The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 2: Western Herd

Western Herd of County Clare provides today's beers. Both are IPAs, a style this hop-crazy brewery still seems very much in love with.

Islander has been part of their line-up since 2016 but has never come my way before. It's a session IPA of 4.2% ABV and looks to be taking a specifically New England approach. Under a tall stack of loose froth it's a fuzzy yellow colour. The aroma is quite citric, with lime intensifying to fried onions. The brewery is showing its usual generosity with the hops, then -- Simcoe, Citra and Amarillo in this case. The flavour is an interesting mish-mash. The bitterness is dialled back in a very New England way, and tropical pineapple is first in the queue. That gets interrupted by the yeast fluff, introducing an unwelcome savoury side. There's a pinch of lemon rind and a dark green kale or spinach acidity. All this is happening on a light but not thin mouthfeel, and the flavours don't linger. It's nearly very good, except for that savoury murk side which I think gets in the way of the fruity fun. Only a qualified success, then.

On to Magic Road, an IPA, though a modest one at 5.8% ABV. None of your headliner hops here: experimental English varieties CF160, CF184 and CF185 says the can. It pours a medium orange colour with some haze but definitely not full-on murk like the above. The aroma is quite reticent but gives me hints of resinous cedarwood spicing, cardamom and rosewater. I was immediately thinking "baklava", and that follows through to the flavour, bringing added honey and crisp pastry. This is fun, and very unusual. It's clean too, which makes it easier to explore everything going on. Beyond the exotic perfumed delicacies there's a sterner hard bitterness, a little metallic but entirely in keeping with English IPA. The texture is thick enough to carry the resins and provide a long finish, without turning difficult by the end. Part of the enjoyment was the novelty -- this is a very pleasant change from the norm -- but it's also a rock-solid, well-made, highly-flavoured and complex IPA.

Both of these were a surprise in different ways. However, I love when experimental hops bring something genuinely innovative to a beer. Hats off to Western Herd for taking the risk with Magic Road.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 1: Third Barrel

Here we go again! The venerable annual tradition of twelve daily blog posts of all-Irish beer in the run-up to Christmas is now in its second year. The breweries aren't selected on any particular criteria: it's just what I've had in the fridge over the last month or so.

We begin locally (to me), with seven recent releases from Third Barrel and its subsidiary labels.

Pale ale specialist Stone Barrel has released a porter called Spectre. It's a charming, old-fashioned ruby colour, topped with a generous layer of dense foam the colour of a proper pub's ceiling. The classic theme continues in the dark chocolate aroma with just a mild bite of green hops and roasted grain in the background. The texture is fantastically creamy for a beer served carbonated -- another opportunity for me to take a jab at breweries packaging their beer with nitrogen: just make them creamy like this. The flavour more or less follows the aroma, though the chocolate is sweeter and more milky, while the hops are tangy and a little metallic: a contrast rather than a balance. Although it has the feel of quite a big beer, and it is a not-inconsiderable 5.5% ABV, the finish is quick. I would have liked the chocolate to hang around longer, but at the same time it does make it very moreish. I could sink a lot of this. It's porter as it should be.

Those Belgium enthusiasts in the Third Circle corner, meanwhile, have come up with an American-style amber ale. I've a fondness for these over most sweet red styles, but they need to hit the balance between toffee and fresh hops just right. Not My Disco almost manages it. The finish blends the two sides really well and there's a long echo of warming malt and zingy American hops. The foretaste lets it down, however, with a too-extreme combination of acidic bitterness and rasping astringency. The aroma, too, is a little harsh: perhaps dry hopping with Citra was a step beyond what amber ale needs? This is nearly good but a near miss for me. Even during the West Coast Revival™, "American" doesn't have to mean "bitter as hell", and especially not for an amber ale.

On a growler run to UnderDog I picked up Third Barrel's Pilot 02: Chocolate Ice Cream Stout. Have the sturdy lads from Bluebell gone full Omnipollo? Not really. This is a stout first and foremost, with a seam of green old-world hops running through it. The texture is creamy, however, reflecting its big 8% ABV. The chocolate is quite muted and I don't know if chocolate or lactose are ingredients -- there's certainly not much sign of either. There's a coffee side which is another classic stout component, and a drier roast aspect in the finish. This isn't a busy and complex beer, but is simple, drinkable and very enjoyable. I don't know if any of these pilots are intended for scaling up into a regular run, but this one would be worth it.

