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.

Freedom of movement

Rounding out this week of posts from the Alltech Brews & Food Fair with the small handful of foreign beers I tried.

There was a bit of a buzz around new English brewery Evolution, from Shropshire. They've taken over the former Battlefield Brewery in Shrewsbury. Where Battlefield brewed safe and traditional English styles, the new lot have gone for something more daring. I began with their pale ale Update Your Smile, a 4.6%-er. It's... perfunctory. It has the vanilla and a wisp of tropical guava, but that's all it does before finishing on a watery note. A bit of a damp squib here.

Picking something that would be harder to brew blandly I chose their imperial stout next: Descent of Man. It arrived almost headless, which wasn't a great start. The fermentation must have been done quite warm as it was full of toffee and banana flavours, quite out of keeping for the style. A certain roasted bite is buried deep behind this, but that's as stouty as it gets. The ABV is on the low side, but at 8.5% it should still be capable of greater substance and complexity than this.

I didn't try any more of their beers. I think Evolution has a way to go, and I hope they live up to their name.

At the Grand Cru stand they were pouring a new one from the Veltins Grevensteiner brand. This Naturtrübes Helles, per the name, is an unfiltered lager. Despite the novelty and the process variation it tastes very like a typical helles, and deliciously so. There's a lot of soft white bread in the flavour, plus a hint of spinach bittering. The one unusual feature was a hint of peachy fruit, but it was pleasant and didn't knock the rest of the beer off kilter. In keeping with the style, it's beautifully smooth and very sinkable. Worth looking out for, helles fans.

BrewDog had a large bar at one side of the hall. Martin Dickie was in attendance on the Sunday, announcing from the stage they'd be holding a sour beer tasting there during the afternoon. As far as I know it didn't actually happen, but while I was waiting for it not to happen I tried a taster of their Brutalist brut IPA. It's 6% ABV and very dry indeed, even by the standards of the style. There's a little bit of hop funk but not much else, making it disappointingly plain for the strength.

Not a festival exhibit, but a boxed bottle of BrewDog's Death or Glory was being hoofed around by Simon and he was kind enough to pour me a sample. For the record, this was decanted from casks 211, 212 and 221 of the barrel-aged eisbock, coming in at 26% ABV. It tasted supremely smooth; warming like a tawny port or Oloroso sherry, seasoned with a peppery spice and bringing a glow to the throat as it goes. Whatever the convoluted process was that resulted in this, it was worth it.

The week's final beer is another which was not pouring at the festival but was handed to me at it. Reuben had been on the inaugural BrewDog flight from London to their American brewery in Ohio and kindly muled me back a can of the commemorative IPA, Flight Club. It's of the session variety, a mere 4.5% ABV, and quite a pale yellow colour. The aroma reminds me of Punk on a good day: brightly tropical, all mandarins and passionfruit. The flavour, too, is exotically juicy, though there's also a cheeky herbal dankness and a grapefruit buzz in the finish. Said finish arrives quickly, the Achilles' heel being a wateriness that's not unexpected given the strength, but is a downer nonetheless. Like a lot of beers that go all-out on the tropicals, the first couple of sips have the wow factor, but those returns diminish quickly and it turns sharp and slightly savoury by the end. As a quenchable quaffer it gets the job done, and as a freebie I can't complain. Cheers Reuben!

And cheers to all the Alltech crew for another superb festival.

Would you like to hear the specials?

Today's blog post from the 2019 Alltech festival is dedicated to the handful of Irish breweries who went all out to present some weird and wacky creations for the event, most of them one-offs, never to be seen again. It's always a gamble, but you can't win unless you drink them.

We go first to Hope, and amongst their regulars and seasonals on day one was Wobbly Ladder, a 6.5% ABV red IPA. This is a tough style with which to impress me, but there was a good blend of the signature qualities here: lots of oily and resinous hops on the nose, a roasted grain bite to open the flavour and then an explosion of summery fruit -- all the jam and jelly -- set on a smooth and easy drinking texture. Red IPAs can be quite serious and worthy. This one is fun.

Shortly after it came on, it was accompanied by an imperial stout rejoicing in the name Weird Flex, But OK. A big sigh on discovering it's a stroopwafel imperial stout. A cheer on tasting no trace of pastry anywhere in it. Instead this 10% ABV job is remarkably bitter, with the sharp/sweet aroma of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and a flavour big on roast and huge on old-world hop bitterness. The branding and description may be down with the kids but the taste is very grown up, and all the better for it.

