Gold stars

As usual, the last post of the year brings the Golden Pint Awards, begun by Andy Mogg and Mark Dredge back in 2009 and celebrating the best of the year's beers and beer-related places and events.

And as usual I'm compiling mine with the aid of a suitable beer. Two, actually, this year: the bottled winter specials from The Porterhouse. I start with Dark Star Ale, a big-hitting 11%-er. It's a deep shade of ruby making me think it's going to be along the lines of a barley wine. And there is a certain vinous quality: ripe fruit and tannins. The wine gets hacked into a vermouth shortly afterwards when a herbal bitterness is introduced. As it warms the drinker is taken on a tour of the luxury goods aisle, passing fine cigars, high-end chocolate and hand-tooled leather. For all that, it's clean and easy drinking; the sweet dark malts don't build on the palate, getting thoroughly scrubbed off by the bitterness on each mouthful. It's a serious beer, but very tasty. It left me very curious about how it would fare after whiskey maturation, and I love that I didn't have to wait to find out.

Now that The Porterhouse has its own distillery in Kerry, the whiskey version is of course called Dingle Dark Star. It picks up an extra ABV point from the process though looks exactly the same. Honeyish Irish whiskey is very present on the nose but the difference is less apparent on tasting. It still has the raisins and the chocolate, it's just now there's an extra honeycomb complexity. Perhaps the biggest change is that it's smoother: all the hard bitter edges have been rounded off, quite pleasingly. The alcohol comes to the fore, and it feels much denser than the unbarrelled version, though also less complex. Anyone who wanted the previous one to be more stout-like will be comforted by this, and while it's lovely I'm personally not sure it's an improvement on the original. Still, it's an enjoyable slow sipper, which is exactly what's required as I face into:

The Golden Pint Awards 2017

Best Irish Cask Beer: Ursa Major
It's been a good year for Irish cask overall, and special mention needs to go to O Brother first of all for their consistent supply of cask beer throughout 2017. My single favourite was the strong brown porter from YellowBelly which I drank at the Franciscan Well cask festival this year. A further commendation goes to Trouble Brewing's Walk On the Mild Side too, even if it was improved by kegging.

Best Irish Keg Beer: The Harvest King
There were a remarkable number of world-class keg beers this year, especially in the sour and Bretted category. The White Hag's Olcan and Kinnegar's Phunk Bucket were both stunning at Hagstravaganza, and both are still around in bottled form -- try them if you see them. However it was YellowBelly (again) who made me put my glass down and say "wow".

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Independent Coconut Porter
Cheating because I drank this (copiously) when it was on draught, and loved it, but it also exists bottled and has just been re-released. Designed for those who don't tolerate half measure when it comes to coconut in beers.

Best Irish Canned Beer: The Fresh Prince of Kildare
Again, I probably had more of this triple IPA on draught than canned, and the canned version was slightly different, though still excellent. Dead Centre's début Marooned was another metal-jacketed delight this year.

Best Overseas Draught: Timmermans Oude Lambiek 2014
This was a surprise tick, presented by Thomas of John Martin's brewery at the EBCU meeting in Brussels back in April. I presume the brewery has vast foeders full of the stuff but have no idea how available it is. Well worth checking out if you see it, however. A special mention goes to Hill Farmstead's Florence.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Druif
Another sour one? Yeah, I guess. New Dutch brewer Tommie Sjef was pouring this at Borefts in September. You can't beat a grape lambic(ish) for accessible complexity, or complex accessibility, for that matter. Other bottled eye-openers this year came from Epic with their Elder Brett and the amazing 2008 vintage of Cantillon's Lou Pepe Kriek.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Pay It Forward
I had never heard of West Sixth Brewing in Kentucky before this cocoa-infused porter of theirs landed at the RDS in September, courtesy of the Brewers Association, and jolly good it was too.

Best Collaboration Brew: Touching the Scald
Perfection in a pint glass at 4% ABV. Props to Galway Bay and Whiplash for making it, and brown malt takes the Golden Pint Award for Best Malt, 200th year running.

Best Overall Beer: Independent Coconut Porter
Drinkability is the deciding criterion here, which means it came down to a straight fight between the Coconut Porter and Touching the Scald. Independent tips it on the complexity, so gets the prize. All great beer, the winner is the consumer, etc etc.

