Any good breweries?

I'm occasionally asked by a prospective visitor which are the good breweries to visit in Dublin, and I have to explain that breweries as drinking venues isn't really a thing in Ireland the way it is in better-developed beer cultures, largely due to our restrictive licensing regime.

But things are changing, little by little, and a couple of Saturdays ago I set out on what passes for a small-brewery tour around Dublin.

Rascals is probably the nearest thing we have to a brewery and taproom in the city at the moment, and that was my first stop. They had recently added the first beer from their pilot kit, daringly named Pilot Brew 1. It's a pale ale of 4.5% ABV, with added peach, pineapple and mango. It was served exceedingly cold, but even then showed a lovely fresh and juicy apricot and mandarin flavour. It gets bitterer as it warms, an extra pithiness which is at least in part down to the yeast bite. It gets more resinous too, with a certain oily dank in both the aroma and finish. Said finish is short though, leaving virtually no aftertaste. It's pretty decent: simple and no nonsense, with the fruit embellishment keeping its head down and letting the hops do the talking.

Pilot Brew 2 (subsequently titled Brown Sauce, and then Jamestown Brown -- make your minds up, guys) had just arrived and offered a delightful contrast. This is a dark and sticky brown ale, packed with molasses, dark treacle and bitter liquorice. It's an old-fashioned and serious beer, a million miles and a thousand years from milkshake fripperies and DDH IPA TLA alphabet soup. Again it was too cold, but again the texture really benefited from a bit of warming up, becoming chewy while no less bitter. Half way down the pint I was shocked to learn it's 7.8% ABV: there's no heat and no stickiness. A clean herbal bite finishes it off. Great job, overall.

Rascals also brews the local versions of the Toast franchise, adding good oul' Brennan's bread to the grist. The IPA is called Bloomin' Lovely, and the recipe's debt to Brussels Beer Project's Babylone is immediately apparent from the deep ochre colouring. The bread gives it a lovely full texture but the flavour isn't malt-forward. Instead there's a gorgeous fresh hop perfume, all rosewater and honeysuckle. This builds into a full-on Turkish delight effect as it warms, while also retaining a kick of bitterness in the finish. The UK version is a mere 4.5% ABV to this one's 6%, so your mileage may vary if you're drinking that instead, but I liked this iteration a lot: delightfully different to most any other Irish IPA.

Last one from here is Whiskey Sour Stout, a gentle 4.8%-er. The emphasis is very much on sour, with a real attenuated balsamic bite going on. There's a little crisp roast, but that's about as stouty as it gets. The bourbon begins to emerge as it warms, bringing a more rounded vanilla warmth, but it's still all about that sour tanginess. Sour stouts are something of a rarity, and I wouldn't count myself among the style's major fans, but one every now and then doesn't hurt.

From Blackhorse to Connolly on the Luas, and the next stop was Urban Brewing where I met my old mucker Dr John. I hadn't been to Urban in ages so pretty much everything in the line-up was new to me.

John had been on the Mandarina Session Pale Ale but wasn't enjoying it. From a taste I could see why: there's a harsh and cloying perfume flavour; a sting of nutmeg and raw clove. For something that's only 4% ABV and meant to be refreshing, it really didn't work. Points in favour for the happy Fanta aroma; marks off for the mucky yellow appearance and poor head retention. I don't think this was technically flawed, just that the recipe didn't work at all.

I had much better luck with my first beer: Urban's Schizandra & Bergamot Saison. I don't think I've ever seen a schizandra, also known as the five-flavour berry, and I've certainly never tried it in a beer. The result is a beautiful deep golden colour and 5.5% ABV. There's an enticing honey aroma leading to a light, clean and dry saison, one with a massive hit of freshly-crushed peppercorns. I completely forgot it was a fruit beer because it absolutely doesn't taste like one. It's not madly complex, but the one thing it does is right up my alley, flavourwise.

Dark beers are a rarity at Urban, but this time they had a Porter available. Not a very good one, though. There was a lot of metallic saccharine in with the chocolate, making for something simultaneously too sweet and too bitter. On the plus side, the texture was decent, and it had plenty of heft at 5.6% ABV, but that's about all it had going for it.

