Park life

It had been a whole six years since I was last at Bloom, Dublin's garden festival with a food-and-drink twist. The lovely people of Kinsale Mead (Drink the Atlantic Dry!™) were kind enough to supply me with a ticket and I went along on the Saturday morning of the June bank holiday weekend. Little seems to have changed so I wisely skipped the show gardens and headed straight for The Bloom Inn.

It was a brave move by Ballykilcavan to bring casks of their Blackwell Stout on such a sunny day, but it still tasted fantastic. I also availed of rare opportunities to drink Legacy cider and Connemara Lager on draught in Dublin. One local brewery took the opportunity to launch a raft of new and reformulated beers: Hope.

By coincidence, it was on my previous visit to Bloom in 2017 that I first tried Hope's lager, Underdog, and I don't think I've had it since. It seems that it was originally one of those beers created to fill a lager-shaped gap in the range but wasn't really a lager. Now it is. The new version uses classic pilsner hops Saaz and Mittelfrüh leading to a big grass aroma. Brewer Richie said they were going for something a bit north German in style but to me it tasted softer, with the gentle golden-syrup and fine candyfloss sweetness of a Czech světlý ležák. The body is certainly weighty for 4.8% ABV but it remains thirst quenching and very drinkable, so the redesign has been a success.

Next under the blade was Grunt, originally a saison, latterly a "spiced wheat beer" and now a witbier. Unhappy with the negative connotations of the name, they've decided to change that as well, opting for the much more positive and life-affirming Overboard. One of the few remaining timbers of this particular Ship of Theseus is the use of juniper, swapped in for the more traditional but divisive coriander. It still tastes very herbal and savoury, accentuated by a very dry base. Balance comes via the oranges in a concentrated marmalade effect. Like the Underdog, it's 4.8% ABV and well designed for summer drinking, even if it's not a cask stout.

Doubling down on the sunny vibes is the beer they produced especially for the gig: Bloom Lagerita. To create it, a lager was treated to a souring culture and given extra lime and agave syrup. The result is pale, greenish and 5% ABV. The lime is extremely dominant, tasting of sticky cordial rather than the real thing: if I got that in a Margarita I would be sending it back. What citric tang there is elides with the sour culture and there's only really a token appearance from both. Yes, it's another beer built primarily to be refreshing, but I would choose either of the other two ahead of it.

Or indeed the flagship session IPA, Hop-On. It now has a less-fun, alcohol-free sibling named Hop Off. I wasn't keen. The tell-tale wortiness is there, but there's also honey and a caramelised toffee popcorn thing which shouldn't be present in any kind of pale ale, as well as a damp, funky, sweaty, fermented silage sort of effect. It's like they've had a go at balancing the sweet and bitter sides, but the component elements wouldn't play along. I guess we must be at the stage now where there's a market segment which understands and appreciates all the varieties of non-alcoholic beer there are out there. For me, similarity to proper beer is the single important criterion and this is yet another one which doesn't manage it.

At that point I gave up Hope and headed for Kinnegar. Libby had the newest Tap Room Only special on the go: Raspberry Basil Saison. Despite every brewery and its hyperactive nephew putting out stuff like this these days, there was a genuine air of experimentation and innovation with this one. I was expecting dry and herbal but it's actually the raspberry that leads the flavour: tangy and little bit jammy, complementing a full and slightly sticky mouthfeel. It's only 4.3% ABV but was still no throat-washing quencher and demanded some time and attention. I don't think I would have identified the late-arriving savoury herb as basil, but I guess any sweet effect will have been overshadowed by the raspberry. Still it adds a character of its own, as does the very late-arriving saison spicing. There's lots to find in here but it'll make you wait.

Cheers to all the brewers who tolerated my blather for the afternoon. And if it's more Hope that you need, I'll be looking at the latest in their Limited Edition series very soon.

Cruiskeen Lawn

A balmy afternoon of dodging the showers in Phoenix Park was had on the June Bank Holiday Sunday when the Bloom garden festival rolled back into town. Organisers Bord Bia kindly sent me a ticket and, with one brand new beer making an appearance in the drinks tent, I had all the motivation I needed.

The format is pretty familiar by now: everything a gardener could wish for with regard to supplies and inspiration, and a major food and drink element too, showcasing independent Irish producers of pretty much everything consumable. Beer, cider and spirits get their own roomy tent, called The Bloom Inn. And new to the line-up was Costello's which, after several years as a client brewer, now runs Kilkenny's only full-production brewery and has finally expanded the range beyond its flagship red ale.

The new one is, perhaps inevitably, a pale ale. Beyond a Pale is 4.9% ABV and a dark orange colour. It's no middle-of-the-road milksop, however, and comes out fighting with a pithy, punchy bitterness. There's a gentler juicy orange middle, and a nod to modern tastes with a caraway savouriness. Overall it's nicely balanced, packed with flavour yet very accessible. With Kilkenny pretty much sorted for red ale brands these days, this will be like a breath of fresh air in its pubs.

(And speaking which, the Costello's-organised Kilkenny Craft Beer Festival is on this week, with various events around the Marble City. I'll be down tomorrow for Craft on Draught at Billy Byrne's.)

With the roster of new beers completed I dawdled around the other stands, enjoyed a couple of different Stonewell ciders, and dropped by the Hope stand to say hello. The guys had brought their prototype dry-hopped lager and, unsurprisingly for Bloom, it had run out. So it had been replaced incognito with their new dry-hopped lager ahead of its official release the following week.

It's called Underdog (not to be confused with the new Dublin pub of the same name) and is a bright golden colour with just a very fine haze in it. New World hops are very much the modus operandi here, but presented cleanly, simply and with the lighter flavours forward. So you get a spicy, spritzy, citrus-skin aroma, followed by a zesty mandarin punch that's just bitter enough to balance the sweeter peach element that follows. A sprinkle of heavier dank and a tiny white pepper complexity finish it off. It's very tasty and easy to drink. A criticism, you say? Well... one thing that bothered me is that it's not very lagery. It could quite happily pass as a pale ale, if a particularly light-bodied and crisp one. I drank it and enjoyed it but I was secretly thinking of Saaz the whole time. It's a difficult beer to be angry with, however.

That wrapped up Bloom for another year. As always with these events I hope that a few punters who were new to small-producer drinks took some new-found preferences home with them...