All over the shop

Here we go with April's random round-up of Irish beer. It's been a busy few weeks so I'll have to split this with Wednesday's post.

From the Porterhouse comes SMASH pale ale, which is what it says, combining Hunter malt with Hallertau Blanc hops for an ABV of 4.2%. It poured a pale lemon-yellow with a dusting of haze. That gentle, breezy, grapes and flowers character of the hops comes through in the aroma and forms the main feature of the flavour too. The foretaste gives way quickly to a mineral dryness in the finish; a little too quickly, perhaps. While I'm being negative, there's a very slight soapy twang as well. As is fairly common with Single Malt And Single Hop beers, there's a lack of complexity here. I don't know what Hunter is supposed to taste like, but it does showcase the features of Hallertau Blanc well, just not very loudly. This one is to be approached as an easy-going pinter rather than the bold and interesting special edition the branding implies.

At the end of March I paid my first visit to The Beer Keeper in Dún Laoghaire, a village that's had trouble keeping a decent offer in the past. Hopefully it works out this time. Well over a dozen beers are on tap, almost entirely Irish with a range of specials from BrewDog as well. The house beer is called Ken, a lager brewed for them by Third Barrel. It's a very straightforward, if sweet, pilsner, soft of texture with notes of lemon and grass. Again, a light dusting of soap is the only off-note, but it's barely noticeable. It does a good job of channelling the ever popular Corkonian Dutch lager, stripping out any of the metallic nastiness of the original. Your rugby jock mates will never know the difference.

While I was there I noticed Chasing Shadows was on. This is the latest from one of Third Barrel's constituent parts, Third Circle. It's a porter of 5.6% ABV and it offers an odd mix of characteristics. They've described it as "Belgian" but I didn't get any of the fruity esters that implies. Instead it's smooth and creamy, stemming from the nitro pour, but while beers of this sort tend to be sweet and chocolatey if they taste of anything, this is very dry and roasty, sparking with flinty burnt grains. The initial sharpness tails off into a more rounded dark cocoa note. While a little severe, it is very enjoyable, narrowly avoiding turning acrid or full-on harsh. There's an old-fashioned porter vibe here, the sort of thing that doesn't get brewed in Dublin very often these days but is occasionally welcome.

It's all go at Third Barrel, of course, and a double IPA comes next: Same, Same... But Different. It's  7.5% ABV, despite a typo on the label indicating it might also be 8%. It looks like juice, appearing an opaque orange, and there's a certain amount of juice in the flavour: apricot and mango in particular. But more than that there's a strong savoury component; quite a harsh waxy bitterness and even some menthol warmth. I found this quite tough going to drink, the sharp yeast bite and the alcohol heat combining to increase the difficulty level, and while the aroma is invitingly fruity, each mouthful brought too much nasty dregginess for it to be enjoyable. I've said it before and I'll say it again: clean up your DIPAs.

Third Barrel is also brewing for newcomer Pleasuredome. The first two beers arrived on cask at UnderDog last weekend. I missed the pale ale but did get to try the oyster stout, revelling in the name The World Is My Oyster. It's a whopper at 6.5% ABV. There's no sign of the titular ingredient in the flavour though I am assured that plenty of molluscs went in. The aroma is very roast-forward but the flavour switches the emphasis onto chocolate sweetness. There's almost a milk stout feel to it: that level of wholesome richness, accentuated by a velvet-smooth texture. A light floral complexity is a bonus amongst all the milk chocolate. A great first effort overall and I'm looking forward to seeing what Pleasuredome does next.

On a Sunday cycle odyssey around the western suburbs I landed in to the Rascals taproom thirsty and sweaty. A taster of a brand new Kölsch-a-like was proffered without even asking. That'll do. It's called Das Beaut and is 4.2% ABV. I don't know that the Cologne style is the best designation for this, however. It is crisp, with a clean mineral finish, so that bit checks out. But I detect new world hops: a hint of mandarin and mango, lasting long into the finish. It doesn't throw the beer off kilter or make it unpleasant -- I would consider it an enhancement; fans of the style might see it otherwise. As a thirst quencher, it provided exactly what I needed.

