Finishing the week with a round-up of assorted new Irish beers from all over the place.
Galway Bay dropped a new double IPA called
Double Super Fuzz, pale and murky in the contemporary fashion. The aroma is gorgeous: mandarin juice with a slight eye-watering acidity. That theme gets louder and more intense on tasting, the juice concentrating to near-cordial levels. There's a lacing of dank resins too, and both of these contribute to quite a sticky texture. It remains clean despite this. 9% ABV generates substantial booze heat but the burn is a precision blue flame. A hint of fried onion creeps into the finish as it warms, but not unpleasantly and entirely in keeping with the overall picture. Irish double IPAs arrive at a high frequency but this is genuinely one of the best I've had in a while. There's no hazy fluff: just big alcohol and
huge hops, the things that made supercharging American-style IPA worthwhile in the first place.
By way of balance there's also a new low-strength offering, called
Table Beer: Mittelfrüh at just 3.5% ABV. It's a bright and murky yellow colour and I was hoping for a big noble hop kick but it turned out rather dull and savoury, tasting of leafy veg, baking soda and a lightly briney gose-like saltiness. There's nothing really distinctive in the taste, and the dreggy yeast and watery texture don't endear it to me any further. There are much better low-ABV beers around, and the brewery's own Weights & Measures is an excellent example. I don't really get the point of this one.
YellowBelly's non-proprietary dragon-branded session IPA is called
Stormborn. Bramling Cross features big here, showing sweet and juicy raisins rather than the more typical blackberry. I don't get much from the complementary Hüll Melon, though there is a substantial and refreshing bitter bite on the end. An English-bitter nuttiness pervades it, and I think my mind automatically filled in the chocolate to create a Cadbury's Fruit & Nut effect. There is a fly in the ointment, though: an odd rubbery buzz bringing a bum note to proceedings. It doesn't ruin it, but it doesn't help, and I've no idea what the cause is. No matter. I'm all on board for decent bitter in Ireland, even if the brewery has to pretend it's something else.
They also put an oblique twist on New England IPA with
Tropical Dystopia. It's not terribly hazy by the standards of the style, but it is fruity, though. Pure pineapple juice is the dominant flavour, with all the sweet syrupyness which comes with that. I'm guessing real pineapple juice was used (ingedients were not available at time of writing) and if so there's nothing here I'd chalk up to actual hops.
Edit: nope! It's all done with Columbus, Amarillo, El Dorado and lactose. Certainly all the garlic, diesel and yeast grit that often plagues the New England landscape is absent, leaving something clean, sweet and tropical. On the downside it doesn't taste at all like an IPA, the lack of bitterness giving it more the feel of a fruited lager. But that's OK; they're nice too.
White Gypsy's
Barbarossa red ale has been around since winter but only passed my way a few weeks ago at The Headline. It's a dark garnet colour and 5.2% ABV. Esters feature big: banana to the fore, with a backing of crisp burnt caramel. It's a bold flavour, big, blousey and unsubtle, but I think I prefer the drier, roastier sort of Irish red, if I'm drinking it at all.
It was a pleasant surprise to stumble across Dungarvan's
Greenway pale ale at the O'Brien's Summer Drinks Festival in Blanchardstown: I didn't think it got out of the locality it was created to celebrate, but I'll take it. It's a pale ale of 4.5% ABV and bottle conditioned. That gives it lots of carbonation, forming a thick head which lasts all the way down. All that gas had to come from somewhere and it's quite a dry beer, with an almost roasted crispness. The hops are the other piece of the picture, adding a different sort of dryness, a sharp citric bite. Overall it's a little raw and rough, the process of manufacture leaving it with more than a hint of homebrew, but it's still decent summery drinking for all that.
Micro IPA continues to be the style of the moment, with O Brother the latest to give it a go.
Hold Please is the
de rigeur 2.8% ABV and the opaque yellow of a New England IPA. There's a bit of that in the aroma: super-fresh dank and herbal hopping plus a touch of sweeter vanilla. Where the texture is soft, and pleasingly full, the flavour has more of the west coast about it: punchy lime citrus, a little tropical pineapple and mango, and a generous dusting of weed. That's quite a symphony of flavour for such a tiny strength. Only a pinch of yeast interrupts the jolly. Overall, a superb effort.
I guess they're going for a telephone theme because that was released alongside
Pick Up, described as a mimosa IPA. It's pale and murky, 6.3% ABV, and smelling mildly dank with overtones of fruity chew sweet. The flavour is pleasantly clean, showing lots of spritzy grapefruit. In spite of the substantial strength this is light and refreshing in a summery way, with no stickiness and a restrained bittering. A bit more hop character might have improved it, but still very enjoyable as-is.
The new Whiplash should perhaps be excluded from this all-Irish post, brewed as it was in London by Gipsy Hill.
Leave Home is an IPA of 7% ABV which looks, smells and tastes like pineapple juice. Need more than that? There's a big hop dankness and a touch of oily coconut. While not particularly complex it does get great value out of the Chinook and, especially, the El Dorado hops. It's a simple and tasty beer, murky but flawless: something all too rare.
