The Devil went down to Aldi

Unexpected summer lager is today's theme: one beer each from two breweries whom one does not find in Aldi regularly.

We don't see Whitewater at all in these parts any more. It's a bit of a shame because it was one of the greats in Irish brewing, in the early years of this blog. Today we have Whitewater's Helles Lager, the pitchfork and pointy tail on the label making it clear which pun they're going for.

At 4.2% ABV it's a little on the weak side, but it looks dense at least, a honey gold colour, with a properly persistent head. The aroma is absolutely spot-on to style, a clean and fresh white-bread effect, just veering towards cakey sweetness, and backed by a hint of vegetal bitterness. It's properly full-bodied too, and does show the cake and veg, but there's something else. I get a dose of heat, of marker pen solvent, which good examples of this in Germany never have, but which you might get in a rustic brewpub version. The beer is still perfectly drinkable, and has a very pleasant filling and weighty heft. It doesn't quite have the beatings of Germany's polished finest, however.

Iron Maiden played Dublin on the weekend I picked up Sun and Steel, and these facts may not be unrelated. This is the latest in the Trooper collaboration series between the band and the brewer Robinsons of Stockport. The gimmick here, other than the tie-in, is that it's "infused with sake", so I'm guessing that a proportion of the finished product is blended into the base lager. The result, 4.8% ABV, doesn't taste gimmicky, and has a very straightforward pilsner profile: predominantly dry with elements of grain and grass around the edge. It's decent, and it feels dead classy to be drinking it from a 33cl bottle. You don't really need sake to make a good clean lager, though.

Turns out these two shelfmates really have very little in common. Still it's always a pleasant surprise when Aldi gives us unexpected beer. Fair play.

Einsiedler? I hardly know her!

We've had a gradual trickle of beers from the Saxon Einsiedler brewery, all in resolutely typical German styles. So far there's been a Helles, Weissbier, Schwarzbier and Böhmisch, and now they've sent us their Zwickelbier, presumably an unfiltered version of the Helles, at the same 5.2% ABV.

It looks significantly darker, however: a deep amber colour which I'm not convinced comes entirely from the haze. The flavour is nicely wholesome, consisting mostly of rough granary bread with a marmalade-shred bitterness and a sharper tang of metal on the very end. That finish is quick, however, so while it's not as crisp and clean as a clarified lager would be, it still has enough of its attributes to pass muster. There's a little bit of heat, too, suggesting some potentially headachey esters, but for me this was all part of the unvarnished charm of it.

A bit like the Böhmisch, this is more challenging than your typical factory-brewed German lager. It doesn't follow the usual Zwickel pattern of being a very slightly rougher Helles; it goes all-in with its lack of polish, and may be a little divisive as a result. I enjoyed it for all that.

Pale in the sun

Time for a summer round-up of new Irish pale ales and IPAs. Here's what I've been drinking when the hop mood takes me.

First, a brand new brand: Sesh Beers, the brainchild of Brian of Craic Beer Community and brewed at Hope. Release one is Sesh IPA in its highly distinctive lifeboat-orange can. It's a predictably modern pale and hazy yellow colour, and lives up to its billing at just 3.8% ABV. And yet it doesn't taste compromised, being without any noticeable thinness. The flavour is typical for the style, offering sweet vanilla and a crisply refreshing hint of tropical honeydew melon. A token pinch of citric bitterness finishes it off. I detected a tiny bit of grittiness but otherwise it's largely free of off flavours. This is decent and unfussy fare, and if that's what Sesh is meant to be then mission accomplished.

Lineman next, and Ponder sees them jumping on the cold IPA badwagon with an example that's 6% ABV. The haze was the first unusual thing about it: these are generally fairly clear, but this one is properly opaque. It's also full-bodied, which is odd. Whatever way a brewery has chosen to do the "cold" bit, the result tends to be quite dry and crisp, where this is almost chewy, much like a typical hazy IPA. Still, the flavour can't be faulted, offering a fun mix of sweet and bitter, like peach skin and lemonade. One point where they have hit the cold IPA attributes dead on is with the small tang of white onion in the finish. Still, it doesn't spoil the rest, and the overall result is very tasty, if not exactly what I suspect drinkers of cold IPA want.

