The Tale Of The Ale

Mini Gueuze Tasting

2013-06-18T16:28:00.000+01:00

Lambics are one of those beer styles you just have to learn to enjoy. I'm not sure how many people try one for the first time and immediately wonder where it has been all their life? It takes a little getting used to. I first encountered Cantillon in Rome and later Brussels. You can read my experience here.

Cantillon is the real thing. They have been brewing the same way, in the same little run down building for over 100 years.

At first my wife was very suspicious of a beer that was like vinegar to her. That changed, I'm not even sure when but somehow, she is now somewhat addicted. Every time I go near drinkstore, she demands Cantillon if they have any.

So, a few weeks ago I grabbed a few bottles but I also grabbed two others. I realized that the only Gueuze I have ever had was Cantillon, I've had other Krieks before, just not Gueuze.

I will spare you the description of the Cantillon Gueuze, you can read about it here.

Anyone who has been to Belgium or is in to Belgian beer should be familiar with Lindemans, at least to see. Their version of a gueuze is very different to what I'm used to. It starts off with the familiar tart and sour aroma of cantillon but far more fruity. On tasting, I was immediately hit with a mix of sweet and sour. It sort of reminded me of what I imagine a mix of golden syrup and vinegar might taste like. The sourness that's there is no where near as pronounced as cantillon. The result is an almost sour wine like flavour with the carbonation of champaign. It was interesting but it was a little too sweet for me. Still, it might be a good introduction to the wonders of the lambic world.

The Chapeau bottle looked cheap so it was either going to be a wonderful old school gueuze like cantillon, or a travesty. It turned out to be the latter. Of aroma, there was little, just a hint of fruit and a little sour hit. I tasted it and almost wished I hadn't. It was like someone combined a little vinegar with prune juice. I normally love prunishness in a beer but this was rather sickly. I forced myself to finish, just in case it got better but alas it stayed the same.

Now I had a problem because I had no cantillon to wash it down with.

How about some Irish cider then? I stopped drinking cider years ago and I only enjoy really dry ciders, the ones with little to no residual sweetness. Longueville House Cider is produced in Cork at the house of the same name. They also make apple brandy it would seem, something I have never had before. This is actually one of the best Irish ciders I have had, though there are a number that I haven't tried yet. Like I said, I'm not much of a cider drinker any more. I keep meaning to try more but I tend to be disappointed, not because the cider is bad, but because I just don't like sweet cider. Anyway, this one was lovely. It had a strong apple flavour as you might expect being a real cider. There was a little earthy funk, almost mushroom like, a slightly tart sourness which was very nice and a little residual sweetness. I would have preferred it to be a little drier but then, I think I'm a rarity when it comes to cider preferences so don't mind me.

Just a thought for my American readers. In many parts of the US you have a drink you call cider which is just apple juice. By apple juice, I simply mean it's made from apples that have been pressed or squeezed and nothing else. You differentiate by having Hard Cider, which is the alcoholic kind. I'm not sure why this is because to my knowledge, cider has been around for well over 2000 years and that's the alcoholic kind I'm talking about.

I suspect it must have happened quite recently in the US. I can easily imagine that it used to be simply apple juice until the mass produced, filtered, treated kind appeared. Apple juice might have become associated with stuff made from concentrate so to differentiate themselves, traditional juice makers, usually the orchards themselves started referring to it as cider. Sort of like Craft Beer is used to differentiate artisan brewing to the macro button pushing breweries that dominate these days.

In Europe and I believe most of the rest of the world, when we say cider, it is always the "hard" kind.

