Big red comes to town

The second of the three core beers from Mitchelstown's Eight Degrees brewery arrived on tap in Mulligan's recently. Sunburnt is (small sigh) an Irish red ale. They've promised us hoppy in the advertising copy, and it's got a fair bit more poke than the typical Irish red at 5% ABV. Putting my style-based prejudices aside, I went out to see how it measures up.

My pint came out very very cold, which wasn't in its favour. I got a sharp bitterness but not much else. So I sat and waited for it to come up to pub temperature. It was worth doing: buried under the ice there's a lovely rich strawberry fruit flavour, buoyed up on sticky caramel. The hops aren't up front as I was kind of hoping, but contribute a waxy bitterness to the finish. All-in-all, though, and true to style, the malt is still firmly in charge.

I can't help but think there are more things one can do within the confines of a 5% ABV Irish red. Personally speaking I'd be saying feck the style and dry-hopping the bejasus out of it, but no-one likes a back-seat brewer. If you're generally better disposed towards Irish red than me, this will give you a pleasant bang for your buck.

I know why the lizard croaks

All of a sudden it seems like there's loads happening on the Irish beer scene. For one thing, Franciscan Well have a new seasonal out which I caught up with in the Bull & Castle recently.

Croaking Lizard is a brown ale of the murky reddish variety. Where one might expect a certain sweetness, this is incredibly dry with lots of roasted grain, almost akin to a stout or schwarzbier, in fact. At the end there's a little kick of vegetal hop bitterness. But no coffee, no caramel: none of the flavours I'd consider important in a brown ale. I did have a second one, just to get my head around it, but I don't think it's for me, really. If you're looking for something light, crisp and quite fizzy, however, this could be the dark beer you're after.

Meanwhile, the most hotly-anticipated new arrival finally made its debut at the end of June, with the appearance of Galway Hooker in bottles. I'm actually a little surprised by how hotly-anticipated it still was. Irish drinkers have been clamouring for bottled Hooker since the time (up to a mere three or four years ago) when it was the only Irish beer in permanent production and distributed widely that had any kind of hop character to it. Since then we've been able to take home Porterhouse Hop Head and O'Hara's IPA, yet still the cry has been "We Want Hooker". Now that I've had a bottle -- a half-litre resplendent in its county colours -- I think I can see why the attraction is still there. Though lacking the punch of Hop Head and the strength of O'Hara's, it's doing its own thing: very sessionable at 4.3% ABV yet rounded out with a crystal malt sweetness that the others haven't matched. For me, the real bonus has been a whole glassful at cellar temperature. The anticipation of a dry-hopped cask version is almost unbearable.

Also fresh off the bottling line is Eight Degrees's Howling Gale. Bottle conditioning in 33cls makes this an even more complex affair, with a bit of yeasty grittiness in with the intense hop bitterness, plus some sweet biscuit malt just peeping through at the end. The guys say the second batch was done with an adjusted hop schedule so I'm looking forward to comparing the two, pathetic geek that I am. In the meantime, keep inspecting the fridges for Howling Gale. The second in the Eight Degrees series -- Sunburnt Red -- should making an appearance soon too. (Oh, today, as it happened. Now on tap at L. Mulligan Grocer.)

And finally a whole new brewery has brought its wares to Dublin. BrewEyed is based in Co. Offaly and met the public at the Brewers on the Bay festival in Galway last April. I happened across BrewEyed Lager when out for a few leisurely Sunday beers in The Village on Wexford Street a couple of weeks ago. This is their first release and as such I wasn't expecting much from it. The tang of cider in the aroma immediately put me on guard for a poorly constructed lager. But beyond it I found a remarkably well-made pilsner. There's a decent amount of sweet candyfloss malt forming the base, and then some lovely grassy Czech hop notes, including a touch of asparagus, rounding it out. Maybe there's a slight oxidised note in there too: another flaw one can expect to find in a first-run beer. But overall a promising start and I look forward to trying the blonde ale when and if that appears in these parts.