I had unfinished business at Rascals too. Last time I was here I had one of their Toast contract beers but the second wasn't on yet. And here it was: Born and Bread, an American-style pale ale at 5% ABV. It's a total '90s throwback: dark amber with a resinous aroma and a flavour which mixes sweet toffee with bitter grapefruit. While characterful, it's not extreme: the different sides of its personality held in excellent balance. For something this bitter it's lots of fun; sweet without being cloying, bitter without being acrid. A pint was no trouble at all.

A new Endangered Species landed from Wicklow Wolf, celebrating the arrival of a new brewer. Here's Johnny is an American-style IPA of 7.4% ABV, dry hopped with Nelson and Citra. Before pouring, the aroma delivered the scent of fresh C-hops from the can opening. It turned out quite murky in the glass, which isn't very west-coast of it. There's an odd savoury tang at the front: red onion, turning to burnt rubber. I was all geared up for bright and clean and bitter, but it's actually quite dirty. Nelson is doing that diesel fumes thing it sometimes insists on. The finish is brut-level dry with a strong acidity coming from, I guess, the Citra. This did not live up to its promise. The least-attractive aspects of both headline hops feature prominently and it's tragically light on redeeming features. Maybe a bit more fridge time would help settle it.

A few weeks ago, at the Alltech festival, I tried an unusual American-Belgian hybrid from Dundalk Bay. They had another strange one up their sleeves and kindly sent me a bottle of it. The name is Hogs Head and it's a "cask aged weiss". As if that wasn't odd enough, the label adds that there's orange oil and ground coriander, making this more a wit than a weiss. Intriguingly weird, and I hadn't even got the bottle open yet. Oh yes, it's also 7% ABV. What? I shouldn't have been surprised to find it looked nothing like a weissbier either: clear, red-brown, and with virtually no head. The flavour is a strong mix of nuts and fruits and alcohol, somewhere between cream sherry and a vodka and Coke. It's not jarring, though: the bourbon has given it a smoothness and while it's very obviously strong, it's not heavy or sticky. I could see this working as either an aperitif or digestif -- a negroni or an old fashioned. Not for pairing with weisswurst, anyway.

Also pulling unusual moves with citrus essence is Miruvor, the latest in YellowBelly's Beer Club limited series. This calls itself a "New Zealand inspired gose" and is 6% ABV, hopped with Huell Melon, El Dorado and Nelson and including lime purée and salt, but no coriander. It is powerfully sour, and I think that's the lime's doing more than whatever souring culture was used. There's a concentrated hit of Rose's lime cordial and a spiciness that made me think there was ginger in here too, but there isn't. While this is fun in a loud and extreme sort of way, it's not easy drinking, every sip inducing a wince. There's a stickiness too, which reduces the refreshment power, and also none of the luscious hop fruit I had been hoping for. I'm sure it was a worthwhile experiment but I wouldn't be in favour of something like this going into regular production, and I'm not averse to a bit of lime.

It's not often we get something new from YellowBelly's cuckoo-in-residence Otterbank but recently, and unexpectedly, there was Snapback Saison. This is on the strong side at 6.1% ABV, and appears a dark and murky orange. A dense texture comes with that but it's smooth rather than heavy. Fresh mandarin and satsuma opens the flavour in a cheery way, leading to a more serious rye crispbread middle: juicy and dry is an unusual flavour combination but it manages to pull it off well. There's none of the fun spiciness of good saison, alas, so it's not the most complex of examples. It's good, though: easy-going and surprisingly refreshing.

