Brown is the new whatever

A new brown ale on the Irish market is always a cause for excitement. So steps up Ballykilcavan, with their newest can: Bambrick's. They claim American influence, and the ABV checks out at a sizeable 5.8%. It's a very dark brown colour, with a tint of deepest ruby. There's not much aroma to speak of and I don't get a whole lot of hopping in the flavour. Instead it's dry and a little burnt tasting, crisp and roasty. There's a faint liquorice complexity in the background but that's as nuanced as it gets. This is a simple and straightforward offering, maybe missing the smooth coffee and toffee of really good brown ale, but there's enough going on on the dry and roasted side to compensate.

YellowBelly also jumped on the brown ale wagon (there's plenty of room), beginning with Doc Brown. This is a supercharged one at 7% ABV, arriving murky looking and with a distinct homebrew roughness. That's not necessarily a bad thing: here it manifests as a flinty spice with piquant pink peppercorns. The brown ale standard flavours are missing again, though there is a caramel smoothness even if there's little to no caramel taste. It feels like a bit of a rush job. The soft and luscious beer it would like to be is under there somewhere, but there's too much interference from the construction scaffolding. It left me wishing to see this with more of a polish on the edifice.

And then, hey presto, my wish was granted. Molecules of Freedom is the same base beer, but dry-hopped. Crucially also, it had a little more time to settle and was altogether cleaner and more finished tasting. Still it's not exactly luscious, showing just a lightly creamy texture and adding in extra fresh coffee roast. The hopping brings fruit to the picture -- black cherry and raisin -- and also a pine and grass dankness. This isn't a typical brown ale either but it is a very interesting take. The base provides a complementary contrast with the busy American hops. The parallel with Dogfish Head's famous Indian Brown Ale should be obvious to anyone who's tasted both.

Three quite different-tasting beers here, and none of them exactly what I like in brown ale. Best keep trying, brewers.

It's Hell, up north

An unexpected new Helles arrived on the local off licence shelves here a couple of months ago. "I'm having that," I said. It's important to grab these things when they're available as you never know how long they'll last.

Einsiedler Hell announces the label on the bottle, and that it's from Saxony, not Bavaria. Intriguing! It's not as clear as a Bavarian would like it, showing some quite large particles suspended in the gold. It's just about full-bodied enough, with the right honey malt flavour but not the white bread or spongecake consistency found in the best of these. Where it really gives away its northern roots is in the hopping: an intense grassy kick, running the risk of turning to a plastic bitterness but balanced by the malt.

This is an interesting crisp twist on standard Helles, enjoyable for that, and in its own right.

Elle surprise

I have been chasing Lambiek Fabriek Brett-Elle for quite some time, and my most recent trip to Brussels included my second quest through the city to find it. Turns out it had been hiding in plain sight all along. De Biertempel is far from a specialist in rare beers: situated on the main tourist drag, you can pay a premium here for some very mainstream offerings. And yet there, on a low shelf in the lambic section, was the beer I had been looking for but not expecting to see.

I was sufficiently elated to want to pick up an accompanying geuze, and two in particular caught my eye from the same shelf. Moriau Oude Geuze is shop house-brand that seems to have strayed from its home. Having been brewed at a number of breweries, each of which subsequently closed, it's now produced at Boon, where the owner admits it's essentially the same recipe as his iconic oude geuze, just blended in different quantities.

Certainly it's the same hazy orange colour, and 7% ABV too. I think it's a little less sour as well. There's the gorgeous hallmark oak spicing, flakes of pepper, flint and gunpowder, but instead of the sharp burn there's a gentler lemonade tang. I suspect that although the recipe is similar to Boon's own beer, this contains a higher proportion of younger, cheaper beer. It's no harm. This is easy-going and accessible while also showing off the elements geuze does best.

