Unsaisonable

Two Belgian saisons today, one traditional with a twist, the other from one of the country's new wave brewers.

Saison Cazeau is first, from Cazeau Brewery, which is in Cazeau, in case you were wondering. At 5% ABV it is what I've increasingly come to regard as Proper Saison Strength and the unusual feature is the addition of elderflower into the mix. It's the limpid pale gold of a pilsner and smells vaguely floral but with a good dose of saison spices too. Vagueness is quite a feature, actually. I was braced for a big syrupy blast of all-conquering elder but it has been used very sparingly; almost too sparingly for my taste actually, presenting nothing more than a suggestion in the finish. The core of the taste is fizzy dryness without so much of the fun saison flavours and crying out for the balance that sweet elderflower could have provided if it had been added more liberally. I get a staleness too, which I don't think has anything to do with the fact that the bottle is a few weeks past its best-before. This beer lacks character, and there's no excuse for that when you're bunging in strange ingredients.

De la Senne won't let me down. De la Senne never rarely lets me down. Their Crushable Saison is one of my all-time favourites of the style so I had high hopes for Saison du Meyboom: extra super crushable at just 4.2% ABV. This is paler still and the column of foam that formed as I poured created the distinct impression of serving champagne. The aroma is bitter lemon and a slightly unpleasant herbal urinal cake whiff. Its texture is thin and the flavour very lemony, resembling a witbier more than a saison. And not a good witbier either. There's no saison spicing, though the dryness is there and a massive amount of gas. The yeast fuzz does help to soften the sharp edges a little, but between the carbonic bite and the citrus peel there are a lot of sharp edges in this beer. Apparently it sold out incredibly fast, and the chap in the Senne taproom was reluctant to let me take it away. I would like to put in on record, therefore, that I don't see what the fuss is about. Bring back Crushable.

Even at Proper Saison Strength, and regardless of the age or acumen of the brewery, saison still offers more of a Russian roulette experience than other beer styles. I've just taken two to the head.

Passing sweeps

Dropping into bars and offies on spec in search of beers new and interesting is a fairly regular part of my drinking life, particularly when left to my own devices.

One such wandering into the beer section of SuperValu recently turned up a bottle of Redemption IPA, the first of the style from the generally quite safe Kildare-based brewery Kelly's Mountain. The ABV is certainly safe, a very approachable 4.8%. It poured beautiful: the flawless clear gold of fine Czech lager with a pure white head whose loose bubbles showed that the carbonation was at just the low level I like. Sure enough there's a lively sparkle to it but no more fizz than it strictly needs. According to the label it's dry-hopped with Chinook and Admiral, promising "magnificent hop aromas balanced with a high bitterness" but it had already started to unravel even before I looked for the brewer's description. The aroma is all malt and sweet almost to the point of sickliness, a golden syrup note bringing thoughts of pilsner to mind again. But definitely no hops to speak of. And it's sweet again to taste: cloying brown sugar and a dirty great smear of diacetyl, though finishing quickly and leaving just a lightly acidic bitterness in the back of the palate. Doubtless the brewer had good intentions but something has let them down: the kit, the recipe, the method. It's not a bad beer; it will have fans, but it doesn't deliver on the promise of the label. Redemption is very much pending.

Work sent me on a rare foray into the south-eastern quarter of Dublin recently and I stuck my head into The Square Ball on the way home. Brewtonic's new porter was on: 13 Seconds, another one brewed at Rascal's to Rossa's recipe and commemorating a recent victory of Dublin's top kicky-punchy man Conor McGregor. It's 5% ABV and foamed a lot as it poured, staying fizzy as I drank my pint, though that didn't take long. The first impression on tasting is a slightly ashen roasted grain quality, followed quickly by a balancing velvety milk chocolate effect and seasoned with gunpowder spices of the sort I normally find adding complexity to dark beers on cask, so it was nice to find them in this cold fizzy keg. Last week's Alltech beer festival, of which more anon, provided the opportunity to try the cask version and it's as sumptuously smooth and creamy as I was expecting. But back to the keg, which finishes dry with a more serious metallic hop edge. It doesn't taste 5% and is very sessionable. I'd have happily stayed for another but there was another pub I wanted to drop by.