Best Branding: Whiplash
Gorgeous surreal and abstract collage artwork next to clean type on a white background. 2D photos (especially mine) don't do the Whiplash cans justice. A shout out goes to Hopfully, who have an art commissioner on the payroll and some really engaging design as a result.

Best Pump Clip: Holden
I liked the beer much more than the novel, but this artwork from O Brother captured the essence of the character perfectly, I thought. Whiplash's recent Scaldy Split gets a very honourable mention: I like the literalism of the interpretation.

Best Bottle Label: Marooned
Bottle? The can is the canvas these days. Brightly coloured squiggly artwork, as popularised by the Scandinavian brewers in particular, has become the universal indication that the contents of this tin are worthy of your time. I love how Dead Centre has ignored all of the fashion and gone with a handsome and minimalist monochrome design. The beer is pretty decent too.

Best Irish Brewery: Trouble Brewing
Seems to me the lads in Kill have had a pretty good year (and not just because they finally got rid of that Guilfoyle fella, lol, bantz). 2017 began with the arrival of Ambush which has quickly become a staple wherever good beer is served. The introduction of cans, and the range they selected to put in them, expanded their packaged offer from supermarket standards to fancy-dan craft. And there was the aforementioned cask mild, and Parklife, and Get Schwifty, while the existence of Graffiti, Dark Arts and Vietnow continued unabated. Something sour and hoppy would be appreciated, but they have sufficient bases covered to earn this Golden Pint, I think.

Best Overseas Brewery: Brew By Numbers
They seem to have disappeared from Ireland, unfortunately, but kept popping up on my travels during the year. In 2017 I had the pleasure of various BBNo beers in Holland, Italy, as well as their Bermondsey tap rooms. 05|25 was my standout, redefining murky IPA for me, but they have plenty of other wonderful stuff too.

Best New Brewery Opening 2017: Hopfully
The year of Dublin brewing that I had been predicting since 2015 finally sort-of materialised. I had hopes of two new brewpubs in the city but had to make do with one, in the form of Urban Brewing. Hopfully gets my Golden Pint, however, for nailing it from day one. Chris made some brave choices in the recipes he has launched with, and this beetroot saison drinker is especially happy with them.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Taphouse
Events, dear boy. The Taphouse celebrates... has been a marvellous feature of the local beer calendar, and the hospitality shown by Adam and his crew has been exceptional. Obvious but completely heartfelt shouts-out go to The Black Sheep and 57 The Headline, both still doing the thing they do brilliantly. And a nod to my international discoveries of the year, DeRat in Utrecht, Zum Franziskaner in Stockholm and LambicZoon in Milan.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2017: UnderDog
Oh you didn't think I'd forgotten it, did you? Even though it only opened in July I've possibly spent more time in UnderDog than any other pub this year. In my first post about it I opined that the real-time online beer list might encourage more beer specialists in Dublin to do the same. Lo and behold, several Galway Bay bars now publish a live list, while other pubs are using Find My Pint to do it. Keep it up, everyone.

Beer Festival of the Year: Toer de Geuze
It's somewhat arguable as to whether this counts as a festival, but the big marquee at Boon certainly felt like one. Also the fact that transport is organised by enthusiasts -- the Lambicstoempers -- really adds to the sense of festive merriment. So it's a festival. And, like the best festivals, affords attendees the opportunity to taste some of the world's truly great beers. I hope to be back in 2019 to finish the venues I missed.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield
I thought SuperValu on Sundrive Road was going to edge it this time, but they dropped the ball towards the end of the year. They're also fighting a tough battle trying to interest my neighbourhood in better beer. Fresh, meanwhile, has done an amazing job, rivalling many an independent for selection, availability of new releases, and personal service. They've taken this Golden Pint almost every year since 2013 and deserve it now more than ever. A special hat-tip goes to drinks manager Carlos here.

Independent Retailer of the Year: DrinkStore
Same old, same old, though now with a new website and more visible pricing in-store. A place I shouldn't take for granted. I'm not sure whether I'm permitted to offer an honourable mention to Molloy's on Francis Street since it's part of a chain, but I'm going to anyway as I found it particularly good for finding things this year.

