Two portraits of hops

Another rattle of the Brown Paper Bag last month yielded two new beers from the Dublin-based gypsy brewing collective, both created at Gadd's Ramsgate Brewery in Kent.

On a Thursday evening in early December I trekked up to The Back Page on Phibsborough Road -- no hardship really; it's a lovely pub and worth going out of one's way for. Lupe Garou, for such is the new beer's name, is available kegged only, and Baggers Colin and Brian were present to launch it. This is a 100% wet-hop ale, made with lots of freshly-harvested East Kent Goldings on a base of nothing but classic English malt Maris Otter, up to a weighty 6.5% ABV. It certainly shows off the features of the hop, in very clear terms: waxy bitterness, turning even towards a herbal honey effect at the extreme edges. The strength lends it a certain amount of golden syrup unctuousness, but really it's all about those stern and serious English hops. It's a fun and creative use for ingredients we tend to take for granted, but they're also the reason it's not a headline grabber: you have to really like traditional English ale flavours to be wowed by this.

Just over a week later, the lads were working late again, this time in top south Dublin offy Redmond's of Ranelagh. The occasion was another new beer, Howrye [pronounced "how'r'yeh", with an interrobang and a cheeky Sligo wink]: a 10% ABV rye wine. What's really interesting with this one is the Projecteers did not consider it ready when first bottled several months ago, so have been storing it to let it mellow and mature. And the result is spectacular: all the flavour from the US hops, and Chinook in particular, is still there, all oily and palate-coating. But there are no bitter edges, not a trace of harshness, and while it's warming it's not hot or even particularly boozy. Howrye slips down easily like a smooth liqueur, flavoured with bright peppery and citric flavours. It's great to not have to wonder if it'll improve with age: I suspect that this is at its absolute peak and highly recommend getting stuck into it now in case those bright hops start to fade.

Cheers to Colin and Brian for the free samples, however I did actually buy some Howrye of my own, and will quite likely buy more.

That's refreshing

At last! A white IPA that's comfortable with its true nature. While the civil war rumbles on over black IPA with neither the hoppy porter faction nor the IPA purists gaining ground, white IPA is simply hoppy witbier. No question. End of. That Sierra Nevada have decided to call theirs Snow Wit is to cut any stylistic controversy off before it starts.

It's even closer in ABV to witbier than most of the white IPAs I've met, at just 5.7%. The colour is a very pale yellow, worryingly like the cheaper, less well-made Belgian wits. The aroma is gentle but wonderfully complex, pushing out peach and passionfruit juiciness with a spicy gunpowder background -- not bad, given the "seven varieties of experimental dwarf hops" with which it's brewed. Such gimmickry seldom works in the drinker's favour.

The dry wheaty quality dominates the flavour, and it's perhaps even a little watery, but the spice and fruit are there to a degree as well and there's a sharp bitter tang giving it a perfumed waxy scented candle finish which isn't really to my taste but may keep hopheads happy.

That said, my preference for this style of beer is bigger and badder hopping and I don't mind sacrificing the witbier spices and subtleties to get it. Snow Wit is just a little too well-behaved.

Egged on

They make a cute couple, this pair from Den Ouden Advokaat, a Belgian maker of egg-based liqueurs. I've no idea why they felt the need to commission two beers, but when in Belgium... Neither of them contain any actual eggs, I was relieved to discover.

Boerken is a murky dark red ale of 9.5% ABV. It smells like a bakery on Good Friday, heavy with wholemeal flour, raisins, sweet spices and heat. One might expect it to be a heavy affair but the texture is nicely light and barely troubled by carbonation for a kind of vinous quality. The flavour intensity is up to this descriptor as well: there's a certain spiced and fortified wine vibe, with juicy boozy raisin notes out in force. The bakery theme is well represented too, with a massive cakey-bready element to the taste. There's a slight crisp roast flavour at the very end, adding a very mild dryness to the whole, but the lasting impression is of sweet dark fruit, almost like a dubbel but benefiting greatly from the lighter texture. Still, the impact of the taste, amplified by the alcohol, meant that one was plenty.

So we turn from the farmer to his wife, Boerinneken. She's just as strong as the oulfella, though paler -- an orange amber shade. The alcohol heat is just as apparent here, and has less space in which to hide. The flavour just isn't as complex, with the honey and golden syrup sweetness of a tripel but none of those invigorating spices you usually get in the style. Instead there's a kind of warming herbal element, Deep Heat and eucalyptus. It is not a fun beer, nor an easy beer, but I can't really say there's anything technically wrong with it. The warning is right there in the ABV.

Two slow sippers for a winter's evening are what we have here. For refreshment, best look elsewhere.

Out for a scoop

Word arrived via the Beoir forum recently (cheers Cathal!) that a pub in the northern Dublin suburb of Swords had set up a brewery in its basement and that the first beer was now available. As it happened I had some spare time at the end of my extended Christmas holiday so ventured up last Friday afternoon for a looksee.