They've also put out Electric Avenue #5, the latest in Lineman's occasional IPA series. This one is 6% ABV and hopped with Nelson Sauvin, Mosaic and new-comer Nectaron. I expected fruity, and fruity I got: the aroma veritably spilling out mandarin, canteloupe, apricot and guava. The flavour isn't as sweet as I expected, though it's heavily textured again, with a bit of New England fluffiness. The most distinctive feature is the Nelson, bringing a mix of diesel fumes and grappa. The tropical and stonefruit elements found in the aroma line up behind this, contributing their own richness to a beer that's no warm-day sessioner but one which needs time taken with. The combination works really well, regardless: the low bitterness of typical hazy IPA yet without the vanilla sweetness which can make them overwrought. Another triumph of balance from Lineman.

I followed it with something lighter and more appropriate to that particular afternoon: Pocket Dial, a session IPA that's the latest in the Wicklow Wolf Endangered Species series of one-offs. Despite being only 4.2% ABV, it's a bit dense and serious in the glass. The body is mostly quite light but the haze fuzzes it up a little, adding some extra weight to the mouthfeel. They describe it as juicy but it's more of an orange cordial vibe to me, verging on sickly. Citra, Centennial and Idaho 7 are the hops though they're a little low-key, bringing no bitterness of note and only a modest amount of citric and tropical flavour. Overall it's fine but unspectacular. The balance tilts a little too far into sweetness for my liking. They've aimed for juice but I don't think they've quite hit it.

The crazy diamonds at Wide Street have a new New England IPA called Any Colour You Like. It's adapted from a local homebrewer's recipe which impressed the executive board enough for them to appropriate it, with credit on the label, of course. Haze and juice are the intention and there's certainly plenty of the former: it's very opaque pale yellow. The aroma is full-on tropical: it says pineapple on the can and the syrupy tinned version is exactly how it smells. Alas that doesn't quite follow through into the flavour. For one thing it's let down a little by a thin and watery texture, which was a surprise given the dense-looking murk and non-insubstantial 5.1% ABV. The foretaste is quite savoury, presenting green cabbage, damp grass and heady, almost smoky, sulphurous kick. There should be soft fruit here and I tried in vain to find any. It could be that I over-poured the can and ended up with too much of the dregs in the glass, though I also think that that's a flaw in the beer if so. I finished up with a definite sense that the beer I drank is not the beer the brewery is describing on the label, nor what the recipe designer intended. By all means give this a go, but pour it carefully, and do it soon: a beer like this which was canned in April won't be at its best for much longer. This is a problem you don't have with wild-fermented sour beers, though I can understand that a supply of willing paying customers is more of an issue there.

Colourforms is the new pale ale from Outer Place, brewing at Lineman. It's 5.2% ABV and a very pale yellow. Mosaic and Cryo Pop should be enough to make it a potential fruitbomb, and the aroma certainly bears that out, smelling concentrated and sweet, like Skittles. The first flavour hit I get is of Mosaic but in a more savoury mood, tasting of poppyseed and white onion. A much more pleasant honeydew melon note follows and leads us to a clean and unfussy finish. It's a tasty if unspectacular beer; good, but not quite worth the premium €4.65 being charged for it.

Kinnegar tries its hand at Cold IPA with Brewers At Play 32, one that's fermented with a lager yeast. It's 5.3% ABV and a very clear pale gold, looking more like a cider than a beer. The aroma is citrus in both bitter and sweet modes; zesty like a lemon meringue pie. Although the body is full, there's still a perfect lager crispness, bringing a dry aspect which makes it very drinkable. It makes sense that a cold-fermented IPA at Helles gravity would have a bit of Helles's chewy-yet-easygoing character about it. The hops have more than a hint of the west coast going on, offering tart grapefruit and slick pine sap. And joyously there's none of the savoury onion that tends to plague this style. Kinnegar have done a great job here of combining the positive attributes of lager and IPA.

