The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 6: The Format

Heading for the half way mark and bringing us there is the new Dublin client brewer The Format with two special barrel-aged editions.

Their imperial red ale was my least favourite of the first set so I was a little underwhelmed to see they'd done another one. Here's One We Made Earlier is only slightly stronger at 8% ABV despite having been aged in rum barrels. There's barely a hiss when the waxed cap comes off but it pours with plenty of head over a ruby-brown body. The aroma is a rich and sweet mix of toffee, milk chocolate and a slightly sour oak tang. Its flavour is along similar lines, adding a raisin and date dark fruit to the selection-box elements. The barrel contribution is quite mild and, given the hefty €16 price tag, I feel it owed me more mellowness, maturity and warmth. As-is it's a straightforward easy-drinker; decent but not spectacular.

The companion piece has a much shorter name: Theo. This is an imperial milk stout with added vanilla and cacao nibs, aged in bourbon barrels, and brought to 10% ABV. It sounds very involved, but once again it's a fairly simplistic offering. All the elements are there, just about. It's smooth and quite warming without being hot. Chocolate and vanilla provide little more than seasoning for the dark malts, with the bourbon merely sprinkled over the top, like brown sugar on an Irish coffee. Maybe I'm too used to highly involved pastry stouts going, frankly, overboard with the added flavours, and I should be pleased that this one doesn't. Instead it's quiet, gentle and balanced. If that sounds a bit boring, that's on you.

Both of these are very much sharing occasion beers, not for sitting alone in the dark writing notes. That relative you think would welcome an introduction to the more esoteric side of beer might appreciate a glass of one or both.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 5: DOT

Things had been a bit quiet at DOT, until this set of new releases beginning  in early November. Forage & Rescue is a kettle soured wheat beer with added sea buckthorn. It's only 4% ABV and feels even less, with low carbonation and a very thin texture. The flavour is good – a refreshing orange and lemon cordial with a tang of salt in the background – and the tartness is teeth-squeak clean, adding a mouth-watering effect but not overdone. It's not one of your complex and involved sour beers, but is a perfectly acceptable session-starter.

And then the second in the foraged beer series turned out to be even lower strength: 3.2% ABV! Windfall is a wine-barrel aged table beer featuring gooseberries and blackcurrants foraged from the former DOT allotment in the Liberties before the bulldozers gentrified it. It's a hazy reddish-orange colour, stained by the berries I assume. There's a spritzy kir-royale aroma and the first taste brings a rush of delicious juice, which is a little bit Ribena but also shows a lot of dry and oaky white wine, presumably a combined effect from the barrel and the gooseberries. The finish is understandably short, but it's not thin or watery and has already put in some serious graft in the foretaste. I was thirsty when I came to the 75cl bottle and emptied the whole thing by myself, but I can see it working in smaller quantities too. Break out the champagne flutes and pass the canapés.

I wasn't going to attack its companion piece by myself, however: Cellar 8 is a main course at 14.4% ABV. A rye amber ale was the start of it, given two years in a combination of ex-rum and ex-sherry whiskey barrels. "A beast of delicate complexity" is the oxymoron promised by the label. Unfortunately for me I put the bottle in the kitchen fridge and forgot about it, so when it was time to pour the beer was much colder than it should have been. It looked good though: the burgundy shade of a ruby port. There's no head but there is a pleasing sparkle in the mouth. The sherry-cask whiskey is very apparent in the aroma. I even poured a glass of Black Bush to nose side-by-side. Any excuse. When it warmed up I found a very gently-flavoured, nuanced beer with no loud or brash elements. It doesn't even taste boozy, bringing no more than a gentle warmth to the belly when swallowed. The whiskey malt is still there, joined by rum-soaked raisins, plum pudding and that fancy hot chocolate at the back of the cupboard waiting for a special occasion. Temperature makes a huge difference here, transforming it from a rather bland and flat affair to a subtle sipper, worthy of your full attention.

Not that it's a competition, but I think I preferred the spritzy style of the table beer. Both are masterful, however.

