Well I never!

It started with a tweet from business journo John West: where is local Sapporo lager brewed? I know that Asahi is brewed at Shepherd Neame in Kent; I noted more recently that cans of Kirin Ichiban come from Weihenstephaner in Bavaria, of all places; but Sapporo was not on my radar. And indeed has never featured on this blog. Asking around finally yielded an answer from local distributor David of Noreast: Europe's Sapporo is brewed at the Guinness brewery in Dublin. Cor!

As it happened I had a bottle in the fridge, so took it out to toast my new-found knowledge. Sapporo is a handsome deep gold colour. It smells boringly sweet, like a million other mass-produced ersatz pilsners. But the flavour does have something going for it. There's a classic central-European grassy hop bite, which was a very pleasant surprise. It also has the full and soft texture of a decent helles making it a lot more satisfying to drink than stereotypical dry and gassy mainstream Japanese-style lager. A decent crunch of malt husk finishes it off.

While I'm on the subject of Asian lager, I lunched in Arisu Korean barbecue on Capel Street recently (highly recommended) and was bemused to see they stocked imported Hite lager. I explored the beer of Korea in Seoul a couple of years prior to starting this blog and Hite wasn't a particularly fond memory, though neither were Cass or OB for that matter. Still, here it was: man up and give it a go. Straight from the bottle, of course.

On this occasion it reminded me a lot of Tiger: it has that horribly thick and estery banana flavour I always get from Singapore's flagship beer. It's barely tolerable when ice cold, but any degree of warmth at all turns it sickly and difficult, in a way that this sort of chugging lager shouldn't be. If you can't create the complexity of Sapporo, at least make it dry.

All of these macro meanderings were enough to guilt me into getting some proper Asian craft beer. That involved another tasty lunch, this time at Yamamori's restaurant on Ormond Quay. It has been far too long since I last tried any Kiuchi beers, which the chain imports into Ireland. The Hitachino Nest Lager was entirely new to me and happily fitted the theme of this post.

I was expecting something exceedingly average, but this it an absolute beaut. It's a plain yellow colour topped by a fine white foam, and at 5.5% ABV is a little stronger than the norm, but that's very much in its favour when it comes to accompanying food -- once again the body is wonderfully full and satisfying. The first sip provided a juicy burst of melon rind, turning to bitterer orange pith on the end. I don't know how this was done, but I suspect it may be down to the judicious addition of Sorachi Ace hops: enough to give it a very distinctive taste but without drowning the consumer in coconut oil. Amazingly, this bright and zingy flavour was still present even as my bottle was coming up hard on the stated best-before date. It's a robust little owl.

Given some of the rubbish that gets sold in Asian restaurants around here, and Yamamori's exclusive hold on Kiuchi, it's a shame Sapporo isn't more prevalent. Its weight would make it a much better counterbalance to spicy food, for one thing. I can understand why they don't sell it at Arisu, however, and I still wouldn't swap the Hitachino Lager for it.

Getting a rise

Yesterday's post was about Diageo's attempt to take advantage of Ireland's growing appetite for new beers. It's far from the only major player in the country to do so. In fact, they're all at it. Forever nipping at Diageo's heels is Heineken, and the Dutch behemoth has taken a very different approach with its latest offering.

While the new Guinness porters were released with huge fanfare and saturation marketing, Rising Road Pale Ale is almost a stealth beer. Only for the fact that it seems to mostly show up in bars where Heineken has a foot firmly in the door -- the places that have Tiger and Paulaner on tap already -- there's no way of even beginning to guess where it comes from.

My first impression on ordering a pint is that it's not "pale" by any stretch of the imagination, but is resolutely copper coloured. Tastewise it has a lot in common with its Diageo lookalike Smithwick's: a similar crispness and the slightly metallic tang of English hops. At the centre there are lots of very clean and quenching tannins, and hiding behind this a toffee base that gradually comes out of its shell as the beer warms.

The low-level hopping, and flavour generally, is certain to disappoint those drinkers who have just started associating the phrase "pale ale" with bold citrus bitterness. It certainly disappointed me. That said, it's technically flawless and perfectly potable. Though if it's priced higher than Smithwick's on the same bar, on account of being a pale ale dontcherknow, it's not worth paying the premium.

