A reawakening

"Here at Galway Hooker, we are always innovating with new brews and new ideas." Well, no. Since the brewery became part of the Connacht Hospitality Group in 2022 they've stuck resolutely to their core range while furiously rebadging them as house beers for pubs around the country. But it looks like that might be changing, with two new special edition beers arriving last month.

Galway Girl is a bit of a route-one name for a beer from a Galway brewery, but maybe it'll help shift some units. It looks route-one too: a medium hazy orange, allowing a little more light through than the best of these do, suggesting it belongs with those examples made by breweries whose hearts aren't really in the style. Still, it smells bright, fresh and clean, of mandarin and satsuma. The flavour is not to style, and is delightful. Those fresh little orange citrus fellows are back, bringing a cleansing bitterness and a little resinous spice: not very east-coast but who cares? I got a tiny kick of dregginess in the finish, but it's barely noticeable, plus a not unwelcome spark of fried onion. The texture is light for 5.2% ABV, though not thin by any means. The brewery's ownership may have changed, but it seems they've kept the old Galway Hooker talent for balance and drinkability.

The companion piece is in a style much more to my taste: Baltic Porter. Wild Sea Swimmers is 7% ABV and does a reasonably good job of things, smelling bitter and herbal, all aniseed and warm red cabbage. I detected a very slight sourness too, but nothing off-putting. It unfolds in several different directions on tasting, incorporating soft and comforting cocoa, invigorating espresso, floral rosewater, treacle, toffee, cola and a greener vegetal bitterness than the aroma suggested. While it's as busy as it sounds, it's tasty too, the different aspects queuing politely and taking turns. I'm impressed by how close to continental Baltic porter it tastes, for a brewery that's never made one before. 

A sign of good things to come from the veteran Oranmore brewery. Shame about the 2007-vintage distressed lettering.

Wild journey

Today's beer is a collaboration in the truest sense. It started life several years ago in Bagenalstown as O'Hara's Red Ale and was then shipped to Firestone Walker in California to be refermented in oak foeders with Brettanomyces and finished with late stage additions of thyme and honey. Then it came back across continental North America and the Atlantic Ocean, which I'd say makes some contribution to the €12 price tag on my 375ml bottle. It's called Fiáin.

The coppery colour of the base beer has survived everything it's been through, and the head stays put in a way that's unusual for wild fermented beer. It smells quite sharp, with the mild balsamic vinegar and tart cherry of a Flanders red ale. The texture is light, verging on thin, with little malt left behind by the Brett as it boosted the ABV to 6.5%. That's not a problem; it's not watery, and there's a pleasantly clean and refreshing sourness right at the front, not quite as full-on as with a geuze but subtly oaked in a similar way. That would be enough to make it a decent beer, but towards the end there's a bonus contribution of real thyme, still tasting bright and fresh after almost three years in the bottle. That flashes briefly, leaving the Brettanomyces to end proceedings with a peach or melon gumminess.

I don't know that it's a €12 beer exactly -- you can get 75cl bottles of beers as good and better for only a little extra -- but it's extremely well made, and has held up beautifully in its time abandoned on the shelves of the Mace on the South Circular Road. There's still some there if you want to try it.

Pick and Mikks

It's a source of some bemusement to me how the breweries and beer brands which were bold and exciting, (if never actually revolutionary) a decade and more ago have become part of the mainstream, when they survived. I barely notice the wares from BrewDog, Stone and Mikkeller in the off licence fridges now. I see it as broadly a positive thing that they became so commonplace; that flavour-first beer is now easily available. It's just, as I say, bemusing that any sense of thrill or intrigue is completely gone. In fact, it was not boldness but the charming retro packaging of these two lagers that caught my attention. I have never liked the Keith Shore artwork for Mikkeller and here it's minimised, giving prominence instead to stolid, commonsense, pastiche Victoriana. You know where you are with a roundel.