It was two days before Hope's next double act arrived. With a nod to all the hours we spent playing Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge back in the '90s they're called Feather Touch and Power Drive. The former is a "micro NEIPA", 3.6% ABV and employing Simcoe, El Dorado and Mosaic. It's a murky yellow colour and smells of concentrated orange juice. There's a powerfully strong garlic flavour, one which lasts for ages despite the beer itself being quite thin. This is impressively full-on for the strength; fun if not exactly thought-provokingly complex.

The big one, then, is 8.5% ABV and sticks to just El Dorado, replacing the other hop varieties with peach and apricot. Again the aroma is sweet, though this time definitely more concentrated, like raspberry ripple ice cream. There's a lot of heat in the flavour, and bags more garlic. I could just about taste the fruit puree behind that but it's all a bit severe and unnecessary, however. A calming game of 8-bit golf it is not.

Carrig is rarely behind the door when it comes to rotating specials and had a bunch on its bar, as well as the first of its beers in cans. I had some catching up to do so began on Panda Nero, a coffee stout they released late last year but which I had yet to try. It's a very sweet take on the style, and more thickly textured than one might expect at just 5% ABV. That gives it a kind of latte effect. I found it tough going, but if sweet coffee is your thing, this is the beer for you.

Along the taps to Idaho (My Own Private), a pale ale made to showcase Idaho-7 hops, combined here with Chinook. It's a pale orange colour and quite dry. The titular hops bring a tasty and tangy bite of jaffa orange peel and a sizeable buzz of concentrated oils. There's not much complexity beyond that, but I like its clean and straightforward presentation.

A double IPA to complete this set: Heisenberg. 8% ABV this time but with a similar combination of resinous flavours. They turn a bit sharp towards the end, bringing in a lime shred and fried onion which is entirely in keeping with the west coast feel. This is a solid and reliable sort of US-style DIPA, as far from New England in style as Carrick-on-Shannon is in distance.

Just a pair of specials from Wicklow Brewery, and no stouts that I saw, alas. Their Ginger Beer was only 3.4% ABV and I'm guessing it's a ginger beer in the true sense, not merely beer flavoured with ginger. It's an innocent pale yellow colour and has a gorgeous soft-drink aroma: ginger ale and brown sugar, plus a suggestion of eye-watering spices to come. The body is full, but in quite a syrupy way. Pear was advertised as part of the recipe, and I'm guessing it was in concentrate form. There's a certain pear-skin bitterness but the ginger is lacking. I think this just missed out on being refreshing and ended up as a sticky alcopop. Needs more ginger.

The other one was a brut IPA called, as I'm sure several are, Brut Force. This is a clear pale yellow colour and sure it's dry, per the style spec, but not madly. Not interestingly, for good or bad. There's also not much by way of hop character, leaving it with a very plain lager vibe. It's inoffensive but really doesn't live up to what the style is meant to do. Brut IPA: just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Another daring pair of specials was presented by Dundalk Bay Brewery, an outfit I've come to associate with very plain and mass-market-friendly styles. My finishing beer as the lights went up on the Saturday night was Romanov, a straight-up, no messing, pastry-free imperial stout of 8% ABV. The aroma has a lovely kick of green bitterness with a slightly sour edge while the flavour jolts with espresso and bites with liquorice. There's a warmth too which belies the relatively low strength. The whole thing is beautifully complex and I'd love to see it as a regular beer in small bottles. Romanov is worthy of a place beside Guinness Foreign Extra and Porterhouse Celebration as an example of How Stout Is Brewed Here.

The next tap badge turned some heads, and I had to walk around it a few times before I ordered the beer. It's a misprint, obviously. It must be a misprint. It's not a misprint. Belgian Trappist American Pale Ale is the name. I'm guessing they got a batch of "Belgian Trappist" yeast and didn't really think through the implications of putting those words on the badge. Expect it to be re-named if it goes any further. And I hope it does go further because it's lovely. Only 4.6% ABV and a polished copper colour, it shows off the fruit and spice that Belgian yeast brings in a wonderfully bright way, sparking with cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper, with a smooth layer of banana and an orange-peel zest. The American side of the house is underrepresented, but no matter. The finishing dry tannins bring English bitter to mind instead and ensure that it remains drinkable, despite the multifaceted flavour.

