Round Ireland with a thirst, part 2: Belfast

After a bit over six years in office I stepped down as Beoir's treasurer at the beginning of last month. It was pleasing that my valedictory annual general meeting was held in Belfast, a city that's really starting to hit its stride as regards beer and brewing, despite the many political and cultural hurdles that decent drinking faces in Northern Ireland. BrewBot on the Ormeau Road was a great choice of venue -- it's got a big long boardroom table and everything -- but they went above and beyond by having two beers on the menu brewed (or at least badged) especially for the meeting on the automated BrewBot nanobrewery, for which the pub acts as the showroom.

Beoir Red Rye Ale was 6% ABV and hits the flavour targets for the style pretty methodically. Above all there's a kind of hoppy fudge sweetness at the centre, given an extra bitterness by the rye right at the front and tailing off into oily coconut. There was a slight yeast bite but not much, and the hops do a good job of drawing attention away from it. The aroma was probably the weakest point: the hops did not manifest here at all, but otherwise it was invigorating, refreshing, and not too distracting from the matters at hand.

I waited until the conclusion of business before requesting a Beoir Double IPA at 8% ABV. This is a hazy orange colour and entices you in with a sweet orange sherbet aroma. The bitterness is punchy and direct right from the first sip but doesn't really follow through all that well as regards hop flavour, just a very mild and generalised citrus buzz. There's a dry smack at the end and then a warming fuzziness from the booze. It's a beer that's felt more than tasted, and happily didn't destroy my palate before I got to try more from BrewBot's selection.

Turning to the English options, I had two from Manchester's Tickety Brew brewery, beginning with a 3.8% ABV Cherry Berliner Weisse. It's the pale pink of pink grapefruit juice and rather sickly looking. While it does deliver a certain mild cherry aroma, the flavour is a very standard watery and wheaty Berliner weisse flavour. True to style perhaps, but it helps one understand why people first thought the style needs syrup added to it.

You get a bit more for your money out of Tickety Brew's Peach Ice Tea Pale, a hazy yellow 4.6% ABV number which I bought bottled. There's a big yeast bite but plenty of fresh peach as well, and a nice tannic dryness keeping the sweet fruit in check. Overall, despite the flaws, it holds together rather well and makes for fun drinking.

Bullhouse Brewing in Newtownards is one of the province's newest breweries and I got to try a couple of their offerings on the day. At BrewBot it was Uber Tuber, a saison made from potatoes. It sounds gimmicky but from a purely sensory point of view it's not: this presents as a very straightforward, good quality saison, clear gold and cleanly dry with just hints of barnyard straw. Later on, up the back of Bittles Bar, I found Bullhouse's Small Axe, a gorgeously juicy 4.8% ABV pale ale. This offers peach, pineapple and lychee, all in a row, all without any other interference. After a few mouthfuls it settles down but is still nicely sessionable and far from bland.

Also in Bittles I had a bottle of Farmageddon's California Common. It's very sweet for the style and the low 4% ABV hints that it didn't ferment as far out as it should have. I look for a dark bourbon biscuit flavour in this style but this gave me a full-on gooey Galaxy Caramel chocolate bar. Stylistic concerns aside there's nothing wrong with it, but it would probably suit fans of brown ale more than California common.

The day also included an excursion to Belfast's oldest existing brewery Hercules (est. 2014), in the harbour area, out beyond George Best Airport. Though it seemed to come from nowhere with its decent-but-unexciting Yardsman Lager, Hercules was a long time in the making, growing out of established speciality beer importer Phoenix Drinks. The distinctive riveted keg fonts really stand out and they cropped up pretty quickly around the bars of Belfast, all of which is me back-pedalling frantically from my previous belief that it was all fakery. But no, all Hercules beer comes from this cramped little unit, currently on its second brewkit, a Dave Porter job acquired from Brú in Meath. As is the way of these things, a further upgrade is becoming increasingly urgent.

Yardsman Belfast Pale Ale I'd tasted before at last year's CAMRA NI festival, where it was not in good shape, and brewery owner Niall had his own explanation of how that happened. It was much better on keg, however: dry, clean and with a green celery note. I'm a fan of this sort of slightly astringent, mineral-chalky pale ale and would like to see more of them around.