Ice Cold Pilsner is where we start, the name and 4.5% ABV suggesting something pale, clear and possibly passed through a Clydesdale. In fact it's very hazy, dark yellow under a rocky head resulting from some messily overenthusiastic carbonation. The aroma isn't classic pils either, being lemony in a very New World way. The fizz had settled by the time I took my first sip, so while it does have a busy prickle, it's not at the expense of the flavour. There's a certain amount of the noble-hop grassy bitterness that pilsner is supposed to have, but it's an easily-missed background element, behind a citrus kick that's by turns sweet (Club Orange; Orangina) and sharp (thick-shred marmalade; Angostura Bitters). It's a bright and jolly affair, and has enough of the pilsner character about it that I can forgive its meanderings. It did leave me wanting the crystal-clear pilsner I had been expecting, however.

Ice Cold seems to come twinned with a Vienna lager, 5.6% ABV, which has similar branding. And a similar name too: Iskold. It's a bit muddy looking in the glass: red like Vienna lager should be, but the murk is not a good fit. The crisper and roastier side of the style spectrum is well represented here: lots of wholegrain toast and crisp malt kernels. The high gravity makes its mark with a thick and treacly body, and that's balanced against a very vegetal tang of tender green cabbage and cool celery: noble hops at their subtle best. Like the beer above, it's nice, but doesn't have the style points quite where they should be. The best Vienna lagers have a cleanness and a precision which this, presumably, Belgian-brewed craft take doesn't show. A polite round of applause and, while I wish it success, I hope it doesn't become anyone's idea of what Vienna lager should be.

For dessert, a taster courtesy of Simon, voted Most Likely To Have A Bottle of Imperial Stout To Share by the barflies in UnderDog. It's called Vanilla Shake and is bourbon barrel-aged. Other Mikkeller Vanilla Shakes may exist; I don't keep track. It's a strange mix of sweet and dry: a powerful 13.4% ABV and heavily laden with milk chocolate, the effect doubtless accentuated by whatever vanilla extract they've added. And then the barrel kicks in. If it adds yet more vanilla, that gets lost in the general vanilla-y morass of the foretaste, but there's a sizeable dose of cork, port wine, and then a splintery dry-wood rasp. The two elements aren't complementary and neither is particularly enjoyable by itself. I daren't think what this costs to buy, but whatever they're asking isn't worth it.

Bemusement of a different kind, there. The hits keep coming at Mikkeller.

UnorthoDOTs

2024 for DOT Brew's beers began with a tap takeover at UnderDog and three brand new offerings. 

A bold move to start: Micro Oak Fruit Thingy, reflecting the brewery's commitment to established beer styles and the perfection thereof. It's 2.4% ABV, which is brave, but suffers from no thinness, the sweet fruit refusing to ferment and giving it the necessary body. I thought I detected favourite DOT ingredient verjus at work here: that tangy lime-esque sourness, but Shane says it's too expensive, so instead it's simply grapes, hitting against whatever sour culture they've used. I got a hint of pink flavour too: spotting the raspberry and not being surprised to learn that there's strawberry too, and then and happy tannic dryness on the finish. That makes it deliciously drinkable and refreshing, aided by a light and almost cask-like sparkle. I spent a lot of time drinking and exploring a pint of it when really it's built for quaffing. We're off to a good start.

The next one is a base blend of pale lager and a light sour beer which is then aged in former white port barrels, and badged as BA White Port Blend when it comes out. The base is quite immaterial as the barrels are firmly in control of the taste, adding lots of smooth, old oak and the good kind of oxidation you get in white port and pale sherry. It's all a bit much at first, accentuated by the substantial 6.6% ABV. White port is an excellent aperitif but I would be inclined to save this beer for dessert. There's a little bonus sweetness in the finish with the arrival of concentrated red grape, more ruby port than white. Either way, I think you absolutely need to be a fan of port before considering this beer. I am, and rather enjoyed it as a result.

The next one is extreme even by DOT's regularly way-out standards. Almost all of The Chairman's Cut has been exported to Italy, saving the one 20 litre keg tapped up in UnderDog. The headline feature is that it's a 22% ABV barley wine so was being served in very small snifters. It's a murky russet colour and that alcohol is extremely apparent from the aroma, where I could almost feel my nose hairs singe on sniffing it. Among the barrels used for ageing it was peated whiskey, and for me that absolutely dominated proceedings. It smelled of real fried bacon and tasted of bacon flavouring at a remove, most specifically of Bacon Fries corn snacks, with the same sort of dry wheatiness underlying the savoury, meaty foretaste. The booze isn't as prominent as I had expected from the aroma and I class the whole thing as smooth, warm and mature rather than rough or hot. The small measure was plenty, however: the density and the intense peat suggest that it could gum up the palate very quickly. Fun for one, but not something I need to see in regular production.