The next three in the sequence arrived simultaneously, in cans, and continue the theme. All three are dark, 6% ABV and thoroughly pastrified. Pilot 03: Salted Peanut & Chocolate Milk Stout sounds hella gimmicky. I mean, how are you going to get peanut flavour into a beer? Well, they did. From the first sip there's a genuine dry, nutty, fatty, salty, crunch. Peanuts! I'm impressed. Beyond that it's a mix of chocolate sauce and caramel: sweet, but not too heavy, and not over-egged with lactose, or eggs. There's even a pinch of hop bittering. But mostly it's peanuts, in a silly and entertaining way. This will never be any brewery's flagship but it's undeniably fun. Own your gimmick!

Chocolate makes a return in Pilot 04: Holé Molé, along with chipotle chillis. One or other of them kills the head retention. There's no peanut, but otherwise it's quite similar to the previous beer: medium bodied, very chocolatey with a big sweetness. We are told to expect smoke, and I get a certain dry rasp, but there's no chilli kick, which is unfortunate. I swear there's vanilla in here too -- it's very pastry. And as such, it's fine. I expected more fun from the chilli, and a greater richness given the mole reference. What's delivered is rather more basic.

Last of this Pilot trilogy is Pilot 05: Makin' Bacon. Bacon flavours are nothing new in stout (or porter; this is a porter), generally using some combination of smoked malt and maple syrup. Here, the syrup is joined by something called "bacon extract". I don't want to know which side-door of the abattoir Third Barrel gets that from. It doesn't smell of bacon, it smells of burnt caramel and maple cookies. This is the sweetest of the lot, a sugary syrup flavour that just keeps rolling, coating the palate and destroying any possibility of nuance or complexity. There's a roasty dryness which does help balance it, though swings it a little too far towards acrid at the same time. And there's plenty of the sappy, woody side of maple syrup: if you like the Canadian sticky stuff, here's your beer. Just don't expect it to taste much like beer. Or bacon. This one was a step too far for me, completely losing sight of the base porter under all the syrup silliness. If you're going to tackle it, have a palate-cleanser on standby.

Last year there was a Baltic Porter called The Darkness. This year it has evolved into an imperial stout, one aged in whiskey and red wine barrels. The Darkness 2020 smells strangely meaty. Maybe it's a mature, oaky-smoky thing that causes it. That theory is borne out on tasting, where I get a definite curl of dense and sweetly aromatic smoke. Dense is the word: this feels all of its 10% ABV and has a heat to match. A tarry and burnt bitterness contrasts with sweet red grape, and then maybe a little honeycomb from the whiskey. The flavours are all quite separate, suggesting to me this is one for putting aside for a year or five. That's what I'll be doing anyway. There's not a thing wrong with it now, but what it tastes of most is promise.

And speaking of promise: 11 more posts coming your way. Imminently.

Fruit moose news

It's far from seasonal, but this range of Moosehead radlers arrived recently and I couldn't resist. Radler should perhaps be in inverted commas as they're a full 4% ABV. Good value for that at just €2 a can, or six for a tenner if you're really into it.

I began with Grapefruit, a sensible start as it's a normal fruit to find radlerised. It poured a pleasing hazy sunshine colour, with a fine white froth on top: a mousse head, if you will. The aroma offers stacks of real grapefruit rind, but also a different sort of bitterness, which I'm assigning to Germanic lager hops. They seem to have loaded it up with sugar as it's lemonade-sweet. Thankfully the pithy grapefruit is there to balance the flavour, adding a much-needed acidity to the finish. There's not much else to it, but radler isn't usually a ball of multifaceted complexity. It's refreshing, extremely easy drinking, and generally jolly decent. So that's the normal one. Now let's get weird.