Edited to add: Rising Road appears to have been subsequently rebranded as "Cute Hoor". The tap badge still doesn't mention Heineken.

Love lager

When it comes to beer, Ireland is pretty much synonymous with stout. As far as I can tell, this is largely down to Diageo's marketing power rather than what anybody actually drinks. The latest figures , from 2006 (p.12 here), say that 63% of all the beer sold in Ireland is lager (stout is most of the rest, with ale a mere 5%). The typical Irish pub certainly offers a dizzying array of locally brewed lagers. You'll find Bud, Carlsberg, Heineken, Miller and Coors Light side-by-side on almost every bar. More upmarket places will also have draught imports like Stella Artois and Beck's Vier, and bottles of Sol, Corona and Tiger as well, while pubs serving a less affluent clientele will have local Amstel and Fosters bringing up the rear.

When Ireland's first lager brewery closed up shop in the summer of 1893 after a meagre 19 months in business, I'm sure Mr Stoer who owned it never dreamed that the daring new style he found in Bavaria and the US would one day rule supreme in Irish beer. Yet when the latter-day beer pioneers Oliver and Liam set up The Porter House in the 1990s, it was inevitable that lager would be a key component in their success. The first brews were called Probably Lager and WeiserBuddy, each with its own distinct and individual branding.

Of course, the multinational which holds the licence to brew Carlsberg and Bud in Ireland threw a fit, and the beers were hastily renamed. I've already covered the Porterhouse's Bud clone back here and today I'm looking at the other two lagers they make and sell: Temple Bräu and Hersbrucker. And yes, I'm well aware that by writing about fancy-pants microbrewed beer I'm breaking my own Session rule on plain everyday lager. Sue me.

I got my first sip of Temple Bräu in just before the rain started and we had to leave the beer garden of Porterhouse North. I hadn't tasted it in a long long time so had basically no expectations, other than what you see here: a fizzy yellow lager aimed at the mass market. I was still surprised, however. It's nice. The body is quite full and comes close to the creaminess you get in the best German pilsners. The aroma indicates a definite hop character and it tastes pleasantly bitter with a long aftertaste. All is not completely rosy in the beer garden, however: there's a bit of a metallic tang as well, right in the middle of the whole thing, though not enough to spoil the enjoyment. Despite its flaw, Temple Bräu remain a tasty quaffer for sunny afternoons.

Inside, I moved on to Hersbrucker. Once upon a time, this was Mrs Beer Nut's regular tipple but she quit a couple of years ago, citing an unpleasant change in the beer. I had never been a fan so was very much on the alert as I took my pint back to the table. Rightly so, as it happened. Hersbrucker, slightly darker than Temple Bräu, is damn near undrinkable. The only thing that saves it is its watery hollowness. The flavour starts with nothing but is followed by a massive disinfectant flavour: pure essence of hospital. Sharp, tangy and unpleasant. I did, in its defence, finish the pint, but I couldn't help thinking that I might have been better off with a pint of Carlsberg, sadly.

I was going to leave this post here, but the guilt about drinking microbrewed lager got the better of me. I had to go back to my roots.

It's very hard to find a pint of Harp in Dublin. It was still relatively common in the mid-1990s but pretty much disappeared soon after. Diageo brew it in Dundalk and just about all of it heads north across the border. Fortunately (or not), there are a couple of hold-outs around town, one being O'Neill's of Suffolk Street, a vast pub that seems possessed of the desire to stock every draught beer that exists anywhere on the Irish market. They have a Harp tap. Since it's the beer I drank most when I started drinking beer, I felt I owed you all a pint.

And it's not awful. I was astounded at how unawful it is. It's not in the least watery and has quite a sweet foretaste with a bit, but not much, of a bitter kick at the end. To be completely frank I doubt I could tell this blind from your typical pale Czech lager. In fairness that's probably more a damning indictment of what the multinationals have done to the established lagers of Prague and Plzeň than any kind of kudos for Diageo, but still: I could actually drink Harp without complaining. That's an eye-opener for me.