Mahon Falls - RyePA

2013-06-16T09:23:00.000+01:00

I feel a little cheated because this was the beer I was most looking forward to at the All Ireland Craft Beer Festival in RDS last year. While working on the 8 degrees stand, I missed it. I believe it might have lasted 20 minutes. I then proceeded to miss it appearing in a few other places until this year's Easterfest down in Cork.
There was a new version on and while I tend not to take much in the way of notes at beer festivals, I do recall it being somewhat better on cask than the bottled version. Don't let that put you off though, the bottled version is exceptionally good. Rye in beer can be hit and miss and more often than not, they can be a miss for me.
Mahon Falls is a 5.1% pale ale that's brewed with rye as its base malt. It also has a mix of American, English and Australian hops, though it could easily be New Zealand because a vaguely recall talk of Pacific Gem being used at some point, however not in the bottle as far as I know. Now, for those that have never had a beer made with rye malt, there are a few things to look out for. Firstly, there's a slight spicy/peppery note that provides the beer with a little bite. This is also evident in rye bread. I'm curious to try a rye whiskey which is very popular in parts of the US, I wonder does it have a similar spiciness to it? The other thing that tends to happen, especially with beer, is a thick sweetness and this is what sometimes ruins a beer because too much and the beer becomes a syrupy mess. If you have ever had a ryvita, then you might recognise some of the flavours that rye imparts.
In Mahon Falls, we do get the peppery notes that makes a good rye beer and while we do also get a fair bit of sweetness, it's not overpowering. Actually the beer is rather drinkable, eminently so. It reminds me of a good lager, only a little heavier. The sweetness is well balanced by a building hop bitterness. The cask version has a lot more aroma, more fruit like blackcurrents and other berries. The bottle is somewhat more subdued but it's still a fantastic beer and one I will be stocking my fridge with whenever I see it. Being a seasonal at the moment, it will not be as available as their core range and my local off licenses don't stock it so a specialist like drinkstore is needed.

A Revelation and a Lost Cat.

2013-06-14T15:16:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, I was up with Steve Lamond for a beer tasting at his house. He had been sent some beer by Revelation Cat in Italy to try. There was two of each so he kept half of them for me to try and share with TheBeerNut. You can read Steve's thoughts here.

There was only one thing to do. Organise a beer tasting at my place and invite a select few. Not everyone who was initially invited could make it on the day so alternatives had to be found. In the end; I had fellow Beoir members: TheBeerNut, Richard Lubell and Brian Condron. I had home made salsa, store bought chips and a cheese board with bread / crackers. Everything you need for a beer tasting. We also had the weather and sat outside in my tiny back yard.

Richard brought along a couple of Moor beers. This was exciting because I haven't had them before. We started with Nor'Hop, a 4.3% pale ale. An aroma of straw and citric in the form of grapefruit. It tasted quite bitter, especially for a beer of such a low ABV. It was very nice, A little citrus overload perhaps, if there is such a thing. There's very little else going on but that's not the point. It's not a big fancy beer with lots of interesting flavours. It's a fantastic summer session beer and it plays that role immeasurably well.

Moving on to the first of six Revelation Cat beers. Take My Adweisse is as you might expect from the name. A weisse beer of sorts, think Schneider Weisse Tap 5 Meine Hopfen-Weisse but at 4.5%. On the nose we have wheat and some citrus hops. It tasted slightly medicinal? I can't be sure, will see what TheBeerNut though. It was a little hoppy, I know that's a hated term but I can't think of a better one for this beer. I could taste hops but no single character came out other than some sort of citrus. It went down well and was tasty but it was no Hopfen Weisse.

Dry Hop Thriller came next, a 4.5% slightly catty pale ale. It's not too bad but it does seem a little one sided. This would be their sessionable pale ale, the equivalent to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale but weaker.

To HopAddendum next and a 6% IPA. Aroma wise, there was SFA. that was odd. It tasted nice enough but again, very catty. I wonder how many, if any of their beers they use Citra in. It's quite sweet and very acidic. To be honest, I enjoyed it but not as much as I probably should. I also suspect that these beers have lost something. Steve tried his back in December and they came from Italy so I don't know how long they have been sitting and losing hop aroma.

California Moonset is another IPA, this time a percentage point higher at 7%. A little black current on the nose with a strong caramel backbone. Yet again, it was rather ammonia like. I enjoyed it but again, this is the sort of beer I adore and I could take or leave it.

F.R.E.S.H is yet another IPA and also 7% but this time we are going for a German and British feel rather than an American one. As the name suggests, the hops are thrown in fresh. I wonder does that mean wet (freshly picked) rather than dried? Considering the age of the beers and what I believe is a lot of lost hop aroma, I suspected we might be in trouble here. We were because by all accounts, this beer is all about the fresh hop aroma and taste but there was little of that for me. Some slight grassiness and fresh cut hay. The beer was bitter of course but the aroma was just gone.

Last of the Revelation Cat beers is Hop Animal. This is their double IPA and when they say double, they mean it! Obviously the Italians took the word double as being literal so they doubled an IPA strength to 13% in a moment of magical insanity. The aroma was sort of winey or port like. On tasting, I found it spicy, very sweet with a fantastic prune juice. It was absolutely gorgeous and I didn't mind that the hop aroma had been lost.