To smaller bottles next, and a year ago DOT released a collaboration with 12 Acres called 12 Dots. Today there's a sequel of sorts: DOT 12, a barrel-aged imperial rye ale. It's 9% ABV and a murky amber colour. A vague berry aroma opens out into a very vinous taste: fruity summer whites come immediately to mind; notes of stonefruit and cantaloupe. There's a wholesomely bready body and a spike of bitter citrus in the finish. Quite an odd combination of flavours, all told. It works, though. A lightness of touch belies the strength and it never gets too busy. I think this will be an interesting one to age and see what happens when those bright and spritzy fruit flavours mellow out a little.

Two special DOT beers created for Redmond's off licence in Ranelagh arrived in November. The paler one is called Round Trip and is a pale ale aged in Madeira barrels, finishing at 7.8% ABV. The aroma is an odd mix: rich warm oak, light stonefruit and a sharper sourness. That spicy-sour mix forms the centrepiece of the flavour, along with more of a burn than you'd expect at the strength. It's an unsubtle beer, going heavy on the booze and wood at the expense of everything else. I found it quite rough, on balance. The initial promise of fruit never really delivered.

2019 Barrel Aged Imp Milk Stout is the companion piece: fairly self-explanatory from the name, except I don't think they used real imps. Held up to the light it shows a cola-coloured reddish brown: I thought 10.7% ABV would produce something denser. I was also expecting something sweet, but this has a burnt dryness and a sour touch from the use of bourbon barrels, meaning it's no candy bomb. More Madeira barrels add a dark sherry quality. The third dimension is the milk chocolate effect from the lactose. It's quite an intense combination, verging on busy and demanding one's attention. I wouldn't recommend this for relaxing fireside sipping: there's too much of an edge. But it's complex in a unique and fascinating way, drawing on wine and whiskey elements, as well as beer, which I'm sure was the point.

No straight IPAs this time round, and to be honest I'd be perfectly happy if DOT left them to other brewers. More barrels please.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 4: Rascals

I hadn't been to the Rascals taproom for a while before the Beoir Christmas Party so there was plenty new to try. I began on their new helles, Jailbreak. Though only 4.2% ABV it's a weighty one, showing a golden syrup quality more akin to a Czech dvanáctka pivo than bready helles, but top quality regardless. A balancing note of celery from the Hallertau Mittelfrüh is as bitter as it gets, but this is really all about the malt. I will continue to pine for Rain Czech, Ireland's greatest ever lager, though this will do to be getting on with.

For the weirder stuff I thought a flight would be more appropriate than a pint. I began that with a Peanut Butter Brown Ale, a beer which demanded it be taken in the spirit it was offered. If you wanted balanced and calm you came to the wrong tap. Now the aroma, I'll grant you, is objectively horrible -- an off-putting damp paper effect. Its flavour is beautiful, however: big and buttery, with elements of toffee, coffee and cream liqueur. Amazingly it's only 4.5% ABV, and I shudder to think how thick and sweet a stronger version would be. Anyway, this is definitely built for the flight. A snifter as dessert is plenty.

They got the name right on the nose for the smoked doppelbock: Dragonator. The ABV not so much: this is a tiddling 6.1%. It's the right shade of red-brown, though, and nicely lager-clean. The smoke is very prominent without turning acrid, just like in Bamberg's finest, and it overlays a malt sweetness and a mild noble hop tang. It's a brave style to take on, given Schlenkerla's international reputation for this sort of thing, but it's absolutely at the races and warrants a larger measure.

L-R: Black Horse, Peanut Butter Brown Ale, Dubliner Weisse, Dragonator

The second in the Rascals Dubliner Weisse series is Elderberry, and it's much better than the raspberry, lactose and vanilla first edition, because it doesn't taste of lactose or vanilla. This one lets the sourness through satisfactorily. It's no lip-curler, just nicely refreshing, as befits a contemporary Berliner weisse. The fruit side is an easy-going cherry-juice effect. I found it simple, pleasant and thirst-quenching. You can find it in cans.

That left the stout on the end: Black Horse, named for the local Luas stop, named for the defunct pub beside it. It presents as a very ordinary 4.4% ABV session stout but has some really interesting characteristics, including smoke, caramel and lots of heavy dry roast -- building to an almost tarry bitterness. It's still perfectly pintable but adds an extra dimension that few plain Irish stouts, even from the microbrewers, manage to offer.