So DOT is still doing things the uniquely DOT way. Expect more of the unusual, as usual.

Go fish

Lough Gill features regularly on these pages. It's a brewery which turns out a lot of product, and one which appears to have an eye on the US as its target market. As such, it tends to go big: high-strength IPAs, barrel-aged imperial stouts and smoothie-like "pastry sours" feature prominently. Today, however, it's a change of tack, with two rather more sessionable beers, both appearing on draught at UnderDog recently.

The first is Horizon, a pale ale at 4.7% ABV. It looks like the straightforward proposition it is: a mostly-clear pale amber with only the slightest cast of haze. They describe it as a "California IPA" without elaborating on what they mean by that. One might be expecting piney hops in the west coast style but it goes for gentler peach and melon instead, suggesting to me that Mosaic or its ilk have been employed. The texture is as light as the sessionable ABV suggests but comes with a heavy dose of fizz which I found slowed my drinking down. This is simple and decent stuff, and will hopefully find its way to being a permanent offering in places that don't already have the likes of Little Fawn, Ambush or Scraggy Bay on tap.

I neglected to take a photo of the other beer, which is a shame because it looked well in the Lough Gill Willibecher pint glass. Black Wave is a stout, nitrogenated and 4.2% ABV so very much made for pub drinking, and as far as I know that's the only way it's available. It performs the task well, without doing anything too unusual, for good or ill. For the most part the flavour is dry with a medium level of roast, enough to satisfy a regular drinker of such stouts without causing problems for those that are wary of it. There's a countermelody of milk chocolate which gives it a character of its own, and then a herbal echo, suggesting spearmint freshness to me. That sounds odd but it fits the rest of the profile seamlessly and is barely noticeable unless you look for it. I would say that getting a beer like this into pubs is a very hard sell and I wish the brewery luck with it.

This new turn towards more accessible beers is a welcome one, so long as it doesn't interfere with the regular production of fancy cans. Either or both of the above would be a welcome addition to the line-up in a pub seeking to give mainstream drinkers quality options from a small independent Irish brewery.

Early hop shoots

As we head into the third month of 2024 we see a resurgence of new beers from Ireland's breweries. Today I'm looking at an assortment from the hoppy side of the house.

We'll start without the alcohol, or almost without, and Brewers At Play 37 from Kinnegar, a variant on its Low Tide super-low-alcohol session IPA. Like that one, it's just 1% ABV and hazy yellow in colour. The aroma is nicely hop forward, balanced well between peachy juice and a spark of citrus. It's definitely a beer, not an ersatz substitute, but is a tad watery: you would immediately know that the ABV isn't the full shilling, I think. There's also the grittiness and metallic twang often found in very low-alcohol beers. Other than that, the taste is good: zesty lemon chased by a cheeky resinous dank, and while the finish is indecently quick, there's a lingering aftertaste of lime rind. It does the job. I wouldn't swap it in for a stronger IPA if that's what I was in the mood for, but when that's not an option I would fairly happily drink this instead.

Even casual readers of this blog are probably familiar with the prolific DOT Brew by now. It's best known for its highly involved barrel-aged blends, about which more later this week, but they do straight-up hoppy things too. This one is called Let Loose, a pale ale. Although oats are listed on the ingredients it's only very slightly hazy, and is otherwise a medium golden-amber. I guess they're there to boost the texture since it's only 4.2% ABV, and it works! It's light, but with enough body to give the hop flavour a proper beginning, middle and end. We're not told what they are, but I'm guessing something classically new-world. There's a broad mélange of soft peach and mango with a bitter mineral edge suggesting dried lemon or grapefruit peel. None if it is especially loud, but it's an excellent undemanding thirst-quencher. I don't usually pay much attention to what breweries write about their beers, but the description here says "Simply, an easy drinking all round bright pale ale." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Trouble's contribution to this first round-up of 2024 is, perhaps appropriately, called New Me. It's a pale ale of 4.7% ABV and references New Zealand on the badge, so presumably utilises hops from down there. Presenting clear and golden, there's not much aroma, and the flavour too is reticent, requiring a few mouthfuls before the character emerges. That character is bitterness: the grassy sort which shows the noble German heritage of many a Kiwi hop variety. There are some mild tropical overtones, suggesting that Nelson Sauvin or something similar has been added to the mix. Still, everything is on the down-low and there isn't really a whole lot to explore. When the fizz has subsided a little, you're left with an unchallenging and quaffable refresher, much like the beer above.

