Chillax

I think this is a first for me: enough winter specials from Ireland's breweries to warrant a round-up post. Put on a cosy cardigan, light the fire, open a box of luxury seasonal clichés, and let's see how they stack up.

First out of the selection box is Vinternatt, brewed by Galway Bay but with the assistance of Bådin, for some Arctic authenticity. It's 6% ABV and brewed with orange peel and cinnamon, pouring a handsome and wholesome dark ruby. I feel the hygge just looking at it. The fruit and spice are to the fore in its aroma, conjuring the season admirably, smelling like a warm kitchen as the Christmas baking is happening. Although it's the lightest beer in our set, the texture is nicely rounded, and while there's no real heat, it's full and filling. The nine different types of malt are where that body comes from but they don't contribute much to the flavour directly. We're told the base is a Scotch ale recipe and to expect toffee, but I didn't get that. We have the orange and cinnamon at the front again, as in the aroma, though I'll note that they're relatively subtle -- I'm thankful in particular that the cinnamon isn't a foghorn blast of raw sticks, as found in too many Christmas beers. After this there's a old-world bitterness, earthy and vegetal, but again balanced and relatively understated. And that's pretty much it; a quick finish and no aftertaste. Seekers after novelty might be a bit miffed by how calm it all is, but it works, with the body being its best feature, something entirely appropriate to a winter warmer. Hooray for subtlety.

Kinnegar's answer to the season is a new version of their Winterland stout, this year's being 7% ABV with added vanilla and hazelnut. Though the pour was lively, it settled after a moment to a shiny black with a stable tobacco-stain head. The hazelnut has control of the aroma, which is dry and woody. So there's quite a turnaround when the flavour is powerfully sweet, the vanilla laid on thick and custard-creamy. I can't really find the hazelnut element in this, but there is a dry side: a dark coffee roast from the very fine stout at the base. As well as the coffee, there's dark chocolate, summer fruit, rose petals and herbal liqueur; all things that make strong stout worthwhile. If anything, the honking vanilla is a distraction and doesn't really add anything positive. The beer would taste just as delightfully wintery without it. Combining the vanilla and burnt-caramel element gives it a crème brûlée feel, and if that's the sort of thing that makes your Christmas, have at it. It left me hankering for more of the serious roast, heat and bitterness, however. Dessert can wait.

Happy tenth birthday to Dungarvan's Gallows Hill barley wine, originally featured here on Christmas Eve 2015. Now they've produced a barrel-aged version, matured in ex-bourbon Irish whiskey casks from Great Northern, raising the ABV from 8.5% to 10%. Last time I dinged it for being too hot, but this version isn't, I'm happy to say. Dark fruit and spicy fresh oak present an alluring aroma, while the foretaste leaves no doubt that bourbon was used in its production. It has that sour lime character of many American whiskeys, balanced by sweeter vanilla. The finish is dry and a little splintery, but not excessively so. All that made it difficult to find the beer in the equation. The raisin and prune effect from the aroma does appear in the flavour but elides somewhat with the spirit: those are valid whiskey flavours too, and at first I couldn't be entirely sure that they were brought here by the beer. They sit embedded in a bread or fruitcake malt base that took me a while to spot, but is its own form of sweetness, separate to the vanilla, and very much a beer thing. And while it's not hot in the marker-pen-phenol way, there's a definite warmth to this, one which is felt more than tasted. You will need to enjoy, or at least tolerate, bourbon in order to appreciate it, and if that's not a problem you'll find a beautifully mellow sipping beer. It may not have Santy on the label, but it's the epitome of wintertime beery enjoyment. A half-litre at a time? That's a full Christmas film of your choice.

Lough Gill takes us out, with a late addition to their winter 2025 range, one which hadn't yet appeared when I covered the bulk of them last month. It's called North Star (unfondly remembered as the name of a misconceived Guinness brand extension back in 2006) and is another of their barrel-aged imperial stouts, Christmassed up with a maroon label and the addition of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and cocoa. Ulp. That suggests an absolute mess, but they have integrated the disparate elements beautifully, creating a confection which tastes of chocolate, marzipan, gingerbread and cherry liqueur. Even though it's a whopping 12.6% ABV, and has the sticky, unctuous texture to go with that, it's a beer of nuance and balance, keeping its syrupy dark sugar clean and accessible, while the candy and spice enhancements are, if not subtle, at least appropriate to the broad flavour profile. Above all, it tastes mature, the ingredients fully complementary to each other, with everything playing its part and not seeking to dominate the others. I had mostly finished it when I remembered the barrel ageing. As usual, Boann whiskey barrels have been employed, but it doesn't taste especially barrelly. I guess once you add vanilla you're going to lose any vanillin subtlety from the casks. No matter. This is gorgeous, and the perfect Christmas season beer to go out on. Trust Lough Gill to deliver.

