Hazy recollection

It's the season for pointless time-consuming traditions and dull end-of-year lists: yes, The Golden Pints are upon us once more. 2018's deliberation beer is one I acquired at the Mikkeller takeaway bar in Copenhagen airport with my final fistful of kroner. Hazy is a New England IPA of 6.6% ABV, an opaque orange-yellow, topped by a thick white head. In the minus column there's a pinch of dreggy yeast and a rising garlic note as it warms; the principal plus, however, is a massive juiciness -- mostly sweet orange but there's a balancing citric bitterness too, from the Simcoe, I'm guessing. Three months on from canning and this was still a perfect example of this style done well. It does need to be consumed cold, though: I was only half way through deliberations when it warmed up to the point of losing juice. A lesson for me to make my decisions quickly. Anyway, without further review, here are...

The Golden Pint Awards 2018

Best Irish Cask Beer: O Brother: The Whippersnapper
This cask-conditioned Berliner weisse ran a close race against another oddity, Third Barrel's Raspberry Stout, but just pipped it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Barrel-aged pale farmhousey beers rocked my world this year. Extremely honorable mentions go also to Rascals for the Chardonnay Sparkling Ale and DOT's Dainty Wood. This one, while perhaps not the most complex, had the best mix of classic wild-fermented and wood-aged flavours, very like an authentic Belgian gueze. I hope they can recreate it, and that there are customers in the local market who appreciate this sort of thing.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Larkin's: Baltic Porter
This award is based not solely on the quality of the beer -- though that is consistently excellent. It's almost as much the availability: this one has been there for me at regular intervals throughout the year; occasions when I just want something unfussy but great to drink. It looks to have been renamed now, as "Dark Matter", but it still tastes perfect.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Hope: Hop Hash DIPA
My standout from The Big Grill Festival this year translated perfectly into canned form. Citric hoppy deliciousness.

Best Overseas Draught: Purpose: Smoeltrekker #68
Another one of those barrelled sour blondes, hailing from Colorado but showing up on tap at the Leuven Innovation Beer Festival back in the spring. All the oaky spices.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Sierra Nevada: Tequila Barrel Otra Vez
I've been a bit grumbly about Sierra Nevada's harmless gose-alike but I was genuinely wowed when I happened across a bottle of the tequila-barrel-aged version.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Collective Arts: Ransack the Universe
In Ireland, "Overseas canned beer" is mostly going to mean "some murk from England with an abstract design on it" -- there are a hell of a lot of those on the market at any given moment and I don't bother trying to keep up with them. So instead I'm picking some murk from Canada with a sort-of abstract design on it, and very nice it was too.

Best Collaboration Brew: Jester Zinne
This one from De La Senne and Jester King -- barrels, funk, sour: you get the picture -- could equally have been awarded Best Overseas Bottle but I'm slotting it into the collaboration bracket where there's less competition instead.

Best Overall Beer: Urban Brewing: Barrel Aged Sour
Scouring the above for the most memorable, pupil-dilating, beer experience of the year, and I think this is the one.

Best Branding: Kinnegar
The Donegal brewer switched its minimalist monochrome designs to the new busy cartoon bunnies and their associates. I haven't seen it on a label yet, but I loved the design for Rustbucket, featuring the late eponymous doggo.

Best Pump Clip: Beerbliotek: Shakes Fist Angrily
Still amused by the sheer daftness of this.

Best Bottle/Can Label: YellowBelly: Covert Operation
The Molloy's guys and YellowBelly are up to something. With a fox.

Not a skull to be seen.

Best Irish Brewery: Rye River
2016's winner returns to the top spot, though for different reasons this time. It still does excellent contract-brewing work, and the Brown Ale and Saison for Lidl were two very strong new strings to its bow, but the five limited edition seasonal launches really marked out the progression of 2018, and we got hints too of a pilot series a few weeks ago. The Rye River brand has come of age, and attached itself to some very fine beers.