Hopsicle is a new beer brand to me. It's an all-Cork collaboration project between Bierhaus and Fionnbarra, although the beer is brewed in the Real Capital: Dublin. I missed the first iteration of the puntastic Haus of Fionn, but here's Haus of Fionn 2.0. It's still a Nelson Sauvin pale ale of 4.9% ABV but now there's extra oats. I have never dinged a beer for not enough oats. It's thick, it's sharp, it's tangy. There's just about a sufficient amount of Nelson's citrus-rind-in-a-petroleum-refinery, but it's not one of those beers to give Nelson fans that big hit they crave. As a middling pintable Irish pub beer, however, it's excellent: this is a noble example of pubs who care about their beer offer taking steps to ensure what they have is good. File this with the contemporary greats like Scraggy and Ambush. Put it on tap everywhere. Teach the masses.

It was a very pleasant surprise to see a new beer from Farringtons, the Kildare restaurant-brewery not being a place from which I expected to see a high turnover of cans. But here we are and the new one is called The Long Road. It's an IPA at 5.9% ABV and they've gone full American with Citra, Simcoe and Mosaic. The harsher side of all of those is what the flavour is about: Mosaic's softer melon and mango is quickly buried by Citra's grapefruit and lime. Couple that with a rasp of dry toast and you have the gist of it. Fans of the west coast revival will enjoy the clean bitterness and a boozy punch that's all California and no Kildare. Don't expect nuance beyond this, though. This is one of those commercial beers that's worthy of a homebrew competition medal: hitting the style right at the point where they also mean it's a good beer. IPA is not quite over yet.

Nothing will date things to the mid-2020s, in the most cringe-inducing way, than bad AI-generated artwork. Even an ephemeral trade like limited-edition beers would be better to avoid it, if only because it all gets documented here for the ages. And so I document Beam Me Up! from Third Barrel. The less said about the label the better. Don't look too closely. It's in the almost retro style of DDH IPA, 6.1% ABV and using brewery favourite Idaho 7. The haze isn't especially dense by the standards of these things, but it's attractive looking, a glowing sunset orange. The aroma is very distinctive, to the  point where I'd be telling you it's that rascal Nelson Sauvin at work if I didn't know what it was: an oily and slightly hot twang of kerosene and bay leaf. Uncompromising. The flavour which follows isn't as severe as I was expecting, nor is there a whole lot of heat. There's a slight raw hop-leaf bitterness and a much gentler zesty lemon and crunchy red cabbage. All tastes quite west-coast to me -- juice aficionados must needs look elsewhere. I liked the sheer boldness of it from the start, and when my palate had adjusted to it, I enjoyed the nuanced citrus and resin. Overall a very well put-together American-style IPA.

Hopfully continues the more serious strengths with 6.5% ABV Lazergun (pew! pew!), a single hop Azacca IPA. It's one of the hazy ones, showing an opaque hazy orange in the glass. Azacca should be giving me a firework display of tropical candy hops but it's a bit muted here, the aroma being broadly sweet without anything specific. This is followed by a flavour which presents little up front, and only later on adds some concentrated mango and pineapple syrup, with a bonus lemon and lime zest. The latter adds a cleanness to a flavour profile in desperate need of it. This isn't bright and sunny juice-powered beer, nor is it an astringent west-coaster. It doesn't quite fit into either, though there are elements of both. It's hop forward but the hops don't really lead us anywhere interesting. I suspect that the Azacca needs company, and if that's what the beer teaches us then that's good enough.