Well, we're heading into the sharp end of the Christmas period now. If you have access to any of the above, they're all well suited to what the season has in store. Lough Gill's is the one for your quiet moment away from all the heat and noise, however.

Encroaching darkness

Now that we're properly into winter, I get to look at some of this season's new release stouts. It's called journalism; look it up.

First, we have the return of a beer series from days of yore: Lublin to Dublin. This is a collaboration between Polish brewery Pinta (not in Lublin) with Irish brewery O'Hara's (not in Dublin) and was an annual release stout during the last decade. For the re-up it's a nitro-canned coffee stout and 5% ABV. The nitro works well for the visuals, providing a flat-topped crema over the dense black-brown liquid. For all that nitrogenation deadens aroma, there's a good waft of coffee, all fresh and sweet and oily. The texture is smooth to the point of flat, and the flavour doesn't quite bring the coffee suggested by the aroma. It's sweet and creamy, causing me to check the ingredients for the presence of lactose, but oatmeal seems to be the sole party responsible. Then there's a strange savoury tang in the middle of the flavour: slightly stale and sweaty, with a mineral bitterness, almost sour, meeting the dark grain's sharp roasted edge. I thought this was going to be quite a cuddly beer, but it turns harsh very quickly. I took my time over it but didn't find it softening as it went along. Normally I'm fine with the more serious and grown-up sort of stouts. This, though, didn't sit well. I think it's the disconnect between the joyful coffee-cream aroma and a much sterner flavour. Try to avoid that if you can, brewers.

The Winter Seasonal 2024 from Hope is an Export Stout, and a proper one, with 7.5% ABV and 48 IBUs. It's a very dense black in the glass, with a thin but persistent head. I thought I was in for a bitter one, but it's very chocolatey, set on a surprisingly light body. Though the hops are low-key, it's still good, and has enough character to justify the "export" label while also being accessible and easy-going, having much in common with the lighter sort of session-strength stout. There's an almost wine-like dark fruit leading on from the chocolate, with an accompanying heat. Beyond that, I don't have much else to say: it's enjoyable, in an unchallenging sort of way. If it weren't for that ABV, I could have happily had a few of these in sequence.

Also very much designed with the season in mind is Winterland 2024 from Kinnegar. They've changed the concept again, this year giving us a Salted Chocolate Stout of 7% ABV. There's a slightly Christmassy spiced wine effect from the aroma: mature grape tannins and a dusting of oregano or rosemary. It's fizzier than I would have expected given the style and strength, but does get properly creamy when allowed to flatten out. The chocolate is immediately perceptible in the flavour as the dark and crumbly sort, classy and probably expensive. The bitterness from that segues into a different kind: green and sharp, like cabbage leaf or cooked spinach. I had forgotten about the salt, but it makes an appearance at the very end, just a gentle kiss of salinity, right on the lips. I liked this. Anyone who thinks they're getting a box of Milk Tray in a can will be in for a shock because it's serious stuff: grown-up tasting, but delicious.

Possibly the first smoked stout I ever encountered was the one called simply Imperial, brewed by Cuilán Loughnane during his tenure at Messrs Maguire. It was light-bodied and drinkable, despite being 7% ABV and loaded with peated malt. Ever since, that's what comes to mind when I see the words "smoked stout", though few live up to it. I was ready to try again when I saw Galway Bay had collaborated on a smoked stout brewed by Czech brewery Sibeeria. Tourist Triangle is only 4.2% ABV, however, and the smoke is subtle to the point of invisibility. The aroma is largely caramel or treacle, smelling more like a Czech tmavý lager than an Irish stout. Its flavour, too, is mostly quite sweet, though the caramel is joined by both a burnt-toast roasted grain element and a faint lacing of savoury smoke. I'm not sure I would have identified this had I not been expecting it, although it does build on the palate as the pint goes down, leaving an ashen residue by the end. While it's certainly not kippery or phenolic, this doesn't quite suit me. Mostly I would like more of the smoke -- a bit of barbecue char or meaty umami -- but my main issue is that caramel sweet side, something I associate with breweries that haven't quite got the hang of stout. Maybe the dryness from the smoked malt was supposed to balance that out, but it doesn't: both sit as parallel tracks in a flavour profile that would benefit from better integration.

