Chasing Trouble

Lately I've been all over the southside, looking for Trouble. It started with the grand re-opening of Ranelagh's The Hill as a craft beer bar. I lived around the corner when I first moved to Dublin so remember this as a dark and slightly down-at-heel football pub. Darragh (pictured, right) and Derek from Ugly Duckling have taken it on, brightened it up, and installed a wide selection of good draught beers.

Opening night saw the début of the first of this set of new Trouble offerings: Stakeout, described as an "American Wheat Ale". I was sceptical: in my head, that combination of words means a wheat beer fermented with a neutral ale yeast and sorely lacking in character. Early American craft brewing seemed to be awash with them but you don't see them as much any more. In 2016, "American" seems to have become a signal that we are to expect citric hops, and so it goes with this. The wheat is still a big part of what it does: the haze is that of a wheat beer, as is the soft pillowy weissbier texture. Then there's a quenching tropical juiciness from the hops, guava and papaya flavours assertively refreshing, though perhaps turning a little too bitter on the finish. At 5.4% ABV it's substantial without being unsessionable. Another welcome addition to the Trouble pantheon of hop-forward delights.

To The Beer Market a week later, and a pint of Last Crash, a passionfruit lager, of all things. This had been pouring in a few places around the country -- cheers to Liam for the heads-up that it had made it to Dublin at last. And it's hard to think of anything to write, beyond the brewery's own description. It's got passionfruit and it's a lager. The former is a huge and rather sickly hit, on both the aroma and right through the flavour. It smells and tastes pink, with a fleshy fruit softness up front and then a harder twangy bitterness at the end. There's a certain syrupyness to the effect, as though the passionfruit were the tinned variety rather than fresh. Behind this sits the lager itself, and I got the impression it's a rather good one: crisp and husky, while the post-gulp burps brought a waft of grassy Saaz to the palate, as well as the fruit flavour add-on. I drank this quickly but couldn't help wondering how it would have turned out without being, erm, "enhanced".

Last Crash is fun for one, but the novelty wears off quickly. Should you find yourself ordering a second it's possible that you don't like drinking beer. Have a word with yourself.

Beer three landed at 57 the Headline following a world première at the Belfast Craft Beer Festival in late April. Owl Day is a pale stout at 6.1% ABV. YellowBelly has been twiddling with this style for a while now, and they have a bottled version knocking around now. Trouble's attempt is definitely pale, a clear orange-gold behind the condensation on that glass. The aroma is low: just a touch of green-veg old-world hops. The illusion is all accomplished in the flavour: a big and crunchy Irish stout roast opens it up, followed by a rather forced-tasting chocolate and coffee. The finish is dry but it still leaves a bit of a sickly impression from the chocolate. So, yes, this beer does successfully achieve what it's trying to do -- it really is a pale beer that has the assorted flavour characteristics of a dry stout -- but it's not a dry stout and, beyond the gimmicky giggles, isn't something I'd be interested in drinking again. Where black IPAs brought something new and thought-provoking to the beer world, pale stout, in my opinion, does not.

And finally it's back to The Hill for a fourth beer: Amber Avenger. Sorachi Ace hops loom large in this, producing big, big coconut flavours with just a slightly more severe acidic burn coming in behind that. I was fairly convinced that it was a single-hop job, but a glance at the Trouble website tells me there's Wakatu and Mosaic in it as well. They have been thoroughly bullied into submission by their loud Japanese colleague, however. As befits an amber ale there's a strong contribution from the malt, but here it's more texture than flavour: it's a heavy and filling beer, tasting stronger than its 5.5% ABV. There's maybe a slight crystal malt sweatiness, but not so much that it interferes with the hops.

Stakeout and Amber Avenger are my top picks out of this lot, which leaves me wondering if Trouble Brewing's hop mastery is leaving it at risk of being a one-note operation. Probably not. I'm just a bit intolerant of gimmicky recipes, unless they taste better than the middle two here.

Last round

A final loop around the RDS at the Irish Craft Beer Festival, looking at new, and new-ish, breweries.