A week ago we took a trip across to the Dead Centre brewery taproom in Athlone. It's a beautiful space down by the Shannon, bright and modern, with a superb line-up of guest beers alongside Dead Centre's own. I took the opportunity to further explore a couple from Belfast's Boundary (I promised you I would), beginning with the double IPA It's Like The Circle Of Life Only Better, a hazy double IPA of 8.5% ABV. It's dense and hazy with a delicious tropical aroma. The texture is slick and slightly gritty, but not unpleasantly so. There's a bit of grit in the flavour too, but again it's not a problem -- thanks hops! There's lots of lovely peach-and-pineapple juicy tropicals, plus a more intense garlic burn. None of it is excessive, though: it's not hot, it's not savoury, it's not sickly. Balanced double IPA is something I'll happily wave a fleg for. A clean finish takes it out and meant it was perfectly possible to taste the next beer after it.

That was Imbongo, one Boundary have been offering for a while but was new to me. It looks the same: a dense juice-orange, the ABV being a more modest 5.5%. The aroma is brighter, friendlier, mixing apricot and coconut in a fun way. The flavour is spicy more than juicy, throwing out pink peppercorn and nutmeg with just a twist of orange peel. A juicebox it is not, but it's accessible, tasty and clean. Can't say fairer than that.

My last one before the train hone was Ballykilcavan's Gingerbread Beer. This is 5% ABV, a dark red colour and smells... well, like gingerbread. The flavour and texture continue that theme: unctuous, with a herbal spice and lots of cake sweetness. It is, in effect, an excellent recreation of gingerbread in beer form. Beery? No, not really. It's an enjoyable novelty, however.

That's it for today but the notebook isn't clear yet. I'll be back with more later in the week, with an emphasis on what Dublin's breweries have been up to.

Trust

Innis & Gunn does not feature frequently on these pages: it's over four years since the last mention, and a further two for the one before that. And that's with good reason: I don't particularly like the beers. Indeed, I'm more likely to invoke the name in a review of something I didn't enjoy than actually pick one off a shelf and drink it. But all opinion, however non-prejudical, must be tested from time to time, and when a raft of new and inexpensive I&G beers arrived into the local supermarket, I thought it only fair to give them a shake and see what fell out.

I have no idea where they're brewed these days. You can probably look it up. The packaging, as always, gave no indication.

Innis & Gunn Session IPA was first, a 4.6%-er in a smart little blue can. The bold claim is that this has all the flavours of an American west coast IPA without the heat or bitterness. The only nod towards America in the appearance was the watery Bud-yellow colour with poor head retention to match. The aroma is quite fun and fruity, hinting at zesty citrus chew sweets. The foretaste that followed was properly charming: a clean and tangy mix of mango and lemon, balancing sweet tropicality with bitter zest. And all hop too: no interfering crystal malt. It falls down on the finish, however, fading much too quickly to a galvanic metallic bitterness and then tailing off into wateriness. This shows a lot in common with other industrial breweries' attempts at doing down-with-the-kids hoppy stuff. It's fine, and at least it's not a big buttery mess.

Longtime readers may have noticed that "gunpowder" is one of my favourite descriptors. I associate it with the spicy saltpetre flavour of geuze in particular. I wasn't expecting that profile from I&G's Gunnpowder IPA but was intrigued nonetheless. The ABV jumps to 5.6% and it's a much more substantial-looking deep and hazy orange. Orange is a theme, doubtless due to the Mandarina Bavaria hops: an orangeade aroma, leading to a sherbet-dip flavour. What it's missing is bitterness, and the fruit candy gets quite cloying quite quickly. When the sugar fades there's more of that tinny thing. Again it's not actively unpleasant but just misses the mark on depth and quality.

We'll pop out for a moment, to Wetherspoon, where they have Mangoes on the Run, allegedly a limited edition. It's 5.6% ABV and claiming to have been brewed as a fruity IPA, then having extra tropical fruit added in. A clear amber colour, there's not much aroma from it, just a vague aspirin metallic thing. Metal is the new butterscotch, it seems. There's a lot of alcopop about the flavour; a sticky syrup sweetness. The base beer is largely absent. I guess some of that stickiness is malt-derived, but it's really hard to tell. Nothing about it suggested hops to me. Another sigh, and we move on.