Best Overseas Brewery: The Exchange
In a busy and diverse drinking year, no single overseas brewery stood out for me. This award is going on visitor experience, then, and the smart, bijou taproom of this place in Niagara-on-the-Lake, visited in September. It brews good stuff too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2018: Four Provinces
OK technically this was a 2017 launch, but it was 2018 before the new range started getting out and about. Láidir in particular was the best new regular-production Irish beer of the year, but there's no Golden Pint for that.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
In the grand tradition of the previous year's Best Newcomer winning Best Pub this time round, UnderDog takes the prize. Anyone who's spent any amount of time there will know why. It's always entertaining and only a small part of that is because of what's on tap. Shout-out to Paddy, Barry and Chris who make it what it is.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2018: GIST
I think I'm right with the timing here: I don't see any reference to its existence prior to last January. Anyway, Brussels has a new star in its pub firmament; a lovely blend of traditional cosy brown-café vibes with a bang-up-to-date modern beer list. A most honorable mention goes to the Metalman bar in Waterford which opened just over a year ago, pouring great beers and hosting fun events on the city's quayside.

Beer Festival of the Year: Hagstravaganza
The only Irish beer festival that people talk about; the centre of the calendar for the last two years; performing stellar geek-service while also being just a fun day out. After a few hiccups in year one, the 2018 outing nailed it.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
Time was this was a back-and-forth between the supermarket near work (Fresh in Smithfield) and the supermarket near home (SuperValu Sundrive) but both have lost crucial staff resulting in the loss of elite status. I'm going with Lidl instead this year, largely because of the Rye River commissions above, as well as the exotic oddities from the summer. More tickworthy exotic oddities please!

Independent Retailer of the Year: Stephen Street News
Unlike the supermarkets, Martin's and DrinkStore have done nothing at all wrong, but here comes the disruptor, jumping on the aluminium bandwagon and making exemplary use of price-points and social media to corner the poorly-served ubergeek end of the Dublin beer market. Long may it continue.

Online Retailer of the Year: YellowBelly Brewery
I don't usually award this because I don't buy beer on the internet, except this year I did: I joined the first outing of the YellowBelly Beer Club which meant four six-packs in the post. As I mentioned in relation to the last one, they weren't all brilliant beers, but there's still a bit of fun in parcel-post beer delivery, especially when it's a local outfit rather than a, say, Scottish or pseudo-Danish one.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Good Beer Guide To Belgium, 8th ed.
The mostly-annual award for The One Beer Book I Read This Year goes to Joe and Tim for this one. It is genuinely good. You don't get Golden Pints, or any pints, for putting out dreck.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Every Pub In Dublin
I've mentioned in previous years how I'm a sucker for a grand project. Dublin has two which came to my attention this year, attempting to visit all the pubs in Dublin (for a given value of "Dublin"), so shout-out to Dublin By Pub, but for sheer indefatigable doggedness, and regular laugh-out-loud pen portraits, this one goes to Cian.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @Bill_Linane
It was well worth keeping a blackboard record of how many times each Twitter account amused me during 2018. The final tally shows Bill to be out in front. Well done Bill.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
The most frequent winner of this category takes it again and godammit it shouldn't be this easy for them. It's not rocket science for breweries to put information about their new releases out on the internet so customers can see what they're buying when they're buying it, yet Eight Degrees is the only one that has the information to hand when I want it. A spirited, and much appreciated, attempt was made on Instagram by Whiplash but they still didn't manage to document all their own releases (Love is Lost? Hello?). Meanwhile, every other Irish brewery: pleeease do this better.

And there we are. Can you believe that that's ten whole years of Golden Pints? Madness. Big thanks to Mark and Andy, of course, who originated the categories, ones which are looking a bit clunky for the current beer scene, but my unhallowed hands shall not disturb them, or the beer world's done for. See you in 2019!

Spring flowers

There was a sudden abundance of new Irish beers in March. Presumably the run-up to the national holiday had something to do with that, as well as a couple of festivals to which I'll dedicate later posts. This one is about the random new beers I found in the pubs and off licences.

And also in breweries. I paid my first visit to Rye River in Celbridge at the invitation of the company. On the roster was the first in a limited edition series of high-end beers, going for that super-premium 440ml can segment. First out is a Belgian Imperial Stout. Brewer Bill described the style as a sort of hybrid, somewhere between a normal imperial stout and a quadrupel. I got that 100% from the flavour: smooth warming banana meeting bitter and roasty espresso, though the two never fully meld. I like the way it maintains elements of both, letting you enjoy two beers at once. With a relatively modest 8.2% ABV it doesn't overdo things either. In a world where pastry stouts are ever more commonplace, it's perhaps lacking a little in wow, but I suspect that may come with a bit of ageing. I certainly put one of my complimentary cans into the stash. Thanks to the team at Rye River for the evening out.

An afternoon excursion to Alfie Byrne's yielded no fewer than three new beers from Hope. Two were from their own Limited Edition series, now up to 9 and 10 respectively.