Freedom of Movement is the defiant name on White Hag and Boundary's latest collaboration, and in one of my favourite rare styles too: black lager. There are no fancy bells and whistles here: it's an absolutely rock solid classic schwarzbier, from the roasty aroma through to the soft texture and a dark chocolate flavour, finishing on a dry pinch of burnt toast. There's a very faint fruit or flower complexity buried deep in this: cherries or rosewater, perhaps, but really it's all about that roast. About the only thing I can fault it on is the 33cl can: I quaffed this and immediately wanted more.
A new Boundary solo effort is
Whose Idea Was This?, a lush tropical double IPA, brimming with cantaloupe, pineapple and passionfruit. Though it's a relatively modest 8% ABV, there's still lots of heat, but not so much that it interferes with the hop fun. There's a touch of gritty yeast about it too, again only a minor flaw. This is a tremendously fun beer, a loud wild ride of hops and booze. The drinker has no choice but to go along with it.
They go all in with the adjectives on
Yeboah, a "double brown export imperial stout". It was the promise of "all the brown malt" that got me in the door: simple and ingenious marketing. It's 10.9% ABV and seems all that and more from the gloopy pour. A purpleish tint to the head and a berry aroma had me wondering if there's cherries or the like involved, but it appears not. The flavour is intensely sweet: hazelnut syrup meets Málaga wine. A streak of dark chocolate is as close as it gets to bitterness. There's a vague coffee quality too, but concentrated and hot, like Tia Maria. I don't think the brown malt gets enough of a shake in this, somewhat drowned by the booze. It's still a very decent imperial stout, though. It's good to see an Irish brewery mixing it with the continentals at this stuff.
For Dublin Pride, Street 66 on Parliament Street have an exclusive house beer created by Sullivan's. It's a pale ale called
Stonewall, with no advertised ABV but it tasted decently strong to me: lusciously full-bodied with lots of soft fleshy fruit flavours, including honeydew melon, white plum and tinned lychee. A biscuity note adds a touch of peach crumble to the whole picture, and there's just enough bitterness -- apple skin levels -- to remind you it's a pale ale. This is smooth and easy-going yet properly characterful. It gets a little candy-sweet as it warms, but otherwise it's perfect for a summer seasonal. A clean glass would be even better.
Finally, the most eagerly anticipated beer of 2019, for me anyway, is Wide Street's
Brett Saison. It's the first big release from the long-gestating Co. Longford wild beer specialist. 5.6% ABV and hopped with East Kent Goldings, the can tells me. It's a hazy gold colour and shows plenty of busy fizz. That definitely adds to the white-grape-and-toast champagne aroma. It's not as crisp as the smell suggests, being quite thick and gummy, another Brett characteristic, I guess. A peach melba sweetness goes along with this, swiftly followed by dry breadcrust. It's not madly complex, but it's very well constructed, lining out its flavour with precise discipline. A promising start from Wide Street. What's next?
That's it for today. Keep 'em coming, Irish brewers.
Continuing my overdue exploration of the beers from Belfast's Boundary. Let's see what's in these particular arty cans of murk.
I came to A Berliner Vice #2 in the mood for something sour. There was a moment of horror when I read the smallprint and saw it's brewed with raspberries and lactose, and that it's an unreasonable 5.1% ABV. Some measure of relief followed when I found it didn't pour out looking like an electric pink cocktail, though the hazy orange body isn't exactly singing to me of Kreuzberg. A decent pinch of real sourness greets the nose, backed by just a hint of raspberry. On tasting, it's all very balanced. The raspberry does a good job of softening the base beer while still leaving its dry and grainy tartness intact, much like a small squirt of syrup might do to the real thing. The added sugar and big alcohol have made it thicker and heavier than these would normally be, and it only narrowly avoids turning sickly by the end of 440ml. Overall, I quite liked it, even if it's not the palate-scrubbing refresher I was after.
I do love a bit of self-realisation in my beer, so was instantly attracted to a Boundary double IPA by the name of Travelodge Painting on the Can, because they all do have those (a redesign is coming soon). That must have distracted me from checking the date, because I didn't hoard this for long but it was two weeks past its official best when I opened it. There was still plenty of aroma from the headless juice-looking glassful, though: peach and pineapple, plus a harder garlic buzz. Peach is the predominant flavour, while behind it there's a slightly dull malt graininess. I suspect I may have missed the best of the hops in this. As-is, it's fine: inoffensive and still quite flavourful. The sizeable 8.1% ABV is well concealed. This is one to look out for again when it's fresh.
Also from the Scandinavian school of long beer names is Don't Ever Think Too Much: a kiwi-hopped session IPA. It's a milky boy, pouring an anaemic shade of greenish yellow and completely opaque with little effort at a head. It presents an interesting mix of flavours; one I don't think I've encountered before. I'm guessing some sort of New England yeast variety was used, and that plus the oats give it a creamy custard sweetness. Where New Zealand's hops tend to be sharply grassy or vegetal, here they're mellowed out to a kind of mint and honeysuckle effect. It's rather pleasant. The finishes brings the harder burn that old school IBU-chasers prefer, as well as a dry mineral chalkiness. As with the best session IPAs, one can sit and analyse everything going on, or chug it back happily and open another.