Steve got an extra bottle called Black Knight so be sure to read his account. He also had them when they were fresh so his account is going to be far more accurate. This does beg the question, why would I buy a hop forward beer that has been imported when I don't know when it was bottled and how much hop aroma has been lost?

Back to Moor now and a beer called Hoppiness. There's a sort of a theme to our tasting it seems. With the UK being so close, this 6.7% IPA had no loss to aroma. This is what F.R.E.S.H should have tasted like. The one word I can use to describe it is "Yum". There was a huge caramel malt backbone to this with marmalade, pine resin and..... never mind... This beer was about the fresh hops. It really did smell like my hop freezer (yes I have one) and tastes like a fresh hop tea.

That's quite enough with the hop forward beers. Time for something different. De Dochter showed up in the TARDIS with Charbon, a 7% smoked vanilla stout. I love stout and I usually enjoy a smoked beer but vanilla? Not so much I'm afraid. I'm all for vanilla notes from oak ageing but actually adding vanilla to a beer tends to make it sickly to me. This was no exception, however it was not as bad as many others. Other than the annoying vanilla, there was a little ash, a little chocolate and a hint of coffee but to be honest, the base stout was a little disappointing. I believe I have TheBeerNut to thank for this bottle?

You might notice from the pictures that we had now moved inside as the evening chill was starting to kick in and we were now in the shade.

Steve also gave me two Thornbridge beers. First up was Heather Honey, a 10% imperial stout infused with honey with heather qualities due to the beehives being located in the middle of a heather field I believe. It's a bottle sublime loveliness. As well as the honey, it's aged in three different barrels before being bottled. Now I'm sure there was plenty of subtlety that was lost on me. My palate was fatigued from a day of drinking but I had enough wits to know that this was a superb beer.

And finally, there was one beer left. Imperial Oatmeal Stout. I wonder how good a breakfast beer this would be? An expensive one probably. This is an 11% imperial stout that has been barrel aged in bourbon barrels for 6 months. About all I could manage to write at this point was OMG that's good!

I had been at a homebrew meet/BBQ before the tasting and by now it was time I went to bed but not before what I can vaguely recall as being one of the best imperial stouts I have ever had. Keep an eye out for TheBeerNut's review because he was probably a little more sensible than me and not had anything to drink before an epic beer tasting. By all accounts he wasn't so sensible afterwards though. I went to sleep but he had a few pints in two pubs before going home.

Thank's to Steve for providing most of the beers and thanks to everyone who came to my house and helped me drink them.

Oh and you might wonder about the reference to "lost cat"? Well it's not exactly to do with the beer. On the night in question, one of my cats disappeared for two nights. She showed up again on Monday morning. I think the beer drinkers scared her as she is not sociable with strangers, unlike the other cat.

Pacific North West Citrus Heaven

2013-06-12T15:18:00.001+01:00

I'm no stranger to Widmer Brothers beers as I have had them many times in the US, mostly the wheat beer though. In the past year, Widmer Brothers beers have been appearing all over Ireland and this latest wave is well worth mentioning.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Farrington's for a "meet the brewer" night. I wasn't there taking notes. I was there for the beer and the food. You can read an excellent write up on The Dublin Diary. Anyway the brewer we met was Matt Licklider who is essentially the head brewer for the three breweries of the Craft Brew Alliance. Matt was also at The Secret Beer Garden the next day and myself and Andrew had a good chat about beer in Ireland. He was quite interested to hear about Beoir. Anyway I brought home some bottles of beer with me so I could properly take notes. Well I say that but really I took them home because these were my favourite beers of the night and I wanted more.

Starting with Hopside Down, we have an interesting beer because it's described as an IPA style lager or India Pale Lager if you will. It's a rather interesting concept, thought certainly not unique. The real difference between this and other lagers is that it's 6.7% so a fair bit stronger than most others. The result is exactly as you might hope. The chewy body with fresh resinous hop oils of a good IPA but the crisp clean taste of a lager. There's a real lemon curd and orange marmalade thing going on here. Hopside Down is very refreshing, Interestingly there is not much carbonation for a lager. It's absolutely lovely though. Towards the end, it Leaves a lovely hop oil coating on tongue and throat. Biting fizz on the finish. It's a beer that keeps giving. This is a beer I want on tap, and lots of it.