9 is Hope Vienna Oatmeal IPA. I expected something quite dark but it's definitely yellow, and a little hazy with it. There's a decent head, of course, from which emerges a pleasingly weedy fresh hop aroma. The texture is a little watery and I think that has affected the flavour detrimentally. You get a bitter kick at the front, and then an acidic afterburn tailing off, but no middle where the hop fruit, or resins, or whatever, ought to be. It's fine but forgettable, tasting like an average session IPA rather than its full 5% ABV with proper malt credentials.

Its fraternal twin is Flat White Stout, this one at 6% ABV, a collaboration with Upside Coffee of Fairview. There's lots of roast in the flavour but specific coffee notes are scarce, at least at first. The sense of coffee is really only engendered by the creamy texture, and maybe a touch of brown sugar sweetness. It takes a minute or two for the coffee bean oils to make their presence felt, and they're at no point excessive, adding an extra layer to the mouthfeel, as well as a warming rich coffee flavour. I liked how, despite the added ingredient and gimmicky name, it never loses sight of being a basically good stout, just one that happens to have some coffee in it.

Last of this trilogy is a contract brew: Brethren Brown from the Midlands Beer Collective. It seems, from nowhere, that everyone's making brown ales these days. Expect more in subsequent posts. This one is a monster 6.7% ABV and a clear red-amber colour, rather than brown. It's surprisingly dry for a big, dark beast, opening with light plum and raisin before turning floral and then full-on bitter. The finish is quite acrid, mixing punchy hops with the sharp bitterness of roasted grains. It's all a bit severe for my liking; brown ale, even with an American twist like this, should be softer with more of a sweet malt character. And browner too.

Moving across town to The Black Sheep next, a pub I've been making much more use of since they introduced live tap listing. It was the first place I noticed Galway Bay's latest: Hearts & Feints, a Citra-forward double IPA which acts as a companion to Weights + Measures session IPA, as reviewed last month. It looks similar: pale yellow and very murky. The aroma is a beautiful medley of funk and citrus: limes and weed. The body is appropriately full given the 8.5% ABV, and there's an eye-popping juiciness right from the first sip. I was reminded of the first time I drank Of Foam & Fury, in the same pub over four years ago. So much so I ordered a taster for comparison. The elder statesman of Irish DIPA is paler and drier than it used to be, much bitterer than this fruity and dank young pretender. Even at identical strengths in the same style they make for a fun contrast. I definitely prefer the hop fireworks of Hearts & Feints, however.

Over on the cask array, one could be treated to the rare spectacle of a cask Berliner weisse in a dimple mug. O Brother's The Whippersnapper  is the beer in question, just 4% ABV and dry-hopped with Amarillo. The cask had been on a few days, and I never got to try it kegged, so I'm not sure if what follows is a description of what it was supposed to be. I liked it, though. The sourness was very mild, almost unnoticeable, and there was a beautiful soft and zingy lemon sherbet quality. The light melt-in-your-mouth candy effect was definitely aided by the effervescent texture and I'd imagine wouldn't stand up to full carbonation. My overall impression was of a pale 'n' hoppy modern English bitter, a sunny beer garden refresher. It's something I'm very much on board for. Berlin can wait.

Back over to the keg taps next for a YellowBelly. Diamond Heist is 5.3% ABV and described by the brewery as a "Belgian style pale ale". I wasn't sure what I was going to get. My pint arrived a deep orange colour with very little head. On tasting... woah, that's Belgian! It has all the fruit and spice of Duvel: banana, orange, clove and nutmeg. This is set on a wholesome rye-bread base and finishing tannic, like sweet black tea. Maybe its the acrobatic complexity, but this tastes much stronger than it is, which is fun: you can pretend you're in Belgium being decadent, even when you're only necking a quick pint.

The White Hag launched their collaboration beer with Norway's Haandbryggeriet last month. Hag & Haand is a barrel-aged apricot pale ale with Brettanomyces and I caught up with it at P. Mac's. It's just as well that 75cl is the main format for this one because I don't think it's quite finished. It's extremely fruit forward, to the point of tasting like a jam or jelly. There's a thick texture to match, giving an impression of real ripe apricot. Just an edge of the oak shows through, sappy and bitter, not mixing well with the sweet side. That flashes only briefly before we're back to the stonefruit again. The Brett funk is more apparent in the aroma than the flavour, and the only other complexity is a slight twist of white pepper. It's one-dimensional; one-and-a-half, tops. But there is lots of sugar for the Brett to chomp through. I think it'll be a year or five before we really find out what this can be.