It was a specific beer that lured me to Alfie Byrne's, having already drawn a blank at its big baby sister The Gasworks. Kompass is described by Galway Bay Brewery as a "hopfendunkel" -- the first I've come across. It's 8.2% ABV and colourwise is, well, purple when put in front of a candle, the pub's main and rather inadequate source of light. I assume it's a dark red colour where it's bright enough to see. A haze was visible too, which is fair enough because the aroma leaves no doubt that we're in weizen territory: there's a massive hit of boozy bananas in the aroma, like Aventinus with the volume up. The texture is appropriately smooth and there's lots more luxury bananas and a darkly decadent rum baba flavour with lighter notes of vanilla ice cream. But then the special effects kick in: a sharply acidic, palate-scrubbing, green hop bitterness that's completely out of place. On each mouthful it's not noticeable at first but then jumps in, loudly and unbidden. The end result is a beer which tastes like an ill-advised blend of a weizenbock and a harsh IPA. I'd like to try this dunkel without so much hopfen, thank you.

That was only a couple of weeks ago but the Kompass sign was already coming down from the blackboard in The Beer Market when I called in last Thursday, to be replaced by yet another new Galway Bay beer: 303. There's lots to conjure with in the description: a "tart pale ale with Azacca hops", but it's really quite a simple affair. It's pitched at a sessionable strength and sessionable price: 3.5% ABV and €4.50 a pint respectively, presenting a murky orange but happily not yeast-bitten (a second pint, in Alfie's on Saturday, was perfectly clear). There's not much by way of aroma: a lightly sour acidity and no more than a suggestion of hops, but the hops are front and centre in the flavour. It tastes bright and fresh with a gorgeous rounded, juicy tangerine foretaste, then a slightly sharper pineapple note in behind, but tropical through and through. While a salty sour tang is certainly present, it's not a defining feature and serves only to aid drinkability. Those who are "into sours" probably won't find much to engage them here. On the downside I think I got a flash of stale oxidation on the very edge of the flavour and, unsurprisingly, the texture is rather watery which starts to get a bit irritating towards the end, but these are teeny tiny quibbles. 303 is a nice sidestep from both Heathen and Via Maris, and like both of them it's a beer I will happily drink, in quantity, until it runs out. I hope it lasts long enough for al fresco consumption.

Not here just to take part

It's interesting to watch the milestones going past on the journey towards Irish craft beer becoming mainstream. A fairly major one went largely unnoticed last year and it was a happy surprise when I discovered that the country's largest independent microbrewery, Carlow Brewing, had joined the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland. ABFI is, after all, the Big Boys' club, representing the handful of major players that produces most of Ireland's beer: Diageo, Heineken and Molson Coors among them. It means something when Carlow, which brewed 25,000 hL of beer last year, is part of that. So it was an even bigger shock to learn last week that ABFI's new chairman is Carlow's founder and MD Seamus O'Hara. It's like David, rather than slaying Goliath, became his boss instead.

I suspect this is just the beginning of the further diversification of what I'm going to continue to call Irish craft beer. Carlow Brewing started small, paying its dues playing the small clubs, as Seamus likes to say. But now we have the likes of Rye River and Boyne Brewhouse, setting out to be big-for-craft on day one, and there are other growers like The Porterhouse and Eight Degrees clearly heading in that direction. It's not a zero-sum game, of course. I firmly believe there's room for breweries of every size in the market, so long as they play nice and don't start pulling the same dick moves that earned the establishment their reputations as domineering bullies and the enemies of consumer choice. From the outside at least, I don't see any signs of that happening.

The Carlow Brewing Company turns 20 years old in 2016 and a series of special beers are planned to commemorate this. The first arrived last week at a launch event in The Bleeding Horse on Dublin's Camden Street. Notorious is a dark red IPA, brewed with a classic US mix of Columbus, Chinook and Centennial. I was a little disturbed by it at first: an intensely sharp and waxy bitterness is how it introduces itself -- harsh and blustery. After this it opens out to a fabric-softener floral character which reminded me a lot of the regular O'Hara's Irish Pale Ale, though it's definitely denser and more intense. The redness manifests as a roastedness that puts even more of an edge on the whole thing. This is a big, loud, mean beer that doesn't pull its punches. Or its roundhouse kicks.

I was half way through my second free pint before I decided I liked it. It takes a while to adjust and, for all its powerful flavour, it's not a beer for sipping. The ABV is a mere 5% and taking it in generous mouthfuls puts more of the fresh floral and citrus notes on the palate, and less of the acidic bitterness. It's definitely not one of your kiddywink tropical juicebox IPAs. This is serious stuff for grown-ups only.

Expect to see more Carlow specials over the coming months. There's an imperial stout on the way in a few weeks, with weissbier and unfiltered lager to follow. It's nice to have a few drinks when it's your birthday, after all.

