Wait, what?

"Oh, Valravn!" I thought, browsing the shelves in Redmond's. "I haven't had that in ages!"

Only when I got the bottle home and did a bit of research did I discover that I'd never had it at all. How did that happen?

This is the souped-up imperial version of Thornbridge's black IPA Wild Raven, though 8.8% ABV against 6.6% isn't exactly a radical transformation. It's an extremely dense black with a handsome off-white head. My bottle was a little on the elderly side but the hops were still getting busy, with Sorachi Ace's coconut elbowing the Nelson, Ella and Centennial out of the way. The thick darkness, in combination with the residual bitterness, give it a major bang of liquorice. A faint roasted element brings the finish, balancing in a way, but this is much more about those hops than the dark malt.

It doesn't taste anything like the strength, though. It's downright sessionable: smooth, tangy and bitter to the extent of mouth-watering, not throat-burning. I'm wondering whether it really needed to be this strong, but hey, I'll take it.

Quality stuff here, as might be expected. I'm just a little sad it took me this long to find it.

Picking sides

Last week I wrote about the Alltech Gathering held in Dublin in July, mentioning some of the internationally sourced beers they had available. I'm bringing us back to the press room for this month's Session which is hosted by Ding and is on the subject of USA vs. Old World beer culture.

There was a handful of American beers knocking around, and quite a few British ones as well. So I thought why not use them as a cross section of their respective brewing cultures and see how they measure up against each other?

Two particular American heavyweights came out of the fridge early -- an unspoken agreement among the assembled leeches and liggers that these ones weren't going to last long anyway. One was Stone's Old Guardian, an 11.6% ABV barley wine which shows the perfect balance-in-extremis that the San Diego brewery pulls off so effortlessly. Yes there's a certain sherryish heat to it, but not too much, and the heavy toffee tones remain smooth, soft and welcoming, not sticky. In amongst the cuddlesome malt there's a gorgeous herbal honey hop character, rising to an assertive, but exquisitely balanced bitterness. A class act from start to finish. Next to it, an IPA from Indiana legends Three Floyds. Blackbeard is created in the English style, they say, then oaked. I can just about detect the orange marmalade of pithy British hops but it's buried under a horrible plasticky sap flavour from the wood. It doesn't cohere as a recipe, isn't nice to drink and is a long way from tasting like any English IPA I've met.

We have to go downstairs to find what the Brits were up to with their pale malt and hops, and one that really impressed me was Sambrooks Pale Ale. I had previously associated this London brewery with reliable but not very exciting English styles, but this 4.5% ABV pale ale is bursting with sweet juicy mandarin and denser bitter jaffa notes. The complexity is topped by effervescent sherbet and spices, and all this through the application of local hops such as Admiral and First Gold. It takes a lot to impress an Irish beer geek with a 4.x% kegged pale ale -- we're swimming in the stuff over here -- but this multifaceted sessioner definitely stood out for me. I was less sure about Great Heck's Yakima IPA. This is 7.4% ABV but hides it well. It's one of those beers I had to take a walk around before knowing what to make of it. On first approach it smacked me with a sharp, funky and slightly musty flavour that took quite a bit of getting used too. I was most of the way through my half before my palate adjusted to it properly and after that it became more enjoyable. At the end I was still left with that mustiness, unsure whether to count it as a bug or a feature. I don't think I'd be running to this one again.

Back in the American camp, another strength-hiding IPA was Boulder's Mojo. 7.2% ABV this time, with quite an understated flavour, compared to the Great Heck beer anyway. There's the right amount of bitter kick and some beautiful smooth fresh peach flavours playing the good cop. The lack of heavy toffee in an American IPA is both literally and figuratively refreshing. A different kind of refreshing was offered by Abita's Purple Haze: a thin pinkish lager with a pleasant raspberry bite, but not a whole lot else to say for itself.

It still had the beatings of the UK's representative lager, though. Windsor & Eton Republika has won a number of plaudits lately but it just didn't work for me on the day, being heavy and sticky with a candy-sweet aroma followed by bananas in the flavour. Cleanness just doesn't feature.

Aha! So the UK is falling down on the refreshment front? Not so. We roll out the quenching big guns with Origin, a saison brewed as part of a side project at Stewart Brewing in Edinburgh. Masses of the exotic spicy mandarin notes I love in pretty much any beer (Galaxy, you beauty), but coupled with the light tartness and tickly prickle of a saison. I only had a taste but I could have handled a lot more.