Where next? UnderDog, of course, and a pint of M-Alt, an Altbier by Third Barrel. This was designed by the brewery's visiting German intern Alex (you can read his recipe here), and was based on Schumacher Alt. It was sweeter than I thought typical of the style, full and fuzzy with lots of warm-fermentation character. Wheat, milk chocolate and melanoidins all feature in my notes, as does strawberry, secondarily. There's a nice and peppery noble hop bite but it lacks the matured lagered cleanness of the real thing. This is serviceable, but sailed too close to an Irish red ale for my comfort.

The pub round-up finishes in 57 The Headline with a glass of the new Trouble Brewing double IPA Space Juice. "DDH", of course. As perhaps implied by the name, it's a weird creature, where the first sip brought a bizarre clash of tropical fruit, vanilla, yeast twang and a metallic bitterness. All very unsettling and impossible to relax with. At its centre there's boozy over-ripe peach, reflecting the 8.2% ABV. The smoothness and the sweetness hint that something like an imperial version of Ambush was the intent here, but it's too hot, too harsh and not clean enough. It could be it's just a sub-style I don't get, but it's not my kind of beer either way.

New bottled Porterhouse beers are a rarity, though I'm hoping they'll be more commonplace now that the new brewery is up and running. Bounty Hunter is the latest, a chocolate and coconut porter with added lactose. As one might expect, there's lots of coconut. The aroma is husky and toasted; the flavour bringing the chocolate into play as well. For all that, it's surprisingly dry, with a powdery desiccated coconut character. The texture is light as well, and the carbonation low, making for easy drinking, although at 5.2% ABV it should really have a little more heft. You don't get much from the base beer, no hop or grain character to speak of, but then it is meant to be all about the coconut. I wasn't wowed by it the way I was by Independent Coconut Porter last year -- it lacks the sumptuous coconut oils that one displays. It's fine, though. No complaints.

I collected that in DrinkStore, alongside their long-awaited collaboration with Whiplash. It's called Embrace the Daylight and is a Cascadian dark ale of 6.3% ABV, made with four different malts and four American C-hops. It poured out like a milkshake, forming a thick beige-coloured head over a pure black body, while smelling enticingly of lemon, bergamot and bitter herbs. I was poised for something serious but it's actually light and fruity; delightfully so. There's a tangerine juice element, and then some darker stout-like roast, some liquorice, before finishing on a grassy bite from the rye. The finish is quick and it leaves little aftertaste. It's all very well balanced, drawing on both sides of its nature and putting them to good use.

Also from DrinkStore, this one which isn't new but of which I was unaware; in fact I caught it in the last months of its shelf-life. Sour Smack purports to be the first in a limited series from Clonakilty Brewing. The label is otherwise short on information, other than it's 5% ABV and bottle conditioned. I poured carefully but couldn't avoid getting a few gritty bits into my glass, turning the bright orange liquid yellower. There's an enticing aroma of melon, peach and apricot: sweet and juicy with a tart mineral edge. The flavour is very Belgian, with the candied orange and old-world spices found in that nation's best blonde and pale ales. De La Senne's excellent Zinnebir leaps immediately to mind. The sourness is almost missable behind the fresh zest and is no more than what a squeeze of Jif lemon would give you. Rather than puckering your cheeks, the tartness serves merely to accentuate the juice, and it's a noble calling. Lightly textured, softly carbonated and beautifully balanced, this is a thirst-quenching triumph and very worthy of a repeat brew.

Bringing up the rear, New Ireland Beers is a new label by Dean Clarke of distributor Premier International. First out is Savage a pale ale designed by Rossa O'Neill and brewed in Dublin at Hope. It's a bright orange colour with a slight haze. There's a fresh orange candy aroma: enticing chew sweets, bubblegum and Fanta. The flavour is more nuanced, with tangerine rather than jaffa, plus added mango and passionfruit. It has a sufficient bitter greenness and a yeast spicing that almost tips over into an off-flavour but thankfully the hopping is bold enough to hold it back. The texture is very light, even for just 4.8% ABV, and that does make it a little thin. I can see how it would work as a sessionable quaffer however, by the six-pack or pint. Overall a great first effort and I look forward to where New Ireland takes us next.

All these and I still haven't reported on this year's Alltech festival yet. Stand by...