That just leaves Lough Gill, which picked up a best in show medal among the Irish beers for the barrel-aged edition of its Dark Sunset imperial oatmeal stout. I can't say I got much of a whiskey impression from it, but there was a lovely espresso bitterness and a pleasing belly-warmth from the 11% ABV. For a whopper of a stout this is the very picture of balance and subtlety.

There was rather less subtlety, in both flavour and branding, when it came to Lough Gill's Chuckee Larmz imperial marshmallow milk stout. This is 9.1% ABV and dark brown in colour. There's a strong caramel sweetness right from the get-go but it's somehow not sticky. All the way through it shows the chocolate and roasted notes of a proper imperial stout, with a strawberry fruit complexity arriving in the middle. The finish is remarkably clean. A great job overall, and it's very easy to ignore the gimmickry if you want to.

The headline IPA at Lough Gill was (were) No-Boil, which came in two versions, one with Idaho-7 and Cashmere hops, the other with Idaho-7, Amarillo and Azacca. As the name makes clear, the wort wasn't boiled during brewing, and all the hops went in at the whirlpool stage. A New England yeast strain was used for fermentation, finishing up at 5.6% ABV. They went on tap in rotation so I didn't get to try them side by side, but I did think they were very similar to each other. The aroma is a fabulous rainbow of pineapple, mango and other tropical fruits. The flavour is as intense as might be expected, more so even, coming across with all the hop punch of a double IPA. There's an edge of garlic running in tandem with the luscious fruit, but in a complementary way without spoiling it. For breweries looking to get the most out of their flavour and aroma hops, this is a worthwhile experiment to repeat.

After all these fireworks, I found Lough Gill's Cutback session IPA quite dull. It's a middle-of-the-road 4.5% ABV, hazy orange in colour with quite a New England vibe: a creamy texture and lots of vanilla sweetness. There's little by way of hops, unfortunately. It's accessible I guess, but a little boring.

A cleansing sour beer to finish this round: Rollercoaster. It's a 4.6% ABV Berliner weisse with added guava, mango and passionfruit. As one would expect, the passionfruit absolutely dominates the picture. The light and clean base beer behind it allows an overall impression of sorbet, a tart edge contrasting with the fleshy tropical fruit. It's delicious and extremely drinkable; one to give YellowBelly's iconic Castaway a bit of competition.

I concentrated on the Irish beers in my time at the festival, and when I felt I'd given them a fair shake, there was just time to try a few of the imports, coming up next.

In the big smoke now

It's was great to welcome breweries to Alltech Brews & Food of whom we see little in Dublin: a chance to find out what the rest of the country are drinking; or at least the 3% of them drinking independent beer.

Festivals are literally the only places to find Bridewell beers here, and I like how Harry and Barbara-Anne always have a new one for each event. This time there were two: a contrasting pair created to commemorate the centenary of Alcock and Brown's transatlantic flight which landed not far from the brewery in Clifden, Co. Galway. Both are purportedly American-inspired, using American hops, though not necessarily American-style. That's certainly true of the blonde ale Pilot. My first impression on tasting this 4.9%-er was of a classic English golden ale, all biscuits and bubblegum with a grassy bitter finish and a soft smooth texture. It's very easy going but with enough complexity to be actively interesting. The companion is a brown ale called Navigator. This lacked the sweetness I look for in the style, going instead for dry roast, with an underlying blackberry and banana fruitiness. It's OK, but I'm a tough crowd when it comes to brown ale, and this didn't do it for me.

Kildare Brewing Company is only out the way, but you still have to go to Kildare to find their beer. The range has just had an overhaul with a series of new flagships. There's a 4.5% ABV pale ale called Soldier's Island, brewed with Amarillo and Cascade. It's very straightforward and pintable, almost like a pleasant pale English bitter. I got subtle summery notes of watermelon and peach, with a mild bite of lime rind at the end. Nothing strange or startling, just nice.

The highlight of the three I tried was called Fifty Three & Six, named after the headline digits of the brewery's coordinates. It's a clear golden colour and shows a spritzy, zesty lemon freshness first, followed by a more serious resinous dank. Mosaic is the dry hop and it's doing what it does best. Most impressively it has a properly full body for an ABV of just 3.7%. The pale ale was thoroughly upstaged.