Entirely new to me was Yardsman Double Stout, a 4.3%-er designed to slot in neatly among the mainstream brands, er, brand. I'm sure it gets labelled as a "Dry Irish Stout" in places where such labels are applied, but it's not especially dry, or bitter. Instead there's a very accessible mild chocolate character for something creamy and smooth but with just enough character to avoid being bland. Think Porterhouse Plain or Whitewater Belfast Black and you're in the same general ballpark. If you're wondering about the name, the brewery makes claims that the recipe is influenced by 19th century Belfast stouts (there was an original Hercules Brewery on Royal Avenue around 1850) but trying to flog a 4.3% ABV beer as "double stout" in Victorian Belfast would likely have got you thrown in the Lagan.

I was sent home with a bottle of the last of the current Hercules line-up, Yardsman IPA. At 4.3% ABV next to Belfast Pale Ale's 5.6% it's guaranteed to piss off the prescriptivists, but they made that rod for their own backs. It presents a rather murky orange colour and smells of jaffa zest and oaty biscuits. The flavour is very sweet with lots of fun orange juice, a prickle of sherbet and maybe a hint of marmalade zing. Unsurprisingly, the body is thin, and the carbonation is low because I got a short-fill bottle that wouldn't have been sold anyway. I liked it. The ABV and low bitterness may disappoint a few IPA purists, but it fits happily into my head space among the orangey English IPAs like Fuller's and White Shield.

Back in town, I wound things up at The Woodworkers. There aren't many places in Belfast you'll find a Catalan brown ale on draught: reason enough to order Darro by Balate. It has all the classic chocolatey caramel you'd expect from the style, a certain dry roasted bite for balance, and then a slight sour sharpness on the finish which I'm not sure is supposed to be there but doesn't interfere. Decent stuff, though probably more of a taste sensation down by the Med than up in the Wee Six.

Beer of the moment, however, was Skiffie Worlds, a 5% ABV  all-Equinox IPA brewed by Manchester's Marble for an international boating event that happened on Strangford Lough back in July. My half arrived looking sad and headless but there wasn't anything wrong with the flavour. It's an absolutely banging hop beast, full of spiky oily resins and all the hardman hop flavours like pine, lime and having your tongue burnt off with acid. It should have been far too bitter and unbalanced for me, but it just worked, screaming quality and freshness loud enough to drown out any concerns about nuance or complexity.

Then nothing for it but a carry-out from the offy next door and train-beering it back to Dublin once more. A lot of work went into organising the day out, so big thanks to Reuben, Stephen, Steve and the teams at BrewBot and Hercules. And of course to Dr John, Beoir's new Master of Coin. I'm really enjoying retirement so far.

A coastal tour

It's been a few years since I was last at the Belfast Beer Festival run by CAMRA, but the recent accelerated growth of the Northern Irish brewing scene was enough for me to book the Friday off work this year and head north. The Ulster Hall was already buzzing when Andrew and I arrived a few minutes after opening. Conveniently, the local beers were all gathered down at one end of the square bar and stillage, though a couple crept around the corner onto a second a side for want of space. It would be a fun way of tracking the expansion of local beer in Northern Ireland by how far along it gets. We can declare victory once it's all the way round.

To business, then. Top priority was a brand new co-operative outfit in the Antrim seaside resort of Portrush: Lacada. They have three beers and, since they're a new microbrewery, I was a little surprised that they brew for traditional cask dispense, in contrast to Belfast's bleeding edge co-operative brewery Boundary. It made more sense when I discovered that sometime chairman of CAMRA NI, Philip Hernberg, is on Lacada's board. I started with the IPA, Giant's Organ, which was served a perfect clear gold colour and centres around a bright, fresh and clean lemon sherbet flavour, the hops balanced by a dry grainy finish. At only 4.5% ABV this is a highly enjoyable sessioner and, for a first effort, frankly stunning.

My honeymoon in Portrush didn't last long, however. Sorley Boy's Stash was next: Lacada's golden ale. Except it's only barely golden, heading more towards amber, and with a heaviness that I wasn't expecting at all. The malt is viscous and cloying toffee while the hops are harsh and vegetal. I found it very tough going and it reminded me a lot of one of my least favourite beer styles, pale German bock. Philip did admit the recipe needs work, so look out for an improved version in the future.