Keeping with style misnomers, Pitch Black IPA is one of those rare examples of how the style should really be. We don't just want a hoppy stout here, we want a beer that in a blindfolded taste test, you can't instantly tell that it's black rather than a regular pale ale. You do, however want a little of that roasted malt to come through or else what's the point? The result here is one of fresh grassy hops, a little milk chocolate, citrus in the form of grapefruit and a little prune. There is the slightest hint of coffee but it doesn't get in the way. It is a very lovely beer and also a firm favourite of many attendees to the Farrington's shindig.

Citra Blonde is is a summer beer through and through. Notes of lemon, fresh cut grass, fresh cut hay and orange pith on the nose. On tasting, you note that while the body is quite thin, it's also slightly oily with a real fresh hop quality. The citra hops ring out their ammonia cattiness but in a not unpleasant kind of way. Citra is a hop that I find is brilliant when combined with others, but on their own they can overpower you with a cat's litter box aroma. In this case, it just about works and the result is a seriously refreshing beer. And here's the best part, it's only 4.4% so it's immensely sessionable.

I saved the best till last because we are in to Imperial IPA territory now. Nelson Sauvin Imperial IPA is the name over here, though I believe it's also called Deadlift Imperial IPA. It's 8.6% so deserving of a little respect. On the nose we have fruity tropical bubblegum, pine needles and grapefruit.

The taste is contains everything from the aroma in a thick, oily body that's almost chewy. A perfect carbonation level with a huge hop hit. There's a slightly spicy finish with an oily slick down the throat. Alcohol is there but not obvious making it very drinkable. I am very biased here because Nelson Sauvin is my favourite hop. I love what it does to a beer.

A Badly Kept Secret

2013-06-10T15:55:00.001+01:00

When one hears the term "Secret Beer Garden", one could be forgiven for assuming that only a select few might know about such a place. However it seemed a fair portion of Dublin was in Dundrum two weeks ago for the 2013 Deveney's Secret Garden Beer Festival. Indeed it was hard not to notice the beer festival since it was located in the Dundrum town centre in a very public plaza.

Ruth Deveney who organises the event each year, was running around trying to keep things running smoothly and here's the thing. It was her birthday! I don't think she got to drink a single beer on the day. That's dedication.

Delicious

To be honest, the last time I was at this festival, it was the first one that was held in the Bull and Castle all those years ago. Things are a little bigger these days. Unlike most beer festivals in Ireland, this is not about Irish breweries, though some do have a presence. This is more a beer festival celebrating all the good beer you can get in a good off license.

Molson Coors had a stand featuring their "Craft Collection". Recently purchased Franciscan Well featured with a new IPA and a Coffee Porter. I will write more about these beers later in the month after their official launch. Worthington's and Sharp's beers were also proudly displayed. Less deserving to be there perhaps was Blue Moon but the interesting thing was the new (to Ireland) versions of blue moon. This will make a lot of American Ex-Pats very happy, my wife included.

One of the few Irish breweries that were there with a stand was Trouble Brewing. I'm a massive fan of their Dark Arts porter but this time they had the second version of their Sabotage IPA. Unlike the first one, which finished too high meaning all the hops were lost in a sweet sticky body, this one is almost perfect. Almost because while the flavour is there, the aroma is somewhat lacking. Not to worry, version 3 is already hot on its heels and should be what they are trying to achieve.

I never did find out what the point of the random apparel hanging from the beam down the middle of the tent was for. Ambiance perhaps?

5 Lamps were there too with beer on tap. This picture was from the night before where I tried it. You know what? It's not too bad of a lager. That said, it's certainly not something I would drink on a regular basis.

Abstrakt AB:13 was on the 4 corners stand, and remember, most stands are run by importers and 4 corners import Brewdog beers among many others. AB13 was seriously impressive. Perhaps the best one yet.

I eventually made my way over to a stand that had a load of beers I have never seen before. A lot of them were from New Zealand. I don't recall the name of the importer but it turns out most of the beers in the pictures below are available in Redmonds in Ranelagh.

They had some very limited edition beers that they made available at certain times throughout the day. These were Welsh I believe. The one pictured above was Danish Monster and it wasn't the best beer of the day by any stretch of the imagination.

The rest of the beers pictured below (including hopwired above) were some of the stars of the festival.

They were absolutely beautiful and I will have to keep an eye out for them and buy them because as regular readers will know, I tend not to take tasting notes at beer festivals. At a certain point, I just won't be coherent enough to do it justice. Plus it's far too noisy and awkward to stand up and taste beer and then write what you think.

And now I'm going to save the best for last. When we first walked in to the beer festival, and by we I mean myself and fellow Beoir member Andrew. Andrew is responsible for the BeoirFinder app which allows you to easily find where the nearest establishment that serves Irish Craft beer is located.