Finally a Coffee Milk Stout, featuring cold brew from local roasters PS. This is pretty straightforward again; a modest 4.5% ABV with sweet mocha roast and a big dollop of cream. Everything a coffee milk stout should be, really.

I got a good chat with Alex from Loudons Brewery in Co. Clare about their ambitions. They're modest ones, and we're not about to see a plethora of Loudons taps around Dublin or the rest of the country. But if we did, they might have their two new beers on them. I began by tasting Loudons Pilsner, an incredibly soft-textured version of the style. A remark about that led on to a discussion of how the brewery uses 100% rainwater as its supply. The wet grass notes of Saaz add just the right amount of bitter seasoning and the whole thing is extremely sinkable at just 4% ABV.

Loudons Irish Stout is at the same strength, and it's rare for one of these to be that low. There's a light roastiness, a fair bit of sweet chocolate and then a tangy bitterness on the end. It's plain and easy-going, though a little too sharp for me.

I thought they had a superior example of the same sort of thing down at Ballykilcavan. Their Blackwell stout was launched late last year. It's a more typical strength at 4.4% ABV and has more of most of the classic Irish stout components. The flavour shows lots of early roast, while the balanced bitterness presents itself in both the finish and, pleasingly, the aroma. Perhaps my favourite feature, however, was the creaminess. That's a bit of a stout cliché, and not something I normally value in them, but it really added to the classic feel here. I think I could happily drink a few of these in succession.

Elsewhere on the bar there was a variety of specials. I thought Line Blocker pale ale was named as a dig the the big breweries' aggressive sales tactics but it's something much more innocent: the obstruction in the brewhouse caused by the excessive hopping employed here. It's a daring attempt at the modern murky pale ale style, going big on the tropical with a juicy aroma and a flavour in which I picked out pineapple, mango and guava. It does suffer a few of the typical flaws, namely yeast bite and a cloying gumminess, and I definitely don't think I could manage pint after pint of this, despite a mere 5.1% ABV. A small glass was pleasant, though, and shows the brewery has a definite daring streak among the safer alternatives.

You can't get safer than a 3.8% ABV lager, like Ballykilcavan's Lager Unlaois'd. Though brewed with Magnum and Saaz it's not terribly hop forward, showing a dry, rye-cracker aroma and lots of sweetish grain in the flavour. I found this quite bland and a little disappointing. Perhaps Ballykilcavan could swap a few notes with Loudons on the makings of lager and stout.

Now Dead Centre we do get in Dublin, though more canned than draught in recent times. There were two new releases on tap at their bar, first on being Wizard of the Sonic double IPA. This is a full 8% ABV and quite a dark copper colour. The malt which caused that also adds a toffeeish flavour. This is set next to an onslaught of resinous US hops: Columbus, Citra and Mosaic doing the heavy lifting. It's a bit loud, in keeping with the name, I guess. Good though.

Bringing up the rear on the Dead Centre range was Sham Maths, an American-style amber ale. It's another big one for the style, at 6.2% ABV. And it's another serious-tasting recipe. There's a heavy hop funk to this in both flavour and aroma. On the malt side it manages to be both dry and caramel-infused, and there's a raspberry flavour I associate much more with Irish red ale than American amber. While I liked the serious bitterness, a little more gentle hop flavour -- some citrus or tropicals -- would have improved it immensely.

The last festival bar for today was actually pouring a Dublin brand, albeit brewed in Co. Limerick and quite limited in its locations around town, namely Persistence. I was disappointed to learn, first off, that the excellent P42 pilsner they did has been discontinued. Damn you, Irish drinkers of poor taste in lager. Replacing it is P45 Lager which is a much sweeter and less hop-forward affair. It's fine, if shading a little to the sickly side. I hope all you haters of proper pils will love it.

Also new to me was P50, described no more explicitly than "session ale". It's a dark amber colour so I thought I was getting something toffeeish. It turned out to be be incredibly dry; full-on astringent, in fact. There's a little blackcurrant fruit in the flavour, and then loads of super-strong stewed builders' tea. I'm really not sure I could do a session on this.

An interesting mix of beers here, and plenty of examples where safe styles don't at all mean bland or low quality. Tomorrow, however, we take all the safeties off.