Online Retailer of the Year: Martin's of Fairview
More business as usual: I still don't buy beer on the Internet, although somebody recently bought me a six-pack of Little Fawn via Martin's (cheers Will!) and it arrived and was very nice. A Golden Pint for you.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: 20th Century Pub by Boak & Bailey
Another more-or-less default one, I'm afraid. Pocket Beer Book (aka Best Beers in North America) 3rd ed. by Beaumont and Webb was fun for dipping (disclosure: contains stuff by me), however B&B's exhaustively researched and entertainingly written history of the English pub from the Victorian gin palace to the modern craft bar was my favourite. Alas I have not yet got around to Pete Brown's Miracle Brew so it gets precluded from this category through no fault of its own.

Best Beer Blog or Website: The Beer Monopoly
The aforementioned Dr. Webb put me on to this site back in the spring. It offers a very handy monthly summation of the global goings-on in beer, particularly among the brewing giants. I make extensive use of it when compiling the EBCU news page, if you'd prefer a more subscribable news source.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: BreitTank
It's gone a little quiet lately, but this account has definitely been the beer commentary for the times we live in during 2017.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Eight Degrees
Of the Irish breweries knocking out specials and one-offs on the regular, Eight Degrees appears to be the only one consistently publishing descriptions and vital statistics of each and every one. Yes it's the exact same reason I gave them this award in 2015, but it's still as important now. Everyone else, please try harder for the beer-buying nerds.

And on that begging note, thanks for reading throughout 2017 and have a happy New Year.

Caskstravaganza!

Franciscan Well's winter festival returned with a bang in late January. Now titled Cask Ales & Strange Brews, the 2017 iteration was bigger than any previous one, almost competing with the Easter festival with several dozen cask beers on offer, plus a handful of kegged specials. I went down as part of the Beoir judging team to help out with the competition on the Saturday.

I started my afternoon with a keg beer, however: Metalman's new Sgt. Pepper sage and pepper saison. It's a cheeringly light 4.8% ABV and presents equally cheerily as a clear dark gold colour. Much as I enjoy sage-infused beers it does have a tendency to dominate flavours but that wasn't the case here. At its core this is a clean, light and refreshing saison in which the herb seasoning is only barely perceptible. I would easily have assigned the pepper to the action of the Belgian yeast while the green wintery notes tasted more like rosemary to me than honkingly oily sage. Either way, it's very nicely balanced and started the day on a positive note. Look out for this fella on draught and in cans for the next while.

Herself picked one of the many YellowBelly beers to begin, their raspberry-flavoured Berliner weisse Raspberry Shower. I say "flavoured", but that's an understatement. From what was served it looks like a mass of pulped raspberries has been shoved into a cask and the beer poured in on top of it to fill the remaining spaces. It's an opaque bright pink with discernible lumps of fruit. And it tastes how it looks: of raspberries and lots of them. Behind that sits a very plain and thin Berliner weisse, mildly sharp and vaguely wheaty, but the flavours of fruit and beer didn't really meld together.

I'm wondering if it was just the bottom of the cask or something, because YellowBelly's Blackcurrant Shower was also on the go and it was very different. It was clear, for one thing: a flawless pinky-purple. Unsurprisingly the flavour was much cleaner too. Though presumably made the same way as the raspberry one, this opened with a classic wholesome grainy taste, imbued with a tangy sharpness. The fruit plays second fiddle to it, not distinctively blackcurranty but more of a generalised summer berry vibe. If guessing I'd actually have suggested there were raspberries in this. It's very refreshing and quaffable: smooth, without being a smoothie.

One more from Metalman before getting to work and that's their Raspberry Saison, from cask. It's another clear golden one with just a very slight haze. Despite the lack of pinkness the fresh raspberries are very apparent, in both the aroma and the flavour. At the slightly warmer-than-keg temperature there's a roundness and fullness to the tangy fruit taste, complemented by signature saison pepperiness. It's not particularly complex but I enjoyed it, though I think its refreshment power would benefit from being served slightly colder.

To the upstairs bar, then, and to the judging table. I was on the dark beers team and all entries were served blind, with Steve organising the operation and John doing runner duty. Like last year, I took my own notes as we worked through the entries and matched them to the names afterwards. The field was solely cask beers, no kegged ones were entered.