As usual, there's a new summer IPA from Hope. This year, topless deckchair guy is presiding over a Juicy IPA. The surprise here is that this one is golden and almost completely clear. Don't they know there's a haze craze on? There's a fun spritz of lime in the aroma, which doesn't say modern and juicy to me, but I'll take a west-coast switcheroo any time of the year. The body is nicely full, suggesting more than its 5.5% ABV, and it's chewy rather than fluffy, again in quite a west-coast way. On the other hand it is indeed sweet, and the promised pineapple makes an appearance, with guava and cantaloupe, though subtle and muted, not loud. A bit of citrus kick on the end would have been the perfect finisher, but it's absent, and instead the understated tropical taste simply fades off the palate, a little faster than I'd like. If the intention was an easy-going sunny refresher then I think they've safely nailed that: it's enjoyable to drink and, since it doesn't hang around, it would be perfectly possible to open another straight after. The brewery's advice is to enjoy outdoors with friends, and I can see why. Hunched over a laptop writing tasting notes about it is completely the wrong approach.

WhiteField is one of those rural Irish breweries we don't see much of in the Big Smoke, though I have it on good authority that we'll be able to go to them soon enough, when their taproom in Templemore opens next year. They did a bit of a rebrand on their beers when they rebranded the brewery but I think Eastwood pale ale is completely new, or at least is a significant variation on something from the old days. It's a dense, dark, red-amber colour, topped with lots of off-white froth. I'm guessing juiciness is not part of the proposition here. It smells like it looks, of caramel and forest spices. The body is big and smooth, reflecting all of its 5.8% ABV. There's a very English tannic buzz and then unusual strawberry and plum flavours, more like you'd find in a red ale. It's a pale ale in the way they aren't really made in the modern era, though would likely have been a perfect fit for the style a century or so ago. Style aside, it's nicely satisfying to drink, though perhaps better suited to colder days.

All or Nothing was the first summer release from Crafty Bear, an IPA setting out to showcase Citra in cryo form and Styrian Wolf. And it does it without being too hazy: my pints (I had two) were both minimally murked, and while it could maybe have done a better job with the head retention, it tasted crisp and clean the way IPA used to. I'm not so sure about what Styrian Wolf brought to the party but the Citra is instantly recognisable, all grapefruit and lime zest; an assertive and uncompromised bitterness. The malt serves the principal purpose of letting the hops sing, and while it's a strong lad at 6.3% ABV it's dangerously easy to get through one pint and order another straight after.

That was followed a few weeks later with something altogether more hazy called Cosmic Wonder. This is one of those beers that absolutely gets the whole point of haze, being softly textured, brightly flavoured and most importantly, clean tasting, with none of the dreggy grit or hot garlic which makes too many of these taste like concentrated fermenter scrapings. There is vanilla, though, but it's not oppressive, joining with a pleasantly sweet lemon zest and tropical fruit character. Four hops have gone into it: the usually-bitter Chinook and Centennial take a back seat while the more colourful and fruity El Dorado and Hüll Melon do the driving. The result is lots of delicious complexity at only 5% ABV, equal parts something to sip and study, and also a very accessible, unfussy, drinker's beer. Nicely done.

We finish in triple time with Irish Wolfhound by Western Herd, a 10.5% ABV animal with an international mix of eight different high-alpha hops. Triple IPAs tend to be quite pale so I was surprised by the murky amber colour of this one. The aroma is warm and resiny, with strong hints of toffee and banana. The flavour is sweet at first, intensely so, mixing marmalade, gingerbread, chocolate and candied orange peel, finishing on a dry piney sap. It's not unpleasantly hot, but the alcohol lets you know it's there. This is a beer to sip through, to chew through, and it's enjoyable to do it. No rush.

That's all for now, but I have many more pale ales on the way, in upcoming posts about Whiplash, O Brother, Third Barrel and more. It's a genre that's going nowhere.

