Autumn leaves

Just time for a quick catch-up on some Irish beers from recent months, before the list grows too long again.

A snook is cocked at IPA fashion by the new one from Galway Bay, Clear Intentions. That said, they've gone all out for tropicality with the Opal Fruit power combo of Azacca, El Dorado and Mosaic. It's a mostly clear lager-yellow colour topped by a handsome and lasting pillow of white foam. Before getting to the candy you have to punch through a citrus bitterness that playfully punches back: lime chews and lemon cordial. Under that it's gooey and fruity, the 6.4% ABV combining with the slightly-too-warm temperature I served it at to lend it a heavy softness. When the Opal Fruits fade there's a darker liquorice bittering on the end, providing a longer, more serious, finish. A spring onion note creeps in as it warms further. This isn't in any way retro, tasting perfectly modern, just not of diesel and custard. It's a cuddly and cosy IPA, one whose bitterness you can happily settle into.

In addition to a new beer, Galway Bay also has a new bar: the pizza-centric Paddle & Peel on the former site of Beerhouse at the north end of Capel Street. They've done an extensive refurbishment but kept a very decent selection of their own and guest beers. I opted for the new one from Trouble, a take on the low-strength IPA craze that's been sweeping across Irish breweries in recent months, a 2.5%-er called Backstop. This presents a frankly shocking quantity of mango to the drinker, in both flavour and aroma. It's incredibly juicy, at least to begin with, before bringing peppery spices and a burst of citrus zest: all the good IPA features, basically, with next to no compromise. Yes it finishes a little quickly but the texture is not unduly thin. Great work by Trouble, and I'd happily see this replace their Graffiti here and there.

The first fruits of Eight Degrees's acquisition of Pernod Ricard came when the brewers raided the Jameson barrel store and came away with some casks to age a stout in. Phat Phantom is the result. I'm not sure I've ever had a barrel-aged stout at just 5.5% ABV: they're usually a fair bit stronger. I got a lot of crackling fizz when pouring, and detected a medium-strong sourness, suggesting that this one may have been still quite biochemically active, despite being only a few weeks in the bottle. The tang is pronounced enough to lend it a Flanders red vibe, and strip away the rich whiskey and chocolate warmth I was expecting. The oak is definitely present, in a slightly harsh and sappy way, and there's a dark plum and tamarind fruit flavour just peeking out from beneath it. But then the balsamic twang returns and insists on being centre of attention once more. I don't know if this is what the brewery intended it to be but it's most emphatically not the "Christmas pudding magic" promised on the label, and I hope the beer drinker won't end up suffering under Pernod Ricard's rush for Caskmates whiskey fodder.

Of a much better calibre was the same brewery's Hopsfume Brett IPA which I caught up with on a rare visit to the Bull & Castle. This is a bruising 8.3% ABV and a medium orange shade of murk. There's an exotic aroma of cedar and pineapple to draw you in, the first taste presenting a dry and musky perfume, turning to farmyard funk in the middle, with a pithy and waxy bitter finish. The alcohol, indiscernible at first, becomes more apparent as it warms, adding a Belgian note of boiled-sweet sugar, tilting the dial away from IPA towards tripel. This is a balanced and classy number, making great use of its assorted components to create a harmonious combination of flavours.

It was always going to be a tough act to follow, and the job fell to Third Circle's Neon Wilderness, another Brett IPA*, this time at just 5.6% ABV. Where's the funk? It appeared headless and dreggy, tasting of a chalky dryness with a vague lemon finish, but sorely lacking in character. I had a similar criticism for Third Circle's last outing with Brettanomyces, the Blue Sky saison back in spring. Whatever their wild yeast strategy currently is, it could do with a serious overhaul.

That was part of a trilogy of simultaneous releases from the Third Barrel collective. Stone Barrel's contribution was Mojo, a straight-up IPA at 6.1% ABV. This goes for an extreme oily bitterness straight out of the gate, though it all fades away quickly, leaving no hop afterburn. The more subtle notes are there: peach, lime and grapefruit, though also a yeasty burr that does no favours for the overall picture. It's OK and not fatally flawed, but Irish brewers are making much better hazy IPAs these days and this one doesn't measure up. Maybe it just needs time to clear.

As almost always seems to be the case, a beer released under the Third Barrel label trumps the others. No Sass! is badged as a session New England IPA. It's a hazy orange colour and tastes pithy and dank, lacking the soft vanilla and stone fruit one might expect from the designated style, but I really don't miss them. This is only 4.1% ABV and suffers a little from both thinness and yeast bite but the citrus zest and harder bitter finish compensates adequately for that, leaving you with a very decent and drinkable American-style pale ale.