Oh but America can do saisons too, albeit with a Belgian-owned brewery flying the flag: Ommegang and their Hennepin. It has a couple of ABV points on the Origin, at 7.7% ABV, pouring a wan cloudy yellow. The refreshing crispness I look for in this style is totally absent and instead there's lots of weissbierish banana fruit and a very obvious heat from the alcohol. We can safely award the saison contest to the Scots.

But we stay with Ommegang while we turn the lights down for the dark beers. Three Philosophers is a 9.7% ABV quadrupel, dark red and every bit as fruitsome and boozy as you might expect: plum, fig, some chocolate, but nothing that really struck me as different or interesting for this kind of strong Belgian-style ale. Founder's Porter was another that didn't exactly rock the style but it was highly enjoyable, laying on heavy liquorice and molasses to begin with, but finishing lighter and not sticky. That full-but-drinkable is always worth a few points when it's pulled off well.

Britain's sole contribution to the dark styles was Thornbridge's Wild Raven: a black IPA aged on brett. Yawn -- pointlessly piling hipster affectation on hipster affectation, with no real benefit to the drinker, right? Wrong! It hangs together beautifully, to the point where the brett funk is barely noticeable ('cos it's not there -- see comments), allowing the hops free rein. The aroma is a blast of fresh mown grass; the flavour a biting pithy bitterness. All this happens on a gorgeous creamy stoutlike texture. Textbook complexity, exquisite balance. I found the bottled form to be tough drinking bottled, but much easier on keg.

Despite the weight of numbers being against it, I think the UK wins out on this showing, but only by outdoing the New World on things that the New World is known for: big flavours, odd concoctions and non-traditional dispense methods. When the Americans tried to ape and improve upon native European styles, like saison or bitter, they just didn't achieve the right sort of effect, barley wine being a notable exception, of course.

Props go out to the US for encouraging more radical thinking when it comes to beer, but this random sample showed the British being better at putting it into practice.

Thanks once again to the Alltech team for assembling such a diverse selection and providing the opportunity to taste them.

Thorn on my side

Inevitable, really. Only a year ago I passive-aggressively ask the trade where the Thornbridge stuff is, and now there's more of it coming in than I can keep up with. So, this is a clearance of some stuff that's been sitting in my fridge for too long, plus some more recent acquisitions, all from the über-classy Derbyshire brewery.

I didn't get Kölsch until I went to Cologne. From the bottle and keg it had always just tasted like a dry pilsner to me, and a very plain one at that. What's the fuss about? That changed when I got to drink it closer to the source. The smoothness offered by the version served from wooden barrels in the better Cologne pubs adds a vital dimension to the Kölsch experience you just don't get any other way. So I was intrigued and more than a little suspicious when I got hold of Thornbridge's bottled take on the style. Would bottle-conditioning make that all-important difference?

Tzara pours a clear limpid gold. I was careful to avoid any sediment, but really there was very little to be found. The mittelfrüh hops are very apparent in the aroma: the heady fermented grassiness of warm silage. The flavour is sweeter, though, making the most of the carapils malt to balance the green flavours with a bit of residual sweetness. And most importantly of all, the carbonation is light. Not cask-smooth, but far from being pale yellow burp-water. I think they've done a good job here, and are showing the joy of Kölsch much better than, say, bottled Früh does.

Raven, Thornbridge's black IPA, doesn't mess about. From the opaque black-brown body comes a bolt of pithy aroma preparing the way for intense bitterness on tasting. Dominating the proceedings is flinty Nelson Sauvin in its dry, less fruity, incarnation. I get a lot of the harshness I associate with Sorachi Ace in large quantities but none of the fruity peachy fun that I feel the Centennial ought to be supplying.

The wife really enjoyed it, and got a good roasted dark ale flavour from it. I couldn't detect that under the citric punch: it's another one of those black IPAs I would swear is pale when drinking with my eyes closed. There's no doubt Raven is complex and interesting, but I just feel a bit abused by it. Too much of a workout for my weak and feeble palate.

Next up, Versa, the puntastic weissbier. It comes out a lovely, almost red, shade of gold and only slightly hazy given the style. At 5% ABV it's on the weak side, and offers very little other than wateriness on the nose. What it loses in welly, however, it gains in drinkability. No overpowering banana esters or other heavy flavours. Instead it's mildly zesty with an easy-going sherbet effervesence rather than full-on fizz.

I'm sure it's a perfect summer refresher but I've no objection to it in the depths of winter either.

For the proper chilly evening sipper I've reserved a bottle of Bracia, Thornbridge's super-limited strong dark ale brewed from a whole host of malts, including brown and peated; a plethora of hops including Sorachi Ace and Pioneer; and with a bonus addition of Italian chestnut honey. It's a beer to take very seriously indeed.