On a side note, both of us are running for the position of Chair in Beoir so it was a great conversation piece when talking to brewers and distributors alike. I'm digressing, anyway the first stand we walked over to was The Brown Paper Bag Project.

They recently re-branded and like the jagged top to their labels. That said, I think it's a missed opportunity to not use brown paper on the labels. The interesting thing is the icons. Each beer has an icon that's very obvious so if you are looking in a fridge for a beer, you will see this icon and recognise it before you read the name of the beer.

Oxman was great but the real star was the new version of Dr Rudi, their Belgian ale hopped with Dr Rudi. It's sort of like a Belgian/New Zealand IPA. It was fantastic and Colin was there for a chat. You might recall that the last time I had Dr Rudi, it was pretty bad. The beer didn't age well. True to his word, Colin recalled all the bottles left on shelves and replaced them with the new version. Fear not over potentially wasted beer.

The old ones will be used to make a range of sauces for their pubs.

Dublin Live Bloggers Crawl 2013

2013-06-06T16:45:00.003+01:00

I had a thought the other day that I can't get rid of. I personally think that it's a brilliant idea but maybe it's just me?
Here's what I was thinking:

Bloggers from different backgrounds/topics, be they based in Dublin or elsewhere meet up. We spend the day doing things picked by attendees. For instance, being a beer blogger, I would want to do a beer related thing which is probably go to a pub for a drink or two.
A food blogger might want to go to a restaurant. A wine blogger might like to try a wine bar.
There might be a generic Dublin blogger who knows the city and wants to visit a little known area.
Perhaps there is a history blogger who brings us to a historical landmark for some education.
Where and what we do depends on how many get involved.
The idea then is that we all blog about the day and tweet as we go along.
Some might wish to live blog, as in start a blog post and update that post as the day progresses using their phone or laptop.

A date/time is picked that suits people.
Idea's for places to visit/things to do are decided upon.
We all meet up on that date and spend a day together.

In terms of numbers, I would say that no more than about a dozen or else we might have problems getting in to some places with capacity issues. If I even got half that number I would consider it a success. Actually, it might be considered a success if more than just me shows up. It would be a great opportunity to do something that you might not ordinarily do.

I will contact a few blogs myself and see if they are interested.
Here are just some of the blogs that I would hope might be interested.
TheBeerNut - Pretty much what I do, though some might say better.
9BeanRow - Food blogger
The Dublin Diary - General Dublin stuff.

Anyone interested in joining, even if you are only visiting then leave a comment below and we can try to work out a date.

"V"ery "G"ood Spanish Beer?

2013-05-31T18:06:00.000+01:00

After Steve and I finished tasting the LochNess beers, we moved on to another brewery called VG Noster from Spain. The bottles are 750ml bottles that would look well on any restaurant table. I'm afraid I know very little about the brewery. They at least have a website which is more than I can say for many breweries around the world, but there is very little info on it and what's there is in Spanish so I have to rely on Google translate in Chrome. It's also very badly designed, such as clicking the contact page brings you to a form but there is no link back to the homepage short of using your browsers back button.

The range is limited to just the three below and they aren't very adventurous with their styles.

We start with the Golden Ale, a 4.8% summery beer and indeed we have been having a glorious time of it in Dublin recently so a bottle of this on the patio would be just the thing. It's rather yeasty for a golden ale and full of biscuit. It's also rather, if you will excuse the term, "hoppy". By that I mean it's pretty bitter, around Sierra Nevada pale ale territory at 33IBU and has a decent lemon citrus to it. Not a bad effort but then, it's probably more suited to the Spanish climate.

The Copper Ale is a little stronger at 5.2% and a little less bitter than its lighter cousin. This must be the boring uncle of the family as there is really very little going on here. I even topped mine up with the yeast to see if it gave off anything extra and it didn't, it barely even gave off any yeast to the flavour profile. so it's your typical red ale then and is a bit of a caramel bomb. Apparently it's 30IBU but it feels like they have run off and hidden somewhere before bottling. There's only the barest hint of fruit of the forest as the beer warms a little, just a hint though.

And finally on to Quercus Ale, a 6% sort of amber is really quite odd. A line from Scarborough Fair: Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme sums this beer up nicely. There are no herbal ingredients that I can discern but at sage and thyme are quite evident and maybe a little parsley. I got no rosemary though, let's be clear about these things. If you get rosemary from this beer, you are clearly in need of another type of libation. It's actually not a bad beer to be honest and considering some of the flavours, it will make a wonderful beer go go with any meaty dish, especially of the snouted variety.

