The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 2: The White Hag

Day two of #TTBoC23 brings us to The White Hag.

Hanging around like a remnant of the Halloween decorations in December is Undead Inside, released in early October and languishing in my beer fridge since shortly afterwards. I didn't think there was any rush: it's a "forest fruit ale" so presumably not reliant on any hop freshness. It pours bright red and a little hazy, smelling strongly of brambly autumnal jam. The flavour, I'm happy to report, doesn't load in the sugar, giving plenty of space for a tangy berry edge and warm pie filling. It probably helps that 4.8% ABV is a higher gravity than most of these tend to be. Still, the base beer is almost lager-clean with no malt stickiness or cloying esters. Moving past the blackberry and raspberry, there's a hint of meadowy flowers and a tang of hop bitterness: Cascade, the can tells us. For something that's obviously contrived as a silly novelty, it's all very well integrated and enjoyable to drink, avoiding any accusations of syrupyiness. The carbonation is a little high, but really that's the harshest criticism I can levy at this. Fair play like.

The next one has been around even longer: Luna was released in September and is another fruit beer, this time an IPA with Valencia orange. The can is orange and the beer is orange. While opaque it's not a New England job, pushing an assertively sharp hop bitterness. The added orange runs in parallel with this, tasting artificial but easily ignored, though I should point out that the brewery says it's done with real peel, not syrup. Regardless, it's pretty simplistic, all told, which is a little surprising for the substantial ABV of 5.8%. If you want a pale ale with bitty orangeade overtones, here's is your guy. The better ones are lighter and show a zesty spice complexity; this is heavier and plainer, lacking spritz. I'm not sure it adds anything positive to the canon of Irish IPA.

I almost missed Blue + Yellow = Green: it had been around for months before it showed up in Molloy's literally yesterday. It's brewed in collaboration with Lviv's Pravda brewery and celebrates Irish-Ukrainian solidarity. They've gone and described it as a "west coast hazy IPA" and I'm sad enough to think that the phrase makes some sort of sense. Haze is definitely a feature, it being a pale opaque custard colour. And bitterness is sort-of also a feature: there's a kind of pithy grapefruit bitterness at the front of the flavour. But it's fully surrounded by specifically east-coast problems: onions, vanilla candy, gritty dregs and too much heat for 5.5% ABV. I think perhaps the west-coast-hazy is a circle that cannot, and should not, be squared. The sentiment is welcome but the sediment is not: this is more of the same murk and far from the brewery's best work.

Our final beer for today is at least seasonally appropriate. They describe Beara as a winter IPA, which they've interpreted as meaning red. So, Sierra Nevada Celebration then? I'm down with that. It's considerably lighter at 5.2% ABV, and a paler shade of cherry red. The label promises a veritable cocktail of Pacific hops: Amarillo, Cashmere, El Dorado and Nelson Sauvin. For all that, it doesn't smell like much, just vaguely tannic. The flavour is quite muted as well. It does have the malt-driven warmth that I'm sure was intended, pushing hints of toffee and treacle. The hops sit on this grumpily, bringing a sharp bitterness but none of the nuance I would expect from any of the varieties listed. There's a pleasant oily dank in the finish, but that's as assertive as the hops get. Like the Luna, it's a bit boring, all-told. The White Hag can do better than this.

For proper seasonal cheer, look out for the re-releases of their Yule ale, and the powerhouse Maccan barrel-aged strong ale. The White Hag does know how to Christmas properly.

National celebration

This year, the St Patrick's Day long weekend coincides with the opening of the seventh Alltech festival at the Convention Centre. To celebrate, I'm bringing you a week of posts about Irish beers, beginning with this mixed assortment.