And that's all I've got to say on the yellow fizz of Ireland. Post your linkages somewhere on here, or e-mail me or whatever. A round-up will be forthcoming some time in the next week. In the meantime, I'm off to Belgium for the weekend where I won't be so much as tempted by a Jupiler. I'll likely be Twittering my way through Cantillon's public brewday tomorrow, but unfortunately won't be able to read your jealous howls until I return.

Requiem for crap beer

At the launch of the latest editions of his Bridgestone Guides to eating, drinking and sleeping in Ireland, John McKenna had some choice words for the much-lauded Irish pub:

Our pub culture is dying, whilst our restaurant culture is thriving. The Irish have decided to choose restaurants over pubs, simply because restaurants offer us service as part of the experience and service is a concept that is alien to so many public houses. The era of the pub is over.

And he's right. The cosy cartel which the publicans have enjoyed for several decades now, and the influence of their many friends in high places, have meant that they have never had to raise their game in the customers' interests. They've never experienced real competition nor had to take any risks which could have an adverse affect on their income. Risks like serving food or decent beer. I should add that Mr McKenna is no gastrosnob or vinofundamentalist -- pubs and beer get a very fair treatment in the Bridgestone media, and the McKennas are among the few mainstream Irish commentators to have recognised Galway Hooker as the national treasure it is.

My daily three-mile commute from the inner suburbs to central Dublin takes me past three pubs sitting derelict, having closed in the last year. I can guarantee you that not a one of them served anything worth eating or drinking, preferring to rely on the general assumption that a liquor licence and membership of the LVA amounted to a licence to print money. They were wrong. It took a while, but people evidently decided they would rather drink elsewhere. Add the value of the land to a property developer and the value of the licence to a convenience store chain, and the remaining regulars can sod off.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not yearning for a city full of swish gastropubs. The nearest thing we have is the Bull & Castle, and its sea of "reserved" signs on empty tables is the least appetising feature of an otherwise wonderful pub -- one backed by a successful high-quality restaurant chain so therefore a bit less averse to taking a risk on good beer, and where good food goes without saying.

No, I just think pubs would be facing a happier future than Mr McKenna predicts if they took a look at their customers for once. Shortly before Christmas I was sitting in The Long Hall, a fine Dublin pub firmly on the tourist circuit. Over my bottle of Guinness I saw a troop of Americans wander in, make themselves comfortable and, when the barman approached to take their order, they asked to see the desserts menu. On being told that no food was served in the place, at all, ever, the coats went back on and out they went. I wondered how often that happens -- foodless pubs are pretty rare in the US and UK. It's the sort of basic business sense that Irish pubs have never had to bother with.

The practicalities of food aside, it could be that pubs should simply be charging less for their beer and not, for instance, adding their own cut to any increases in tax or wholesale price, as they always do. And if they're chasing premium prices and a more affluent crowd then please give us something better than Tiger, Krombacher and the other dull yellow lagers which are treated as the height of sophistication because their TV ads are artier.

Give us quality. Give us variety. Give us value for money. It's not rocket science. The off licences and supermarkets can see how that works, and your response of having your friends in government threaten and cripple them is not going to work. Drinkers will not flock back to you the way they used to because you are not giving value for our money. We'll drink at home or we'll drink in restaurants.

Opting for the former the other night, I had a bottle of Brakspear Oxford Gold, poured to a hazy orange shade, with some bleu d'auvergne and onion cheddar on fresh brown bread. I'm well impressed with the beer, which has a beautiful earthy fruit nose carried through into a foretaste full of spiced oranges. It's organic, so I'm wondering if its Target and Goldings hops came from a country where alpha acids are more highly prized than England. Either way, despite carbonation that's a smidge on the high side, it's a fine example of what can be done with the basic building blocks of English beer. Along with the hoppiness there's an exciting gunpowder flavour to it I really enjoy and most associate with home brewed ales. Nice to see a commercial brewery coming up to that standard.

The acidity cuts beautifully through the creamy blue cheese, but fades in time to let the mouldy funk stand alone at the end, deliciously. The sweetness in the cheddar's onions is heightened by the contrasting bitterness of the beer, and vice versa. This was a good idea.