The archaeology-themed barrel-aged imperial stouts from Lough Gill are also back for another round. This year the newcomer is Oseberg, named for its fermentation with kveik, though the barrels were also an unusual choice: Palo Cortado sherry. I don't think it quite worked. The base beer is a tad characterless, with little more to offer than a basic milk chocolate flavour. Maybe the idea is to keep things simple to let the barrel complexity do the heavy lifting, but perhaps because it's a wine cask rather than a spirit one, the barrel part of the flavour is also low. There is merely a wisp of raisin and prune flavour, but a whole honking amount of booze heat with it. It's 13.4% ABV, so a certain amount of flame is expected, but this has passed well beyond warming and into hot, lacking any mature mellowness. While the beer isn't flawed as such, it's not the equal of the others in the series. Oseberg doesn't need to be back next year.

That was a surprise: Lough Gill doesn't usually put a foot wrong in the strong-and-dark arena. Kinnegar and Hope are still nailing it, though, and I would like to see much more by way of black beer from the latter.

Flashing the lights and sweeping up

And so we bring down the curtain on 2022 with the year's final post. It wasn't a bad one for me, all things considered, and I was able to get out and about more than in previous recent ones. This was the year beer festivals returned, and I was lucky enough to get to attend them in three different countries. While I tot up the particular highlights, I'm aided by something suitably strong and wintery.

Kinnegar has substantially re-jigged its sweet stout Winterland for its second outing. Now it's gone imperial, with the ABV up at 9% and coconut as the added ingredient. Is that Christmassy? Christmassy enough, I guess. It's thick in the glass, shimmering black under a tan coloured head. The aroma is sweetly floral, suggesting rosewater or cherry liqueur to me. They haven't gone overboard with the coconut, and before that arrives it's a roasty and bitter old-fashioned stout, perhaps more in the Foreign Extra genre than imperial. There's a slightly unctuous quality, giving an early impression of super-strong filter coffee and leaving that as residue in the finish. The coconut makes an appearance in the middle where it's very much dry and toasted rather than fresh and moist. This tones down the novelty factor and complements the dark grain well. Despite the slight severity of the bitterness this fulfils its role as a cuddly winter beer very nicely.

So I am positively aglow as I face into...

The Golden Pint Awards 2022

Best Irish Cask Beer: Brehon Black Hills
Options around Irish cask beer have been severely limited this year and it didn't feature at any of the Irish festivals I went to. On the plus side, JD Wetherspoon has a new commitment to Irish cask, making arrangements with Brehon and Dungarvan to have at least one of theirs on the handpumps at any given time. I've not yet seen Dungarvan's Black Rock stout in the wild, but have had the pleasure of Brehon's excellent Black Hills (aka Ulster Black) oatmeal stout and it really sings in this format. Do not pass it up if you see it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Third Barrel Funk's Old Brother
This aged Brettanomyces-fermented red ale showed up at the Fidelty festival over the summer where it wowed me with its endlessly unfolding complexity.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Land & Labour Bière de Rhubarbe
Ireland's spontaneous-fermentation guru would be claiming a few spots if this were a top ten instead of single winners. However, this was the one I thought most accomplished of the offerings so far, and was a highlight of the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival where there was plenty of competition.

Best Irish Canned Beer: O Brother Opus One
We have not been short of big stouts this year, with Lough Gill, Larkin's and Wicklow Wolf all releasing multiple versions. Opus One, a 12.5% ABV job given a gentle whiskey barrel treatment, was my favourite of the lot. Everything to enjoy about the style was ably demonstrated.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Eik & Tid Barbar
When I'm compiling these, I try as much as possible not to refer to notes. I'm looking for the memorable ones. This Norwegian sour ale I found on tap at BXLBeerfest was one of the year's showstoppers for me. I don't remember exactly how it tasted, but I remember how it made me feel. A close second place goes to the mighty Keesmann Herren Pils, and drinking it at source in Bamberg was one of my year's beery achievements.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: HORAL Oude Geuze Mega Blend (2021)
I've had a few vintages of this and they haven't all been brilliant. This one, however, was utterly magnificent, even by the standards of high-end oude geuze. A  nine-way collaboration seems like a recipe for watered-down mediocrity but instead they've made something better than I've had from any individual producer.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hoppin' Frog T.O.R.I.S. the Tyrant
It was fun going through all the B.O.R.I.S. variants back in February, and it isn't often that such a variant would outshine a classic original. T.O.R.I.S. did, though, simply by bigging up what was already there. Fair play.