Finally, for the season that's in it: Ugly Xmas Jumper, created for Molloy's off licences though sneakily available at the taproom too. It's an oatmeal pale ale, hazy orange in colour and 4.5% ABV. There's a suitably Christmassy tangerine aroma, though a background dryness as well. It tastes sweet, like hard candy, the orange intensifying to lime and then weed. Despite the oatmeal, the texture is a little thin and the taste has a certain hollowness as a result. While I'm complaining, that initial dryness I detected in the aroma becomes a savoury caraway aspect in the flavour as it warms, though not a strong one. Nevertheless, the jolt of hops this beer delivers is deliciously invigorating. This is one to have on hand to intersperse with all the strong and dark stuff you'll doubtless be drinking in the coming days.

Rascals ending a big year on several high notes, then. I'd be very happy with more of the same in 2020.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 3: Wide Street

A new set today from the Midlands funkateers Wide Street Brewing.

I had no idea what to expect from the first one: Sour Rivière, using aged Crystal hops. Aged hops are a lambic thing so maybe it's a take on that? It didn't look like one, though, pouring a wan hazy yellow, like a watered-down witbier. The head fizzed busily at first then faded to nothing. Brettanomyces says hello in the aroma: peach and lychee accompanying a spritzy floral perfume. Per the appearance, it's very light-textured, not suggesting the full 4.8% ABV. The flavour is only slightly tart, with lots of sweet fruit behind it. Nothing so exotic as lychee, though: more heavily diluted orange cordial. A very slight mineral note in the background is the only hint of complexity. This refreshes in the way that lightly soured beers do well. It's not serious about any part of the offer, however. Quaff it, enjoy the juice rush, and move on.

I moved on to Saison Sunday whose label yelled Brett, rye and Saaz at me. Though a big ol' 6% ABV this looks even thinner than the previous, the misty yellow of a kellerbier. It smells more like a lambic too, that combination of funk and spice you get in the rounded-out mature sort. Yum. There's a very nice gummy thickness, running in parallel with a cleansing sparkle, while the flavour brings cantaloupe, pear, oak and white pepper. I would swear this has done time in a wine barrel, but I'm sure the brewer would have mentioned if it had. I love the way that sparkly spicy saison is still discernible beneath the funky Brett costume. This offers a fascinating combination of contrasting flavours and was great fun to sip and explore, but at the end I just wanted another to neck and enjoy without the analysis. I think this is Wide Street's best work yet, and a beer that would garner a lot more attention if it came from Bruges rather than Ballymahon.

What I loved about drinking these two on the same evening is seeing just how varied beer can be, even within the relatively narrow parameters of Wide Street's wild-yeast remit.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 2: Lough Gill

Sligo's Lough Gill is the second in our sequence, with twin beers which are very different from each other. I see the brewery has adopted the Serious Art approach to branding that appears to be the latest necessity. Lough Gill beers were good even when the artwork was terrible. Anyway...

Walls With Wounds is first, a gose with raspberry and blackberry. I came to this after a large meal -- 'tis the season after all -- hoping for something light and palate-cleansing. It is only 3.2% ABV, which boded well. It's a deep opaque red with a generous topping of pink foam: 440ml will have no problem peeping out of a pint glass. Of fruit, salt and sour, the fruit is unsurprisingly foremost: it's thick and yoghurty, a fresh tartness meeting a sharper lactic sour twang. What prevents it turning cloying is the drying saline charge, balancing the sweet with savoury and enhancing the mild sourness. This isn't the piquant cleanser I really wanted, but it's packed with character and impressively interesting, especially given its modest strength.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger to that Danny DeVito is Lupulin Vibrations, a New England-style double IPA at a whopping 8.4% ABV. The haze is present and correct: an opaque orange-yellow. The heat is hidden well by the fuzz, but not bad gritty fuzz: it's a full, smooth and juicy sort of fuzz. There's a mix of jaffa, lemon peel, custard and a pinch of oily garlic. The strength only makes itself felt after all that has paraded through and it all settles in the gut, exuding fuzzy warmth. On the one hand, hot-garlic NEIPA's aren't my kind of thing. But on the other, this has better subtlety and complexity than most, with minimal dreggy interference. If you must drink this sort of thing, drink this one, and that's as close to an endorsement as you'll get from me.

Lough Gill here, as usual, proving itself adept across the range of modern beer styles. I like that more of these are coming out in packaged form and that I don't have to wait for a festival to catch up.