Blind justice

And so, before January had even slinked away, the 2016 beer festival calendar got under way at Franciscan Well in Cork. Irish cask beer has been central to this bijou affair in the brewpub yard since its inception in 2011 but this year the service was 100% cask, which was fun. Beoir, with the organisers' co-operation, took the opportunity to hold a competition to judge and declare Ireland's best cask beer. I had intended to do no more than heckle the tasting panel while I worked along the taps but ended up roped into a bit of judging as well. This did mean that I got to taste several new beers blind, which is of course how beer ought to be evaluated. I took my own notes as I went and matched them to their names at the end. My team, also including future pro-brewers Barry and Brendan, was allocated dark beers for the most part.

Black's World's End

World's End imperial stout by Black's of Kinsale was not part of our line-up for some reason, but I snaffled some from the other end of the table when I heard loud disagreements about it. It ended up taking second prize overall so consensus was that it was great. I was one of the dissenters, however. The first sip is unquestionably beautiful: thick and strong and luscious with a silky, warming hot chocolate effect. But within seconds it turns and finishes stale, reminding me very specifically of that awful brown substance which passes for chocolate in the USA. Nobody wants to drink a Hershey bar. I never cease to be amazed that anyone wants to eat one either, mind. Perhaps the dispense is to blame and the sample I got was oxidised -- I'd certainly be happy to try it again bottled. But on the day it just rubbed my palate up the wrong way.

In general, I'm a fan of stout on cask. I imagine they're difficult to mess up and the smoothness and complexity that cask lends really suits the style. So I was surprised by how poor I found most of the regular-strength stouts. 9 White Deer's Lón Dubh, for instance, tasted powerfully of caramel wafer biscuits, while also being unforgiveably thin. The cask-exclusive West Cork Brewery -- who ended up taking the top prize for their Roaring Ruby red ale -- also had Stout x Stout West in contention. There's cinnamon and chocolate in this, but not enough of one and too much of the other. The cinnamon is overpowering and it ends up tasting sweetly medicinal: mouthwash to me; syrup-of-figs to Brendan. A dash of molasses and a hint of chocolate do nothing to balance the mess.

Torc Kingdom Porter

Things get a little better when the sweetness is dialled back. Torc's Kingdom Porter, tasted later once judging had ended, goes all-out for dryness with a big black-malt roast kick and finishes on a scouring sharp grain husk. It's pretty severe, though the cask texture does help round it a little. I don't think they've got the recipe wrong, but you need to like your porters ashen to enjoy this.

Late last year O Brother had a popular coffee stout doing the rounds. I didn't get to try it, but I'm assuming that No Joe at this event was a coffeeless version of the same. A vanilla and chocolate aroma opens it but it switches unexpectedly on tasting to quite a green bitterness. A little harsh, perhaps, but still pleasant for sipping.

For reasons known only to head steward Kellie, we got one ale in our set, which turned out to be Winter Solstice by Killarney Brewing. It proved a rather dull red-brown job, low on both aroma and flavour though harshly yeast-bitten and with an unpleasant alcoholic heat. I could see what the brewers were going for within the coppery winter warmer genre, but this didn't work for me.

Best of the bunch was Dungarvan's Coffee & Oatmeal Stout, but of the new beers YellowBelly's Rosehip Schwarzbier impressed me most. In no way does it resemble a schwarzbier, however, so it was deducted a token couple of points on stylistic grounds, though that didn't prevent it from going on and taking the best lager award. It smells simply of bananas and is light bodied, fitting the modest 4.5% ABV. And it tastes pink: a strongly floral perfume melding with dark chocolate, coming out like those old-fashioned raspberry ruffle sweets, but with a tart edge to aid drinkability. Silly, but fun.

We'll stay with YellowBelly as we move out to more beers I didn't get served blind. YellowBelly Brown Porter was a late addition to the line-up on Saturday afternoon, when it looked like supplies were in danger of running out. This is also very tasty, but doesn't really match the style accorded to it. There's a lovely sweet and spicy pipe tobacco flavour with smooth fruit sherbet and then a cheeky smack of lime on the finish. Great drinking, but you need to watch out for the stealth 7.5% ABV.

Also brewed at YellowBelly, but under head brewer Declan's own marque, was Otterbank Pine Needle Berliner (aka The Vikings Are Coming). There's barely any sour tang in this murky orange 4.9%-er, nor anything I'd pick out as pine needle, but there is a huge expanse of tropical fruit juice. It's a bit one-dimensional that way, though refreshing when cold. I probably shouldn't have sat over it so long since an unpleasant chlorophenol note is your reward for letting it get any way warm.