The next one is from the enigmatic St-Louis brand by Kasteel Brouwerij -- not one of the high-end marques and one I only know for their syrupy fruited versions. St-Louis Fond Tradition oude geuze looks like a cask lambic: amber in colour and seemingly short on carbonation. The aroma is all but absent, just a hint of cider and sherry. A subtle jolt of sourness is all the flavour has to offer. Yes, it's clear that this came from a wild-fermentation barrel, but I suspect the blend comes from a much lower level of expertise. After the initial burst of fuzzy funk I get an unpleasant rubbery or phenolic note, and then it all just goes away. I half expected substandard St-Louis to wow me with this one, as Timmermans and Mort Subite have with theirs. But it just doesn't cut it and can be safely avoided. The lack of a cork should have been a clue.

So to the main event. Brett-Elle was more than double the price of the Moriau and it's hard to see how it justifies that, other than in rarity. It looks similar: another hazy pale orange one. The aroma is more funky than sharp and tart, though it still manages to smell properly of lambic. A very high carbonation meant it took a moment or two to get a proper first impression but when that came it was rather plain. White wine vinegar is about the extent of it, with a scorch on the throat and a mild nitre brick effect. It's fine but it's absolutely not the next-level experience implied in the price. It's just not as interesting as Moriau, even allowing for it being 1.5 ABV points lower in strength. This new lambic brewery seems to have nailed the fundamentals but is still lacking in finish and poise.

Though these didn't all amaze me, it's good to know there are still new mixed-fermentation beers out there for me to try; ones where doing something different involves more than a tub of fruit syrup.

The festival fringe

Today's post is an addendum to the previous two this week, covering a pair of beers from the UK that I met on my visit to Cork for the Cask Ales & Strange Brews Festival at Franciscan Well.

I caught The Linen Weaver on a good day when I called in for breakfast. The staff were in a chipper mood and there was a respectable selection of cask beers on. I opted for Proper IPA by Broughton. It didn't looked the Mae West: quite a murky amber colour with a fast-fading head. The aroma was promising, however, offering a waft of tropical fruit of the kind you rarely find in a cask British IPA. It's 5% ABV so I was fearful of a hot and soupy texture next but it passed that test too, being light, clean and refreshing. The flavour delivered perfectly on the promise of the aroma: gentle mango and passionfruit, a sterner lemony bite, and backed by a quenching tannic dryness. All the hallmarks of a good bitter are here, while the use of American hops has given it an added dimension of flavour. Very nicely done.

On the way home I picked up a selection of beers at No. 21 on MacCurtain Street, including Hunter, a helles from Gipsy Hill. It certainly looks like a helles, being pale and clear. It smells of toast in a champagne sort of way, which is promising. So it goes with the flavour: a dry white-grape effect that definitely says "posh wine" to me. It fades after that, so if you don't like your craft lager clean and simple, this one isn't for you. There's little by way of complexity but I liked the way it goes about its business. It's a craft take on a classic German style, and while it may not be 100% accurate, it is is nice, and I give it a pass for that. This is one of those UK beers that would work well in big cans for an unfussy market that doesn't know how good it has things. The other recently-imported Gipsy Hill beers are on my to-do list.

I think I did very well picking random beers under limiting circumstances. Some days the beer karma is just good for no reason.

... so below

Following on from Monday's post about the Francsican Well Cask Ales & Strange Brews Festival a couple of weeks ago, here are the beers from round Cork and Kerry way.

Franciscan Well itself had a couple of special edition versions of its core beers, including a Dark Chieftan. I'm no fan of Chieftan IPA in general, but this one, tasted blind in the competition, was rather good. It was amber rather than properly dark, with a fresh citric aroma and a floral taste: starting at Parma Violets before veering close to the front door of Lush. An odd beastie, but quite charming, and it grew on me as I assessed it. I wasn't the only one to succumb as it ended up taking the prize for best strong or dark beer and third prize overall on the day.