The White Hag kicks it off, making the move to 440ml cans for the first time with Fionn, a double IPA. It's densely hazy, of course, though no nod towards New England is made on the label copy. The aroma is an equal mix of vanilla, grapefruit and garlic, while the flavour, experienced cold, is a mix of soft sweet pineapple flesh and a harder, more acidic grapefruit and lime. I was a bit clumsy with my pour so got more yeast dregs than necessary, which spoiled things, but it's cleaner if you treat it gently. It's a middle-of-the-road modern IPA; you've tasted it before. But apparently it's the first in a series. I don't know where it's going to go, but maybe wait for the next one.

Also in a four-forty is Third Barrel's Is This Real Life?, pitched squarely at the three letter acronym fans as a DDH IPA. 6.1% ABV gives it plenty of scope to pile in the hops, and pile them in it does. In defiance of fashion it's full-on bitter and spicy, sparking with notes of grapefruit, peppercorn and dry grass. While the flavour is on the severe side, its aroma is so fresh and rounded that's forgivable. This is a can of pure west coast joy. I don't remember enjoying this type of beer so much when they were commonplace, but now they're a rarity it's a breath of fresh air. Fresh, piney, green air.

Can three for today comes from Whiplash and is a pale ale of 4.3% ABV called Small Moments. It poured a sickly opaque yellow colour and had an odd, but not unpleasant, aroma: spicy perfumed notes of jasmine, violet and bergamot. There's some of that in the flavour, which is nice, and some smooth tropical juice in the finish. There's a "but" coming, however: the big and obvious one. Yeast bite, dirty and sharp, sucks much of the fun out of it; the concentrated garlic oil adds nothing positive either. This is yet another modern hop-forward beer which leaves me fantasising about the brewery finishing it, letting the dregs drop out until it's clean and clear. It does round out a little as it warms but never quite transcends the things I didn't like about it. Ho hum.

Trouble dropped one of their too-rare new releases in the form of Peach Out, described, intriguingly, as a peach and white chocolate IPA. It has a New Englandy appearance: a bright murky orange with little effort at a head. The chocolate is very apparent in the aroma and absolutely dominates the flavour: sweet and creamy, like a Milky Bar. Next to this sits the fruit and hops, combined into a zesty, jammy mix of satsuma and apricots.  The combination is very strange indeed, and won't be for everyone, but it worked for me. The texture is light enough that it doesn't get cloying, and there's a certain balancing savoury pepper spice in the finish, which I'm guessing is the residual yeast: welcome, for once. I'm impressed by how it manages to taste as strongly of chocolate as any chocolate stout without losing sight of the whole pale ale genre. Weird, no question, but fun with it.

Larkin's makes a return to lager brewing with Operator, one of the India pale variety. It's a clear golden colour and 5% ABV. There's not much of an aroma, the hops not making their presence known until tasting time. That reveals a crisp lemon sorbet followed by spicy citrus and floral lavender notes, finishing bitterly grassy. That middle bit makes it taste quite un-lager-like, but it is still properly clean and quite delicious. One to enjoy on its own level rather than compare with its peers.

The 4.3% ABV session IPA from Hope has been around a while but has just got new branding and a name: Hop-On. It's yellow with a very slight haze. I found it a little plain when I tried a pint. There's a certain quantity of citrus fruit flavour and bitterness, but not much of either. The finish comes very quickly. I got a spike of yeast bite on the end too. It's easy drinking, for sure, but lacks character, I thought. There are much better versions of this sort of thing around.

The first of a new collaboration series from Eight Degrees landed last week: Yellow Ball, an IPA brewed with American breweries Bale Breaker and Revolution. This is a clear copper colour and sports lots of dank resins right from the get-go. There are bags of tannins behind this, and a long-lasting bitterness, the resins coating the tongue and clinging on tight. With all that crystal malt and grapefruit, it's a bit of a '90s throwback, but enjoyable nonetheless. The surprising bit is that something this straightforward took three breweries to formulate, but I'm not complaining. Rack up the next one.