Only two were completely new to me, though there was a new barrel-aged version of Brehon's Shanco Dubh porter, which ended up being the whole judging team's pick for best dark beer of the festival. It's out in bottles now and I recommend it highly. Brehon's other entry was Pop Your Cherry (groh!), a cherry-chocolate stout of 5.2% ABV. It's intensely floral, with a sharply pink hibiscus taste. The chocolate, and indeed general stoutiness, is almost mute behind this, offering more by way of texture than flavour. After a couple of sips the flowers build to an almost perfume level of sharp bitterness that sits on the palate a long time. Too long, by my reckoning. With a bit of toning down this could be a great beer but it was just too busy to be enjoyable as is.

At last year's festival I had fun with YellowBelly's 7.5% ABV brown porter. Now it's back, ramped up to 8.1% and given the name Ursa Major. And it's even better than before. Still dangerously easy drinking, with a silky smoothness and a crisp, dry background. But what really makes it interesting is the up-front complexities, and I reckon these were particularly accentuated by the cask dispense. There's this beautifully sweet summer fruit flavour, all succulent cherries and ripe strawberries. They meld sumptuously into the soft milk chocolate in an extremely moreish way. Like its predecessor you really do need to keep an eye on how much you're drinking because this beer screams to be quaffed.

As I mentioned, Shanco Dubh took the top dark beer prize, with the host's Chieftain winning best pale beer, Dungarvan's Dark Mild taking best red/amber and YellowBelly's passionfruit lager winning both best specialty beer and best beer overall. Deservedly so, in my opinion. And back to the festival...

YellowBelly Mosaic IPA does make regular appearances in Dublin bars, though at almost €7 a pint for a 4.8% ABV beer I've so far resisted the temptation. The festival was far more reasonably priced so I took the opportunity to give it a spin, and it's very nice. The Mosaic flavour balances deftly on the line between honeydew melon and raw white onion, the fruit side helped by a distinct juiciness and a substantial amount of peach character. Soft and sessionable, yet complex, it's pretty much exactly what you'd want from an IPA at the strength, and it doesn't suffer in any way from being a single-hopper.

With time running short I only just remembered to try Torc Grodziskie but was very glad I did. This style of pale smoked wheat beer can sometimes be rather harsh and overwrought but this one, at an even 4% ABV, is light and very easy drinking. Which isn't to say it's bland or watery: you get a substantial hit of pure hickory bacon all the way through, but the finish is quick and the body is full enough to make it enjoyable.

Chugged down as my fellow travellers were leaving was The Beacon, a new one from Baltimore's West Cork Brewery whose wares we rarely see in my part of the world. This is an IPA and I didn't realise at the time that there was added grapefruit and orange in it. They got their money's worth out of them anyway, because there's a lot of sharp pithiness in this. The fruit blends seamlessly into what I suspect is a generous quantity of hops, which give it a thick and oily dankness set on a chewy malt base. To my mind it's very much IPA in the English mould, but a particularly aggressively bitter example, more lime and grapefruit marmalade than just orange shred. Not so easy to drink, but fun while you do it. I made my best effort at draining the glass and ran after my companions.


I caught up with them along the quays at The Bierhaus. Among the usual stellar selection they were pouring Cotton Ball Vienna, a Vienna Lager, by Cotton Ball. It's a pretty good example, even if the style is rarely an exciting one. 5% ABV and full-bodied with it, featuring a flavour that's all about the dark crunchy grain husk, finishing on a slightly roasty note. There's the classic lager cleanness which means for all its weight it doesn't get difficult to drink. Just as well, as train time approaches.

To the off licence for some train beers and I continued the lager theme. Among my picks was Švyturys Amber, which I don't recall ever having before. I'd been hoping for something a bit like the Vienna, but this is much thinner, with a light spongecake sweetness and a smooth texture, making it resemble a helles, including its colour: you call that amber? Inoffensive, but not terribly exciting. Perhaps I'd had enough beery excitement for one day.

A big thanks, of course, to the team at Franciscan Well for running another superb festival, and to everyone who pitched in with the competition and/or supplied me with pizza. If you haven't yet made it to one of Franciscan Well's festivals, the Easter gig will be on 15-16 April this year. Mark it!