By now I'm missing the buttery old I&G. A rum barrel red ale ought to deliver the goods: codename Blood Red Sky. It's red all right, the tawny shade of dried blood, so there's a certain accuracy there. There's a strong splintery wood element to the flavour at first, and oaky vanilla in particular, of course. I also get a diesel sharpness of the sort found in dark rum, giving it quite a pleasant spirituous edge. There's a kind of nutty cola effect providing a base sweetness, finishing dry and fizzy, and again indecently fast. While fun to begin with, it gets a bit boring after a while. It avoids being sickly and sugary, but is perhaps a little thin and dry for a barrel-aged beer at 6.8% ABV. Like the I&G of old, there's no subtlety; no integration of spirit, barrel and beer in the way you get from breweries who are good at this.

It's a positive move that Innis & Gunn has diversified away from the barrel stuff, and the fresh hop-forward beers are much better than the usual stock in trade. All of it is second-tier quality, though.

Phoney Peroni

A few weeks ago I was at Aldi's summer drinks press event. Wine mostly, of course, but they had one new (to me) beer in the line-up, an Italian lager which was obviously aiming to be an own-brand answer to Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Rossini matches Peroni's 5.1% ABV and I'm told is brewed by Swinkels, though I didn't know they had an Italian footprint.

On tasting it I was quite impressed. I have an active dislike for Peroni, considering it a cheaply-made lager that has gathered for itself an entirely inappropriate premium status. Rossini, on the other hand, tasted solid and decent, if unexciting. I decided it would be fun to try them blind side-by-side to test my prejudices. Is Rossini actually better?

Two days later I bought a bottle of Rossini in Aldi and a Peroni in Tesco. Unexpectedly, the latter was actually the cheaper of the pair, the 66cl bottle part of a 4-for-€10 while a half-litre of Rossini was €1.99. I had intended to run the tasting as a triangle test but there wasn't much point in the end: one beer was pale yellow with a stack of tight white foam while the other was a darker gold and lost its head quickly. I immediately had a suspicion of which was which.

Pale 'n' frothy was the more aromatic one, showing Saaz-y grass and petrol while the other smelled of nothing much. The paler one was bitterer to taste, but that's not in its favour. There's a sharp and quite harsh plasticky bite on the end, leading on to an unpleasant acrid aftertaste. I'll put my cards on the table now and say this is a nastiness I associate strongly with Peroni.

Supposed Rossini, then, was blander but definitely smoother and more full-bodied. There's a bread or biscuit malt character that made me think of Bavarian helles more than Italian or Dutch pils. The finish was clean and the whole thing very satisfying to drink. Dull helles beats crappy pils any day of the week.

The reveal proved me correct. What have we learned? Well, Peroni is still objectively awful and should never be consumed by anyone anywhere. Peroni purists, however, are unlikely to be swayed by Rossini's superficial similarities: the flavour profile is dramatically different. Asahi shareholders have nothing to fear from it while the drinking public can rejoice that Nastro Azzurro is safely uncloneable.

Brutal winter, cruel summer

A raft of new beers from the ever so industrious Sierra Nevada today.

It was still winter, just about, when I opened the Winter Warmer lager. This is a  potentially warming 6.7% ABV and a very dark red-brown colour. Not much head formed on pouring, and that dissolved to nothing in a couple of minutes, leaving it millpond flat. The flavour is typical of mid-European dark lager, big on liquorice and caramel, with lots of burntness too. There's a surprising lighter fruit side as well, bringing a squeeze of sweet cherry and blueberry. What it lacks is warmth. Though it has the same sticky dark malt of any dunkels or tmavý, the alcohol doesn't really push through. It's fine but unexciting.

"Spring seasonal" it says on the label of Sierra Nevada Brut IPA. Also that it was packaged on 17th December. Go figure. From the bottle it's a pure and clear pale gold. The aroma is quite sickly: a gastric acidity that made me slightly apprehensive. Thankfully there's none of that on tasting, just a lemon sherbet flavour, and not much else, really. It's surprisingly sweet for something that's apparently had all the sugar fermented out of it, a definite hard-candy effect. There's a certain tongue-shrivelling dry smack, but nothing dramatic. It feels a bit efforty, overall: an attempt to get down with what the kids are drinking that doesn't bring the Sierra Nevada finesse in the same way Hazy Little Thing did.