The Old Schoolhouse is one of those organic, rambling country-style pubs, nestling into an embankment just outside Swords village and covering multiple levels, inside and out. The normal mainstream beers are available on tap, as well as a couple from Rye River. Behind the main bar, however, is another set of taps, one of which bore the legend Scholar Black Stout. This is the first beer from the basement nanobrewery which they've named "Ravenbrew".

Sadly the brewery is not on display and is out of bounds so the details will have to wait until a visit can be arranged. By then there should be a pale ale available too, meaning there's definitely a reason to go back. For the moment, I contented myself with a pint of the stout.

Scholar Black is a very straightforward take on Irish nitrokeg stout and has plainly been designed as a direct substitute for the big industrial brands. Don't expect any unorthodox complexities or high intensity flavours. Instead you get a super-smooth creamy pint with just enough chocolate to prevent it from being bland and a very nice dry and slightly bitter tang on the finish to keep it in line with the Irish dry stout style spec. I doubt I'd be crossing the city again to get another pint of it, but if it was on tap in my local, especially at just €4 a pint, I could see it being a go-to beer.

Flavour aside, what I really love about the whole thing is a pub simply setting up to brew its own beer on-site. We don't have nearly enough of that kind of thing in Ireland, and for no good reason I can see. I hope the Old Schoolhouse becomes a beacon for publicans who want to get into the production game. It has certainly set an example of how to do simple decent quality beer well.

Free schipping

Two beers from Schipper's of Mount Eden in New Zealand today, both acquired at the Alltech festival waaay back last February so sadly not on the Irish market, as far as I'm aware.

First up is Scallywag, a 5.5% ABV amber ale boasting Motueka, Pacifica, and Styrian Goldings hops, though boasting is about all that's going on. There's a vaguely pleasant orangeade tang to it, balanced against some light biscuit malts, but not a whole lot else. As well as lacking the proper flavours for an amber ale, it even has the colour off, being more pale than amber. There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just not what I'm after in this kind of beer.

Golden Geezer also makes a bit of a colour faux pas, being more of an orange amber than gold, pouring fizzily with a light fuzz of haze through it. Though only 4.6% ABV it's not the weak antipodean lager substitute I was expecting. The aroma gives the first clue: peaches, pink grapefruit and other succulent tropical loveliness. A more assertive bitterness arrives on tasting, pithy and acidic at first, allowing some rounded juicy mandarin in the middle before going back for a sharp lime finish. All done with Pacific Jade and Nelson Sauvin says the label helpfully, I'd never have guessed. Its Achilles' heel is the texture: an attempt at lightness has left it more watery than anything else; the hops lack a proper malt base to cling to. If you're going to unbalance a beer then this is definitely the direction in which to do so, but just a little more body would have upgraded it from pleasant sunshine sessioner to world-beater.

Schipper's, it seems, know what they're trying to do, and are capable of doing it, but on this evidence I think more practice may be required.

Ringers

"Are you here for food, or just a look around?"

Yes, Wetherspoon has certainly been something of a curiosity since it came to Dublin last year, hence the smiley greeter at the door of The Forty Foot on its first morning of business. I was here, since she asked, for beer.

Chances are you'll have seen the shock news as it happened: the pub chain choosing not to stock Heineken-brewed beers. A bevy of substitute bevvies was shipped in to replace them, and that's what drew me.

The stout line-up included Bath Ales Dark Side, and I kicked off with that to get it out of the way. While it's nitro-dispensed there's a pleasant tongue-tingling sparkle to this, though the texture is also plenty creamy. As expected, the trademark Bath Ales butterscotch is present in a big way but it's disguised somewhat by the sweet chocolate. It's a passable pint but you won't catch me drinking another.

Keeping it company at the black end of the taps is Marstons Revisionist Stout, a tiny bit stronger at 4.1% ABV with the informative tap badge helpfully offering black malt and roast barley, so I was hoping for a drier experience to cleanse all that diacetyl off my palate. The head on this one was promisingly darker: a healthy shade of nicotine, but of flavour there was none. Even after letting it warm up a ways there was a vague putty sort of tang but nothing that tasted like beer, never mind stout. My palate was cleansed but so was my optimism that the Marstons Revisionist project can deliver anything worthwhile.

Chances are I wouldn't have opted for Murphy's or Beamish on a visit to The Forty Foot anyway, though I have no objection to either. But these two stouts don't even reach Heineken's low bar.

My hopes were higher when I turned to lager. As titles go, Adnams Dry Hopped Lager really sounds like a winning formula. They certainly got their money's worth out of the Galaxy hops: this is a total mandarin bomb, to the point of being almost too sweet and juicy. There's a little bit of resinous incense spice and some heavier herbal dank, all of it given total free rein by the pristine lager cleanness. With no major bitter element, this is the beer to turn the local collars-up lagerboys into IPA fanatics.