Some breweries still use bottles. Fancy! St Mel's launched the third in its Black Album sequence of dark beers. It's called Proliferation and is in one of my favourite styles: schwarzbier. The label says it's bottle conditioned and dry hopped, neither of which would be typical, I think. Maybe it was the shape of the glass but it looked like a porter on pouring: a deep red-brown with a generous off-white head -- perhaps a more slender vessel would have convinced me better. I couldn't shake the porter thing on the first sip: lots of roast and quite a creamy texture. It took me a while to notice how clean it was, the crispness absolutely singing and barely an ester to be found. A mild noble bitterness and a touch of chocolate in the finish are the only nods to complexity; otherwise it's a straight and honest dark lager, beautifully refreshing at just 4.8% ABV. A cold draught pint would be just the thing.

We finish back at White Hag, on a Sligo-Cork joint effort, a beer that's seen a bit of the country. The full name is Brett Finished Bourbon Barrel Ale, created by The White Hag for Bradley's off licence in Cork. This started out as the brewery's Yule Ale, so was originally brewed with ginger and cinnamon, but that was two years ago. In the meantime it's spent a year in bourbon oak and another in a Brettanomyces-inoculated wine barrel. Phew. Head retention was lost somewhere along the way and it's almost completely flat: a wineish red-brown. The aroma is quite funky, offering old grapes, old oak and a touch of red wine vinegar. Its texture is thick, befitting the 7.2% ABV, and the flavour has a lot in common with a big and mature Flanders red. There are fresh raspberries up front, then a steady sour burn, bringing in the sweet vanilla oak and luscious grape. The dusty Christmas spicing from the original beer is still apparent too, so no part has been wasted on the journey. For all the complexity, it's not busy, staying smooth and well-integrated; comparable to its Belgian peers. I'm sure it'll get more interesting over time so if you have a bottle put aside, maybe save it for next winter.

That's it for today. More cans tomorrow.

The curtain descends

Old Father Time is oiling down his scythe, ready to take a swing at 2014 and bring the year to close. I'm left with a scattering of beer tasting notes gathered over the year that I've yet to commit to this blog and most of which will have to wait until 2015. For this post I'm pulling together an assortment of Irish ones, mostly to give posterity flavour of what was happening at this point in the big bang of modern Irish microbrewing.

Red is something of a theme, and rumours of the death of Irish red ale have been greatly exaggerated. The slightly hoppier amber ale twist is also highly fashionable and Mayo newcomer Reel Deel have launched with an amber ale as their first. Irish Blond is a sort-of in-joke, because it's not blonde, it's red. Ahahahaha. Um. What we have here is a pretty decent fist of an American style amber pouring a lovely shade of chestnut red. The aroma is lightly fruity, combining old school white lemonade and sherbet lemons. There's a lot of quality English bitter about the flavour, a crisp and thirst-quenching tannic element, some spices, but also the rounder exotic fruit of new world hops. It's maybe a bit too dry for first-rate American-style amber ale *cough*Amber-Ella*cough* but it's a very well made beer and one I would happily quaff lots more of.

Dublin's Stone Barrel brewing are coming to the end of their contract brewing phase and are hoping to have their own production brewery in the New Year. Red Mist is their second UK-brewed bottled beer and is an amber ale of a modest and sessionable 4.2% ABV. It packs a lot of complexity in there, being another sherbet-smelling one but showing bags of toffee in the flavour, in keeping with the dark copper body. The sweetness is balanced deftly by pockets of green bitterness, for that hop-studded candy effect I always enjoy in amber ale.

There's less of that sort of thing in Clanconnel McGrath's No. 6 which I chanced upon in The Waterloo in Dublin. Their Saturday night €4 bottle offer is great for some sociable exploring. This is another dark red amber ale but the malt is winning the aroma, showing in a rather musty burlap smell. There's crunchy grain in the flavour as well, though the hops are more assertive here. Rather than American citrus you get a genteel lavender and talcum which adds up to a sweet and slightly twee beer. Think granny's oatmeal cookies. That she eats in the bath.