It pours slowly and unctuously, lazily forming a dark tan head. The aroma is odd: lots of roast, but the dryness is sweetened by a floral character which I'm guessing comes from the honey.

It tastes weird. Intense perfume pervades the whole thing and makes it hard to get at the beeriness beneath. I can just about detect the peat, and the roast barley is present on the finish. There's possibly a bit of chocolate buried in there too, but overall it's quite difficult to take. Still, I suppose when it's €10 for half a litre you don't want to be charging through it. I'm not at all sure I'd buy another bottle, and the price is only part of the reason.

And that concludes the beer reviews for 2011. All that remains for this the last post of the year is the handing out of...
The Golden Pint Awards 2011

Looking back on the 2010 awards (2009 is here), I think I can safely say I achieved my ambition for 2011: to travel. 12 countries and 4 of them new to me is a personal best. And the beer scene in Ireland has moved on quite a ways in the past year. I'm excited at the thought of similar progress over the next 12 months. Anyway, here's how it's all panned out:

Best Irish Draught Beer: Metalman Windjammer
A brewery that was no more than a logo this time last year stormed out of the blocks with a kickass flagship ale and this stunning summer seasonal. All kiwi hops made it a pineapple and mango flavour grenade. I'm limiting the award to the cask version, however. It all fell a bit flat when filtered and kegged. Caskless Irish pubs: start your engines.

Best Irish Bottled or Canned Beer: Knockmealdown Porter
Lots of Irish beers made an appearance in bottles this year, including old favourites such as Trouble Dark Arts and Galway Hooker. I give the prize to another brand new brewery for 2011, however: Eight Degrees and their hefty-yet-drinkable porter Knockmealdown, though Franciscan Well's Shandon Century was a close second.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Wild Esra on Cherries
Even at a festival where imperial stouts, barrel-aged rarities, sour one-offs and weird fruit beers abounded this one from De Molen had enough character to stop me and make me pay attention. It's the whole picture. The world of beer geekery in a single glass.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Great Divide Smoked Baltic Porter
They say Great Divide ain't gonna be exporting no more. I'm willing to donate one of the last bottles of this in the country to a local brewery for cloning purposes.

Best Overall Beer: Wild Esra on Cherries
No question. It's not a drink-all-year sessioner. It's an unforgiveably room-dividing one-off of the sort that shouldn't get awards from people who aren't insufferable rarity-chasing spoogebeerians. But it's just too damned tasty not to take the prize.

Best Pumpclip or Label: De La Senne Equinox
The wife spent a fair few days in Brussels on business this year, which meant a Belgian beer bonanza for me. Ordering by remote control can be a dangerous game but I've never had a problem in saying "Just anything by De La Senne. You'll know them by the labels." From a brewery with a wonderful eye for design, brooding Equinox is one of my favourites.

Best Irish Brewery: Metalman
You want to know what I think is missing from Irish beer? Bravery. With just a few exceptions, mostly from the established companies, we're still stuck in the Stout-Lager-Red Ale Beermuda Triangle of traditional Irish styles, only now we have a hoppy-but-sessionable pale ale thrown in too. Metalman, while sticking to a solidly reliable pale ale to make a name for themselves, haven't been afraid to play around with other ideas for the limited editions. So we had the antipodean-hopped not-quite-amber ale mentioned above for one, and second up was a peppered witbier made with saison yeast: Alternator. Beer is all about diversity and Metalman get this gong for giving us that from the very start.

More of this sort of thing, please, Gráinne and Tim.

Best Overseas Brewery: 1516
Back to the very top of the year for this one, and one of the highlights of my trip to Vienna. Breaking the lagerland mould with hoppy pale ales and plenty more besides. Bravery and diversity once again.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Bowe's Lounge
I haven't ventured too far from my usual local haunts in 2011: The Bull & Castle, Against the Grain, The Porterhouse, L. Mulligan. Grocer: chances are, that's where you'll find me. But we've seen an interesting development in Dublin pubdom this year. An increasing number of "normal" pubs -- some of them guidebook classics -- have started stocking beers from the independents. The bright green light on the O'Hara's IPA keg font is the most welcoming sight in any Dublin pub. It says "Yes, you can stay here for a drink".

The Palace on Fleet Street has long been ahead of this curve, but this was the year they went cask and got a Dungarvan beer engine installed. The Long Hall now has Hooker; there's Carlow bottled and draught beers in The Church on Mary Street. But one of the most enjoyable evenings I had all year was the Sunday night session in Bowe's Lounge. O'Hara's IPA on tap, Fuller's ESB bottled, and a casual yet wonderful trad session in the corner.