Jersey, sure

Craft Central offers regular flurries of brightly coloured American tins at exceedingly high prices, largely made up of hazy IPAs in the way that beer these days generally is. I have little interest and usually scroll on past, but... maybe I should be checking in now and again to see if there's value to be had. These, presumably, are the beers that everyone else around the world is copying, right? OK, I've convinced me. Here's two IPAs from the less obscenely priced end of the spectrum, both from New Jersey, a lonely state, lacking a New Guernsey or New Sark to keep it company.

Brew Jersey: there's a dead clever pun. This is from Twin Elephant in Chatham. It's 7.4% ABV, hopped with Citra, Azacca, Nelson Sauvin and Mackinac -- the latter is new to me but the others are good 'uns. It presents pale yellow and opaque, something I generally take as a good sign. The can says it's "mindfully brewed" though not mindfully packaged as there's no brewing, canning or best-by date on it. Still, it smells and tastes fresh, mostly of tinned pineapple in both instances. There's a mildy leafy bitterness in the background of the taste which is presumably the Citra trying to make itself heard, but otherwise it's smooth and rather anodyne, presenting no challenges or off-flavours, but few points of interest too. It's a casual sort of conversation beer, something I'd normally be fine with, but I'd like a bit more of a firework display for €8 a can.

6.9% ABV and labelled "west coast style India Pale Ale", When The Haze Clears, by Icarus, cost me €8.85. It's not clear, looking a dirty, slightly muddy, orange in the glass. The blurb talks a good game on the hops: Columbus, Centennial, Motueka, Nelson Sauvin and Strata all feature. Nevertheless it smells sweet and artificially floral, like Skittles. So far not very west coastish. The flavour has a lot of that but there's also lots of oily weedy resins, with the pilsner grass of classic Kiwi hops butting upside the sweets. It's far from a classically clean west coast IPA, though nor is it juicy or garlicky haze. More than anything, this reminds me of drinking IPA in Poland or Spain, where they're not hung up on copying the Americans directly and introduce their own... idiosyncrasies... in their recipes, some of which work and some of which definitely don't. In the US, beer normally tastes exactly how you expect it to; this doesn't. Maybe it's an east coast satire on west coast; Jersey busting California's balls. Regardless, I appreciated that it's boldly flavoured but didn't really enjoy the rather messy overall picture.

Am I convinced of the value of high-end American cans? On this showing definitely not. But I'll check in again some time when the urge has built sufficiently.

In the Mayne

It apears to be Dublin beer's best kept secret, that Arthur Mayne's in Donnybrook is owned by Benny McCabe and is therefore affiliated to his Rising Sons brewery in Cork city. It certainly carries the goods: eight taps of Rising Sons core range and seasonals, beers which otherwise you'll rarely see outside of Benny's pubs in Cork. It's a charming Victorian-style interior too.

On my recent visit, there was one which I hadn't tried before, the Raspberry Sour. It's dark amber coloured and quite murky with it, including bits which I'm guessing are fruit-derived. A mere 4.3% ABV means it's quite light-bodied, though not thin. The other thing it's not, surprisingly, is sweet. The raspberry element arrives late, after a quite hard mineral tartness up front. I liked that, having feared it would be sickly and syrupy.

This isn’t quite the summer thirst-quencher I was seeking, but I do appreciate a fruit-flavoured sour beer that takes itself as seriously as this does.

Lithography

I surprised myself with the discovery that I had never had any beer from the Utenos range, despite having once been to Lithuania and regularly being in Dublin's east-European supermarkets. It's a sub-brand of Švyturys, itself the property of Carlsberg. I don't know where it sits on the premiumisation scale, but the can design is pretty basic-looking.

Your starter Utenos pale lager is 5% ABV and looks decent: clear and properly golden. The aroma is malt forward, though with a hint of banana in that bread. The ester effect is quite prominent in the flavour, and especially at the end. It starts innocently as pear and lychee but grows in intensity to full ripe banana and red apple before the end. I like the weight and chewiness but would still find it tricky to drink more than a couple in one sitting.

