a lot in common with it. Coconut is the main feature of the flavour, though rather than Sorachi's lemons, there's a softer fruit accompaniment, something like lychee. I see one description of the hop which mentions an elderflower characteristic, and I can understand why. Amongst all the fruit and flowers there is a serious bitterness here too, but it's restrained enough to let the other flavours out to play. Much like Sorachi Ace, I expect this beer will divide opinion but I'm definitely a fan of its up-front boldness.

Finishing up with a couple of trips to 57 The Headline, Trouble Brewing's latest is a "fresh & juicy" pale ale called Ambush. It seems to be pitching a little at the New England segment of the market, with its cloudy yellow stylings. At least some of that must be hop haze because there's a full-on smack of pineapples and weed in the aroma, while the flavour has not a trace of yeast bite. There's a slight savoury greasiness, but no allium or caraway, I'm happy to report. Instead, the first flavour is a spicy peppery resin thing, pure dank, after which comes softer mandarin, pineapple and lemon candy. Fresh, yes, and a little bit juicy, but it's mostly about that weedy, spicy bitterness. Beautiful stuff, and at 5.01% ABV, very sessionable.

Finally, another fast-moving Rascals special. Vacuum Boogie IPA is an award-winning homebrew recipe, scaled up and sent out into the world, starting at The Headline. The Capital Brewers homebrew club had descended en masse to clear the first couple of kegs and I was fortunate to secure one of the final pints. It's another murky one, and once again dankness is the signature move. There's less of a tropical character than in Ambush, instead having a more bitter and spicy grapefruit skin thing going on. A teeny bit of onion starts to develop as it warms, but nothing significant, and not enough to upset the basic delicious spicy premise. There are about 18 kegs of this floating around, I believe. Grab it while it's fresh.

Not a bad start to 2017, all-in-all.