A Session IPA to finish, sessionier than most at just 3.9% ABV. Like the pale ale before it, it's a worrying shade of orangey grey. The flavour opens well, with tangy citrus peel, but deteriorates quickly into a harshly bitter metallic thing, similar to the Porter, which I didn't enjoy. It is clean, and could even be described as refreshing, it's just not kind. A session would be out of the question.

Urban does seem to specialise in brewing a handful of absolute diamonds in amongst many much lesser beers.

From there it was a short hop along the Liffey to JW Sweetman where I finished my tour with a pint of their excellent porter on cask. Before long we should be able to continue the journey out to the new Porterhouse Brewery, once they're ready for visitors in Broombridge. Dublin has a way to go yet as regards brewery tourism, but it's getting there.

To the point

It has been a slow start to 2019 for DOT Brew: a few rare special editions and exclusive blends, none of which have crossed my path. And then last week, in landed three fresh cans of non-barrel-aged beer and a set was very kindly donated to your correspondent by the guys in DrinkStore. There's an unusual reticence to name the brewery of origin on the cans; they just say "Brewed in Dublin". Third Barrel? Hope? DOT HQ, now that it holds a licence of its own? I'm sure it's no big secret.

The first I opened was So Far So Good: described as a New England session IPA, with a microscopic ABV of 3.2%. While that matches the "session" claim, there's not much "New England" in the appearance: it being an almost totally clear rose-gold colour. Galaxy and Amarillo are the billed hops, and there's a pleasant spicy dankness in the aroma, with an additional lacing of tropical fruit. This is all present in the flavour, but really quite muted. I think it's the lightness which lets it down: there's a watery feel, causing the hops to fade too fast, with insufficient malt to support them. A mere seconds after sipping, the flavour has shrunk to a mere tang of mineral water with a metallic bitterness on the very end. I wonder if this didn't turn out quite as planned: the description doesn't match and the taste is not quite right.

Moving on, it's an amber ale next. DOT's core bottled amber ale is a longtime favourite, so how is fancy-dan and fancy-can Intersection? It looks gorgeous: a crystalline auburn, topped by thick foam the colour of old ivory. The aroma has the delicious mix of fresh hops and caramel, though nowhere near as strongly as I'd like. The shadow of disappointment loomed again, and with less excuse, given this is 5.9% ABV. From tasting, it's not what I was expecting, but I can't say I'm disappointed. The hops quotient is lower than I anticipated, offering a punchy bitterness but not much flavour or complexity. To make up for it, the malt gets properly busy, bringing toffee and burnt caramel, increasing in intensity as it warms. The hops season this with a peppery greenness which is present but not terribly assertive, but it doesn't need to be. The finish brings it all in with sense of gingerbread or Christmas cookie which I found charming. It's an interesting sideways take on the amber ale style. Don't serve it too cold.

An IPA completes the trilogy: the solid-sounding Straight Up. Slightly hazy again, and a solid 6.6% ABV. There's no lack of aroma here, Idaho-7 and Centennial hops hitting the precise junction point between juicy tropicals and dry savoury seeds. The savoury wins that battle in the flavour, but it's joined, and enlivened, by a zesty citrus: sweet tangerine and candied lemon peel. While there's plenty of malt substance to carry the hops, and even a warmth from the alcohol, there's a pleasing dryness too, with not a jot more residual sugar than is strictly necessary for balance. For once the savoury quality didn't annoy me and I was able to enjoy this classically-constructed American-style IPA, just as it was billed.

Just one slight mis-step here. Otherwise DOT continues to show itself as an adept brewer of mainstream styles, as much as the casked and blended specialities.

National celebration

This year, the St Patrick's Day long weekend coincides with the opening of the seventh Alltech festival at the Convention Centre. To celebrate, I'm bringing you a week of posts about Irish beers, beginning with this mixed assortment.

