Trigo drinking

Big-craft American lager is today's theme. Isn't it cool that Sierra Nevada and Founders, who built their reputations on hoppy ales, have a market for pils too?

But before the pils, a relatively recent arrival from Founders: Trigo. It's a wheat lager of 6.3% ABV and a pale hazy yellow-orange colour. The aroma is enticing, suggesting juicy chewy orange candy, and giving an idea as to what the brewery meant when they put "hoppy" on the label. The orange theme continues on tasting, presenting a zesty mix of satsuma, mandarin and similar small spritzy ones. A soft texture renders it very juicy, with no bitterness to speak of. The wheat side of the equation makes more of a contribution than the lager side, though it is unarguably clean with well-defined flavours. I drank it on a dark winter's evening but it had me immediately thinking of warm summer days. Sunshine in a glass.

The more orthodox PC Pils from Founders is another low carbonation one, a deep yellow topped by loose bubbles. The ABV is an approachable 5.5%. I'm guessing they've gone for something local with the hopping because it's citric: lemon, lime and jaffa oranges, plus a fun bathsalts buzz on the end. There's a thickness which feels quite ale-like and, while it's tasty and refreshing, I feel a little gypped by its claim to be a pilsner. It absolutely does not taste like one. Founders and I seem to have very different ideas on what lager should be.

Another American brewery whose lagers are generally hit and miss is Sierra Nevada. Today I have Southern Gothic. It's advertised as unfiltered, though I wasn't expecting it to be so pale: a wan and sickly shade of yellow. The head crackled away to nothing soon after pouring, and yes the carbonation seems a little underdone: just a faint sparkle in a beer that could have handled livelier fizz. You get your noble hops right on cue. There's a bitter weedy greenness which is a little harsh but doesn't hang around. Softer lemon zest follows, then the malt tips in, a slightly sticky golden syrup vibe. A fun herbal pinch brings the bitterness back at the very end. It's a flavourful beer but I think it lacks the smoothness and effortlessly integrated taste of good pils, though it's only a near miss.

It's hard to be too critical when these are all good beers in their own right. I'm certain there are American breweries making lager on a par with the best of Europe. We don't see it over here, though. Perhaps that's to be expected.

Four course meal

The formalised pairing of beer and food was a big thing about a decade ago. It was very much driven by the industry rather than consumers, and when they left it behind it fell into abeyance, though I'm sure people continued to drink beer while eating food, as they always have. I know I did. It was a blast from the past, then, to receive this four-pack of beers from the Guinness Open Gate Brewery folk, brewed at and in collaboration with Cornwall's Harbour Brewing, to match a menu at the Hawksmoor restaurant in London. I was happy just to pour them down my neck without thinking too much about complementing and contrasting with some grub.

Following the sequence specified in the accompanying press release, I began with Mixed Botanical, aiming to ape a gin and tonic. Well it doesn't look like one, coming out a hazy deep orange colour. It smells like beer too: the unmistakable aroma of sweet and slightly sticky candy-like malt sugar. That's a big part of the flavour, moreso than one might expect at just 5.1% ABV, but yes the botanicals are present too. I got a mix of ginny herbs -- angelica, cinnamon -- plus a decent smatter of peppery juniper berries. It's zesty and fun, like a G&T, while also tasting absolutely nothing like one. The big malt body means it lacks the sharp refreshing quality of a good aperitif. I'm glad I'm not marking these on fitness for their specified purpose. As a beer for drinking it's spot on, however.

The starter beer is Verbena Saison, standing in for "a dry white wine". Isn't the project somewhat undermined by mentioning what the proper drink is, instead of letting the beer do its own thing? Anyway. It looks like a saison: hazy and a deep yellow colour. There's lots of fizz too, the half champagne bottle feeling much more appropriate here than with the previous one. It tastes a little one-dimensional, with the salt-and-pepper savoury quality of the titular herb, but not much else. Yes it's dry, and the fizz gives the palate a decent scrub which I think would work well with the proposed garlic scallops. This is a simple chap; tasty, different, but not terribly complex. I hoped the second half of the meal would bring the intensity up a notch.

