Rare as a Yeti

Great Divide is back! The Colorado brewer hasn't been seen on these shores in around ten years but it has returned -- via Grand Cru Beers, of course -- with a couple of the classics and a bunch more recent releases. Predictably, I acquired cans in Stephen Street News.

I begin with Hibernation, described as an English-style Old Ale and a sizeable 8.7% ABV. Pouring was a bit of a chore, lots of foam piling up with each tip of the properly fridge-cold can. It's a dark red colour under that; a clear shade of garnet. I guess English bitter is the beer style at the base as it tastes of that sort of caramel and green cabbage. "Old ale" implies a certain richness but this doesn't have that. It's sharply boozy, throwing in a mix of strong tea, cheap sherry and rancid veg. Old in the sense of dusty, musty and dry. I'm not a fan of this. Dry and strong bitter is fine but this one just pushes things too far. Americans.

On a much more modern note there's Heyday IPA, because those crazy kids love hazy. It's only slightly clouded, still letting plenty of light through. There's a delicious spice on the nose, all mandarin rind and a kick of coconut. The flavour brings more coconut plus a mix of satsuma, grapefruit and red cabbage. A sticky passionfruit tang lasts long into the finish. This is very much its own thing, not chasing a juicy trend yet still full-on tropical goodness. I don't know that there's anything to answer the real fashion for murk, but plenty of punters will be convinced they're on-trend and drinking the latest thing. Fair play to them all.

I look forward to seeing what else Great Divide has been up to, as well as quietly revisiting some old favourites.

Friday, bro

Our week in Irish beer concludes with a pair from the busiest outfit of 2019 thus far: O Brother. Their current arty series continues with Time Waits For No One, a saison at 6.1% ABV. As usual, UnderDog was the first place I spotted it. The first sip told me this was going to be the fruity sort of saison, all tropical juice on a soft texture. But just as I was settling in to that, along came a dry and dusty bite of yeast. This turned out to be two beers from a single pour: the fun juicy one and an acridly bitter dreggy mess. It's the very definition of a curate's egg in beer form, flashing with moments of brilliance alongside literal bitter disappointment. I found myself too discomfited by the contrasting tastes to enjoy it and deemed it actively unpleasant. The unrealised potential here saddens me a little; it could have been wonderful.

Onwards to Networking, this one a brut IPA. Whereas the previous beer had too much going on it, this was simpler and more integrated. It's lightly dry with a spritzy orange flavour; minerally, like Orangina. A stronger, more tangy, grapefruit juice element arrives late but doesn't make the taste too dramatic. I don't know that balance is supposed to be a feature of brut IPA, but at the same time I don't see why not: they don't have to be enamel-strippers. This is just dry enough to qualify as true to style and makes really good use of the hops' fruit notes. I would certainly take this sort of thing over a murky vanilla-and-garlic hop soup.

And with that, it's into the long weekend. Those of you who'll be at Alltech today or tomorrow, have a fabulous time. Otherwise, celebrate St Patrick's Day in whatever way works for you (or don't) and I'll be back on Monday with more of the usual.

All stations

Today's the day. The Alltech Craft Brews & Food Fair opens at the Convention Centre in Dublin at 5pm and runs through to Saturday night. In today's post I'm catching up with the host's brewery, Station Works in Dundalk, and for a change I'm looking at their own brands rather than the ones they brew for supermarket chains. All were bought in chain supermarkets, though: that's just how this segment works.

Foxes Rock has long been the signature brand. I'm revisiting the very first in the series, Foxes Rock Pale Ale. I first reviewed this off the back of the 2015 Fair, and pronounced it lousy. A new brewery and a new brewer later and I thought it deserving of a second look, although I couldn't find it in its snazzy new green livery. It poured a murky shade of orange and smelled artificially fruity, like a boiled sweet. Bracing myself for a malt-bomb, I was pleased by the sharp zing of citrus -- classically American and very refreshing. That lasts all the way through, too: I expected the hops would fade at some point to let sweet biscuity malt in, but it doesn't; it's juice all the way. If anything it gets bitterer, the satsuma and kumquat intensifying to grapefruit and lime by the finish. This beer has come a long way. I'm glad I gave it another go.

Foxes Rock Red Ale was entirely new to me. It proved a very much down-the-line interpretation of the style, the ghosts of Macardle and Moore passing the baton to Cambrickville's new incumbents, perhaps. So. You get a deep red glassful and an ABV of 4.5%. Summer fruit and spiced roasted grains mix in the aroma, though the flavour is somewhat less complex. Toffee first, creating a very sweet foretaste on a surprisingly light body; and then a somewhat harsh bitterness: vegetal and metallic, like the more severe kind of brown English bitter. The roasted spice from the aroma returns to add a little complexity in the finish. Nothing is overdone or off-kilter about this, and there are no creative bells and whistles. The lad who likes his large bottle of Macardles will find this familiar, if rather more full-on.

The latest in the line-up is Foxes Rock Session IPA, 4.1% of sessionability. It's quite dark by the standards of the style, a hazy ochre, almost brown. There's a strong bitterness in the aroma, all punchy lime-shred marmalade. And that's all it really does in the flavour too. Good session IPAs (thinking of you, Little Fawn) have a rounded and juicy fruit quality to balance the bitterness. This skips that bit, ending up simple to the point of cheap-tasting. There's a savoury bite too, which I'm guessing is from that residual yeast, and it doesn't go well next to the extreme hops. It's far from offensive, and in no way a return to the bad Foxes Rock beers of yore. It's just not very good as a session IPA either.

Before there was even Foxes Rock, Station Works produced a pilsner called Finn. That's still around, and has been joined by two new brandmates. I don't know what it means that these were priced about a third cheaper than the Foxes Rock. Perhaps I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Finn Pale Ale is 4.3% ABV and quite dark. There's a haze which, on close inspection, proved to be a solid curtain of suspended lumps. The aroma is a mix of eye-watering citrus pith and caramelised malt. It tastes sweeter than I expected: lots of malt candy right at the front. The hops bring fruit -- juicy citrus, leaning almost to tropical -- but no real bitterness, beyond a familiar and vaguely metallic tang in the finish. I think this would be recognisable blind as a new-wave Station Works beer, certainly to anyone who has tasted the Foxes Rock Pale Ale above. It's fun, simple and easy going. I see no reason why you would trade up to the more expensive flagship.

We conclude with Finn Stout, This looked very handsome in the glass, its heading looking almost nitro-creamy, and lasting for the whole pint. Flavourwise it's absolutely classic in the Irish dry style. There's a solid roast-grain backbone balanced with hints of chocolate and finishing with a bite of what I'm guessing are English hops: tangy and earthy. No single part of the flavour jumps out particularly: all is calm and harmonious. Its best feature is the texture, tiny bubbles giving it a beautiful smoothness and making it very easy drinking. This is very much a beer for sessioning, perfectly fitting for 4.3% ABV and €1.99 a bottle.

To say Station Works has come on in leaps and bounds since the bad old days is an understatement. I'll be front and centre to see what they've brought to the Convention Centre later.

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.