The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 1: White Gypsy

Over the last month or so I have amassed too many tasting notes on Irish beers to fit into one of my usual uncomfortably long round-ups. Instead, I thought I would take them brewery by brewery, every day between now and Christmas Eve. Maybe you'll find some inspiration here for when you're shopping to fill out your seasonal stash or seeking gifts for the beer lovers in your life.

We begin with White Gypsy, and I owe this set to Baggot Street Wines's occasional offer of free store credit to loyalty card holders. The three-pack of special edition bottles was just what I was looking for.

The first I opened was the Farmhouse Ale: no fancy French terminology here but it is very much a saison. It's clearer than most, a lovely bright amber shade, though the busy carbonation and tall head is fully to-style. It's one of the sweeter, fruitier takes on saison, smelling of lemon sherbet and tasting of peach, lychee, ice tea and clove rock. It's quite a mix, but all clean and distinct. You really can imagine it providing refreshment to farm workers, despite that little kick of smooth warmth from 5.5% ABV. Far from acrid but definitely not too hot or sweet, this is saison just as I like it. From the get-go I'm wishing a longer production run for this one.

Cuilán has brewed many a bock, and one starkly titled Bock was in the core line-up at Messrs Maguire during his tenure at the Dublin brewpub. So I'm guessing there's a bit of recipe history behind White Gypsy's Bock Lager. It's a sizeable 6.5% ABV and a coppery orange shade. Weedpatch noble hops are the frontispiece but the substance is all malt: a big, chewy, biscuit and brown bread effect with touches of golden syrup and honey. White Gypsy's side hustle is as agent for Weyermann and I see this beer as a local liquid advertisement for the Bamberg maltster's wares. This isn't a style that normally floats my boat yet I can't but doff my cap to the way it's been produced here: everything is showroom bright, polished and welcoming. The years of getting bock just right are very apparent. Again, this would be worth a permanent billet, if only because no other Irish brewer is making anything like it.

That leaves the Smoked Wheat. "Bamberg style" says the label, which is a big promise, though personally I've never really liked Schlenkerla's Weizen. This is a medium orange colour and smells meaty, like a barbecue. It has the fruit stylings of a weissbier up front, though more orange than banana. The dry, slightly acrid, smoke element follows it quickly and takes over in short order. This works rather better than the Schlenkerla one does. You sip slowly and take stock of the different flavour elements as they arrive, but all is calm and orderly with no clashes. I wasn't wowed but I enjoyed the simple yet distinctive elegance here.

One extra bottle outside the set: Dunkel-Weiss. Again it's not a style I have a lot of time for but I'm always up for an Irish version. And it's fine. Spot on. Properly dark brown, big bodied with lots of caramel, cola and brown banana. The one surprise was that the ABV was all of 6.2% ABV -- it certainly doesn't taste hot or heavy. It's perhaps a little drier than the typical example, finishing on a burnt-toast crispness. I am not suddenly converted to the wonders of dunkelweisse, but this is very decent.

All of these are expertly crafted and, in a time of silliness with regard to beer styles, are a reminder of saner times. Long may that continue.

Come back tomorrow to see who's behind door number two.

UK OK?

With election day looming in the country next door, I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at some of the beers from over there that have been showing up on tap over here.

Kirkstall makes regular appearances on both cask and keg. We begin with the normal-sounding Kirkstall Pale Ale, setting the tone for most of the brewery's offerings albeit much clearer. It's quite a dry affair with a powdery chalky feel. This turns to bathsalts with the addition of a pithy hard citrus and bright meadowy flowers. It's only 4% ABV, making it light and very drinkable, but there's plenty of interesting flavour to explore as well.

The Pale Ale isn't lacking in American hop characteristics, but they've dialled that side up even further in Oregon IPA, brewed with freshly harvested Strata hops. The ABV is a still-modest 4.5%. It's a thick chap, though: weighty with slick and dank hop resins. Lime ice lollies and citrus rind sit up front, with a backing of sweeter meringue and savoury onion. It hits the New England beats very well, but in a gentle and balanced cask bitter sort of way. Beautifully done.

Also from the UnderDog handpump there's Humle, a 4.4% ABV pale ale, hazy and bright yellow in colour. This shows a marvellous blend of sweet smooth vanilla and punchy lime. Despite appearances it's very clean-tasting too, with no interference from yeast or other murk. This is very much a quaffer rather than a sipper; not madly complex but far from bland. What it does, it does very well indeed.