There was also a Franciscan Well Raspberry Wheat Beer which was less impressive. "A brave attempt that hasn't worked" said a fellow judge. Why? Well, the raspberry element is rather overdone, coming across more as a concentrated essence rather than real fruit. There's a jarring old-world spice as well: nutmeg or clove, lending it a mulled cider quality that's not unpleasant but not right either. It fitted the festival's theme by being both wintery and strange. Too strange to be enjoyable as a wheat beer, though.

The other new special was called, for some reason, Immoral: a 4% ABV dark lager. A relation of Archway, perhaps? It's quite plain anyway, with an aroma of toffee and a touch of coffee in the flavour. It could easily pass as a middle-of-the-road Irish red, certainly more easily than as a continental dark lager of any sort.

Rebel Red with added Azacca, Simcoe and Amarillo hops plus some chipotle chillies gives us The Witcher. This is another quite dull one, the extra hops completely absent to my palate and the peppers bringing the plasticky taste they sometimes impart but nothing else as regards flavour or heat. This promised a great deal more than it delivered.

Franciscan Well still brews some beers on the kit out behind the pub so the management don't have far to go if they want something created for them. Yet their collaboration barrel-aged stout with Bán Poitín and Three Fools Coffee was brewed at Dick Mack's for some reason. It's called Foolish Monk and combines the various novel elements extremely well. There's a strong a clean coffee flavour, minus the roast, and a spirit kick from the poitín barrel it was matured in. The base is a smooth and easy-going stout. I got a mellow Black Russian cocktail effect from this and was particularly impressed it was all done at 4.2% ABV.

The presence of Dick Mack's beers is one of the things that keeps me coming back to the Cork festivals. This year the Dingle brewpub had a Honey & Hemp Ale on offer. It was pale yellow and hazy, with a grassy lager aroma. And indeed Czech pilsner is the thing it tastes like most, with the same soft mineral quality. There's a very slight honey-syrup texture but that's as close to novelty as it gets. Everything otherwise is well integrated and easy-drinking. I was surprised to find it packs a punch at 6.5% ABV: that's kept hidden. Some peppery hemp character would have been nice but I can't complain.

We finish the festival beers with another barrel-aged job: the French Oak Stout from 9 White Deer. Boy is this oaky. It's like drinking a glass of corks. There's a tawny port effect beneath that, with a square of dark chocolate on the side. The base stout was only 4.5% ABV and that may be why the oak drowned the flavour out -- it needed something bigger to stand up to the woody assault. Still, if the aim was to find out what effect this particular barrel has, mission accomplished.

My own mission at the festival was thus accomplished and I stopped off briefly at The Bierhaus on my way to the train. They were pouring Dearg, a blood orange IPA from Black's of Kinsale. This 5.2%-er is a little thin, and the oily orange side does clash somewhat with the IPA aspect. It's saved, however, by the hops: a lovely big jolt of classic American spritzy bitterness. I didn't have long to ponder it, and it works well on a gulp-and-go basis. I gulped, I went.

Always a pleasure, Cork. Until Easter then.

As above...

At the beginning of the month it was off down to Cork for the first festival of the year, Cask Ales & Strange Brews at Franciscan Well. As usual, before I could enjoy any of the beers, I had to partake in the judging of the best ones in show. Tasting blind, it's a handy way of putting together an honest assessment of what was on offer. I just had to match the numbered reviews to the listings once judging was over. I got through twenty beers at the gig and I'm dividing them geographically, beginning today with all the ones from not-Munster.

And I may as well kick off with the winner, the Baltic porter from Dublin's own Rascals: Absolutely Baltic. This was brand new out and otherwise only available at the brewery. It's an orthodox 7.5% ABV, properly brown-black, though a little flat from the cask. The banana aroma was a surprise but not jarring, leading on to a subtle caramel flavour. There's a lick of liquorice and then a wholesome walnut effect. Nothing is too extreme in this even though it's full of character and cheering winter warmth. Just a smidge more fizz would have perfected it.