Back at the Bull & Castle, I also caught up with a relatively new IPA from YellowBelly, a collaboration with Dutch brewer Big Belly and called Belly Dance. No ordinary IPA, this has been formulated to mimic the flavour of a pisco sour, via the addition of lime and grapes. It does it quite well too, having a strange sort of salty sourness and a soft soda texture. There's plenty of sharp citrus and even a vague dankness, so it's not all novelty and there's a decent IPA beneath the decorations. It's still a bit busy, overall, and I was getting tired of all the fruity, spicy fireworks by the end of a half pint.

An emergency hop transplant in my garden last winter meant I missed making a contribution to the third year of Rascals's Social Hops project. Maybe next year my plant will be up to producing cones. I caught up with the wet-hopped pale ale in Underdog, finding it a charming clear golden colour. There's a solidly bready base with a sweeter touch of almond and hazelnuts. The hops do make you work to find them, eventually revealing themselves as mild and meadowy dandelion and clover. There's a slightly sterner bitter finish with overtones of lemon, but that's about as hoppy as it gets. Overall it's a soft and refreshing pale ale in a bucolic English style and would make for a great introductory summer beer were the seasons the other way round.

White Hag had a bunch of new releases over the last few weeks. From the can I got Son of the Sea, described as a session NEIPA, being 3.8% ABV and a wan pale murky yellow. It smells pleasingly pithy: orange rind with a hint of vanilla and sorbet. The flavour doesn't quite live up to that promise, turning very watery very quickly: a rapid rush of yeasty spices and then nothing but an echo of sweet lemon-curd citrus and a mild coconut buzz. It's pretty basic and I can see how raising the alcohol base might improve it. This hits the general style points, lightly, but I don't see what it adds to the Irish beer environment: there are better low strength beers and better murky hop jobs. It's unnecessary.

At P. Mac's, meanwhile, there was a red ale brewed especially for the pub and given the name Aw Class! That's something of an exaggeration as this is very much a down-the-line version of the style. It does show the complexities of flavour that good Irish reds often have: hints of summer fruit, a certain spicy piquancy and a faint burnt roast, but it doesn't accentuate the modest malts and hops the way the really exceptional versions do. Still, it's not bland and only 4.6% ABV so could have been a lot worse. I can't see myself ordering another given the usual quality alternatives on offer from P. Mac's taps.

Up the street at Against the Grain I found White Hag's new oatmeal porter, a 5.2% ABV job called Cauldron of Plenty. It wasn't served on nitro (thankfully) but still arrived with a beautifully smooth and creamy texture. The flavour offers milk chocolate to start, then moves on to plump sweet raisins and tangy plums before reaching a crescendo with boozy rum and port. This is perfect comforting winter fare and I look forward to seeing more of it around as the nights draw in.

I hoped for something along similar lines when I saw JW Sweetman Mild land, and hightailed it straight to the Burgh Quay brewpub as soon as I could. I was surprised, then, to discover a pale red coloured beer on nitro, all gloopy with a sickly candy-sweet aroma. Sweet syrup forms the centre of the flavour, with an outlying nuttiness and a tang of spinach on the end. For all that, it's a bit insipid, and it's hard to locate those flavours amongst the gloop. Perhaps it would be better on cask. In the meantime, I'll take my milds dark, as usual, please.

Down on Millennium Walkway, the space that had been branch two of Pitt Bros barbecue has swiftly and with minimum redecoration become branch two of Mad Egg fried chicken. They've made the smart Beer-Nut-friendly move of having an exclusive (eggsclusive?) house beer, ensuring that I go in at least once. It's a 4.5% ABV pale ale called Mad Yolk, proudly wearing its Hope Brewery provenance on the label. This is a sweet and sticky beastie, packed with juicy Seville orange. Low fizz and next to no bitterness mean it would likely be a tough slog for drinking on its own, but placed next to the spice and stodge of a fried chicken sandwich it works rather well. I got a bit of a nostalgic buzz from the flavour, reminding me of Fanta in the 1980s, when it was lurid orange and had never had a real orange near it. If you can stand that level of sweetness in your pale ale, you'll be OK here.

Rascals has marked the change of seasons by giving us a new imperial stout, Straight Up, aged in bourbon barrels and a relatively modest 8.6% ABV. It looks like a bigger creature, pouring gloopily with a tall dark-tan head, and it certainly feels very thick on the palate. There's a lot of heat too: the bourbon is not subtle. Bags of vanilla, raw toasted oak and a sharp spirit burn. Only afterwards is there a gentler buzz of chocolate and coffee as the stout finally gets a word in. I was expecting a mellow and gentle beer but this is a bit rough and loud. I wonder if more time in the can would settle it?