Metalman fulfilled the "strange brews" part of the festival brief thanks to an accident in their brewery involving their Equinox wheat lager. The result is Spring, with added lemon peel, thyme and pink peppercorn, and still a lager despite what the pumpclip says. It's another light and refreshing quencher, the peppercorns giving it a subtle aftershave spice while the citrus adds a kind of lemon-and-lime 7-Up shandy effect. This manages to deliver all the fun of odd fruits and spices without them dominating the underlying beer. Perhaps more summer than spring, but I could definitely quaff a lot of it.

And finally for this year, Torc India Pale Ale No. 1, a belter at 7.2% ABV but very drinkable with the soft and cool cask texture. And tasting clean, before you ask, despite that haze. The styling seems very English to me, in the best possible sense: all spicy orange marmalade spread thick on wholegrain toast. You don't get many beers of this sort produced in Ireland, it has the makings of a future classic and I'm not sure the series needs any revised sequels.

There was time for a couple of swift ones on the way back to the train so I dropped in to The Bierhaus, knowing they were serving Wired from Trouble Brewing. This 5.9% ABV oatmeal IPA is a scaled-down version of last year's Hardwired double IPA. It's an attractive red-gold and tastes like another Trouble classic: big grapefruit and seriously resinous weedy hops, though I guess some of that full mouthfeel is provided by the oatmeal. It's a welcome bigger brother to Graffiti and I'd be happy if it became a regular feature, especially now that Galway Bay is halting production of its own oatmeal IPA.

I followed it, perhaps inadvisedly, with another IPA. Cork city's own Cotton Ball has brewed one with blood orange and called it Another Bloody IPA. I found it heavy and quite malt forward from the bottle, but that could have been down to my wired palate. There is a citrus element to the taste but it's muted: more sherbet than pith. It's decent, but not terribly exciting and doesn't really stack up against the like of Beavertown's Bloody Ell.

With that, it was time to grab some train beers and head back to Dublin. Well done to all the competition winners and congratulations to Franciscan Well for another great festival. I'm still slightly spooked that Ireland seems to produce better pale beers on cask than dark, but I'll just have to live with that.

Chill out

"Snowed in" is the topic Jon Abernathy has chosen for this month's Session, raising the perennial controversy over when winter ends and spring begins. Ireland persists with the daftly optimistic notion that 1st February is the beginning of spring, which is, of course, nonsense. Look outside if you don't believe me. Does that look like spring to you?

Anyway, to 57 The Headline again, on a chilly, damp January evening. The draw was the Christmas special beer from Connemara's Independent Brewing: a Barley Wine presented in two different barrel-aged forms, one in Jack Daniels casks, the other in an unspecified type of brandy. I failed to secure any bottles of it but fortunately the pub had commissioned a 20L keg of each.

Surprise no. 1 was how pale it is: almost golden. Kevin the brewer happened to be on hand to explain that it's a 100% pale malt grist. First for the taste test was the Brandy version and I didn't get much barrel character from it. Kevin said it was much more apparent as it came out of the conditioner but admitted that it seems to have disappeared here. There was a certain rich fruitiness to the aroma which could have been the spirit at work, but I quickly began treating this as though it were an unaged version, enjoying the heavy warmth and sharp grown-up bitterness. Very much in the style of an English strong ale, I thought, though it turns out the hops are a mix of Magnum and Willamette. Go figure. It's an enjoyable winter sipper without much by way of novelty enhancements.

All the enhancements are present in the Bourbon edition, however. A big vanilla bang right at the outset and then a tang of classic JD sourness which goes a long way to cover the bittering effect of the hops. Thankfully the warming properties of the base beer remain intact and aren't boosted past the point of comfort. The end result is a beer that's heavily bourboned but at 8.1% ABV has all the heft required to counterbalance it.

A taster of each was enough before I reverted to a sessionable pint of Graffiti. Our host asks "Imagine you were snowed in at a cabin in the mountains for the winter. What one beer would you want with you?" If I'm honest that's more likely to be the session beer than any of the strong ones. Big winter beers are OK for a short while but they do tend to leave me hankering for something sunnier soon afterwards. Now where has spring got to?

Curiosities

I'm aware of the risk that this blog may turn into What I Drank At 57 The Headline but, for better or worse, that's where I encounter a lot of new beers these days, and often ones that aren't even on the pub's stock list.

For example, I spent an enjoyable afternoon recently, chatting beer with fellow enthusiasts Dorothy, Simon and Andrew for a radio documentary Andrew's missus Laura is making. At the end, the guys produced a bottle of Allagash Curieux for the table. It's a looong time since I last drank any Allagash beer so I was keen to find out how they'd been getting along while my attention has been elsewhere.