The White Hag kicks it off, making the move to 440ml cans for the first time with Fionn, a double IPA. It's densely hazy, of course, though no nod towards New England is made on the label copy. The aroma is an equal mix of vanilla, grapefruit and garlic, while the flavour, experienced cold, is a mix of soft sweet pineapple flesh and a harder, more acidic grapefruit and lime. I was a bit clumsy with my pour so got more yeast dregs than necessary, which spoiled things, but it's cleaner if you treat it gently. It's a middle-of-the-road modern IPA; you've tasted it before. But apparently it's the first in a series. I don't know where it's going to go, but maybe wait for the next one.

Also in a four-forty is Third Barrel's Is This Real Life?, pitched squarely at the three letter acronym fans as a DDH IPA. 6.1% ABV gives it plenty of scope to pile in the hops, and pile them in it does. In defiance of fashion it's full-on bitter and spicy, sparking with notes of grapefruit, peppercorn and dry grass. While the flavour is on the severe side, its aroma is so fresh and rounded that's forgivable. This is a can of pure west coast joy. I don't remember enjoying this type of beer so much when they were commonplace, but now they're a rarity it's a breath of fresh air. Fresh, piney, green air.

Can three for today comes from Whiplash and is a pale ale of 4.3% ABV called Small Moments. It poured a sickly opaque yellow colour and had an odd, but not unpleasant, aroma: spicy perfumed notes of jasmine, violet and bergamot. There's some of that in the flavour, which is nice, and some smooth tropical juice in the finish. There's a "but" coming, however: the big and obvious one. Yeast bite, dirty and sharp, sucks much of the fun out of it; the concentrated garlic oil adds nothing positive either. This is yet another modern hop-forward beer which leaves me fantasising about the brewery finishing it, letting the dregs drop out until it's clean and clear. It does round out a little as it warms but never quite transcends the things I didn't like about it. Ho hum.

Trouble dropped one of their too-rare new releases in the form of Peach Out, described, intriguingly, as a peach and white chocolate IPA. It has a New Englandy appearance: a bright murky orange with little effort at a head. The chocolate is very apparent in the aroma and absolutely dominates the flavour: sweet and creamy, like a Milky Bar. Next to this sits the fruit and hops, combined into a zesty, jammy mix of satsuma and apricots.  The combination is very strange indeed, and won't be for everyone, but it worked for me. The texture is light enough that it doesn't get cloying, and there's a certain balancing savoury pepper spice in the finish, which I'm guessing is the residual yeast: welcome, for once. I'm impressed by how it manages to taste as strongly of chocolate as any chocolate stout without losing sight of the whole pale ale genre. Weird, no question, but fun with it.

Larkin's makes a return to lager brewing with Operator, one of the India pale variety. It's a clear golden colour and 5% ABV. There's not much of an aroma, the hops not making their presence known until tasting time. That reveals a crisp lemon sorbet followed by spicy citrus and floral lavender notes, finishing bitterly grassy. That middle bit makes it taste quite un-lager-like, but it is still properly clean and quite delicious. One to enjoy on its own level rather than compare with its peers.

The 4.3% ABV session IPA from Hope has been around a while but has just got new branding and a name: Hop-On. It's yellow with a very slight haze. I found it a little plain when I tried a pint. There's a certain quantity of citrus fruit flavour and bitterness, but not much of either. The finish comes very quickly. I got a spike of yeast bite on the end too. It's easy drinking, for sure, but lacks character, I thought. There are much better versions of this sort of thing around.

The first of a new collaboration series from Eight Degrees landed last week: Yellow Ball, an IPA brewed with American breweries Bale Breaker and Revolution. This is a clear copper colour and sports lots of dank resins right from the get-go. There are bags of tannins behind this, and a long-lasting bitterness, the resins coating the tongue and clinging on tight. With all that crystal malt and grapefruit, it's a bit of a '90s throwback, but enjoyable nonetheless. The surprising bit is that something this straightforward took three breweries to formulate, but I'm not complaining. Rack up the next one.