Finally for today, a new release from Larkin's, their first since the Summer Session Saison back in July. Galaxy Quest is a session IPA with a dramatic name but a more prosaic ABV of 3.8%. It's a milky pale orange colour and tastes yeasty and creamy, lacking the expected hop impact. I found a lemon sharpness in the finish, and some notes of garlic, turned to aioli by the texture. More than anything, it tasted unfinished to me, like a longer maturation would have cleaned it up and allowed the hops more breathing space. It was quite a shock to experience this from a brewery that does clean and bright flavours so consistently well. I hope it's not the beginning of a trend.

That's it for this scattergun blast of recent Irish beers. I'll be turning a more focused gaze on one particular brewer's wares tomorrow.

*Well, sort of. I'm told WLP644 is the yeast used here, one which was thought to be a strain of Brettanomyces until genetic testing a few years ago revealed it to be regular Saccharomyces, albeit with very Brett-like characteristics.

How's the weather?

Wild Weather Ales arrived unexpectedly into Ireland earlier this year like a sudden storm. The cans are striking, with their quirky names and kids'-comic artwork. I picked up a selection in O'Brien's in Blanchardstown when I was there for their festival.

First open is King St Pale, an "honest" pale ale at 4.2% ABV. True honesty would have meant a written warning it was going to gush all over my hand when I flipped the ringpull. It looks well: hazy but bright, and keeping its head after the initial rush. The aroma is a balanced mix of citrus: mandarins and lime, though with a savoury edge that made me wary going in for the sup. It's OK, though. Not as juicy as the aroma suggested, turning instead to the caraway side of hopping with some added oily dankness. It's a little watery too, finishing quickly on a mineral soda tang. Nevertheless, this is perfectly drinkable, and actively refreshing on that particular warm afternoon. A good starting point to build from.

Led Balloon was next, described as an American red ale. It's not very red. Perhaps it's the murk giving it more of a pale amber colour. There's a buzz of Irish red from the aroma: caramel and roast. It's no hop-dodger, however, and the flavour brings a spice more than a bitterness: green pepper and celeriac, but all hop-derived. It's not an exciting beer, and the "American" badge implies to me that the hopping would be more intense, but as a red ale it's very passable.

Back to the pale ales next, and Obscure 80s Reference. It didn't gush but I could tell from the tall pillar of foam it was thinking about it. The appearance is similar to the King St: a cheery opaque orange. Simcoe is the advertised hop yet it smells of caraway. Are we in for a replay here? There's a certain resin to the flavour, but not as much as you'd expect from something with Simcoe written in all caps on the label. The texture is light and what hop flavour it has fades out quickly. Even at 5% ABV, it should have more going on. This is a little tin of whatever.

From pale ale to IPA, and Storm in a Teacup, brewed with additional Earl Grey tea. It's a hazy deep orange colour with a busy fizz, foaming up at first, then keeping a thin but steady head. The aroma is a strange mix of sweet Seville oranges, harsh yeast and twangy zinc. Despite the fizz, it has a smooth texture, reflecting fully the 6% ABV. The flavour is out, though. A heavy dregginess dominates the picture, covering the hops, aided by thick treacley brown bread. As it warmed I even got a twang of vinegar. A tannic edge on the very end must be the tea, but it tastes like dry leaves rather than a steaming infusion. I've had problems with Earl Grey flavoured IPAs before, but not these sorts of problems. I'm convinced this is just a poorly made beer.

We conclude, appropriately, with End of Level Boss, the double IPA at 9.2% ABV. No overactive foam here; in fact it was difficult to get any head to form. I should have known by now to pour carefully, and shuddered when a concentrated gobbet of dregs followed the clear golden beer into the glass. The aroma offered the first hint of tropicality I've had from this supposedly hop-fronted lot: pure pineapple juice. The flavour isn't as sparkly, though the pineapple is there in the background. It's as thick as the strength implies, with a fairly intense alcohol heat. Most of all it's sticky, in a fruit juice sort of way but also a gummy lactose sort of way. This is a beer to be chomped through, and it lacks any balancing bitterness or major fruit complexity. Passable again, like the pale ales.

My takeaway from this whole thing is that, despite the shiny cans and the kidult branding, what we have here are your basic bottle-conditioned English microbrewed ales. You have to be careful how you pour them and there's nothing exceptional in the way they're designed. I suspect it's an inevitable consequence of the way British craft beer has developed in the last ten years, that brewers with no intention of making daring beers reckon that the artwork is enough. These aren't bad beers, but they look to me like they're intended to fool the drinker.