The Inchicore brewery also had a dubbel in the running, the fruit flavoured Cherry Poppin'. I've said before that flavoured dubbel doesn't do the style justice and this one, while nothing was wrong with it, at no point reminded me of dubbel. It's only 6.1% ABV, for one thing, a clear and deep ruby with an aroma of dark biscuits. There's a little syrup in the vapours too, and that turns to cough mixture in the flavour. I couldn't identify cherries specifically, just a general sweet and dark fruit, like you'd find in Málaga wine or PX sherry. A touch of dark chocolate brings Raspberry Ruffle bars to mind. It's fun, and a bit silly; treat it with the lack of seriousness it deserves and you'll enjoy.

Staying with the Dubs, DOT had some superb beers on the go, all of which somehow failed to win any awards. I know none came my way for judging. Pick of the bunch, and my personal favourite of the day, was a Barrel Aged Imperial Saison. Wisely, I came to this late in proceedings. It's a whopper 10.4% ABV but is clean and smooth; warm rather than hot. The dominant flavours are a mix of dry Sauvignon Blanc turning to dryer Fino sherry, allied with some sweeter Sauternes. The grape fun is accompanied by the peppery spice found in my favourite saisons. It's a great example of taking the features of a base style and building something different yet amazing from them. I imagine it's more difficult than just squirting fruit syrup in the fermenter, though.

At the opposite end of the scale there was the modestly-named General Sour at 3.5% ABV. It's a hazy yellow colour, and perhaps that contributed to the impression of custard I got from the aroma. Add in the sourness of the flavour, and you get a stick of rhubarb with your custard, the creamy texture enhancing the dessert effect. The sharpness is nicely balanced here: unmistakably tart but rounded and easy-going too.

At the same strength (related recipe?) there was a Session Pale, also with a bit of a vanilla quality in its flavour and a thick-set texture. Sweet orange cordial and a pinch of white pepper also feature. Despite that tiddling ABV I'm not sure a session on this would actually be possible. I was glad I only had a half to enjoy, but enjoy I did.

DOT's blip was a barrel-aged amber-brown yoke called Assorted Nuts. It tasted hugely of hazelnuts with a touch of wafer biscuits. Simple and smooth; clean and easy, there was nothing technically wrong with it, but at 9.4% ABV there really ought to be more happening. It's a strength at which "only OK" is not OK.

There was one beer in competition that I swore was a DOT offering when it came my way for assessment: it had that spicy, pithy oak-and-citrus taste that DOT's barrel-aged pale ales generally show. Except it wasn't DOT, it was YellowBelly's presumably experimental Mixed Fermentation Barrel Aged Special. Coconut/gorse and vanilla come out in the aroma, while the flavour is warm and herbal, like a spiced barleywine, with the weighty mouthfeel to match. Amazingly it's only 5.5% ABV. There's fantastic complexity here, though not the kind I expected. "Mixed Fermentation" means sour to me. Shows what I know.

Just one other YellowBelly beer today: Kazbek Dry-Hopped Ale, showcasing a Czech Saaz-a-like hop I've never encountered before. There's certainly a lot of grass going on; too much really. Steve reckoned it was the hallmark of a beer that's been left to dry hop for too long and I think he's correct there. Behind that it's a decent but unexciting grainy beer, the ABV 4.6%. If I had to put it into a style category I'd suggest a basic English bitter. It left me none the wiser about what makes Kazbek unique, if anything.

New beers from Barrelhead are all too rare, which is a shame. For this gig they sent along a thoroughly unfashionable but quite delicious English-style Strong Ale. It's a very pale example, its appearance resembling the Belgian sort of strong ale. I got no aroma from my judging sample and found the flavour quite hot, but in a clean-burn Duvel sort of way. It doesn't have the Belgian fruit esters, however: the taste settling to a very English bitter wax before some simple candy sweetness and a green weedy spice. No fireworks, no gimmicks, and not too dangerous at 6% ABV. This is one of those beers I wish there was more of a market for. Replace every milkshake IPA with it.