Item three is a Barrel Aged Red, paired with a steak and pretending to be a Rioja. Well, it's red, or possibly pink, though the masses of foam and fizz means it doesn't really resemble blousey Spanish wine in appearance. The aroma is full of sweet summer fruit -- all strawberry and raspberry -- and that very much comes through in the flavour. Cherries are involved, the press release tells me. There's a touch of oak spice on top of the jammy berries but again it's quite one-dimensional; there's none of the richness I would expect from a barrel-aged beer of 6.8% ABV. This isn't very different to the fruit-infused brand extensions from Rodenbach, and shows a similar lack of complexity. As a substitute for Rioja it definitely falls short. While not an unpleasant beer, there's very little impressive about it.

The final item is paired with a sticky toffee pudding and is a Barley Wine. The ABV is a big big 9.5% and it's an innocent-looking orange colour. As one would hope, there's a serious substance here. American oak white wine barrels have been used and they really make their presence felt in the big and heavy vanilla and juicy grape flavours. Subtle? Nah. Pairable with sticky toffee pudding? I wouldn't have thought so: I think the intense acidity would clash with all the caramelised sugar. It's a gorgeous beer though; best of the set.

My closing remark is that none of these really show the advantage of beer with food. They're too heavy; too intense; trying too hard to do what wine does (and failing) whereas beer's primary advantage is that it is not wine, and can do things and hit places that wine can't. If food and beer is to be a Thing, I'd prefer if it played to beer's strengths.

Super, darling

There's no particular story behind this bottle of Lagunitas's Super Cluster: it was just there in the DrinkStore fridge and I bought it. It's 8% ABV, hopped with Citra, and I was a little worried I'd left it a few weeks too long before getting around to drinking it. If it decomposed in any way then it must have been stunning beforehand because it was still very very good when I opened it.

A crystal-clear orange colour sets it in immediate contrast to current fashion. It poured quite thickly, a head only forming at the last minute. There's only the faintest trace of citrus in the aroma, presumably because of the lack of fizz. The flavour, in contrast, explodes with citric joy right from the off. There's a super-clean lemon and lime, where the emphasis is all on the flavour itself, not the bitterness or any pine or weed offshoots. It's almost like a high-end soft drink; quite sweet without being sugary, but mostly tasting of that zingy and zesty fruit.

It's rare to find a beer of this style and this strength that's actually refreshing, but we have one here. I quaffed it indecently quickly and would have been up for another straight away.

What Larks!

Wicklow's lager specialist, Larkin's, has been busy with the warm-fermenting yeast of late, dropping two new IPAs, both of which I caught up with at 57 The Headline.

The lower-strength one is called Dog Days, being a mere 3.5% ABV. It's a murky orange colour, but then pretty much everything is these days. I'm guessing from the name that it's intended as a summer beer, and I think it'll do that job well with its zingy thick-shred marmalade flavour. There's a little vanilla alongside this, and the whole thing shows a lot more body than might be expected from the strength. The finish is very quick, however: I would have liked a longer citrus buzz. While the murk makes it taste a little rough when it's cold, it does mellow and soften as it warms, and I was thoroughly enjoying it by half way down.

While there were hints of New England influence in Dog Days, the other IPA was much less subtle about it, even if it doesn't use the words. Outlier's badge simply says it's an IPA and 5% ABV. The hazy yellow-orange colour is a dead giveaway of the Vermont sensibilities, however, and the bright and peachy aroma is another. There's a slight yeast bite in the flavour but it's almost comprehensively buried by the hops. First there's a pure orange juice foretaste, then zesty lemon meringue, building in bitterness to a tangy citrus crescendo. And that repeats with every mouthful all the way down. NEIPA purists will enjoy the mild vanilla note as well; I'm not pushed. This is luscious and summery, pressing some of the same buttons as the beer above but really using the extra strength well. I hope it'll be around for a while.

A Larkin's post needs a lager, of course, and this one has Black Pine Rising. I thought from the name that it was going to be a black IPA, until Mark set me straight that this is actually a schwarzbier. It certainly didn't taste like a black IPA, nor at all piney, so that confusion was cleared up. It didn't really taste like a schwarzbier either, however. What I got was a soft-textured and wheaty dark beer, watery of texture low in hops, and with a touch of coffee in the flavour, almost like a mild. The crisp dark dryness I enjoy in its purported style is unfortunately absent. The result is inoffensive, but I know Larkin's is capable of better dark lagers than this.

