Bar flying

In between bottling three batches of beer and brewing another, as well as giving my regular lecture at The Beer Club, I managed to fit in a fair bit of pub time over the long weekend. In a life consumed by beer it's important not to lose sight of the important things, dontcherknow. As I mentioned at the time, it was national Farmhouse Cheese and Craft Beer weekend so of course I nipped in to the Bull & Castle to give their tasting platter a go. Wherever Geoff had been buying his Cooleeney it was far superior to the one from my tasting, with none of the waxy harshness. The match with Buckley's hop-forward golden ale was excellent, and the Hegarty's cheddar fitted wonderfully with all four beers, though in different ways.

Before heading off I snaffled a bottle of Rothaus Tannenzäpfle, on special offer at the moment. This is another pils from the cult Black Forest brewery, robust at 5.1% ABV and heavily laden with the nettley German hop flavour I usually struggle with. Here, however, there's just enough of a malt profile to hold it in check, keeping both the beer and this drinker appropriately sweet. Enjoyable in small doses, but 33cl was enough for me. (Edit: I'm reliably informed by Barry in the comments that this is the same beer as the Pils, reviewed here.)

Down the hill in Temple Bar I dropped in to Farrington's, a hitherto quite plain and unremarkable Dublin boozer (formerly The Norseman, to any ex-pat Dubs who don't know where I'm talking about -- they used to have really nice runic lettering on the sign). Farrington's has, for want of a better term, gone craft. The usual macro keg fonts still line the two sides of the bar, but they're interspliced with those from Galway Hooker, Carlow Brewing, Metalman and the like. There's also an extensive bottled range -- local and import -- at least according to the blackboards.

What dragged me in was the promise of some Sink the Bismarck! and on Sunday evening a bottle from Farrington's cellars was procured, opened and offered round. I have two contradictory opinions on this 41% ABV freeze-distilled IPA: a) it's quite nice, and b) it tastes like an eastern European aperitif. The concentrated hop bitterness comes through as a sort of herbal, fennel flavour, which sits assertively atop the unctuous cough mixture body. Despite the super-dense texture there's a very faint fizz to it, and that helps soothe any intense alcohol burning, warming the insides rather than scorching them. I thought it worked great as a pre-dinner sipper. Nice beer; shame about the name.

Our hosts also had a bottle of Tactical Nuclear Penguin on the go. It still tastes like cheap sherry mixed with lighter fuel. Nice name; shame about the beer.

Onwards across the Liffey and upstream, to dinner and the antipodean delight of a pie floater at L. Mulligan. Grocer. The main draw here was a one-off cask of Trouble Brewing Pumpkin Ór. As far as I know this is Ireland's first and only pumpkin beer, and a one-off cask at that, pending a larger batch next year. It could have stood to be a degree or two cooler on serving, especially since the pub was heaving in the run-up to the Sunday night quiz, but it was still nicely smooth and perfectly drinkable. There's no fruit as such -- there rarely is with pumpkin beer in my experience -- but the blend of spices works beautifully, adding gentle warming cinnamon notes and a background hint of almond. I reckon solid, simple Ór makes quite a good base for throwing in interesting ingredients and I definitely look forward to seeing this spiced pumpkin version more widespread next year.

Irish homebrewers who fancy mucking about with their own interesting beer ingredients may be interested in entering Trouble's Trouble Maker competition. This time round they've asked specifically for unusual recipes. Reinheitsgebotniks need not apply.

A weekend well-spent there, I think. Hurrah for pubs!

Three controversies ago

It's hard to believe that the whole furore over Tokyo* was less than a year ago. Since then two more, even stronger, beers have come out of Fraserburgh knocking the so-strong-it'll-cure-binge-drinking barrel-aged imperial stout into a proverbial cocked hat. If I'd known how quickly its notoriety was going to wane, maybe I wouldn't have spent so much on it in Utobeer last December. And if I'd known that it was going to be sold in Dublin off licences for a fair bit less come summer I'd have made a point of drinking it sooner.

As is, it was only last weekend that I rescued the blighter from my sweltering beer store (currently, refugee bottles are crammed into every hidey hole in the house, all but wearing babushkas and playing mournful violin music). With all the fuss a distant memory, how's the beer?

After the unpalateable mess that is Tactical Nuclear Penguin I was on full alert for boozy harshness, but boozy harshness came there none. The nose is heady and alluring, like a tasty liqueur, with hints of wood and cigars. Texturewise it's incredibly smooth. The 18.2% ABV gives a warming sensation, but doesn't burn or cloy: think Drambuie or similar. The taste reminds me a little of Samuel Adams Triple Bock but it's much mellower and more balanced, calmly soothing with chocolate and cherries, not leaping up to show you flavour after flavour from its toybox. It's very easy to forget this is a stout. To the point, perhaps, where stout fans and Paradox fundamentalists might be disappointed. This stuff is playing a different game altogether.