From one crowd of haze fanatics to another: here's Whiplash with Flat Beat, for all the 1990s glove puppet fanatics out there. This is another dense-looking orange one, the ABV at 6.8%. I expected fruit in spades from the hop combination of Hallertau Blanc, El Dorado and Amarillo, but the aroma is quite taciturn, offering only a minimalistic quantum of zest. The flavour is on the down-low as well, which is a surprise. I get a kind of herbal, savoury effect -- thyme and marjoram, perhaps -- and then a lightly pink bubblegum finish which I suppose counts as fruity, but not in any fresh or happy-hop way. That's set on a mostly fuzzy but also slightly gritty base, which ends up being the main feature in the absence of anything more prominent. Seriously: where are have the hops all gone? It's not unpleasant, and I could drink it, but it's very characterless, in a white-bread and steamed potato sort of way. Flat in name and flat in flavour, this is quite a distance below the usual Whiplash standard.

It's customary to finish on a double IPA from O Brother, and this time it's Humans Are People Too, launched last Thursday in UnderDog. It's a big one at 8.3% ABV and very dense: sandstorm-opaque and with a substantial heat. The haze can unfortunately be tasted, adding a dry, powdery grit which is far from enjoyable. The hops are the beer's good side, tasting exceedingly bright and fresh under the murk. A sharp, west-coastish, grapefruit tang arrives on the palate first, followed by a gentler and longer-finishing apricot sweetness. It's big enough and bold enough that the regrettable heat and grit don't spoil it. I think de-hazing would be an improvement, however.

And so 2024 in Irish Beer is well under way now.

Beer 2, oxygen 0

The prologue to today's beers is that they were both recalled from the market. A problem with the can seamer meant that not all of them were properly sealed, running the risk of oxidation. Craft Central were kind enough to refund me the cost of the beers and I checked with the brewery, Lineman, if it was OK to review them, since I couldn't detect any flaws. Mark showed me how to spot the defective cans and I'm confident that neither of these were affected by the issue.

We begin with a pilsner called Can You See Me? I guess it's one of those modern takes on it, using modern hop varieties Motueka and Hallertau Blanc, in such a way as to accentuate their fruity sides. It's very slightly hazy as well. Nevertheless, it still looks like proper pilsner, especially the tall crown of white foam. Hallertau Blanc's white grape effect is front and centre in the aroma, fresh and succulent, with the toasty fruitiness of Prosecco. The texture is light, reflecting the mere 4.4% ABV. The sweetness of the hops wouldn't sit well with a sweet malt body, so it's just as well that it's crisp and quite dry. Lightly browned toast features in the flavour, where the hopping is dialled back to allow that refreshing cleanness to sparkle. Just when I thought the Motueka had been drowned out, I got a pinch of eucalyptus and aniseed right in the finish, bringing a bittering complexity which contrasts nicely with the juicy grape. This is very well put together, offering summery, thirst-quenching, accessible lager vibes, with plenty for the chin stroking connoisseur to discover and enjoy as well. Chapeau.

On then to the double IPA, Machine Soul. They've upped the ante on most Irish examples, at 8.6% ABV. It's medium-pale -- mostly yellow with a bit of orange -- and its hops are Citra, Simcoe and newbie Luminosa, seemingly not trusted to carry the beer without support from the established varieties. It smells heavily dank, and also a bit leafy, an effect I've come to associate with the tail end of a keg, where all the bits end up in your glass. Unsurprisingly it's heavily textured, very much a sipper not a slurper. And the hops help with that too: there's a strongly resinous and bitter side, palate-coating and a little too warm for comfort, and then what may have been intended as juice but is more concentrated and cordial-like. Assuming the intent was to create a punchy, full-spectrum hop powerhouse, then it succeeds, and I'm sure there are people who want this kind of beer even though it hasn't been 2010 for a while now. While I found it technically perfect, it's a little too loud and brash for my palate. The pilsner is more my pace.

It's sad to think of either beer being wasted, but Lineman's commitment to quality has always been impeccable and I completely understand why it has been done. That I got two freebie cans out of it is some comfort at least.