Beer of the moment

I'm going back a few months to when there seemed to be a disturbance in the force on beer Twitter over the absence of Rheinbacher Pilsner from the shelves in Aldi. I had always assumed it would always be there, and even having never tasted it I made a point of picking up a four-pack when it came back.

It looks... proper: a clear gold. There's a delicious weighty sweetness, starting me thinking of helles, but quickly after the early candyfloss and golden syrup there's a harder spinach and dry tin. It's not quite a balancing act; more a seesaw: the two very different characteristics taking turns to run the flavour. Overall, though, it's a jolly decent pilsner with plenty to offer the fan of malt-forward German lager while also bringing just enough noble hops to keep the other tribe happy. And all for just over a euro can. Can't say fairer than.

While I picked up that plastic-wrapped four-pack I also, on a whim, bought a sixer of Brasserie Lager Shandy. This is fun because no ABV is displayed on the can though the number of standard drinks and the ratio of beer to lemonade is there. I reckon it comes out at about 1% ABV.

Expecting yellow I was immediately surprised by how brown it was, a clear garnet-copper. It does present like a soft drink, being bubbly but headless. And yes it tastes of lemonade: a sugary fruit concentrate with just a sprinkle of spiced ginger. There's a sizeable layer of lemon tea in the taste: dry and quenching. The problem is all the sugar stays in charge while there's no sign of the beer: nothing of the hop or the malt about it at all. I can see why the pre-mix shandies of my youth used an ale. It offers a much better base to work from.

This doesn't have the bright zing of a good radler yet lacks the depth of a old-school English shandy. There are much better options out there, even if you have to pay a little extra for them.

O it's you

I haven't had an Odell beer on this blog in well over a year, and that won't do. A bunch of new ones arrived recently and I took advantage of the 4-for-€10 at Stephen Street News to explore them.

We begin with Sunny Rain, described on the can as a "golden tart". Oookay. It's golden all right, pouring headless with just a faint misting. It's more sweet than sour, showing hard lemon candy as the main feature. There's a chalky, salty, mineral buzz in the background but it never really develops into anything I would describe as fully sour. It's refreshing, though: light and zingy. I hoped it was somewhere under 4% ABV as there's no excuse for a beer like this not to be, but it's a humongous 6%, which is frankly unreasonable. Great for sunny outside drinking, but approach with caution.

Pale ale next: Rupture, named after some sort of machinery the brewery uses to give hops an extra squeeze. I got a flashback to Odell's classic IPA from this: it has the same mix of sweet orange cordial and clove/cinnamon spicing. The texture is lovely and thick, and this time 6% ABV seems pretty reasonable. The balance is superb, with just enough bitter pinch to balance the weighty malt. It's quite a nostalgic beer, reminding me of a time before garlic and caraway were common IPA flavours. While I've obviously no interest in turning the clock back on American beer, it's very nice to be able to revisit the old days and get a new tick now and then.

We finish, perhaps appropriately, on Settle Down Brown. It's a handsome deep red colour and smells wonderfully floral. The flavour is more muted. While it opens on a burst of heavy caramel, chocolate and herbal mint, that all tails off very quickly, leaving it dry and acrid in the finish. I had a feeling it would be strong, and it is at 6.5 % ABV. It doesn't do enough to justify that, I think. It's very thin, for one thing, and the flavour becomes harsh after a few mouthfuls. There's none of the richness which marks good brown ale.

So where do we stand? Odell still makes very decent beer, but pale and hoppy is where it's at. Colorado, ladies and gentlemen.

Double Chubble

Delving deep into the dusty notebooks for this one. It was back at the end of May, in 57 The Headline, that Simon staged an impromptu vertical tasting of Cloudwater's triple IPA, Chubbles.

It's a feature not a bug of modern IPAs that you can set up a vertical within only a few weeks of the first beer being released, but there was the best part of a year between these two: one an original summer '17, the other arriving the following spring, so only a few weeks old when opened. How would the ravages of time have differentiated them?

The fresh one smelled of cheese and tasted of garlic, toffee and yeast dregs, all pumped up by a near-spirituous 10% ABV burn. I've got a can full of new clothes, fetch me an emperor. The older one was more settled and comfortable in its booziness. I got notes of Pedro Ximinez sherry: a dose of rum-soaked raisins in with the toffee, without any of the garlic or anything else hop-derived. While nothing at all like an IPA, Chubbles the Elder was a very tasty beer.