Last week I met with the PR chap behind the new Beer Naturally campaign, being run by Ireland's two macrobrewers plus AB-InBev. It's aiming to raise the profile of beer among the foody and winey types, and as such is a laudable exercise. I was surprised when he told me that enthusiasm was high in the pub trade for the campaign, since it looks to me like the kind of thing pubs would normally run a mile from: making good food and offering appropriate beer to go with it. If I could think of a single pub where there was a possibility of a nice hoppy ale and a simple plate of bread and cheese, I'd have been there instead of my kitchen.

Die bürgermeister

Gourmet burgers are the new rock 'n' roll in Dublin at the moment, and a new fancy joint opens every couple of months. I had avoided all of them until this afternoon when I found myself in the vicinity of Jo'Burger in Rathmines and reckoned I'd chance it. It's fashion victim heaven, and I think an effort has been made to have a beer list reflecting this uber-avant-garde-ness. None of your Tiger or Erdinger for the bohemians of Dublin 6; instead you may choose between Duvel (in two sizes), Vedett or Schneider Weisse Kristall. I opted for the latter as I've never had it. Kristall, in general, just doesn't do it for me.

First surprise was how pale it was: a bright washing-up liquid yellow. It's very fruity, even by weissbier standards, with a powerful banana punch up front. I've read and heard a lot about clove flavours in weiss but I had never before encountered them in real life. After a couple of sips of Schneider Kristall, however, there were the cloves climbing into my nose from the back of the palate. I was impressed, but I very much doubt I'll ever opt for one of these over normal dark and cloudy Schneider.

Opposite Jo'Burger there's an Aldi, currently selling 5 litre minikegs of Dortmund's DAB Original for €15. I went home with one, feeling like Gene Hunt carying a party seven (second TV reference in two posts: need to get out more). Minikegs are very popular in Germany, but are relatively new here, and mostly contain Irish-made Warsteiner or Heineken. DAB is a cut above either. Following the instruction to serve at 8-10° C, I found it had a very pleasant full, smooth and ungassy mouthfeel, very like an ale. There's plenty of head, but I'm led to believe that's a feature of minikegs. The taste is dry and corny; smooth yet interesting enough to hold your attention. I understand that Dortmund lagers are very similar to kölschs, despite the latter being top-fermenting ales. I can see the similarity in this, but it's definitely easier drinking than most any German kölsch I know.

And with that, my Maßkrug (pictured) is empty and I must return to the minikeg. Four litres to go. Prost!

The Alan Partridge Project

Last year I reported on a visit to a dire pub in what used to be rural England but is now just off the road to somewhere else. This week I went one further and found myself in a generic low-rent business hotel in the English midlands: exactly the sort of Travel Tavern that Alan Partridge used to live in. It was, of course, a real ale desert (how did he survive so far from his beloved Director's Bitter?), with the bar taps dominated by InBev products, including Boddington's. It's a very sweet, light keg bitter: unchallenging but still quite tough drinking. I stopped at one pint.

My trip was far from a total waste, however. With some careful planning I found myself with a couple of hours to spare in central Manchester. I had picked out a handful of pubs worth visiting, but never got past the first: the gloriously appointed Marble Arch. This quirky boozer is kitted out in steel-and-ceramic Victorian bling and boasts a curiously slanting floor throughout. Out back, the house brewery produces a range of cask and bottled beers, the latter available to take away. Everyone in the house was drinking Manchester Bitter, a shockingly pale yellow lager lookalike. The resemblance ends there, however. This has a strong fresh hoppy aroma and greets the palate with a lemony bitterness which would appeal to any witbier fan. It's a wonderfully refreshing classic bitter and, I can only presume, the sort of beer that Boddington's would like to be.

The house range also includes Stouter Stout, a very sharp, bitter, but creamy stout. The abundance of hops is there right from the nose and is carried through in the strong rich bitter flavours. For a stout this is just too tart to my taste: IPA dressed as stout and off-puttingly weird, despite the care and attention that obviously went into making it. The house also makes Ginger Marble, another very yellow ale. The clue's in the title here, but in case of doubt there's a sweet, candied ginger aroma first off. This is followed by a gorgeous back-of-the-mouth raw ginger burn on the first swallow, with a legacy of ginger nut biscuits on the lips. I think this is the best ginger-flavoured beer I've ever tasted and would make a superb aperitif. And every flavoursome beer the Marble Brewery produces is 100% organic: proof that most everyone else is just doing organic wrong.