Strawberry Lemonade. Oh God. This is going to be dreadful isn't it? It's a hazy pink and smells powerfully of strawberry concentrate, like lurid sticky chew sweets. I'm developing type-2 diabetes from the smell alone. On tasting it wasn't as sticky and cloying as I expected. The light texture and the lager base keep it from being a total disaster but it's still something of an alcopop. As such, you really need to drink this properly cold. With even the slightest warmth on board the lager loses its restraining power and the sugar takes over. The final half of the can was hard work. While I'm complaining, I feel gypped by the "lemonade" promise of the name. There's none of that. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising as, unlike the grapefruit one, there's no lemon in the ingredients, just carbonated water and citric acid, as well as "purple carrot juice", "red cabbage extract" and "glycerol ester of wood rosin". Mmm, wholesome. Perhaps it's time to put this aside and move on.

We're back to a cheery yellow colour with Peach Mango. At least both mango and peach show up on the ingredients. And the aroma, for that matter, with a concentrated peach cordial being the loudest part, but accompanied by a certain tangy mango too. This has a lot in common with the grapefruit one in the way it uses the fruit for flavour but manages to avoid over-sweetness. One wouldn't expect much bitterness yet there's a pleasant pinch of it in the foretaste. The finish is sweeter, of course, but in a way that's completely valid for something peach-flavoured. I feel I got off lightly here. It's not something I would choose if I weren't striving to complete a series, but all things considered it could have been much worse.

To finish, Watermelon. This had the faintest, and therefore most natural, aroma of any of them. Mostly it smells like lager, with merely a hint of watermelon rind. And so it goes for the flavour: the crunchy green quality of a watermelon's thick hide. There's a bit of a Jolly Rancher vibe, but without the hot solvent esters, and a fun peppery seasoning -- almost like you'd get from a real beer. It's perhaps not as refreshing as the grapefruit one, but makes up for it by having a more interesting flavour. You certainly get your money's worth of watermelon: that side of it is unmistakable, which is not always the case with lightly flavoured fruit, even in syrup form. I still think the Grapefruit is the best, but here's a commendable second place. I wouldn't object to more watermelon-flavoured beers on the market.

In conclusion, you do need to have a sweet tooth for this lot, and they're quite different from your more commonplace European radlers. Given the higher strength, it's hard to think of a use-case, here in the depths of winter.

The ALD alliance

What a jape! What an absolute wheeze! When discount supermarket Aldi brought out obvious knock-offs of BrewDog's flagship beers Punk IPA and Elvis Juice, the Scottish brewer retaliated with ALD IPA, appropriating the German chain's company livery. Suspiciously soon afterwards, Aldi agreed to begin stocking ALD alongside their specially-commissioned BrewDog doppelgangers, Anti-Establishment IPA and Memphis Blvd. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for some blind-taste fun, to find out if Aldi really can go toe-to-toe with a brewery of BrewDog's stature.

Of course, the recipes of Anti-Establishment and ALD have nothing at all in common with each other, and the beers look very different: one a russet amber, the other purest spun gold. Head retention was uniformly poor but that could just be the state of my glassware. Aroma: the dark one was pithy and sweaty, and immediately set wheels spinning in my memory; the pale one was dank and piquant, suggesting fresh American hops. It has been suggested that the brewery behind the knock-offs is Aldi regular Williams Brothers, and that unpleasant funk from the darker one called to mind some of the poorer Aldi specials they've committed in the past. I thought it would be better to taste before calling it.

It couldn't have been clearer that one of these breweries knows how to handle hops the way I like while the other definitely doesn't. Amber Boy is chalkily dry and rough on the tongue but also tries to tack on a balancing malt sweetness. It's an unholy mix of celery, spinach, strawberries and toffee, liquidised and forced down your throat in a tube. Not a good time. The angel on the other shoulder is lager-clean and light-bodied, while also resinous and oily, tasting of fresh, crisp kale and crunchy red cabbage with a sprinkling of black pepper. The bitterness is properly balanced by lemon candy. Easy drinking but complex and interesting; a class act (not a million miles from Dead Pony) and just a higher level of quality next to the other ghastly chimera.

My guess, then, was that the dark one was Anti-Establishment, with a bonus punt for Williams Brothers being the brewery, while the pale one was ALD IPA, BrewDog doing what they're good at. My identification proved to be correct.

