No more heroes any more

Mark of Clanconnel Brewery has a very acute sense of Place and Time. His branding is carefully chosen to reflect the real life and history of where he brews. So, on his first outing, there was a tribute to Co. Down's former lifeblood, the linen industry, in the fine blonde ale Weaver's Gold (I've just noticed recently that between Weaver's Gold, Helvick Gold and Ór we are living through the golden [hahaha] age of Irish blonde ales -- long may it continue). The long-awaited second beer is named in honour of Co. Armagh's greatest sporting legend: the Lurgan greyhound Master McGrath (1866-1871). It seems my home county's humans are a little behind the canines when it comes to sporting prowess. That certainly explains my abilities at least...

Anyway, McGrath's Irish Red is the name, and once again we're looking at a half-litre bottle, brewed for sessionability at 4.3% ABV. The colour is a little paler than one would expect for an Irish red: it's more the dark amber of brown English bitter. The flavour is a tick-list of what the style does at its best: heavy toffee in the ascendant with a lighter, sweeter caramel middle, topped by ripe strawberries and fading out with a mild dry roastiness. Ireland's other microbrewed reds twiddle these dials to varying degrees, but this has most of them turned up quite high, especially the fruit elements. And yet it's still very light and sessionable with nothing cloying or difficult about it. A break with tradition and a bit more of a hop profile would have been nice, but otherwise this is a tasty and quite complex quaffer.

You can argue the toss as to whether Ireland really needs another beer in this style. But there's no doubt that McGrath's Red can hold its own against the top flight of O'Hara's Red and Copper Coast.

Thanks for the sample, Mark. When's beer number 3?

On the Neva Neva

I'm in England at the moment, pootling around Shropshire, doing most of my drinking in and around the main town of Shrewsbury, though what I've found in my beery excursions will have to wait for a future post. Mostly I've been on the local brews, but while passing Appleby's -- one of several posh offies in Shrewsbury -- I spotted something in the window from a little further afield that I had to go in immediately and buy.

Saint Petersburg is an imperial stout by Thornbridge, a Peak District brewery I've had several wonky experiences with but whose devoted following of beer cognoscenti means it must have something going for it. And sure how far wrong can you go with an imperial stout?

I won't answer that, but Saint Petersburg doesn't go very far wrong at all. There's a reddish-brown tint to the otherwise black beer and a lovely thick creamy head, at least at first. From the nose and the taste there's no doubt of the very generous hopping: green and bitter like crunchy veg, with an alpha acid vapour burn as it goes down. Under this there's lots of silky dark chocolate whose bitterness complements the vegetal hops beautifully. A beer of immense balance, this one, worth the excursion.

Today I'm venturing southwards to London, since the Great British Beer Festival kicks off tomorrow. If you're there, you'll see my eye-burning Trouble Brewing t-shirt before you see me.

Francis of A Sissy

They were a little sheepish, the Cork contingent of ICB when the local brewery launched a pink beer. While new brews are always welcome, it's best not to get too excited in case someone thinks you're a bit... you know. Me I'm always ready to embrace my fruity side, so it was on with my most flamboyant outfit and off down to The Franciscan Well to see what all the excitement manly banter was about.

There's no doubting the pinkness of Raspberry Weisse, though my camera seems to have spared the head its blushes: in real life it's very very pink. However, I think it's unlikely that this has ever had a real raspberry near it. Raspberries ferment, and generally leave quite a dry beer, whereas this gives off a powerfully sweet artificial aroma that immediately activated one of my nostalgia sensors: if you weren't raised in Northern Ireland or Scotland around the same time I was this isn't going to mean much to you, but it smells exactly like Creamola Foam, and that carries through on tasting in the powdery effervescent mouthfeel.

My assumption was that they'd just added the raspberry flavour into the house weissbier Friar Weisse, but I'm not 100% sure of that. Friar Weisse (which changes quite a bit from batch to batch) is going through one of its more Bavarian phases at the moment, whereas the base beer of Raspberry Weisse is rather dry with quite a nice wheaty cereal finish. And so tacked-on is the fruit flavouring it's actually possible to ignore it and enjoy the real beer underneath, with only the screamingly pink colour to assault your senses (as well as your dress sense, hairstyle and proficiency on the dancefloor).

I'd go as far as to say it's worth drinking. Though with craft beer fans of a girly persuasion a bit thin on the ground on North Mall, it remains to be seen who actually will.

Delawary

My run-in with Dogfish Head's Raison D'Être a while back left me a little suspicious of the Delaware brewery's abilities to make nice beer with fruit. So it was with some trepidation that I opened the cap on Festina Pêche, a self-proclaimed "malt beverage brewed with peach concentrate" which doesn't claim to even be beer. Oo-er.

The pour gives lots of dramatic sparkle, champagne-like, subsiding quickly to a pale orange cloudy body with no head whatsoever. On the nose, subtle peaches and a bit of carbonic fizz. Flavourwise it's quite dry, with the peaches -- fresh and juicy -- having nothing more than fizzy water to bear them up. The lack of any real body or follow-through taste are a bit of a letdown. It could, in fairness, have been much worse. They could very easily have packed this with sugar and made an alcopop out of it. Instead, while much closer to a Bellini than a beer, it is at least drinkable.