Only one brand was completely unknown to me: Hope. A brewery-restaurant is in the planning for north county Dublin but in the meantime the brand is all designed and the first three beers have been produced at Craftworks. They have a saison called Grunt (see website for story; they're big on story) and it's pleasingly light and crisp, and only 4.7% ABV. The IPA, Handsome Jack, is a beast of 7.4% ABV and offers an unusual, but not at all unpleasant, mix of flowers and citrus. At the centre is that off-kilter Japanese hop Sorachi Ace, but not so much of it that the Citra and Cascade flavours don't make a contribution too. And their work-in-progress is a blonde ale called Passifyoucan -- it didn't taste of anything much, but I'm sure that'll change in later versions.

While we're at Craftworks, in-house brand Postcard had a new one out, a "strong IPA" (6.7% ABV) called Silicon Docks - apparently that's a place in Dublin. News to me. Anyway, this is a dark reddish beer with a significant amount of the toasted caramel more typical of an amber ale, alongside the fruit candy hops. There's something quite English about its power and restraint.

Cork-based gypsy brewer Radik Ale, meanwhile, was also pouring a new beer made at Craftworks. Initially badged as "Curious Brew", I understand it has been subsequently been re-named Radical Brew, and the (fairly) radical thing about it is the use of gin botanicals in place of all hop additions after the initial bittering one. The base beer is an amber-coloured rye ale and the herbal blend is apparently exactly the same one used in Blackwater Distillery's fantastic gin. It smells like posh sausages and tastes savoury, not like gin, but the spices and herbs really do leap out of the flavour. I reckon there's a little too much going on to drink lots -- a bit like most neat gins, really -- but a tasty and fascinating experiment in small quantities.

The brewers of County Wicklow were certainly giving the public what they want: pale ales and plenty of them. Wicklow Wolf launched Freeranger at the festival, a 6.3% ABV IPA that takes unmistakable cues from the US, with its heavy and dense fresh-hop bitterness. Falconer's Flight is doing the heavy lifting here, I believe. And for the less hop-inclined there was Elevation (left), a lovely light and zesty thirst-quenching pale ale of 4.8% ABV. O Brother also had a new American-style pale ale, called The Sinner. This leans more towards the tropical fruit end of the fresh hop spectrum and, saving only the late great Bonita, is my favourite of their beers so far. I certainly preferred it to Bonita's new boyfriend, Brutus double IPA: a 9.1% ABV thug, far too thick and boozy for my liking.

Derry's Northbound Brewery made its festival début and definitely got the hang of things straight away by bringing two brand new beers. The IPA was Unnamed, which I find downright weird for a brewery which calls everything it makes by a two-digit number. How hard is it to think of a number? Anyway, it's a balanced and easy-drinking chappie, dry, with a kind of green-bean squeaky vegetable quality. Beside it was 33, a sticke alt, though a light one at just 5.5% ABV. It's appropriately brown and has all the classic bourbon biscuit sweetness of an alt, and a modest nettley noble hop bitterness. An elegantly put-together beer in an effortlessly classy style.

Also on board for the first time was YellowBelly, borrowing a bar from Rye River, and some of their daring as well. There was a Black Tea Porter made using lapsang souchong for a tasty and complex twist on all those other, straighter, smoked porters you've had. And they also did a Pale Stout (left): an attempt to recreate stout flavours in a pale beer. It was fun, and genuinely nice to drink, but ultimately unconvincing: the coffee they've added makes it taste of fresh coffee, not of dark roasted grains. For something a little bit more ordinary, there was the YellowBelly collaboration with Stone Barrel: Stone Belly IPA. It was just 13 days old so rather yeasty but the pale body and soft juicy hops suggest it'll be great when it's dropped a bit. I hope I'll see it again.

By midnight on Saturday my feet were screaming and my palate was crippled, but there was room for just one more beer, though not from a new brewery, nor even an Irish one. Lagunitas Fusion was pouring at Grand Cru's stand, near where I was pulling Northbound beers. Fusion is a juicy beast of a beer, packed with apricot and mango but, crucially, missing the syrupyness that has spoiled several other Lagunitas beers on me. Irish brewers may be making some amazing things at the moment but there's always more to learn.

Thanks as always to the festival organisers, brewers and attendees for what turned out to be a wonderful weekend, at least after I'd had a sit down.