I needed to complete the set, of course, so also picked up Memphis Blvd. As Aldi's answer to Elvis Juice it's an IPA with grapefruit. Not that I'm a big fan of Elvis Juice or anything, but hey -- 6.5% ABV and for buttons. It's a lovely coppery red colour, but the fun pretty much ends there. There's awesomely epic amounts of grapefruit and epically awesome amounts of bittering hops and they do not get on. The result tastes like an equal mix of orange peel and vomit, with a nasty dry metallic rasp for bad measure. While I don't particularly like Elvis Juice I do particularly hate this. 

The finisher is one which I picked up with the others but is thematically unrelated to them. I don't know if Deadly Brewing Lager is meant to be ripping off something specific, or even where it's brewed. It's a pedestrian 4% ABV, a middling clear golden, and my lightning finger on the camera shutter managed to capture a thin layer of head in the seconds before it faded away completely -- bad for a lager, cheapie or not. There's a decent body; a malty weight not unlike a much stronger Helles or even a Märzen. A honey sweetness accompanies this, plus a fun wintery spicing: sage and eucalyptus. My cynicism of three sentences ago melted before the sticky oat-cookie finish arrived. This has a lovely heft and a tasty complexity. If it's not German-brewed, it's from someone who has the German way nailed down well.

As a reluctant scholar of Aldi's big-brand clone beers I have noted before that they rarely have anything other than the most basic specifications in common with the beers they're trying to ape. While I didn't do a side-by-side with this latest pair I doubt anyone would have trouble differentiating them from Punk or Elvis Juice, and anyone who bought them as substitutes is in for disappointment. Deadly Brewing Lager, on the other hand, is easily overlooked and well worth throwing some change at.

Tampa tantrum

The beers from Cigar City have been packing the off licences of late. It has taken me a while to catch up with what's available but here's what's in the mix so far.

We start with a brand extension since that seems very much in vogue among the American breweries we get over here. Jai Low is a session-strength variant of the Cigar City flagship Jai Alai. It's an even 4% ABV and a clear amber-gold, though worryingly short of head. Jai Alai's iconic punchy bitterness is well represented: right from the start it's pithy and waxy. In something of this strength, that tends to be a recipe for harsh thinness, but this is nicely full-bodied and provides sufficient malt balance for those hyperactive hops. I've had a few of these American 4%-ers and this is the first not to taste compromised. I was sceptical about the Jai Alai associations, but it's worthy of the tie.

Margarita Gose immediately caught my eye. I like a gose and I like a margarita. It's meant to be a bright summer drinker, at just 4.2% ABV, and I caught it just before winter closed in fully. It looked a bit sad in the glass, to be honest: a hazy shade of dull orange with the head disappearing in the first couple of minutes. Salt and herbs is the first hit I got from a huff of the aroma, then the promise of tangy, oily, limes. It's surprisingly flat, with only the merest tingle of carbonation. Combined with a light texture, that made it seem a little lifeless. There's the briny tang and a smidge of citrus bitterness in the flavour, but that's all you really get. I was afraid this would be a cloying alcopop combination, and it's not, it's a real beer, but I found it less engaging than I expected. Refreshing, sure, but sailing close to the point where that means bland.

"Ale brewed with orange lime and salt" is the strapline for After Sesh, and I wonder if it was designed as a gose too, but they couldn't bring themselves to call it that. It's also orange in colour, and the head is lasting this time. 4.5% means just a slight increase in ABV. The aroma doesn't have much to say, other than a mild waft of oily oranges. The mouthfeel is decently thick, much more so than the previous, and I can taste the malt. I can just about taste the hops, but nothing that says real orange or salt. This is another very plain affair, inoffensive and quaffable like many an Irish red ale or English red-brown bitter, especially in their fizzy canned forms. I would expect to get this from a discount supermarket in a brightly-coloured can from an unspecified brewery. It tastes a bit cheap and definitely doesn't deliver on the promise of the description.