Bowe's is a decent, untouristy, unpretentious boozer that happens to take its beer a bit more seriously than most. We need dozens more like it in this town.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
I think the local highlight was Bloom in Phoenix Park back in June, but the geektastic Borefts festival at De Molen in September was something else entirely.

World-beating beers aside, it was the most enjoyable drinking session I had all year. Thanks to Derek, Ron, Lexie, Mike, Chris, Dom, Evin, Menno and Her Outdoors for making it so.

Supermarket of the Year: No-one
Looking back, I realised I've bought next to no beer in the supermarket this year. None of the offers have really caught my eye. The only one giving us any decent amount of diversity is Marks & Spencer, and their stuff is just too expensive for what it is. I've been pleased to see off licence chain O'Brien's really raise their game beerwise this year, with Carlow, Dungarvan and Eight Degrees all now in stock. But really, only the independents have been meeting my needs in 2011.

Independent Retailer of the Year: The Beer Club
Partly because it's headquartered on my doorstep, but mainly because manager Stephen has shown an incredible enthusiasm for the whole speciality beer segment. It has been a delight to deliver the tasting sessions in the basement (and if you were at one of them over the past few months -- thanks for being such a great crowd) and even more of a delight to be at the sessions where other people did the talking. I'm looking forward to more of those in the New Year.

And extras like this aside, I love that I can just nip around the corner to buy beers I've never had before. I never thought I'd see the day.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Oxford Companion To Beer
Simply for existing, and being a huge sign of beer's growing stature in the culinary world. The errors and ommissions, while they should never have happened, provide a new opportunity to help right the historical wrongs that have been done to beer. As such, The Oxford Companion to Beer is the antigen in the beer writing system, and Alan's wiki shows a healthy immune system.

Best Beer Blog or Website: DrinkStore
Yes, it's a shop that sells beer online, but I'm giving it this award for its role as a  reference source. New beer comes and goes on the Irish market quite quickly, and not everything gets reported by drinkers in the field or the responsible retailers like Bradley's in Cork and Jay at Hollands of Bray. When I'm wondering where my next blog post is going to come from, DrinkStore's beer section is where I look first. Where did I find out that, at last, Ireland had Thornbridge? DrinkStore's website.

Best Beer Twitterer: BoakandBailey
One of the best things about their blog is the way it acts as a sort of clearing house for informed and mature commentary on all things beery. Their long overdue arrival to Twitter has extended that to the microblogging world and we get wonderful links and observations that we would otherwise miss. They get this award despite the unfair tweeting advantage of having four thumbs.

A dishonorable mention, of course, goes to SimonHJohnson. If you're into beer, on Twitter, and not following him, you're doing it wrong.

Best Online Brewery Presence: Eight Degrees
Dungarvan got the gong last year for sheer busyness. This year, for the same reason, it goes to Eight Degrees (not that Dungarvan have slowed down or shut up or anything). Great outgoing support for the local businesses that stock their beers, and by extension great support for the customers who want to find and drink it. Howling Gale on draught is a rare beast: it's great when Scott and Cam give us the coordinates to find it.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Cheese, generally
I'm no wiser about the principles of beer and cheese matching than I was in January, despite the government dedicating an entire long weekend to teaching me. However, I've had an enormous amount of fun this year just picking random cheeses and beers and seeing what happens when they're put in close proximity. I'll be doing lots more of this in 2012.

In 2012 I’d Most Like To: Try going pro
I've had fun this year trying my hand at the whole public speaking malarky. Together with Stephen at The Beer Club I've discovered that there are people out there willing to give up their evenings to be talked at by me about beer (previously it was just a question of picking the bar stool next to me) and having a receptive audience and a bit of back-and-forth is very rewarding. So, more of that for 2012, until I decide I hate it and don't want to do it any more.

Which leads effortlessly into a shameless plug for the gigs I'm doing at The Carlyle Institute starting in January. Two hours; six beers; small classes; lots of cheery-beery banter and only limited quantities of awful puns.

Open Category: Most Exciting Beer City
By all accounts London has really got it going on at the moment. But I wasn't there in 2011 so can't comment. My award goes to Prague for its ale revolution sitting atop a well-deserved reputation for kick-ass lagers. Well worth a weekend if you're anywhere in the vicinity.

I wouldn't say no to a return to Vienna or Amsterdam, mind. It has been a good year.


But here endeth 2011. I'm off to the beer fridge to begin putting 2012 into some sort of drinking order.