There was no immediate difference between that and Utenos Auksinis, the so-called "golden" one: still a 5% ABV lager. It's a tiny bit paler and had a very fine haze to it, little protein flakelets bobbing about in there. It seems a little cleaner in the aroma: still with an estery note but more sharp pear than banana. Although the ABV is the same, it's lighter and crisper on the palate, suggesting that the gravity is lower and it's more attenuated. I don't know that it's a better beer, though. Something seems a little off about the dry side of the equation; a stale tang, close to classic oxidation. Like the haze, that's not something one expects to find in an industrial European lager. This is no more sessionable than the previous one, though if they knocked the ABV down a bit, it might be.

The curveball in the set is Utenos Cherry. Let's see if tipping a drum of syrup into it improves the wonky lager any. It does reduce the strength and we're down to 4.6% ABV here. The colour is a lovely shade of dark maroon with a firm head. So I guess it was a lot of syrup, because this is very cherry indeed: think of it as session-strength cough medicine. The cherry flavour is delightfully real, though, with that hard bitter and tannic edge amongst all the sugar. There are loud echoes of candified Belgian lambic here, and I really enjoyed it on that basis, while fully recognising it's not going to be for everyone. Beyond the syrupy wallop there's a spicy nuance, like the cinnamon seasoning in a fruit pie filling. Above all it is tremendous fun in a delightfully silly way, which was just the tonic after the previous two po faces.

And while I'm scouring the shelves of Polonez on Mary Street for new ticks, here's Vienas Premium, another standard 5% ABV golden lager but from a smaller brewery down Kaunas way. Initial impressions are excellent, from the generous 568ml can to the handsome cap of fine white foam it wears when poured. The aroma is sweet but pleasant, mixing light spongecake with meadowy blossoms. The flavour isn't so sweet, being a little on the plain side but with a lovely refreshing crispness. I get a very faint fruitiness -- apple or banana -- which is probably a flaw but I'm happy to write it down as character. This is a very decent no-frills lager in a large can. Sometimes that's all I require. Though a bit of cherry would be nice.

A Volfas Engelman sneaks in at the end, via the lower shelves in SuperValu. This is simply called Pilsner and is 4.7% ABV. It looks lovely, all clear and golden with a handsomely Germanic head. To taste it's quite sweet, with lots of meadowy flowers, honey, and a more artificial fruit candy vibe. The latter is accentuated by a chewy texture. It's not unpleasant but it's not what I want from a pilsner: no sharp bittering and a severe dearth of crispness. It didn't cost more than a few euro so I can't complain too hard. I'm pretty sure Engelman does better lagers than this, however.

Sweetly does it, seems to be the watchword in Lithuania, and their lagers suffer as a result, if this lot are anything to go by. No hidden bargains this time.

Post-gluten

It's another Post Card post, concerning beers brewed in Kildare but named after places in Dublin. Both of today's are gluten free, a new move for the brand.

First it's a lager, called Samuel Beckett Bridge. It's in the Helles style and is a little dark on it, shading towards amber with a bit of a haze. It makes sense that this gives it a certain richness, particularly on the nose: an aroma of biscuits and bread. In the flavour that's how it begins, before adding a grassy green bitterness in the finish. The two aspects don't really balance each other out, keeping apart from each other, but that's OK. It's a clean-drinking job with just enough distinctive character to be interesting, in an unfussy way.

And speaking of unfussy, it's an Irish red next: Dublin Castle. It may be a mainstream style but "intriguing hop additions" are promised on the label. It pours very murky, and is paler than red -- more an orange shade. What they mean by the hop comment is immediately apparent on tasting: there's a bright and very new-world fruit foretaste, suggesting satsuma and mango. That's fun, and almost distracted me from the fact that none of red ale's more orthodox features appear: no caramel, no roast, nothing malt-forward. As a pale ale, it's not bad, but I can't imagine any red ale purists will be happy with it.

Not exactly stellar work by Post Card here, but gluten-free beer has come a long way. These didn't taste in any way compromised.