Still, it's good to see the turnover and the variety. Keep them coming.

Do you want anything from the shop?

I was going out to the Mace on the South Circular Road. This modest convenience store with a kick-ass beer selection is possibly the only place in the country you can pick up an Ambrosia rice pudding and a De Molen Rasputin in a single transaction. A request for something strong and dark was proferred before I left the house.

Non-pastry stouts are hard come by these days. I had a choice of six or seven 8%+ ABV dark beers form the fridges but almost all had been "enhanced" with syrups and sugars of various kinds. Only one was unadorned: Jekyll & Hyde, described as a "double stout porter", brewed by Wylam with input from De Molen.

Coffee is the main flavour this is built around. Though it's sweet and gloopy, as befits 9.8% ABV, there's a lot of dry roast and coffee bean oils in the flavour. A dusting of red summer berries lightens it up while the strong and warming alcohol gives it a rich depth and long finish.

I don't know that this is fully up to the excellent standard of either brewery but it's bloody good drinking and great for a random pick from a cornershop shelf. Well played all.

De Molen also made a stout with another northern English brewery, Kirkstall. De Abdij & The Mill was the result, popping up on cask at The Black Sheep before Christmas. Manager Cormac was very keen I give it a try. It's 6% ABV and made with oatmeal, something that really accentuates the smoothness that cask already provides. The flavour is complex without being busy, mixing creamy Galaxy-Bar milk chocolate with a more serious dry and crunchy cereal. Enjoyable as the taste is, it's really the silky texture that makes this beer. Truly nothing shines on cask like a well-made stout.

We succumb to the pastry for the last one. Nightfall is also a collaboration, being an imperial stout brewed by FourPure with input from Brazil's Sunset Brew. It's 9% ABV and the Brazilian influence is manifest in the inclusion of chocolate and coconut in the recipe. There was pretty much no point in photographing it in the dimness of UnderDog as it's very dark indeed. The coconut aroma is massive, and it's concentrated in the flavour too: that almost crunchy effect you get from real coconut flesh. The chocolate is in second position but is definitely pronounced. Would I make the cliché'd comparison to a Bounty bar? Yes, I'm afraid I would because that's how it tastes. Sorry. Best of all, after all that, it simply cleans politely off the palate, not building or growing difficult. I think I could consume quite a lot of this.

This post started out as a sort-of rant against wacky-recipe stouts, but sometimes it's hard not to like them.

Stone immaculate

A couple of new Californian IPAs  to begin today, both part of Stone Brewing's "Hop Worship" series, developed, I guess, in case people thought Stone is a brewery that doesn't really care for hops.

Idolatrous is first up, brewed with El Dorado and Mosaic, two of my personal favourites. It's 7% ABV and there's just a slight haze to the pale amber beer. It's perfumed with a sweet spice, a touch of aftershave and incense. On tasting it's thick, first and foremost: bags of sugary resins. There's a strong green-bean bitterness, and where I was expecting the lighter tropical hop notes to rise to the surface, the sweet malt just steamrolls back in. I enjoy Mosaic and El Dorado for their brightness and fun but the base beer here, while not in any way bad, just drags them down into a hot malty soup. I wasn't relishing the prospect of starting into the same thing except without hops I like.

OK, Citra is fine, but I'm not convinced about Loral. They're both in Exalted, the other one of this pair. It looks largely similar, and from the aroma the big toffee malt base is immediately apparent. It's a big part of the flavour too, but I think the hops get more of a say in this one: they may just be louder hops. There's a fresh juiciness offering real jaffa flesh as opposed to Idolatrous's thick-shred marmalade. Alongside some very American lime, there's a slightly Germanic noble side too, bringing fresh spinach, celery and white pepper. While the thick malt is inescapable, the hops here do a much better job of counteracting, if not actually balancing, it.

Neither of this pair paid proper tribute to the hops, I felt, getting bogged down in too-dark heavy malts that stole the focus completely. The latter is a pretty decent beer, however, in a brash old-school west-coast sort of way. A first gold star for Loral from me as well, I think.