Best Collaboration Brew: Otterbank/Third Barrel Time Will Tell
Like our Irish Keg winner, this was another heavy red ale given the Brett 'n' bugs treatment with spectacular results. It arrived in April as the first in a collaboration series which then went no further. Was the brew day that bad?

Best Overall Beer: HORAL Oude Geuze Mega Blend (2021)
The fact that I drank this in early January and I'm still thinking about it means it's the obvious candidate for the top prize. I have another bottle too, so you may be seeing it here again.

Best Branding: Larkin's
Brightly coloured cartoons of anthropomorphic animals aren't just a sound financial investment, they also look good on beer cans. I've been enjoying the most recent Larkin's rebrand, especially the action foxes on the imperial stouts.

Best Pump Clip: Ca' del Brado Cerbero
I went through my photos for the year and found very few pumpclip images. It seems cool bars and festivals don't use them much any more. I liked the shaggy purple doggo on this old ale from Emilia-Romagna's finest, however.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Whiplash Chimes
Second year in a row for Whiplash, which I doubt anyone familar with the brewery's can art will be surprised at. Chimes is a pale ale produced for the Bunsen chain of burger restaurants. "Let's put a burger on it, which is also a bunsen burner". Simple, a bit daft, but it amused me and that's what counts.




Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay Brewery
I'd be prepared to give them this on foot of the return of Märzen To The Fire alone, but we also got new Two Hundred Fathoms, a West Coast IPA that actually means it, a bunch of stouts and some fun tinkering in the broad Belgian farmhouse genre.

Best Overseas Brewery: Moersleutel
The Dutch brewery graduated from one whose beers I enjoy when I find them to one I actively seek out. It was all imperial stouts until this year's Borefts Beer Festival where I tried a double IPA they'd made and it was at exactly the same high standard. They're occasionally available in Ireland, if you want to find out what the fuss is about.

Best New Brewery Opening 2022: Original 7
This was a tough one. 2022 has been much more about breweries closing than opening. We said goodbye to Metalman and St Mel's, and are watching with concern as Eight Degrees slips into a zombie half-life while the stupid multinational that acquired it tries to find a buyer. There have been rays of light, however, especially up north, but nothing that I've actually been able to drink. I haven't had any beers from Cork's Original 7 either, but I'm giving them the award for what they represent: the spirit of independent brewing after Molson Coors has come in and absolutely trashed the brand you built previously. Let's hope for something similar for Eight Degrees.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Foeders
It has taken me far too long to find my way to this geeky heaven in Amsterdam, very much one of those for-people-like-me bars. An excellent beer line-up and lovely service. If they gave the floor an occasional sweep it would be nearly perfect.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2022: UnderDog @ The Legal Eagle
"Will it / won't it" was the talk of Dublin's beer scene since version one shut up shop during the throes of the pandemic. Consequently there was proper elation when Dublin's only beer-first pub found a new home, where the winning formula of constantly rotating high end beers and first rate service has been reinstated with more legroom and actual windows. Most pleasing of all is that fact that the regulars are back and once again we have place to pull up a barstool and set the beer industry to rights with whomever is there to listen. There was a late contender for the title with the arrival of Fidelity on Queen Street just last week. More about what's going on there early in the new year.

Beer Festival of the Year: BXLBeerFest
So many great candidates but I'm picking this one because it was the most me of them. The range of beers and breweries wasn't the biggest, but there was a theme of wild and funky running through it which I wasn't expecting but valued hugely. The atmosphere was upbeat, the seating was plentiful and at the end you got to go drinking in Brussels. If all that seems like the kind of thing you might enjoy, stick it in your calendar for late August.

Supermarket of the Year: Polonez
There wasn't a whole lot of special interest beer at my usuals, but I did enjoy the occasional foray into the eastern European supermarket chain for exotic items, mostly of the lager variety.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Mace SCR
I usually go in for something specific and come out with a bag bursting at the seams. Serendipity, thy name is the Mace on the South Circular Road, at the back gate of James's Hospital.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
Can't argue with the numbers here: I bought more beer from Craft Central than anywhere else in 2022. The system is simply too easy: new beers arrive, they go up on the website, I order them and pick them up next time I'm passing. There's a slight premium to be paid for the convenience but it's very much worth it to me.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: none
I usually award this one by default for the single book I read during the year, but I don't even have that for 2022. A symptom of wider malaise in the beer publishing industry? Nope, just me being bad at reading.