Two Ballykilcavan specials next, both veering away from classic styles, in the spirit of Strange Brews. The first was my second of the day in the blind judging and I didn't care for it at all. Murky, soupy, dreggy and hot; green apples, cheese and feet. None of those descriptors fit the profile of what turned out to be a Peach & Passionfruit Pale Ale. I could tell there was a decent beer at its core, a simple affair with fresh and juicy orange flavours. I blame the serving method for making a mess of it.

My last beer at the festival was their Cherry Chocolate Stout, a bit of a beast at 6.7% ABV. Cherry cough syrup, pie filling and cheap Black Forest gateau say my notes: altogether more wholesome than the previous one. The jammy sweetness is one side but it's balanced by a cherryskin bitterness that was the making of the beer. The base stout takes a bit of searching to find, but it's there too, making this a well-balanced effort, with two complementary aspects to enjoy.

This post began on the festival's official best beer and I'll finish on the official second place: Bullhouse Margarita Gose. Yes the concept is the worst thing to happen to Leipzig since 1943 but I genuinely liked it. It was lovely and smooth from the cask, and an approachable 4.5% ABV. From a red-apple aroma it goes on to be very salty -- the best part of a margarita -- with a jolt of real lime juice and plenty of coriander, something lacking in even straight-up craft-brewed gose these days. It's unsubtle, and risks turning cloying before long, but a judging sample was just right to spark joy. Built for the flight, and that's OK sometimes.

That's all the beer that travelled down the motorways to get to Franciscan Well. The next post will be strictly low mileage.

Mama we're all hazy now

I am forever sceptical when I hear complaints about the ubiquity of any particular beer style. "You don't have to drink it," I sigh, "there's always something else." So I had to bite my lip when I went shopping for Amundsen beers in the Stephen Street News January sale and discovered all three were New England-style IPAs. Still, they're also all collaborations so maybe this is an experimental, learning experience, for the Norwegian brewery.

The first one is in association with Aberdeen's Fierce Beer, called Stardust Galaxies. There was an impressive rush of pineapple juice aroma when I opened the can, though pouring and sniffing revealed something less subtle, and more sweet, like hard fruit candy: no juice here. I see lactose in the ingredients and its effect is immediately felt on tasting, being a completely unnecessary slick sweetness. This clashes with heavy, green, bitter hops, a flavour which begins metallic before fading out as boiled spinach and cabbage. A beer of two halves, then, and neither very charming. That sickly travel-sweet thing re-enters the picture as the beer begins to warm. This is the weakest of the set, at 6% ABV. I started to fear the sequence of increasingly cloying creations I may have got myself into.

For the next one, Pinball Space Machine, the ABV moves up to 6.5% ABV while the collaborating brewery moves down to North in Leeds. It looks much the same, a pale opaque yellow, and the lac' is back. The aroma is less in one's face: just a mild nondescript greenness. The flavour isn't dull, but it's gentler than the previous. Still cabbage, but fresh, cool and crisp, with a little celery too. The unnecessary lactose thick 'n' sweet effect is still present, but it's more muted, lurking in the aftertaste. A buzz of coconut is a welcome bit of complexity and there's a cheek-warming clean alcohol quality. While not wildly different, this is better than the last one, though still not great even by the low standards of hazy IPA.

Let's bring this in. Appearance-wise, Into the Wormhole, with Finback, is more of the same. Lactose again, and the ABV is up to 7.5%. I'm now accustomed to the candy-sweet aroma, this one lacking the crisper hop veg. The texture is different, the carbonation lower and the beer smoother. Its bitterness is much lower than in the others, replaced by an almost custard sweetness; the lactose fitting in for once. That NEIPA garlic kick I had been waiting for finally arrives here, oily and sharp, wafted up on the volatile alcohol. But is it any good? Ehhhh... not really. I think this is the one that will please advocates of the style more than the others. It's hot, punchy, and is juicy if you like your juice with a spoonful of sugar and a shot of vodka.

In my 100% objective analysis, the middle one is the best of this set.