While I might consider VG to be "V"ery "G"ood, I can't say the same for Decadence from Marble. It's wonderful in almost every way. Now I love me an Imperial Stout so this should be a great beer to end a tasting on. Indeed it was, but after so many beers in one night, this was a little heavy going. At 8.7% and barrel aged, there was no way this was going to be one to down quickly and then go to bed. So I ended up sipping slowly and enjoying it until I was practically snoring. It has everything you expect from a good imperial stout and then plenty of soy sauce, so much so that you could easily dip sushi in to it (don't do this). There's also a real wood and ash thing going on from the barrel. Fruit of the forest down the back and a dry finish complement the beer perfectly. I reckon there's even more going on than I wrote down but my palate was as tired as the rest of me. I think this is one to come back to another time. It was beautiful.

The Family Ness

2013-05-29T18:25:00.002+01:00

Not to be confused by the cartoon I used to watch in the 80's. No, this is a family of beers from the Loch Ness brewery. A quirk of theirs is the naming convention used. Every beer ends in "ness". Some of these beers are monsters in themselves as you will see if you dare to lurk deeper in to the abyss of this article.

The tasting was held at friend and fellow blogger; Steve's house with just the two of us partaking with his wife helping out on some of the beers.

As always, we start on the lighter end of the scale when doing a monster tasting event. LightNess is 3.9% ABV pale ale. It's rather bitter and packed full of lemon citrus goodness. I should note that the pic above was one I retook using Steve's glass. Either his pouring skills are abysmal or a third of the bottle was yeast. So mine, being the second pour, came out brown. In fairness to Steve, I know his pouring skills are second to none so it was the latter. Be careful of this beer when pouring. With this much yeast in such a light beer, mine had a slight oxidised feel but apparently Steve's was grand. Either way, I really enjoyed this and would have loved to be sitting in the sun with a few bottles of it.

Steve's Pic

My beer

Staying at 3.9% is WilderNess. Now I obviously got a yeasty second pour on this one too. I didn't bother taking a second pic. Instead, compare it to Steve's pic for comparison. This was very different to the first one. Again there was that hint of cardboard oxidisation from the excess yeast. There was far more caramel to this one. It was similar enough to Lightness but with a more mandarin like fruitiness. Since mine looked like I was drinking a glass of water from Loch Ness itself, it was hard to pick out too much in the first 2 beers.

By the third beer, Steve had figured out how to pour the beer. Just kidding, the rest of them didn't suffer from yeastitus. Aptly named RedNess, it's a 4.2% ABV that starts off with chocolate before moving on to strong caramel. Out of nowhere comes a little marmite before settling down to some blackberry and then finishing off quite prunish. I have to say, this was a grower. I started out unsure but by the end it was something I wanted more of.

LochNess is a chocolate raisin Scottish 80/-. It's 4.4% and lively in carbonation with plenty of biscuit. There's a little burnt toffee and and and a slightly sour finish. It was a real grower and I think my favourite so far. Everything just came together very nicely in this beer.

DarkNess is a 4.5% dry stout that you could be forgiven for believing had coffee in it. Rich dark chocolate and a slightly sour (coffee) finish. Throughout, there is is a hint of smoke but really the coffee dominates.

HoppyNess should be my kind of beer and at 5% it's just about sessionable. On the nose, there's a fair but of ammonia so I guessed there must be citra in it and after reading about it since, there certainly is. Ammonia is not always bad of course. I have cats so I'm used to that smell. As well as that, we have plenty of other flavours and aromas to balance it out like grapefruit and various tropical fruits. The beer is nice and bitter with a good caramel backbone to balance it and it was very moreish.

On to a slight oddity now and not just because this one begins with Ness rather than ends in it. NessuKorma is essentially DarkNess with curry powder and other spices added during the brewing process. I was somewhat apprehensive as you can imagine. Beer and curry go hand in hand but a curry flavoured beer? I was somewhat relieved and maybe even a little disappointed to find out that it was a stout because now it falls in to place and what we have here is really a normal chilli stout with a slightly eastern feel due to some cardamom like flavouring. It's one of the better chilli like beers I have had. Some are just too overpowering. This beer need not be just a novelty one off beer, but for most I suspect it will be.

You can read Steve's account here if you haven't already.

Beers From A Little Valley In West Yorkshire.