We finish on one from Stone's Berlin satellite brewery, a collaboration with Lervig called Hi, I'm Kveik. How would they handle the temperamental type of oh-so-fashionable nordic farmhouse yeast? Well, they've made it into an IPA for a start, which seems less than entirely traditional. A clear pale yellow, its aroma is an odd mix of lactic sourness and sweet stonefruit, like an apricot yoghurt. The flavour is not as intense as I was expecting with a subtle toasty champagne foretaste, dry and crisp, leading on to peach fuzz and a sharp but quick waxed-lemon sour bitterness. I took a good third of the pint to get used to all the twists it pulls. The crispness I approve of but I don't think it needs the busy hopping. It also seems thoroughly overclocked at 6.2% ABV, tasting like something a good couple of points lower. Sour and hoppy is one of my favourite things, and there should be more of it, but I prefer it more easy going than this.

No flagships here

Round-up time: a broad mix of mostly-new Irish beers.

Boundary has a raft of new cans just landed, with more on the way. The buzz has been positive, and I've done a terrible job of keeping track of their wares in general, so I made sure to pick up a couple of these when I saw them in Molloy's. First up is G.O.A.T., described as a New England pale ale and 4.5% ABV. It pours a very pale yellow colour, and almost completely opaque, like pineapple juice. Maybe it's a trick of the visuals, but it smells of pineapple juice too: all sweet and tropical. The flavour is quite muted, offering very little up front, before fading to garlic and spring onion and then leaving a spark of mango and lime as the aftertaste. Normally this sort of beer has plenty of body but that's not the case here, and I think it's the thinness that lets the flavour down. It's perfectly serviceable and pleasant, even though every sip left me wanting more from it.

The other one was called Almark, another sessionable job, at 4.9% ABV, and in the Belgian pale ale style. The colour is a medium orange-amber, clear at first, murked up by the dregs at the bottom of the tin. Pouring took a few goes, too, as the foam piled up. The Belgian side is very prominent on tasting: a mix of fruity esters bringing sultanas and orange peel, plus some crusty brown bread. Gentle tannins give it an English bitter feel. This is another thin one, however, lacking the substance that stronger Belgian beer offers.

Both are decent but unexciting, not really escaping the limitations of their modest ABVs. I think I'll go stronger when I next pick a Boundary beer, which I will, soon.

Staying with the nordies, I mentioned Bullhouse's new session IPA in Friday's post. Its companion is a New England double IPA called Residents Only, and they brought both to an event at The Tap House recently. The big lad is 7.2% ABV but just 30 IBUs. Its texture is suitably big and soft and the alcohol gives it a satisfying warmth, something I wouldn't normally value in an IPA. The flavour is dominated by garlic, finishing with a pinch of bitter lime. A thick seam of sweet vanilla ice cream runs through it. This offers a lot of the things I dislike about the New England fashion but they work incredibly well together, creating a loud and full-flavoured beer without any unpleasant extremes. Witchcraft!

And if it's not New England these days, it's kviek. Or, in the case of O Brother's The Kraken, it's both. This double IPA is a humongous 9.1% ABV and a deep orange colour. A garlicky aroma leads to a taste of fresh and sweet pineapple, followed by a hot burst of concentrated spring onion. There's a significant yeast burr, with an emulsion mouthfeel to match. This isn't the first New England double IPA I've found fun for the first sip or two, but a hard slog for a whole glassful. As such it's typical of the style, with no point of differentiation brought by the farmhouse yeast. If you like 'em hot and dreggy, this one's for you.

For the Six Nations, Rascals has produced a sessionable pale ale, Offloaded, an easy-going 4.3% in a match-friendly 440ml can. It's a light golden hue with a subtle misting of haze. On the hop front we have Magnum, Citra, Ekuanot, Enigma, Amarillo and Mandarina Bavaria -- something for everyone. That should deliver the juicy tropical fruit promised on the can but I didn't get it. Citra's lemon-peel kick is there, briefly, but the rest is quite savoury. I got fried onion in particular, and there's caraway and sesame seed as well. I'd love to know enough about brewing to know how that thin border between tropical and savoury is tread. This beer isn't bad. It has plenty of body given the strength, and is no bland gulp-and-go job. However it didn't deliver quite what I was hoping for.