We move on to a "Citra Pale Ale" next: Guayabera. Funny how that hop in particular tends to get this special billing. This is a deep orange colour and 5.5% ABV. The aroma certainly says Citra: fresh and zesty lime. The mouthfeel is nicely full and this provides ample legroom for the flavour hops. Zesty again, not skimping on the bitterness, but showing a certain nuance as well: it's a pie or a pastry rather than a mean raw lime. This effect is heightened by the malt base which adds a hint of toffee to the background, a little like the American pale ales of yore. A hint of green onion is the only bum note I found, and it's well concealed by the bittering. While not socks-knocked-off amazing, this is well put together: punchy yet approachable, and enjoyable throughout.

"Belgian-Style White Ale" is a peculiarly awkward American construction. Is it a Blue Moon thing? Cigar City's is called Florida Cracker and is 5.5% ABV. It's surprisingly clear, but that's OK, and the fluffy white head is pleasingly persistent. The aroma is quite herbal: I got sage and cardamom although plain old coriander and orange peel is all that's listed. Shows what I know. It's very dry to begin with, all crunchy grain and citronella oil. From there there's a more nuanced lemon candy and more of that wintery resinous herb I found in the aroma. And that's it. Overall this is quite a severe sort of witbier, and maybe it's the filtration that has removed the usual smooth and fluffy edges. While not bad, I don't really see the point of it -- Cigar City aren't bringing any worthwhile innovations to the style with this.

From cod-Belgium to ersatz-England: would they do any better with a brown ale? Maduro is also 5.5% ABV and a lovely clear garnet colour. The aroma doesn't have much to say. The flavour... is understated, in a good way. It's not bland, and definitely not thin, but it takes a moment for the taste to unfold properly. Burnt caramel is first through, followed swiftly by bitter liquorice, milk chocolate, very black tea, and sticky molasses. A truly great brown ale would have a dusting of meadow flowers on top, but this doesn't, not venturing far from the standard roasted-malt profile, and that's fine by me. You can sip this, explore it, analyse it, but it works just as well as a relaxing wintertime drinking beer. It tastes authentically English to me, and we don't get many like this in these parts. I award it extra points for bringing something a bit different to the scene.

Full-strength IPA is inevitable, of course, and here we have the 6.5% ABV Fancy Papers, a (slightly) hazy example. It smells perfumed rather than juicy, and there's a hint of the hop-studded toffee that I associate with American IPAs of the old school. The flavour is more tropical, but in quite a cloying, fruit-concentrate way. I get pineapple and coconut, intensely so, like some sort of pre-mixed piña colada. It's not exactly unpleasant, but it's very strange: far from an old-fashioned bitter IPA but definitely not anything like the modern sweet sort. I guess it's its own thing, then, and fair play to it. Luckily there's just enough of a candied-lemon bitterness to make it palatable, and a dry note of acidity on the finish to prevent the alcopop taste turning cloying. I can imagine sipping this while gazing across the azure waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which is probably all any Cigar City beer is meant to do. Job done.

"unpredictable... nearly criminal... world's worst superhero": weird way to show local pride, there, CC. Here's Florida Man, a double IPA of 8.5% ABV to round out this selection. It's another translucent pale orange fellow. The aroma is juicy but on the cusp of resinous -- I don't know if mandarin oil is a thing, but if it is it probably smells like this. That juiciness combines with the big malt to create a pleasing tangerine sweetness. There's a suggestion of caramel or milk chocolate but really the hops are in charge, as they should be. And despite 80 purported IBUs that hopping is gentle, subtle even, bringing the flavour without any overdone bittering. Nor is it boozy or difficult to drink, squeaking into the double IPA style category to my palate, but only just. As an old man of simple tastes it suited me perfectly; anyone looking for something as supposedly crazy as its namesake might feel let down.

Once upon a time, Cigar City was one of the American breweries spoken of in hushed tones this side of the Atlantic. I don't know whether they switched to more middle-of-the-road offerings since, or if the market caught up with them. Either way, I was a little surprised by how few big wows I got here. I'd buy that brown ale again, mind.

All the fancy stuff

You might be thinking of getting a few posh beers for the upcoming Christmas break. Here's some of what the high end looks like in Ireland 2020.