I'm guessing West Mayo brewery were going for more of a traditional red style with Clew Bay Sunset which I found on tap in The Norseman back in October but this is a weird mutant variant. It's thin enough and fizzy enough, but is over-the-top sweet, with the fake fruit flavour of red lemonade. The aroma is pure butterscotch and the finish saccharine-sweet to the point of tasting metallic. It's the awful candy concoction of an especially vindictive Willy Wonka. Avoid.

More recently (yesterday) in The Norseman they were pouring Yule, a Christmas beer for White Hag's first Christmas. It's 7.2% ABV, mostly headless, and a murky red-amber colour. I'd say it's quite highly attenuated as the texture is thin even though the alcoholic weight is very apparent. There's a powerful red fruit flavour with all the sugar of ripe rasberries and strawberries plus the acidic sharpness of both. I'm definitely not of the opinion that a Christmas beer should taste Christmassy but this one has me wondering why a beer called Yule conjures up strawberries and cream in front of the tennis.

Meanwhile, at the supermarket, Solas is one of the brands Rye River brews for Tesco, the more traditional of the two. Solas Red is a classic dark Irish red: copper shading towards brown. The head is generous to begin with but collapses quickly, while the nose is a charming mix of warmth and red fruit, like fresh cherry pie, including the slight sourness. It's rather plainer to drink: lots of simple dry roast and a highly attenuated thinness. There's no hop character and not much malt either, not even the caramel that any reasonable human might expect from Irish red. It's 4.3% ABV but drinks like a cheapy supermarket own-brand half that strength.

So, apprehension going into Solas Stout. It certainly looks the part, pouring thickly and nearly opaque with a loose-bubbled ivory head. There's a rich and sweet aroma, though it's slightly phenolic, but not in a bad way -- sort of smoky. The flavour is at once classic Irish stout, but also quite unusual: there's lots of dry roast, more than a hint of caramel, burnt edges and a sour tang. It exists somewhere in the middle of a circle marked by bottled Guinness, Knockmealdown and O'Hara's Leann Folláin and is beautifully complex for something that's just 4.5% ABV. I really like it, and it's great to see this sort of interesting full-flavoured Irish stout hitting the mainstream via Tesco.

New lagers are a bit thin on the ground. Who wants to drink lager, after all? Cumberland Breweries from northern England do, and have set up a satellite brewery called Station Works just outside Newry where they're making Finn Irish Craft Lager. It's 4.5% ABV and comes in 33cl bottles decorated in hexagons, because giants and that. It's perfectly clear and very pale, with a suspicious but not unattractive burst of green apples in the aroma. It's very clean to taste, however: lightly carbonated for moussey texture and with light notes of grapefruit and lime balanced against a sweet biscuit graininess. There's a near-sour bite on the end which may be down to a technical flaw but which I rather enjoyed. It's maybe not a session lager, but works well as a refresher or aperitif.

A similar bite is at work in Carden's Wild Ale by White Gypsy, discovered by chance on the beer engine at Alfie Byrne's the other week. The aroma of this red-gold ale is a kind of lemon sourness rather than the full-on acetic of deliberately soured beer. The body is quite thin and the flavour offers a mild combination of pale biscuits, brown sugar and light lemon-and-lime. I'm left a little confused as to what it's supposed to be, and at 5% ABV I expected a lot more of everything.

I only managed to catch one of White Gypsy's pair of draught winter specials, namely A Winter's Ale, a title seemingly abandoned by Eight Degrees now after a couple of years of disuse. This "German Pale Ale" promises an intriguing mix of Belgian yeast and ultra-hip German hop varieties Polaris and Mandarina Bavaria. Conveniently for me, The 108 in Rathgar had it on tap so I nipped over one quiet Sunday afternoon to give it a go. It's another odd beast, pouring a perfect clear garnet colour with an aroma very typical of Belgian dubbel, despite a mere 5.7% ABV. There's a double impact on tasting: the heavy brown-banana esters of the yeast and then a sharp, medicinal, mentholyptus effect from the Polaris. I'd been hoping for some rounded fruit tones from the Mandarina but I'm guessing the yeast esters have buried all that. A long menthol burn finishes it off gradually. It's a strange beer: invigorating and like nothing I've ever tasted before. But it's just a little too hot and sharp to be friendly.