Next up, the much more promising Indian Brown Ale. It boasts of being "well-hopped" which, from the makers of 120 Minute IPA, should really mean something. But there's not a whole lot of hops in evidence. Instead, this very dark ruby ale is loaded with smooth and creamy milk chocolate, accentuated by the light carbonation. If you pause a second after swallowing, the echo of hops makes itself felt: pithy and herbal, but not lasting long as the residual chocolate cream takes over the aftertaste. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for some sort of stale, oxidised bum note, but that never came. Overall, this is a simple but interesting beer. The velvety texture leaves no hint of the 7.2% ABV and it was only after slipping back half the glass that I started to feel a warming glow from it.

Conclusions of this research: one beer for frivilous summer chugging and one for warm autumnal comfort. Or whatever works for you.

Oldies but goodies

There's an e-mail address from an ancient UK ISP on the label of Arundel's Old Knucker, one of those domain names that will forever be associated with dial-up modems and plain-text websites. It shows that when Arundel do an old ale, they do it properly archaic. Old ale is one of my consistent favourites among UK beer styles but it's almost impossible to get hold of here (Clotworthy Dobbin is probably the nearest approximation we have, though it's dubbed a "ruby porter" by its creators and has more of a hop character). So when I was in Brighton last month I grabbed what old ales they had on the shelves of Waitrose and made off, grinning manaically.

Old Knucker (no I don't know what the name means and I'm not going to look it up) doesn't disappoint either. It has that gorgeous limpid ruby colour topped with a loose off-white head derived from very gentle conditioning. The heady aroma promises chocolate covered raisins, but there's even more inside. The first pull (it's definitely a beer for taking pulls of) confirms that beautifully light cask-like sparkle revealing succulent damsons, milk chocolate and sweet pipe smoke. A rich and comforting beer that I really wish I had more of.

I was expecting something very similar from Hepworth Classic Old Ale, and sure, it poured the same lovely dark red hue. But the taste experience was quite different. Only traces of the fruit and chocolate are present, mostly in the aroma. The taste is startlingly dry and roasty, reminding me a little of the lovely red ale that Carlow make for Aldi. Additionally there's a sulphurous bite making it extra crisp and complex, and very drinkable. This is perhaps not an old ale as I would normally recognise it, but it's still very very tasty.

Hooray for old ale, and more of this kind of thing please.

The sweet taste of summer

It's that time of year already when the Porterhouse sets up an eleven-day celebration of Belgian beer across its estate of pubs (well, possibly: I'm not sure if the new Shanghai branch is participating). The draught list isn't exactly brimming with rarities and is a little light on the dark beers, but there's something for everyone I'm sure. There certainly was plenty for me when I went along to the launch on Thursday evening last.

Fruit beers have always featured strongly in the line-up, and this year sees the return once again of quaffable Newton apple, plus the inclusion of house strawberry wheat beer Früli -- both favourites of mine, even if I do only drink a couple of pints of each per year around this time. The fruit newbie is Kriek Boon, and while I'm sure I've had this on many past occasions I've no record of it here other than in a sauce at a Porterhouse gig some years back. The House of Boon, though not quite in the top flight, are one of the better-reputed lambic breweries so I knew this would be good. I was a little surprised at how unsour it was. In that, what sourness the heavy, sticky red beer has comes not from the lambic but from a chewy cherry skin flavour -- a strong, concentrated cherry taste that I liked a lot. There's of course a sweetness to it too, though despite the stickiness, it's not overpowering: fresh and fruity rather than cough mixture sickly. Nicely positioned between the tooth-stripping acidity of Cantillon Kriek and the tooth-rotting sugar of Floris, Boon was a nostalgic reminder of how I ever came to like Belgian fruit beers in the first place.

For those in search of less frivilous Belgian beers, the Porterhouse are offering the strong toffee-banana stylings of Gouden Carolus and the rather astringent St Bernardus Tripel. On the lighter side, they have LeFebvre's Blanche de Bruxelles, a witbier I've seen around in bottled form but never took the time to try. It's a light and zesty affair -- slightly dry and with quite a low carbonation, at least on this draught outing. What separates it from a million other wits is a piquancy on the tail end, a similar sort of incense note that I found in Kiuchi's Classic Ale recently. It's not massively complex, this, but it's always nice to have a simple session beer that's a little bit different from the norm.

The Porterhouse Belgian Beer Festival is on until Sunday. Thanks to Rachel and the team for the launch invite.

What's it all about? Alpha?

I'm sure the term "bog standard" doesn't get used in the same sentence as "Three Floyds" much, but Alpha King is the nearest the Indiana brewery gets. This is their flagship brew, though very far from being beer-by-numbers.

After pouring the dark amber ale I noticed that head formation wasn't a strong suit. It's actually quite a heavy and thick one, and I can't help feeling that a few degrees below cellar temperature would have made it a little less work to drink. No ABV on the label but the Internet tells me it's 6% ABV, and it feels it, leaving a sticky residue behind in the mouth.

Toffee and mandarins are the main things I get from the flavour, finishing citric, though not as intensely hoppy as the name might suggest. The aroma is rather understated for a hop-driven beer of this sort, possibly due to the low carbonation. It's a shame, because more often than not the aroma is the best bit of these kinds of beers.

A cold six-pack is probably the optimum method for enjoying this -- it's not a beer that lends itself to considered analysis.