Back to lager again for the next one. Sierraveza is Mexican-style, tapping into that craft market for macro clones. It looks more like a Corona than a Negra Modelo: a pale limpid yellow with poor head retention. It also somehow tasted skunked, and given the brewery's attention to detail I can't help thinking that might be deliberate. There's a touch of Germanic heritage next -- some slightly harsh ryegrass noble hops and soft, sticky, candyfloss malt. It doesn't taste like a quality beer, and yes I know that's probably the point, but I also don't know why Sierra Nevada is elbowing in on Corona's territory. Their brand is cheapened by it and the drinker gets nothing worthwhile out of the arrangement.

Beer four is for charidee: Resilience, an open source IPA produced by multiple American breweries to aid relief from the 2018 Butte County wildfires. It's a dark orange job, the aroma redolent with toffee and caramel. The texture is smooth and the flavour dry at first, with a strong-tea astringency. Behind that are the fresh and fruity hops, bringing mouthwatering orange peel and spiky, earthy resins. It's another of those '90s style IPAs that I keep calling out when I see them but there's a new one every week or so. It won't be for everyone, tastewise, but I liked the complete eschewing of fashion in aid of a good cause.

Overall, not the brewery's best work, this lot. At least we can be assured there'll be something else from them along soon.

A fair shake

I make no apology for the one-and-done approach this blog takes. There are too many beers, and too many variables affecting how it's perceived, to try and be any way objective. Beer is no more immutable than my palate. So I write about what's in front of me when it's in front of me and then move on. Usually.

I was recently approached by a brewer who wasn't happy with my account of his beer. I reviewed White Gypsy's Vintage in this post last summer. It was on the train home after an afternoon at Hagstravaganza, and he thinks the circumstances were detrimental to my opinion of the beer. Much as I dislike revisiting beers, I'm always up for an experimental challenge, so the next time I saw a bottle of Vintage I bought it: €9.95 for 375ml in Baggot Street wines; almost €2 more than at the festival.

And here we are. I am well rested. I have a clean glass and a clean palate. The beer is still 6% ABV and a pure obsidian black. A tall layer of tan foam builds rapidly as it pours but fades quickly. By the time I had settled in to take a drink it was little more than one bubble thick on the surface. Before a sip, a sniff. A spicy sourness arrives first; a sandalwood or cedar effect. That's complemented by -- but definitely separate from -- a rich stout bitterness, heavy on herbal liquorice. OK, there's no soy sauce this time. The flavour is that spritzy bitterness, mixing bitter marjoram and yarrow with dark chocolate. There's no more than a seasoning of the aromatic wood, plus a tiny nibble of sourness. Why such a light touch on the complexity? It's thin, is why; big on fizz while the bitterness fades last, leaving almost no aftertaste. I'm sure this is part of the spec, but at a tenner a throw it really ought to be more than nice. It may be an obvious statement to make, but Guinness Foreign Extra Stout will give you something along the same lines -- if much less subtle -- at a fraction of the price.

Yes, this was a different experience to the one I had last summer, but my conclusion remains the same: it's not spectacular, but it's priced like it is.

Spooning around

On a sunny Sunday in January, with nothing better to do I took a spin out to Blackrock. On the handpumps at The Three Tun Tavern they had Gadd's She Sells Sea Shells, "light summer ale from the Kent coast": out of season perhaps, but it was still a bright afternoon and I was on the coast, so why not? The "light" refers more to the colour than the strength, it being a full 4.7% ABV but a very pale and slightly hazy shade of golden. The taste is pure summer: a meadowy breeze of floral notes, a gentle honey sweetness and a tiny bittersweet hint of high-end lemonade in the finish. The texture is quite thick, so I question its utility as a summer thirst quencher, but as a means of getting a summer buzz in the depths of winter, it was spot on.