For now, that left just one more chance for redemption: a porter called Stranded Bunny. And redemption is delivered! This isn't one of your complex dissecting porters, it's simple and classical with a creamy body, a smooth chocolate centre and just the right amount of roast bite to aid drinkability. Again it's just 4.5% ABV, so very much the sort of beer you could stick with over an evening. It deserves a wide audience.

From the Causeway Coast we come all the way around to south-eastern corner of the province, where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea and you can't move these days for marauding Westerosi hordes. Mourne Mountains brewery launched back in September with three beers and I got to try two of them at the festival. Mourne Gold is a fairly typical golden ale with a fun sweet bubblegum flavour, though a less pleasant soapy character as well. It's certainly not bland, though it is quite heavy, reflecting the 5% ABV. Perhaps it's one that works better served cold from the bottle rather than on cask.

Next to it was Red Trail, a 5.5% ABV red IPA. It starts with a beautiful spicy, grassy aroma and the same thing comes through in the flavour, which is nicely dry with thankfully no sticky crystal malt. And that's pretty much all it does: it's a beer of few moving parts, but no less enjoyable because of that.

So much for the newcomers, next it's over to some of the festival regulars, starting with Mourne's neighbour Whitewater. Maggie's Leap is a new IPA. It's a very dark gold colour with a strange artificial fruit sweet aroma alongside a whiff of raw cereal. A dryly tannic smack accompanies the first sip, with the sweet fruit rolling in behind it. It's a charming beer and elegantly balanced, though a definite sideways step from any orthodox notions of IPA.

Hen, Cock and Pigeon Rock (it's a place in the Mournes) arrived around the same time as Maggie's Leap and is an amber ale, and a bit of a murky one, on the evidence presented in Belfast. It smells great, all plummy dark fruit and the dry roast found in the better Irish reds, but it's badly let down by a thin texture and it ends up tasting rather flat and worty. There are good principles in here, but the execution needs work, I think.

Last of the new Whitewaters is Ewe Rebel, a powerful 7% ABV IPA. I got a hint of phenols about the nose and this followed through to a slightly medicinal quality in the flavour. But that's almost lost with everything else that's going on. This is thick and laden with melanoidins but also packing a lot of tannin as well. Any subtlety gets kind of lost under the malt weight, and a light spiced orange note is all the hops manage to make heard. It's all a bit much. You can get away with this sort of thing if you make it smooth and warming, but this is just too jarring for even that.

We travel back up along the Co. Down coast and drop in at Ards, a brewery whose beers I only ever seem to find at this festival and at Bittle's Bar in Belfast. The new one was called Hip Hop and it's as dad-dancey as the name suggests. Though badged as a pale ale and claiming inclusion of very hip hops Citra and Nelson Sauvin, this tasted much more like a golden ale. There's a similar light bubblegum to that found in Mourne Gold and lots of grain and golden syrup of the kind I associate with quality pale lager. Proficiently made, then, but hoppy it ain't.

Just one very quick stop in Belfast city for a drop of Yardsman Belfast Pale Ale from the Hercules Brewery, the first beer of theirs I've tasted since the lager they launched with early last year. It's woeful: infected so badly it tastes of blue cheese. I almost threw up, and was very glad I followed the recommendations from several corners to have a taster rather than just ordering it. Hercules is definitely on my Exercise Caution list as regards their ales.

I'll finish on a brewery located about half way between the previous two: Comber's Farmageddon. I just had time for one and decided to take a chance on Farmageddon White IPA. This style is always a roll of the dice, this one doubly so because they've brewed it to a highly unorthodox 3.5% ABV. It's lovely, though. There's a surprisingly big body, allowing the spices to cover the tongue. You get peachy hops, floral lavender and a bitter pinch of bergamot. It's complex, yet refreshing and lots of fun. They've done an amazing job, considering the strength of this.

That's the locals taken care of. But I used my last couple of tokens to try a few of the English beers and I'll cover them, and the train beers on the journey home, in the next post. For now, cheers to CAMRA Northern Ireland and the local breweries they put on show for us. Here's to many more in the coming years.