Of the guest ales, Spitting Feathers caught my attention first. This is a "smoked autumn ale", thick and creamy with little foretaste and almost reminiscent of a nasty keg ale. The smoke comes through afterwards in a vague sort of way, after some unpleasant dry mustiness. My limited experience of smoked beer has led me to expect the full-on bacon flavour experience and you don't get that with this. Two guest taps were displaying clips from Scottish craft brewing's enfant terrible Brew Dog. When I asked the barman whether I should go for Hype or Buzz, he told me he'd sold more Hype that evening, so that's what I ordered. Again, this is a very pale affair but it more than makes up for it in texture and flavour. It's warm and hits the palate with a hefty bitterness. A heavy and filling beer, all-in-all, despite having a mere 4.1% ABV.

With a heavy heart I left the pub and headed to the airport. A little previous research allowed me to stave off the return to keg ale for a few more precious minutes. The online menu of terrifyingly cheery family restaurant Giraffe included, among the Corona and Tiger, Brooklyn Lager. This is an impressively amber beer with a hoppy aroma, smelling for all the world like the lighter sort of American IPA. On first sip there's a full body and a strong malty flavour, carrying through to a dry bitter bite at the very end. Brooklyn is a thinking man's lager, and not just because the brewmaster is now a published philosopher.

A delay to my flight meant the time eventually came to bite the bullet and approach the main bar, where Worthington's Bitter was the house ale. Unlike the Boddington's, this is properly amber coloured. It has a striking burnt corn flavour, liked singed tortilla chips. Flavoursome, but not really in the right way.

I feel Manchester definitely warrants further barstool-based research. It'd just be a question of tearing myself away from the Marble Arch.

The irony of Asian lager

How come there's a Singapore beer called Tiger and a Thai beer called Singha? What's that about, eh?

Anyway, Singha is one I've seen on sale for years and years but today was the first time I'd tried it. Expecting a basic hot-country lager, I was surprised. In strength it resembles the Munich lagers, weighing in at 6%, and it has a similar well-honed smoothness. But instead of the Bavarian sweetness, this has a dry and slightly sharp malty bite. Isn't it great when a beer turns out to be more interesting than you expected?

Beyond Tigers

Off on my travels again, and I paid a flying visit to Singapore, calling in at two of its microbreweries. Brewerkz is a monument to the faux industrial school of brewpub architecture: a huge converted riverfront warehouse. It does a sizeable range of beers across several genres.

On the lighter side, their Golden Ale is a typical grainy microbrewed lager, slightly cloudy and quite light. Unusually, also, they do a Fruit Brew which was made of strawberries on my visit but which apparently changes. I found it quite bland: too warm and with a touch of ale hops neither of which should feature in this kind of beer. The strawberries were barely identifiable.

Moving on, they do two IPAs: the plain one being very similar to the mainstream English IPA and the Xtra IPA having a subtle malty foretaste followed by a serious hops afterburn. It's 7.2% and tastes it.

Other dark beers include a bock lager, which is cloudy rather than properly dark and carries a delicious smoke and burnt caramel flavour which reaches parts of the nose other beers don't reach. They also do Hopback, which claims to be in the real ale style, and is indeed complex and bitter like the best of them, but is a tad too fizzy to be counted with proper real ales, in my opinion. There's also the inevitable stout, this one being made with oatmeal. It has a strong roasted grain flavour and is very heavy and satisfying.

All in all, the range and style of Brewerkz makes it one of my favourite brewpubs and definitely worth a visit should you need something other than Tiger or a gin sling.

Less worth the effort is the Singapore branch of the Paulaner brewhouse chain. I had to cross a ring of steel put up for the World Bank conference to get to it and I don't think it was worth it. They produce a helles and a dunkel, both rather insipid and neither as good as the mass-produced mainstream Paulaner. This is the first of this chain I've been to and I suspect it is just pointless big-brewery gimmickry of the highest order. You don't have to be independent to make great beer on the premises, but it helps.