Best Beer Blog or Website: BeerFoodTravel
April was the only month that Liam didn't have a new post for us, which counts as prolific in beer blogging these days. It's all great stuff too, meticulously researched and entertainingly written. This Golden Pint is very much a personal token of appreciation for the effort that goes in.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @alldoomandgloom
In-jokes are the best jokes; the more specific and audience-tailored the better. Ross gets to them faster and better than I do. I don't know how much longer I'll still have a Johnson to give, but for now it's his.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: @PilotBeerUK
They last collected this one from me in 2016 but they're still at it and it never gets old. I don't get to drink their beer and daft tweets is the second-best thing a brewery can produce.

There. That'll do for 2022. I have a generalised bad feeling about what 2023 will bring to the small and independent brewing sector in Ireland and abroad so I'll sign off with a wish of good luck to all who may be affected.

Play to winter

Kinnegar's Brewers at Play series reaching 20 coincided with the brewery's tenth anniversary so they celebrated by splitting it into two different lagers.

Brewers at Play 20÷2: Anniversary Pilsner was first out. It's 5% ABV and a bang-on medium clear gold. The bang-on-ness continues in the aroma and flavour. The former is mild and unobtrusive, with just a faint dry hay quality suggesting that noble hops are on their way. Said hops get properly delivered in the flavour: grass, spinach, celery, finishing dry and almost shading towards the unpleasant burnt-plastic effect I sometimes get from traditional German hops, but not here. The taste is buoyed up on a thickly textured weighty malt base which sacrifices the beer's crispness a little but does make it a more complex experience: no simple quaffing lager this. I enjoyed how it treads that line between easy lager and multifaceted sipping beer -- something the best German brewers do effortlessly but is unusual for Ireland. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Pilsner is easy but rauchbier is hard. I was intrigued and a little apprehensive about how they would fare with Brewers at Play 20÷2: Anniversary Rauchbier. It took me a while to find out because it's very foamy and I only have a wee Kinnegar glass. That did give me time to appreciate its deep chestnut colouring. The aroma suggests they've nailed it, all warm soft ham and bacon, with no harsh kippers. On tasting it has a lot of the signature Schlenkerla flavour, and the fact that I find myself trying to find points of difference is a testament to its quality. The smooth richness isn't quite there: it's a little sharp and thin, the carbonation interfering with the taste somewhat. And there's a very slightly harsh edge to the foretaste meaning it takes a moment for the smoke's more genteel side to kick in. But these are inconsequential details; they really have managed to recreate the classic Bamberg rauchbier experience in a very impressive way.

Life can't be all play, however. It looks like number 15 in the series has graduated to being a normal part of the range. Winterland is a new milk stout with vanilla, slightly beefed up from BaP 15, the ABV rising to 5.3% from 4.8%. Although it's sweet and creamy, it goes for coffee roast in a big way so ends up tasting like an Italian coffee-infused dessert: tiramisu or affogato, with a crisp wafer biscuit on the side. The gravity boost hasn't given it the full-on creaminess that I wanted from the previous iteration, but it's definitely an improvement. I particularly liked how the dessertish qualities are balanced by quite an intense roasted bitterness. With this one, they're definitely not playing any more.

Play resumed shortly afterwards with Brewers At Play 21: Barleywine. Just barleywine (or "barley wine" if the creeping Americanisation of European beer styles bothers you): no kooky ingredients or post-fermentation treatments, simply a hefty and warming 10% ABV. In the glass it looks comforting and thick, chocolate-brown, turning garnet when held to the light. It smells sweetly of fruitcake and cola, and the mouthfeel isn't as heavy as I had been expecting; though it's far from thin, there's a lightness of touch which really aids the drinkability. With an American name and an American at the helm, I thought we were in for some big Bigfootesque hopping, but that's kept on the downlow to allow the malt take centre stage. It's glacé cherries and strawberry jam in the middle, with a harder metallic bitterness in the finish. Its olde-worlde stylings might miff a few punters more used to the brasher barley wines, but I liked the understated quality here -- perfect calm winter sipping fare.

Keep 'em coming, Kinnegar! The games are only just beginning.