Overall, a beautiful beer for taking time out with, its softly-spoken dignity ill-deserving of being dragged through the gutter press.

Gone to the dogs

I hadn't been expecting quite so many non-Danish beers to be available at the Copenhagen Beer Festival last week, but it was great to see them. Most were presented by importers, but a couple of foreign breweries had taken their own stand. One of whom, I was delighted to see, was BrewDog. I even braved the hordes on Friday evening -- the most crowded I ever saw the hall -- for a quick taste of Tactical Nuclear Penguin, just to see what the fuss was all about. It's pretty much undrinkable. At 32% ABV it's certainly boozy, but not quite strong enough to be spirity as such. The oak character from the base imperial stout has been concentrated by freeze-distilling into a rather sharp and harsh medicinal flavour and on swallowing produces a burning, tarry aftertaste. I can't imagine it'll work for most beer people, nor many whisky people either.

Nor was I impressed by a couple of others they had on: 5AM Saint was my kick-off beer on the first day -- a hopped-up red ale at a modest 5% ABV. The nose is marvellous: fresh and fruity promising luscious things to come. But they don't materialise: I found the flavour quite acidic and unpleasant, the hop-juice sensation compounded by a thin body. I had great hopes for Bashah, the black IPA they've produced with Stone from California, but I finished the glass confused. Once again a fantastic aroma, this time mixing those succulent fresh hops with rich chocolate, but they didn't taste right together -- harsh again, and a bit stale-tasting; perhaps even Bovrilesque. It's nearly wonderful, but I just couldn't get behind it. So, a bit of a bust on the BrewDog front for this drinker: in the words of the boul' Larry Gogan, they just didn't suit me. I did, however, get a taste of the new-recipe Hardcore IPA and heartily recommend it over any of these.

I had much better luck down at the stand of an importer of American beers who had lots of Flying Dog beers I've never had. I made a beeline for Raging Bitch and loved it. A warming spice coming from the Belgian yeast and a wonderful fresh mandarin hop flavour on top of it, fading elegantly to peaches and ice tea. Smooth, characterful and totally inappropriately named. Staying with the strong and pale, I also liked Horn Dog barley wine, a deep brown-red ale, just over 10% ABV, and with strange and interesting banana esters undercutting a citric hop bite; and Double Dog pale ale with its rich toffee mattress bounced on by massive zingy hops -- marvellously sippable at a stonking 11.5% ABV. On the dark side there was the wholly unsubtle Schwarz Dog, loaded with those lovely smoked ham notes I associate most with Schlenkerla beers while also providing proper schwarzbier roastiness, finishing dry like a porter, while also being big and warm, as one might expect at 7.8% ABV. The very dog's, this lot.

A respectful distance from these delights, the same stand was also selling Cave Creek Chili Beer, a Mexican travesty that seems to be doing for chillis what Desperados does for tequila: associating them vaguely with beer as a gimmicky marketing exercise. It's actually pretty hot, with a green-tasting chilli burn. But, like Desperados, there's no real beer character here. This is occasionally available in Ireland, but I think I'll be giving it a miss.

Celebrities were fairly thin on the ground, though I did spot this guy (left) towards the end of Saturday. However, I missed the special beers he'd brought along from Brooklyn Brewery. I did get a taste of a couple of the regulars. Putting the cart before the horse, my opinion of Local No. 2 is that it's a lot like Local No. 1. Except I've not reviewed Local No. 1 here yet. I will soon. The second edition is in a vaguely Belgian style: strong, dark and sugary with some big banana esters. Nice in its own way but there are plenty of actual Belgian dark ales I'd have in its place. I much prefer it when Garrett gets the hops out, and really liked the Brooklyn Monster Ale. It's a kicking barley wine which, while plainly packed with citric American hops, is balanced beautifully with super-sweet caramel malt base: as chewy and hoppy as you could wish a US barley wine to be.

One last set of North American imports came from a stall pushing the beers from Schoune, a farm brewery in Quebec. Obviously there's a major Frencher-than-the-French theme happening. There's also some serious maple notes in the beers, most of all in A L'Erable which is made using lots of maple syrup -- produced on site like all of the ingredients. The syrup has fermented out a lot of the way, so the base beer is dry, but there's a lovely woody maple taste left behind. Erabière is even more mapley, especially on the nose, though actually tastes sour. Strange and very interesting. On the sweeter side there's Premier Baiser, a very drinkable sweet blonde, and Trip des Schoune, made with hemp for a light and spicy sweetness. On the darker side there's 1608 which is warm and roasty and Hivernale an incredible sandalwood-spicy winter beer which is like drinking incense. Lovely.

Some more beers from abroad next, before we get back to Denmark.