The Grafters range, brewed by Rye River for Dunnes, has had a refresh. The Porter has alas been consigned to history, and the kölsch-a-like has stayed largely as-was but is now rebranded "Clocking Off". The hoppy pair have been completely re-engineered, and a casual enquiry about them to head brewer Bill landed me a six-pack of the set the following day.

Labour of Love Extra Pale is aptly named: Bill is particularly fond of it. It's still 4.5% ABV and Cascade-based, but the colour is very different, ditching the '90s copper orange for a clear and bright gold. The aroma is enticingly fruity, offering up succulent peach and mango notes. Its flavour is more typically Cascade-ish, beginning on an assertive earthy bitterness, fading to jaffa orange , before tailing off completely. That quick finish was a little disconcerting: I would have liked it all to hang around longer, as tends to happen in beers badged as session IPA. The tropicality does return on the aftertaste, which is good. It's a very decent beer overall. Some additional complexity or hop wallop would have been good, but as a supermarket own-brand pale ale, built for the session, it's hard to fault.

The new IPA is called Working Day. Again the ABV has been retained, at 6.5%, and the hops have been switched from Cascade and Vic Secret to Mosaic and Ekuanot, which sounds like a trade-up to me. It should at least be fruitier. There's a grapefruit spice to the aroma, and the strength is very apparent from the heavy texture and boozy warmth. Unfortunately the Mosaic they've used is the variety that tastes of savoury tahini, not sweet pineapple. I hate when that happens. There's a certain lime and grapefruit citrus coming in after this, providing the high point, but it left behind a harsh and plasticky aftertaste which is a lot less fun. This didn't work for me. There are flashes of goodness, particularly when the grapefruit is in play, but too many unpleasant sharp and savoury edges for it to be relaxing drinking.

Also coming in pairs are the first two from Mescan's new Seven Virtues series. I assume there will eventually be seven of them. First out of the traps was Seven Virtues Lager. Mescan do Belgian styles so I wasn't sure what to make of a lager. It's 4.9% ABV, a hazy straw yellow with a thick long-lasting head, and it smells... wonky. There's bit of sweet witbier lemon, and a burning acetic sourness too in the aroma. As expected there's lots of crackly fizz, giving it a gassy, prickly texture. The flavour isn't sour, I'm happy to say, but there's loads of that candied lemon effect. Sweet at first, there's a more correct grassy pilsner note later on, turning almost acrid by the end -- caution: noble hops at work. While far from tasting like a "proper" lager, it's a pleasant fusion of lager flavours and more rounded and fruity Belgian stylings. Not for purists of any stripe, but I enjoyed it.

I got a shock from the name of the second in the sequence: Seven Virtues Lambik. Isn't that a protected designation? Turns out no: "lambic" and "lambiek" are reserved, while "lambik" is a nonsense word that doesn't mean anything. Except in Mayo. The assistant in Redmond's warned me it was a gusher, and so it proved, but I was ready. The coppery amber colour looks like proper lambic, and the smell is most of the way there, with champagne toast and a damp bricky funk. There was something else, though: a solvent whiff that shouldn't be present. It's only 4.5% ABV but it tastes hot: that solvent smell grows to full-blown marker pens in the foretaste. There's a massive fruity kick of peach, lychee and plum in the middle, which isn't unpleasant but isn't especially lambic-like, and then a raw white-vinegar burn finishes it off on a downright nasty note. This is bootleg bathtub lambic; step one on the journey to making it well, perhaps, but not worth buying unless you're very curious about how an Irish brewery would approach the style.