They're fond of a collaboration beer at Kirkstall, and I'll start them with one they created with Track from Manchester. It's a hazy pale ale called Out of Focus. This is pleasantly both peachy and pithy with a big and soft sherbet texture: effervescent fruits giving way to another slightly dry chalky finish. Again it's easy to drink, though unnecessarily strong at 5% ABV. I could imagine a few of these sneaking up too quickly on the unwary drinker.

Next is By Twelve, a collaboration with Mondo. It's another hazy one, though this time it runs big on minerals: no fruit juice or weed here. From the first sip there's that chalky effect, backed by a citrus bitterness and a cordial sweetness. This is one of those cask beers beers where I think lower temperature and a bit more fizz would help it. As-is it's OK. Again not what anyone comes to Yorkshire cask beer to drink, but if it's going to be fundamentally modernised, why not like this?

Northern Monk is the next Kirkstall collaborator, creating yet another hazy pale ale, this one is 4.5% ABV, and called Music & Silence. Once again it's very sweet, with a familiar lemon and lime ice cream effect and the chalky dryness at the end. I found it quite heavy and cloying, not an easy drinker like most of the above. It's probably the closest of any of them to a real New England-style IPA but that's not a point in its favour.

Switching to Northern Monk's own work, Powerhouse 006 is the only one from that sequence to come my way. It's a fuzzy yellow double IPA with a trace of garlic in the flavour but also lots of gorgeous peach and pineapple juice and a wisp of sweeter vanilla. At 8.2% ABV it would be within its rights to show a significant alcohol burn, but there's pleasingly none, just a smooth texture for the fruit to bounce off. Yeast bite is present, but again understated, providing a useful bittering balance for the sweetness. This is a textbook example of how the style ought to be done.

They're not above the odd pastry stout at Northern Monk, hence Pete's Dark Past, a 7%-er with added chocolate, caramel, lactose and vanilla. It tastes like a caramel wafer biscuit, which I think was the point. There's a bit of hazelnut going on as well, though it's lacking proper stout characteristics like coffee, and even the chocolate side is on the down-low. I would like to think that the era of drinkers being wowed by candified stouts has passed. They need to be significantly better made than this basic offering to impress.

We've had a steady stream from Newcastle's Wylam, including the IPA If 6 Was 9. This includes wheat in the grist and results in an extreme thickness. Mosaic hopping comes across as a concentrated garlic flavour, with a slick and sickly streak of orange oil. The garlic comes back as a long, lingering finish. Prepare yourself for an intense experience when approaching this.

To follow, as we are all aware, Change is Inevitable. Rye IPA, to me, means something copper-coloured and sharply bitter so I was surprised to get this custard-looking double dry-hopped job. And it tastes how it looks: a bright and sweet mango juiciness with just a minor counter-melody of hot garlic. It's only 5.5% ABV making it approachable and easy-going. The flavour profile will be very familiar to people who like these sorts of beers, and it's not a bad example. A moment of silence, then, for anyone who bought it in the expectation of rye flavours.

A strong finish comes in the form of Macchiato, Wylam's 10% ABV hazelnut praline coffee porter. It's black and headless, smelling strongly of cold brew coffee. The flavour is intensely sweet, tasting mostly of milk chocolate, and the texture is surprisingly thin. I got very little beer character from it: no roast, no bitterness and not much booze warmth either. It gets a little oilier and nuttier as it warms, but not any beerier. This is strictly for the chaser of novelty, I fear.

We finish up down in that London with a couple from FourPure. Their Asahi stablemates Magic Rock collaborated on one called Driftwood, a session IPA at just 3.4% ABV. It's a pale and cloudy affair with a spritzy citric bite and a background minerality. There's plenty of substance for the strength and no trace of wateriness. An invigorating hard hop bitterness finishes it off. This offers a lot of new-world hop fun at an amazing ABV and it's a shame there aren't more beers like it.

On at the same time in UnderDog was FourPure's Hummingbird, described as a raspberry hibiscus sour. It's a dark pinkish-purple colour, unsurprisingly, and very syrupy. This is another one of those jam bombs with hardly any sourness to speak of. At 5.4% ABV it's no soft drink but it tastes far too much like one. Pass.

That's all I have for today. See you after the results come in.