In keeping with the name, it's something you don't see very often: a bourbon-aged tripel. Tripels, in this writer's opinion, are all about the freshness and spices. I was a bit sceptical as to whether wood-ageing might improve one. It started pleasantly enough with bitter yet juicy melon rind and orange pith. "Coconut" is one of the descriptors on the label and yes, I get that too. But after these initial treats from the base beer, in sweeps the blaring raw oak from the barrel, coating everything in a thick layer of whisky and vanilla. The bourbon doesn't spoil things completely but it does dirty up what I suspect is quite a decent Belgian-style beer underneath. Still, it's always nice to try something different -- thanks Laura and Andrew!

Meanwhile, proprietor Geoff has been collecting beer from all over, including this sample bottle of Celtic Warrior from Cavan-based Hyland Brewing, though the beer itself is brewed at the Craftworks brewery in Dublin. Like a lot of the pale ales coming from Irish start-ups these days, it's designed to be accessible: a sessionable 4.5% ABV, copper orange in colour and balancing a bitterness that's no more than marmalade level with a lightly sugary malt stickiness.

The recipe designer seems to have aimed for -- and succeeded at -- something inoffensive, though personally I don't see how anyone could be offended by the gorgeous hoppy high notes you find in the next-level Irish pale ales like Eight Degrees Grand Stretch, Trouble Graffiti and White Hag Little Fawn: I think I speak for the entirety of Ireland's drinking public when I say that the nation's basic pale ales should be more like these. If you're in Cavan, though, I reckon Celtic Warrior is still a lifesaver. Baby steps. For now.

Dis und dat

I got these Distelhäuser beers from Barry a shamefully long time ago and they were at the front of the queue when I began an overdue clear-out of my beer fridge recently.

Starting with Distel Blond, a 5.1%-er with the unusual distinction of being a top-fermented German ale. Unkonventionell, as the label helpfully puts it. It's a very pale gold in the glass, topped by a happy and bright blanket of froth. The aroma speaks of moist white fruit: pear, lychee and white peach -- juicy but with a sterner note of acetone or gasoline. The texture is light, verging on watery, with the space filled by carbonic fizz. But the fruit still pokes through on the flavour, with the malt adding a tasty burst of sherbet to it, finishing on a sauvignon-blanc-like light citrus. National stereotypes being what they are, I had expected something serious and husky here, but it's not. It's a joyous celebration of malts and hops which I'd say makes for ideal summer drinking. And much as I love quality lager I'm sure this makes a welcome change from them.

Suitably impressed I move on to the next one: an IPA with a cavalcade of top hops: Amarillo! Centennial! Cascade! Simcoe! And, er, First Gold, which was presumably on special offer. Lucky Hop is rose-gold and there's more of that lychee-and-petrol effect in the aroma, as well as an eye-watering marker-pen burn from a very obvious 7.7% ABV. It tastes quite plain to begin with but after a second the hops arrive bringing a heat with the bitterness. It's as thick as the foregoing beer is thin, rather syrupy in fact, and mixing that up with the green acid hop burn makes for an intense, but not necessarily enjoyable, experience. It calms down on the finish and you get your lychees back, which is nice. But this scores low on the drinkability scale. All those hops and I don't think any are lucky. Next!

Back down to earth with 5.5% ABV Black Pearl porter. Proper black, with a brown trim when held up to a strong light, and smelling pleasingly liquoricey. Liquorice in the taste as well, but much more besides: luxurious high-cocoa chocolate, exotic smoke, even more exotic gunpowder, vanilla, rosewater, zinc and wrapping up on a dry burnt note. Phwoar! The texture is that of a much stronger beer: not quite syrup but distinctly unctuous. I'm very impressed by this. Maybe I'd like a bit more sweet floral character, and the metallic burnt bit upsets an otherwise perfect smoothness, but if more breweries were turning out medium-strength porters like this we'd all be drinking them.

A tough act to follow for the big finish: Loch Ness stout is the same strength and more or less the same colour, though the head is darker, greyer even. Its aroma is a sweet and bready fudge cake and the texture lovely and smooth, mouth-coating velvet like some sort of platonic ideal of stout. The flavour is a lot simpler, however. Sweet chocolate is the bulk of it, backed by a yeast kick that's almost Belgian in its spiciness. It's another very well made beer, even if it doesn't have half the bells and whistles of the porter.

I'm thoroughly impressed by this showing from Distelhäuser, the IPA notwithstanding. You can bleat all you want about the craft movement trying to tear down what makes German beer great, but the quality of these ones, and the dark ones in particular, is equal to the best of classic Belgian and British brewing. They deserve a wider audience, if any importers reading have a gap in their portfolio for German porter and stout.