Some breweries still use bottles. Fancy! St Mel's launched the third in its Black Album sequence of dark beers. It's called Proliferation and is in one of my favourite styles: schwarzbier. The label says it's bottle conditioned and dry hopped, neither of which would be typical, I think. Maybe it was the shape of the glass but it looked like a porter on pouring: a deep red-brown with a generous off-white head -- perhaps a more slender vessel would have convinced me better. I couldn't shake the porter thing on the first sip: lots of roast and quite a creamy texture. It took me a while to notice how clean it was, the crispness absolutely singing and barely an ester to be found. A mild noble bitterness and a touch of chocolate in the finish are the only nods to complexity; otherwise it's a straight and honest dark lager, beautifully refreshing at just 4.8% ABV. A cold draught pint would be just the thing.

We finish back at White Hag, on a Sligo-Cork joint effort, a beer that's seen a bit of the country. The full name is Brett Finished Bourbon Barrel Ale, created by The White Hag for Bradley's off licence in Cork. This started out as the brewery's Yule Ale, so was originally brewed with ginger and cinnamon, but that was two years ago. In the meantime it's spent a year in bourbon oak and another in a Brettanomyces-inoculated wine barrel. Phew. Head retention was lost somewhere along the way and it's almost completely flat: a wineish red-brown. The aroma is quite funky, offering old grapes, old oak and a touch of red wine vinegar. Its texture is thick, befitting the 7.2% ABV, and the flavour has a lot in common with a big and mature Flanders red. There are fresh raspberries up front, then a steady sour burn, bringing in the sweet vanilla oak and luscious grape. The dusty Christmas spicing from the original beer is still apparent too, so no part has been wasted on the journey. For all the complexity, it's not busy, staying smooth and well-integrated; comparable to its Belgian peers. I'm sure it'll get more interesting over time so if you have a bottle put aside, maybe save it for next winter.

That's it for today. More cans tomorrow.

Soured up

Beer from Manchester's sour specialist Chorlton Brewing has been drifting into Ireland and onto bar taps since the middle of last year. I haven't been seeking them out, exactly, but a handful have come my way at various points.

First to do so was Solera One. It shows quite a thrilling sourness, a sharp acidity but with the mineral complexity of real lambic. They've also added elderflower, and this is very apparent once the initial wave of sourness has passed, adding a complementary sweet quality. The two elements gel together much better than they do in the Lindemans attempt at elderflower geuze. It's still not as good as most lambics, lacking subtlety and with a slightly nasty gastric bite in the finish. Close, though. Longer ageing might just be what's needed.

Kolibri was next, a sour IPA. It arrived rather flat and an unattractive murky orange. The flavour was excellent however, starting with the refreshing juice that the style provides so well -- tangy mandarin in particular -- but also adding in a splash of very classy geuze-like dry mineral brick. A lemon-juice finish brings the IPA bitterness. Despite offering a very unusual mix of flavours, it all holds together very well and you wouldn't think you were drinking a hybrid.

The last one is called Karumandi, and I was definitely apprehensive about this. It's brewed with coffee and I'm not at all sure that such a combination of flavours works. I got what I expected: a hot sweaty mess with a nasty metallic twang and a watery finish. While very much as-advertised -- loads of coffee, bags of sour -- it's just not nice to drink.

There's no doubting Chorlton's commitment to sour. This year they'll be packing up in Manchester and beginning anew in Brussels. I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing them as part of that city's beer scene. I'll have my coffee on the side, though.

Gripes and grapes

Gotta love the unexpected samples that occasionally get served up at UnderDog. Barry was sharing a bottle of Û Baccarossa by Bologna's Ca' del Brado brewery, one evening late last year.

It's a bit of a bruiser at 7.9% ABV and tinted pink with Centesimino grapes. There's an over-riding vinegar sharpness in the opener, intense like the more extreme end of the Flemish red family. I also got a twang of savoury lees as well, though I think my serving was from near the bottom of the bottle -- they could do with serving this in bigger ones.

Nevertheless, despite these minor faults, there's some delicious sweet and luscisous grape fun to be had here, lasting all the way through. An added spike of throat-scorching saltpetre and some bricky nitre add up to a package that's every bit as good as the grape lambics I've tried from Belgium.

Not all of these sour grape-infused Italian ales are great, but this is a near-perfect example of the style done beautifully. Thanks Barry!

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.