In no rush home, I followed it with Lo-Res session IPA from SixPoints which has been around a while but I had yet to catch up with it. It's on the strong side for the style, 5% ABV, and uses that extra welly successfully. The aroma is beautifully dank, full of pure and oily hop resins. The flavour offers a little of that funk, alongside fresh and spritzy limes and a touch of fried onion. The nod to sessionability is the quick and clean finish afterwards. This is a good representation of classic west-coast flavours, albeit from the east coast.

The Gadd's beer showed up again this past weekend when I made the twice-annual pilgrimage to Dún Laoghaire for the Wetherspoon festival. There were four new-to-me beers on the pumps at The Forty Foot, so I began with three thirds. Beginning in the middle of set, that's Flack Catcher, a 4.4% ABV golden ale from Flack Manor. It arrived surprisingly dark, a rich golden amber colour. A heavy stickiness goes along with that but there's enough flavour complexity to prevent it getting difficult. It's a kind of spiced honey and maple effect with maybe a pinch of black pepper or celery salt. A lower serving temperature and a bit more fizz would probably lift this from "only OK" to "quite good".

The bright and fun badge of Hop County immediately suggested a good time in store. This is brewed by... oh. I had inadvertently drawn the Shepherd Neame beer from the line-up and braced myself. It's a deeper golden again than the previous one. And it's not awful. It is very weird, however. There's an intense artificial sweetness, like Juicy Fruit gum or rhubarb-and-custard candy. A certain viscosity adds tutti frutti ice cream into that mix. It may be simplistic and silly but it doesn't taste like a Shepherd Neame beer, so I feel like I got away with something.

The Forty Foot has been eternal and unchanging since it opened in late 2014, but this year there was a novelty: pour-your-own gravity cask. And so the last of these, Contender, was dispensed by my own fair hand from a barrel at the end of the bar. It's one of the international collaborations, brewed at Banks's from a recipe by Shanghai's Boxing Cat brewery. Though officially a pale ale, it's a similar golden colour to the other two. The flavour is very pale ale, however: a very American blend of grapefruit and lime citrus, softened with juicy apricot and lychee. While still a pale 'n' hoppy English bitter at its heart this does a great job of channelling the new world, as the best of the Wetherspoon collaborations have always done over the years.

Before leaving I upgraded to a half pint of Ilkley Ruby Jane. Dark mild deserves to be consumed in quantity, after all. And this is a very classic mild: blackberry fruits and dark chocolate set on a light body. Where similar beers tail off into wateriness, this leaves a lasting tang of bitter green English hops. It's one of those beers I had to restrain myself from quaffing until I'd captured enough of a description. Unfussy, balanced and complex without being busy, it's the sort of thing I'd like to see available regularly.

To The Three Tun, then, where there was an emphasis on dark. Asphalt Jungle is another international job, brewed at Wadworth by Bagby of California. It's a 4.5% ABV stout, opaque black with a tan head. There's a salty chocolate tang here, next to a cinnamon spice and some dark forest fruit. I'd be interested to know what the original beer tastes like, because this is very much English cask stout all the way through. It's perhaps a little heavy, given the strength, but it's also a great example of how cask serve adds complexity to stout that it just doesn't get otherwise.

Elgood's next, and their Hen In Black porter. It's the same strength but visibly paler and... ooof... something's gone wrong here. There's a strong bleachy kick off this right from the get go. Fresh bleach, mind: dry and cleansing. There's a seemingly OK chocolatey porter behind it, but I didn't go further than a couple of sips. Bringing it back to the bar, indicator paper was produced, a test was done and the presence of bleach was not found, so apparently that's genuinely how it tastes, according to the Wetherspoon system.

The beer in the middle is Exmoor Beast, 6.6% ABV, of course. No roast or chocolate here. Instead it's a dense mix of fruit and flowers; a base of summer berries sprinkled liberally with rose petal. A bitterly tannic astringency finishes it on a dry note, while there's plenty of alcohol heat running in tandem. There's a bit of an old-man vibe off this; a beer with no bells and whistles, designed for getting grandpa nicely sozzled with maximum efficiency. I'm into it.