A collaboration starts us off: Brú and DOT got together to create Legna Dearg, a Bretted rye ale aged in Amarone and American oak barrels. On a day I was feeling flush, a 375ml bottle set me back €14. It's a muddy red-brown in the glass and there's bags of barnyard in the aroma, as well as the classy balsamic vinegar effect you get in Flanders red. So far, so Belgian. There must have been a fair amount of wine left in the barrel when the beer went in because there's a serious grape ale characteristic from the start: downright juicy. All the funk follows, offering a pleasant contrast to the fruit, and there's a lambic-like waxy bitterness in the finish. A smack of sweet red grape kisses you goodbye. Where I'd ding this is the weight: it's 8.2% ABV and thick with it, so it lacks that clean briskness of Flanders red. Still, this is very enjoyable sipping, and the effort that went in to creating it pays off. I'd say it needs some further ageing to clean it up properly.

The Porterhouse has been calling its various imperial stouts "Celebration" since 2006. They've abandoned the convention this year in favour of Around the Clock. The name alludes to how this 12%-er was brewed for 24 hours before ageing 180 days in ex- sherry and bourbon whiskey barrels from Porterhouse's sister distillery, Dingle. It smells very spirituous, though not of whiskey -- something richer; rum, perhaps. There's a bite of bitter liquorice too. Richness follows into the flavour, and I can't shake that rummy sensation, now with added raisin, chocolate, black cherry and vanilla. I went into this expecting something hot and serious but it's a fun dessert, though a very classy one at that. Strictly no silliness or syrups. Of course stout is what the Porterhouse excels at. Those chops have been very much earned over almost a quarter of a century with the same guy at the helm, but this is some of their best work, and at under the €6 mark is genuinely good value.

We conclude with this year's large-format bottle from Rye River, a bourbon barrel quadrupel of 13% ABV and €20 called The Herd. I confess I expected this to be several headaches lined up in a glass, but while it meets the description perfectly, it's smooth and balanced without a trace of harshness. There's the luscious warming raisin of an Oloroso sherry plus honey and fruitcake notes like a pot-stilled whiskey. And yes, the alcohol is that pronounced, but it's also integrated into the flavour, not an add-on as it can sometimes seem with strong and barrel-aged beers. Although it's sweet, there's a herbal, aniseed bitterness which emerges as it warms and helps balance things. At various stages, easing my way through the bottle, I also got dark chocolate, cherry jam and coconut. I should mention the beautiful clear ruby colour too, like a glass of fine port. This is a pure class act and perfect winter sipping, not just for the beer world's extremophiles.

There's rarely a shortage of fancy spendy beers on the shelves in Ireland, though finding a local one can be tough. All three of these are worthy of a place among the best of international.

Century city

Today's beer came courtesy of Eoghan Walsh, author of the Brussels Beer City blog and was created to accompany his book of the same name, on the history of brewing in the Belgian capital. It's that most Belgian of styles, a Scotch ale, created at Brussels Beer Project in the heart of the city, following the best estimation of what these were like a century ago. Sctch 1920 is the appointed name.

As a 21st century sort of bloke I expect Scotch ale to be darkish, but this is quite a pale amber, mostly clear with just the faintest haze. No immediate esters feature in the aroma: it smells quite plain, just slightly sweet, and that's backed up in the syrupy texture. Par for the course at 8.8% ABV. Surprise number one is the bitterness: a serious waxy kick, somewhere in the same zone as a north-German bock or a north-English bitter. This doesn't hang around, however, giving way presently to floral honey (an ingredient) and a little of that hard orange-flavoured travel sweet found in tripel, a beer style which is arguably a descendent of this one. A slightly oily herbal note -- marjoram and dill -- finishes it with a bonus balancing bitterness.

I can see the relationship between this and modern Belgian tramp-brews like Gordon Finest, but there's definitely an extra nuance, which I'm taking as hop-derived. Interestingly, they went with Belgian Groene Bel hops rather than a more typical English variety. This is a solid, old-fashioned, heavy-bodied sipper. Unlike with many a candy-infused modern Belgian beer, you know when you've had a drink when you've had one of these. Thanks to Eoghan for letting me try it.