On the journey home, since I was in the South County anyway, I dropped in to the other Wetherspoon: Blackrock's Three Tun Tavern. Mostly I wanted to grab a pint of Devils Backbone Pale Ale, the US-style offering brewed by Banks's for the chain and not yet in stock at The Forty Foot. Here is the bitterness missing from the Adnams lager: sharp and waxy; invigorating and refreshing. The flavour is rich and pithy, all ripe jaffa oranges, and the aroma adds to the waxy bitter effect. I liked it. It functions equally well as a cold, cheapy thirst-quencher and a more considered sipping ale. Would I be shot for suggesting there's a hint of Timothy Taylor Landlord about this?

And ugh, because I have to: Innis & Gunn Lager. My half arrived an innocent pale yellow colour smelling of nothing and tasting of little more. There's a bit of lagery grain husk and just a trace of the standard I&G toffee yuck. But it benefited hugely from the super-low serving temperature and was actually quite refreshingly bland, something I never thought I'd say about an Innis & Gunn beer. Still, I wasn't tempted to let it warm to further explore its charms. Down the hatch and one more for the road.

While waiting to be served that (sadly, second-rate English-style bar service comes with the package) I spotted another Adnams beer in the bottle fridge: Crystal Rye IPA. I guess there's a reason "Crystal" is writ large on the label, because it's writ large on the flavour too: a stiff, chewy toffee character, barely troubled by the hopping which I'm sure is generous but just gets drowned in caramelised sugar. There may be a grassy rye bite in the finish but it's entirely possible the power of label suggestion is putting that in there for me. I'm glad it was cold and I'm glad it's only 5% ABV: it could pass for stronger.

A couple of cans of Sweet Action for the long trek home on the number 17, and my day of 'Spooning was over. Once again the beer quality and price wasn't enough to drag me away from my more regular haunts, but roll on retirement, eh?

The gaze of Janus

Hidden Agenda joins Graffiti and Vietnow in Trouble Brewing's OMG All Teh Hopz family of pale ales, this one at the 4.5% ABV mark. Australian varieties Vic Secret and Summer are providing the show here but it's not really one of those soft tropical fruit jobs you often get from Aussie hops. Prepare yourself instead for a major blast of fresh, sharp citrus and pine resins. Only in the finish is there any more rounded fruit taste, a swift suck on a mandarin but nothing more. I assume some malt has gone in here from the orange colour but I couldn't taste its presence: it's actually a little watery at its heart, especially when arriving cold. Still, I welcome the clean zippy hop bang and hope they make more like it.

White Gypsy's cask winter seasonal is a big 5.7% ABV dark ale called, appropriately, Dark Night. There's lots of chocolate in here but it's not overly sweet and, while rich and warming, doesn't taste all of its strength. When acquired fresh in The Brew Dock there was an extra bitter bite in the background, for a sort of Wrasslers effect. I couldn't be sure if it was generous hopping, a yeast bite or even an immature greenness I was tasting, but it added an extra dimension to the flavour, one which was gone a few days later when the pub was clearing the cask for the Christmas break, leaving behind some unseasonable but tasty strawberry sweetness.

And across the Galway Bay pub estate we're starting to see the appearance of Heathen, a 3% ABV sour black wheat beer. I've got through a lot of this since it first appeared in The Black Sheep: it's light and clean and super quaffable. The puckering dark vinegar tang is shocking at first but once you've settled in to it the flavour and high carbonation make for a refreshing oxyclean scrub for the palate.

The last of the new breweries to send beer out in 2014 was O Brother in Wicklow. They made sure I got some exercise by keeping the two first-run beers on opposite sides of the Liffey in L. Mulligan Grocer and The Norseman. Believe it or not the two glasses of The Fixer here presented were both poured from the same keg within seconds of each other. It's described as an American Red and it's very bitter: green cabbage and metal, plus some chewy toffee. There's more of a strong English bitter feel to it, I thought, than anything stateside. The cloudy version was actually a little softer, though still rather acrid.

I much preferred their pale ale The Chancer. Startlingly pale and with every right to claim the "'n' hoppy" that goes with it. Bright fresh lemon zest is the principal flavour; malt sweetness steers it towards candied peel, though it does build, becoming a bit piney floor cleaner by pint's end. Overall, a very good quality effort and it will sit well alongside more established luminaries like Metalman and Black's of Kinsale pale ales.

Irish brewing is in fairly good nick, then, if this lot are anything to go by. The current renaissance in international beer styles, starting in 2006 with Galway Hooker, is well documented. But it's the story of Irish brewing before that that I'd love to see told, in answer to Alan's question for this month's session: What beer book yet to be written would you like to see published?

I remember, and drank, the Irish craft beers of the early 2000s, and have seen tantalising glimpses of the extinct breweries which dotted the country in the previous five centuries through the work of Barry, Martyn, Ron and others. But while I'm sure all the information is out there somewhere, and that there are plenty of wonderful stories to be told, nobody has yet taken the time to write a properly wide-reaching history of Ireland's beer. I'd even settle for Dublin's.

In general I'm quite happy with where we're going in this country. I'd just really like to know more about where we've been.