Carlow Brewing have an interesting collaboration on the circuit at the moment: a witbier, of all styles, brewed using Tullamore DEW whiskey yeast and intended to be paired with the spirit. I was dubious to begin with: aren't whiskey yeasts designed to maximise the alcohol output without a care for the flavour? Why would that be a good idea for a beer? Anyway, they very kindly sent me a couple of the beers and a bottle of whiskey to try for myself. Irish Wit does not present like a wit. It's hazy, yes, but a deep dark ochre colour. The aroma is coarsely grainy, and the flavour similarly dry and husky, like Ryvita crackers. This isn't a good profile for a style that works best when frisky and spritzy: there's not an ounce of Belgian summertime in here. On the plus side there's some fun gunpowder spicing and a genuine rye bitter kick, though no rye was used in the recipe. The blurb promises whiskey-like fruit, but the only way I'm going to get that is by drinking whiskey with it. Here goes... Yes, that does actually work. I've had no joy with whiskey and beer pairings in the past, but here the dryness of the beer really helps accentuate the raisin and vanilla in the spirit; honeyish Irish whiskey notes fill in the gaps in the beer profile, making up for its shortcomings. Carlow Irish Wit isn't a great beer by itself, so it's worth having a sweetish whiskey to hand when you open it.

The latest from Third Barrel is an imperial stout called Black Stuff; amazing that nobody thought to call a beer that before. It's 9.1% ABV and a slick obsidian colour. The alcohol is very obvious from the get-go, combining with the dark malt for a kind of Tia Maria or liqueur coffee effect up front. It softens quickly, turning to chocolate, but still the bitter and crumbly kind. That's pretty much all you get, but it's charming in its simplicity: a big and heavy imperial stout without any unnecessary embellishments. I have a lot of time for that sort of thing.

JW Sweetman had a new beer last time I was in, chalked up as Brexit Bitter on the blackboard. It's an on-point 3.8% ABV and brewed with Challenger hops. I was less convinced by the choice of nitrokeg dispense. Still it looked well: a bright and warm golden colour. The flavour was surprising, in that there was some. It's dry and tannic, with a distinct cut-grass hop bitterness. That, and the colour, is enough to qualify it as a proper northern-style bitter for me: warming and comforting, but definitely hop forward. It's only as it starts to warm that it turns gloopy and cheap-tasting. When the pint is fresh, however, it's impressive.

Also codding the macros was YellowBelly, with House of Hops dry-hopped lager at (tee-hee) 4.13% ABV. Beyond the nose-thumbing at Diageo there's a murky orange beer with a texture that's heavy for the strength, not feeling or tasting at all like a lager. The hops bring orange sherbet, damp grass and fried onion: a fun balance of the juicy and dank sides of hops. To me this tasted like a pleasant and refreshing pale ale, with just a pinch of New England fluff. I still would have liked it to be crisper, though. "Lager" should mean something.

Third Circle is back on the Brettanomyces wagon. I make this their third Brett beer, but they've called it #1 Brett. A pale ale of a clear orange colour and 5.2% ABV, it offers a deliciously complex spice and wood flavour, all exotic frankincense and cedar. While this brings a certain resinousness with it, the base beer is horribly thin, at least at first, and this sucks much of the joy out of it. It improves with warmth, becoming more full bodied and developing an enjoyable juicy mandarin note. Overall I liked how it worked, and certainly deem it a promising start to the series; the recipe just needs a bit of beefing-up.

Valentine's Day gave us a cheeky new release from Wicklow Wolf: 50 Shades of Bray, badged as a "New England black IPA". I'm nearly surprised I hadn't seen that before. It turned out to be more a dark chocolate brown than black, and brought the New England side out with an immediate soft and sweet cherry and strawberry effect. It all firms up immediately afterwards, becoming a sterner, danker, hot tar and liquorice sort of black IPA. The texture is beautifully creamy, and the aroma shows the same punchy green hops as the late flavour. I really enjoyed this. It's a proper full-on black IPA given a contemporary twist that adds complexity without fundamentally changing its nature. Fittingly playful, given the name.

The last pint for the moment is Carrig's Lady Jade which which I caught up at the newly remodelled Bar Rua. I can't say I'm a fan of the move to combine it with the Catch 22 restaurant next door. It takes away from its essential pubbiness. Anyway, the beer.

This is a pale gold IPA of 4.2% ABV, brewed with Pacific Jade and Simcoe. It was a lot sweeter than I expected, packed with honey and lemon, like a throat lozenge. A sticky texture goes with that, one which overpowers the hops and their bitterness completely. It's not terrible but I was disappointed. Needs more hops, as we used to say.

That's your lot for now. Expect another mega round-up sooner rather than later as the pre-Paddy's Day releases start to arrive.