2013-05-22T16:18:00.002+01:00

A few months ago, my local tesco started stocking beers from Little Valley. It was during their last attempts at expanding their craft beer selection and was during the 5 for €10 phase they went through which was great while it lasted.

Withens Pale Ale is an unassuming beer. It's a brilliant thirst quencher and is almost like a bitter pseudo lager. There's lots of cereal, hay as well as a nice peppery quality. Citrus is a-plenty and is of the lemon variety.

My wife enjoyed the Ginger Pale Ale and also Tod's Blonde.

I haven.t seen them in a while, inevitably with tesco, no matter how much craft beer we buy from them, they decrease the shelf space to the point that it's not worth looking and with the 5 for €10 deal changed to 3 for €7, I don't even buy beer in tesco any more.

Alaskan Smoked Porter

2013-05-16T11:33:00.001+01:00

Alaska is not somewhere I am ever likely to visit so it's nice that I can get beer from Alaskan microbreweries. There's a surprising number of breweries in Alaska, a massive state with only about half the population of Dublin. Anchorage for instance has about 7 breweries alone which is more than Dublin. It begs the question as to why a city with a metropolitan population akin to Cork (city) can support so many breweries? I can imagine that drinking is a popular pastime in such an unforgiving place as Alaska.

Smoked Porter from the Alaskan Brewing Company is the only beer I have had from Alaska so far. At 6.5% it's pretty weighty but not unmanageable. Drinking the 660ml bottle by yourself is perfectly reasonable, sure it's barely more than a pint! The aroma is just smoky bacon, but not real smoked bacon, the kind of artificial stuff they use on the likes of Rancheros or similar snacks. The beer sort of tastes like it was eh.. "dry hopped" with rancheros. The result is rather unpleasant as the fake bacon dominates leaving little room for the little coffee and chocolate that break through. It's not all bad though, I like rancheros and I liked this beer, it had a wonderful mouthfeel and I could certainly drink more of it. From many a tasting session, I get the feeling I pick up more smoke than some people so many purposely smoked beers I can find the a little one sided. By all other accounts, this beer is balanced nicely and is world class. Actually I think this beer would be very pleasant to drink on a cold evening in Alaska. And by cold I mean colder than my little country has ever been in recorded history. That said, summers in Anchorage for instance would appear to be better than Irish summers from what I have read so maybe it's not such a bad place to go for a visit, not with so many breweries to hand.

Hardknott Beers In Ireland? A Likely Prospect.

2013-05-08T18:09:00.002+01:00

Drinking order: from right to left

I have met Hardknott Dave a number of times over the last few years. Beginning when he ran his old brewpub and moving on to when he sold that and moved his microbrewery to a new premises. Some of the things I like about Dave is that he is uncompromising when it comes to quality and also he loves to experiment with his beers. Think Brewdog but without the attitude that comes with them.

Dave has been twice over to Dublin this year in search of an opportunity to get his beer in to Ireland where I know it will go down very well. It's hard to believe but this was the first time he had been to Ireland and while the first trip was more of a package deal for small businesses, the most recent trip was simply themselves as a brewery going around and getting a feel for the Irish drinks market and most importantly, meeting with prospective importers.

Both times I met up with Dave and his better half at L. Mulligan Grocer. I had tried to get him to meet the proprietor as he himself is a beer importer but Colin was on a plane and only arrived after they had left. Not to worry as this time there was an actual meeting arranged well in advance. Though Colin was still coming in from the airport as it turns out.

We sampled 12 of the Hardknott beers that Dave had brought along and I have to say, they were all very impressive. Some I have had before and not thought a great deal at the time. I am happy to report that the recipe has either been altered for some of these beers and they are now wonderful, tasty beers or in the case of some of the bigger beers like Rhetoric, have been allowed to age and are now at the ideal time for drinking.

Colin brought out his own Dr Rudi but unfortunately it seems to have gone past its best by because there was a wet cardboard like oxidisation going on and Colin was very apologetic. Dave picked out Oysters and I thought it pretty tannic. If you want to know what it should taste like, TheBeerNut already talked about it last year.

After this, we headed to The Brew Dock for a few more beers before calling at a night. It was a great beer filled evening.

Anyway, I don't know if a deal has been struck between Hardknott and any of the people he talked to and I imagine it's a little too soon anyway but it does seem fairly likely that Ireland is going to get Hardknott beer at some point this year if we are lucky and not just bottles but hopefully kegs too.