Now obviously if you've spent a wodge of your own money on a can of Chubbles, you'll probably want to drink it fresh and as the brewer intended. But if you got it inadvertently, and aren't a fan of the hot-garlic school of IPA formulation, it might be worth sitting on.

Many thanks to Simon for a most enlightening evening.

Hans up

It was exciting to see a beer from Hanscraft landing in Ireland. The client brewer left a lasting impression from my last visit to Germany in 2014, for his Backbone Splitter IPA in particular. This one is a collaboration, of course, with Stone's satellite brewery in Berlin.

Quince-Essential is the name, a New England IPA with added quince, and including the inevitable childish snub to the Reinheitsgebot in the label copy. It looks New Englandy, an opaque orange colour. The aroma is vaguely fruity with nothing specific jumping out. It's 6.3% ABV and there's a heat which comes with that. Behind this it's fruity, all orange and lime cordial. My experience of quince doesn't go beyond jelly with cheese, but I don't think I can taste any of it here.

This fits the bill of a thick and juicy NEIPA. It doesn't do anything very interesting within the style, however, and certainly doesn't justify the sizeable price tag. I can't really complain, however: this beer is fine. Hans does better, though.

Dark twists

"Oak smoked imperial wheat stout". Words to conjure with. This is Surround, from Stillwater Artisanal of Connecticut, a brewer I know more from their collaborative works with European brewers. The first impression is what one would expect: a dense and gloopy beer, slipping silkily into the glass and forming a dark tan head on top of the bubbles. The aroma is not especially smoky, but it's clear that it's 10% ABV: mixing liquorice, espresso and dark rum.

The coffee bitterness is dialled back in the flavour, present only at the very end. Before that there's dark chocolate and strong herbs: liquorice again, accompanied by aniseed and sweeter basil. There's a serious smoothness to the texture, which I'm guessing is the wheat's input, and while it's enjoyable I got the impression that it's muted some sharper elements that might make this a better and more assertive beer.

Though undoubtedly well-made and high quality, there's a certain lack of oompf. The smoke in particular is more subtle than I'd have liked, relegated to a background performance where it could have played a starring role. I give this a guarded thumbs-up: fans of strong stout won't be disappointed. It's not best of breed, however.

Still, I'm always up for someone messing around with strong dark beer. I think it suits the format much better than doing it to pale and/or hoppy ones. Let's see what else is in the notebook along these lines.

Crooked Stave's strikingly-named Nightmare on Brett showed up on tap at UnderDog earlier this year. It's a Bretted imperial stout, aged in whiskey barrels, and this edition came with added cherries. There's a lovely old-leather aroma, with just a subtle hint of sweeter cherry. The flavour begins on a rich dark chocolate note that would be enough for any imperial stout but then proceeds to sour cherry before ending on a deliciously tannic grape finish. There's a subtle but present funk, giving you all the benefits of Brettanomyces but with enough other flavours to keep it from dominating the taste. I could have sipped this one all night, finding new things each time.

I've mentioned before the fun phenomenon of random suitcase bottles showing up in UnderDog. An employee of Two Brothers Brewery in Illinois was in a while back, bearing a bottle of another 9%+ ABV cherry-infused imperial stout, Cherry Northwind. This was simpler: I guess lacking the complexity brought by the Brett in the other one. While surprisingly fizzy, it was also thick and syrupy, mixing soft chocolate with boozy cherry liqueur. I'm a sucker for those cherry liqueur chocolates so a beer that tastes like them absolutely gets my vote, regardless of how fizzy it is. Others might be disappointed that what was probably a very decent base imperial stout has been pastried-up somewhat by the fruit. I'll have to wait until a bottle of straight Northwind comes down the stairs from Dame Street.

We return to Europe and craaank the ABV up to 12.5% for the finisher. Norwegian brewer Lervig have given this the stark name of Coconuts, and boy is it coconutty. From the headless body comes a concentrated oily coconut aroma, rising next to rich and sweet chocolate. Comparing it to a dark Bounty Bar is an unavoidable cliché, but that's exactly how it smells, and like nothing else. The chocolate, surprisingly, is to the fore in the flavour. The coconut, still distinct, provides the afterbuzz. For all the alcohol it doesn't taste hot, certainly when compared to the lighter Cherry Northwind -- just a cheeky Tia Maria kick is all the alcohol has to add to the picture. This is very much one of those one-dimensional flavoured novelty beers that are just a joy to drink. Big but not clever. Very tasty, though.

If anyone out there has any notions of getting creative with an imperial stout, here are just some of the ways you can do it successfully. Easy on the wheat, though.