A cleanser was required next and I went with Kol Schisel, a pale ale from Hook Norton, based on an original by Aussie brewer Big Shed. It's 4.2% ABV, a light shade of orange, and tastes of luscious stonefruit: apricot in particular, but you can add peaches and mango into that picture if you like. There's a very slight fuzzy bitterness and a sweeter spongecake base. All-in, it's very tasty: dessertish without turning sticky or difficult. The fruity features of stereotypical "Australian" hoppy beer are all present and correct. Great work.

One last beer from the collaboration series, then. Gypsy Mask is another Shepherd Neame job, collaborating with Darling Brew from South Africa. It's a red ale, though on the pale side for that. It's a bit bland too: thin with just a dusting of toffee and marzipan. Perfectly quenching and drinkable, with a complete absence of off flavours or twangs. It's just dull. Very dull. Mind, that's two narrow escapes from Shepherd Neame awfulness. Maybe they know what they're doing after all.

Sunday brought me to Blanchardstown where the spangly tap badge of West Berkshire Brewery's Maharaja IPA caught my eye immediately. It poured a dense deep orange colour and at 5.1% ABV is strong for an English cask ale, though it tastes even stronger. There's a definite heat here; a slightly sickly buzz of vodka and orange cordial, accentuated by the heavy texture. A sherbet spice adds a lighter note and adds to the drinkability, as does a tannic dryness. It's definitely one to take time over. There's no other way of drinking it, really.

Ruby coloured Secret Kingdom, from Hadrian Border was next, a bitter of 4.3% ABV. It's fairly simplistic: dry cereal sweepings and a mild sour tang that suggests it may not have been the freshest beer in the house. It was far from spoiled, however, and made quite a decent thirst quencher. There's effectively zero hop character here but it somehow manages to get away with it.

The weekend's casksploration ended with Castle Rock's Snowhite: a bright golden pale ale. Though the aroma is all sweet old-fashioned lemonade, it's a bitter one on tasting, full of waxy lemons and a slightly soapy twang on the finish. The texture is soft and soda-like, so even though the sharpness is assertive, the beer remains easy to drink. Not Castle Rock's best work, but thoroughly passable.

Only about half of the above were official festival beers, but overall I think this was a good year for the event; a return to form after a few dud sessions. With the first branch opening in Dublin city centre in the coming weeks I might not be doing so much mileage come the next one.

Fool's Gold

Something truly special for you today: a beer too long neglected by this blog, and indeed beer blogs in general. Dutch Gold has been an Irish budget mainstay since the mid-1990s. The brand is owned by Coman's wholesalers and it's brewed, to the best of my knowledge, at the Dommelsch brewery in North Brabant. Full marks, then, for accuracy: it is Dutch and it's most definitely gold.

This isn't my first time tasting, nor even my first since I developed beer-critical faculties, but it is the first time in the lifespan of this blog. Let's say I wasn't impressed on the previous occasion, and 14 years is the minimum waiting period before a reassessment. It smells quite sweet, though with a certain richness, belying the mere 4% ABV. There's a decent body too: no thinness here. One might even class the texture as helles-like. There's a small pilsneresque hop tang and the crusty-bread smoothness of a Dortmunder, and if that was everything we'd be in clover for €1 a can. That's not everything, however.

Bawling loudly over the top of all the lager subtleties -- which are genuinely there -- is a sugary sweetness which I'm guessing comes from the extensive use of maize in the recipe. At points it tastes like refined white sugar, others like sweetcorn husk, and others like concentrated honey. It leaves a syrupy residue behind on the palate as well. As it warms to gutter temperature it takes on characteristics of proper tramp-strength lager: that sherry and markers effect. It's not an improvement.

All that said, this isn't as bad as I expected. There's a decent lager down there somewhere, and a warming hug too. I can completely see how its fans manage to ignore its worst points.