Just one token IPA for this post. It's hard to believe people are still drinking this quaint and outmoded style. Bran & Sceolan is one of the White Hag range that I missed at the RDS back in September but seems to be part of the small core range the brewery is selling in Ireland. There's something classically American about the amber colour, the 7.2% ABV and the big hit of mango and peach in the flavour. There's a certain amount of residual crystal malt sweetness, but not so much that the hops suffer; if anything the tropical fruit notes are emphasised by the extra sugar. It's nicely balanced, clean flavoured and very drinkable showing very little sign of how strong it is. The hop acidity lasts well into the finish, coating the tongue, so I suspect it may be a bit of a palate killer, but what a way to go! Another bravo performance from the Sligo lads.

And a handful of dark beers to finish on: St. Mel's first seasonal is Raisin & Oatmeal Stout which showed up in bottles at 57 The Headline. Sharp, dry, crisp roast rules supreme in this 4.5%-er. The label employs the words "vinous" and "port" but you need either a finely-tuned palate or an active imagination to spot them. There isn't even the smoothness that I understand is part of the package with oatmeal, whether that's down to the low ABV or the bottle-conditioned high fizz. Towards the end I got a tiny hint of dark fruit, but not enough to really mark this out as anything other than a decently put-together dry Irish session stout.

Trouble made a much better fist of fruited Christmas stout. Dash Away was on cask for one thing: no upsetting fizz, just luscious smoothness, helped no doubt by 5.7% ABV. Chocolate and cherries are the added ingredients, the former making a huge contribution to the flavour, the latter just a small smattering of the glacé variety. Amongst the warming sweetness there's a mildly spicy edge as well, generated by the roasted grains and yeast, I'd guess. The finish is quick, making it nicely glugable, setting up the next pint. The keg version is simpler and less rich but does preserve a lot of the black forest gateaux complexity.

I found a very similar flavour profile in Carrig Winter Ale, part of an excellent seasonal line-up in The Bull & Castle at the moment. It's dark and dense, and slightly stronger at 6.5% ABV. Chocolate features in a big way, sweet and creamy, while behind it there's a confection of mild winter spices: could be cinnamon, could be nutmeg, but nothing particularly assertive or distinctive. This mince pie effect is even more noticeable in the aroma. As a filling winter warming it's absolutely spot on though the weight and sweetness do mean a pint is a little like consuming an entire selection box in one go. Not a session beer, then.

Time for a palate cleanser. Fortunately JW Sweetman had tapped a cask (possibly the first) of Barrelhead Dry Stout. I suspect that this is a very simply made version of the style: it has the same sort of crisp roast and creaminess of any Irish dry stout. But the natural conditioning adds dimensions to the flavour, with notes of sandalwood and cranberry sneaking in. It's a little watery at heart, reflecting perhaps the sub-4% ABV, but overall a damn decent beer and a great example of how cask conditioning can benefit a stout. Cheers to Steve for the heads-up on this one.

Lastly the second beer from the Blackstairs brand: Dark Fiery Porter. It's 5% ABV and brewed with oatmeal, ginger and jalapeños. What's not to like in that? There's a density to the appearance, jet black with a tan coloured head. For all that, it's a lightly textured beer, low on fizz and smooth without being thick. The spicing is gentle and mannerly with the ginger present more in a candied way, as a sweetness. There's very little sign of the peppers, maybe just a slight fruity pop in the aroma. The end result is a nicely complex warming winter beer, proof that you can get great results with wacky ingredients without the beer itself turning out wacky.

Phew. Bit of a scattergun, that. But it reflects how trying to keep up with Irish beer feels these days. I've deliberately left out several groups of beers and I'll get to those before the clock strikes midnight on the 31st.