If I hear anything more, or they start to appear, I will mention it on here. In the meantime, keep an eye out yourself.

Brew #54 - Belgian Fool

2013-05-01T09:57:00.000+01:00

Galway Bay Brewery is holding a home brew competition soon. Entries are to be dropped in to one of their pubs. If you are Dublin based like myself, they need to be in by May 6th to one of the Dublin pubs but otherwise, May 9th in The Oslo, Salthill.

It was a last minute change that brewer Chris decided to restrict the style to Belgian. No problem until I realised too late I didn't have some of the ingredients I needed to make my witbier.
So I threw together the beer below on the fly and just took note of the recipe as I went along and then entered in to beertools and this is what it looks like.

I tasted a week old bottle conditioned version. It's not bad, seems to be like a Belgian amber ale.
The real version is in the keg and is force carbonated. Something I don't usually do but time was against me.
I won't know until today how that beer turned out.

One thing to note, the yeast I used was T-58 and that's the most explosive yeast I have ever come across. It knocked my blow off tube clear off the carboy and it did this twice with a foaming mess coming out. Finally it settled down but it was a lot of fun. There were some interesting sulphur smells too. Every morning it smelled like a fart downstairs.

Belgian Fool

16-E Belgian Specialty Ale
Author: Reuben Gray (Saruman)
Date: 01/04/2013

Size: 26.03 L @ 20 °C
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 189.36 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.057 (1.026 - 1.120)
|=============#==================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.014 (0.995 - 1.035)
|===============#================|

Color: 46.42 (1.97 - 98.5)
|===============#================|

Alcohol: 5.6% (2.5% - 14.5%)
|============#===================|

Bitterness: 21.2 (0.0 - 100.0)
|===========#====================|

Ingredients:

4091 g (64.1%) Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt - added during mash
1012 g (15.8%) Belgian Biscuit - added during mash
484 g (7.6%) Wheat Malt - added during mash
300 g (4.7%) Crystal Malt 250 - added during mash
500 g (7.8%) Candi Sugar Dark - added during mash
23 g (48.9%) Perle (7.3%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
24 g (51.1%) Northern Brewer (10.9%) - added during boil, boiled 5 m
1 ea Fermentis T-58 Safbrew T-58

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.24

#IHP2013 - The End Result

2013-04-29T23:33:00.000+01:00

I've been drinking my re-creation of Truman's No 4 for about 3 weeks or so and it turned out rather well, though as usual with these historical recipes, it never turns out exactly as expected. The recipe I used can be seen here. I didn't have quite enough EKG for the 30 minute addition so I added 10g of fuggles to make up the difference. I doubt there was any real impact to the beer.

The real differences are as follows:

The Original Gravity was supposed to be 1.079 but I only managed 1.065
The Finishing Gravity should have been 1.024 but mine was 1.021
This means, the 7.3% beer became 5.8% which is a little over 1% off target.

So all in all, the beer is not going to be the same as it originally was, but then from tasting it, I have to say it's probably rather close.

Al's description is that it should be both sweet and bitter at the same time and that's exactly what I have here.

It starts off with a little butter and honey, a product of some fermenting temperature extremes. Mostly though, there's a real sweet caramel like malt with some cereal. Then the hops comes out and you get the hint of the 125 IBUs. A little fruit and slightly grassiness are about as much as I could detect through that heavy body. It's almost chewy and even meade like.
It was a fun experiment as always and I look forward to next year. Having a drinkable beer makes it worthwhile.

A Tasting With TheBeerNut

2013-04-18T14:25:00.000+01:00

Recently, TheBeerNut hosted a beer tasting night at his house. I guess he needed help emptying his stash of beers so myself and Richard Lubell (freelance beer writer for the likes of Dubliner magazine) were only too happy to help him with such a serious problem.

There was no real theme other than drinking some of the harder to find beers and with the exception of the bottle of Left Hand Smoke Jumper I brought to the table, I had not had any of these beers before and thankfully Smoke Jumper was new to the others too so it all worked out.

We started off with Noblesse from De dochter van de korenaar. It's a 5.5% blonde ale. Notes of grain/straw, slightly metallic, hint if bubblegum. Slightly spicy and sour finish. Little honey and lemon making it a little like lemsip with whiskey with a little spice on the finish. It was rather enjoyable I thought and a great start. I believe it was a fair bit past it's best before date and it was none the worse for it.

From the same brewery came Finesse. An aroma of peaches, hint of grape and pine. The pine is due to the beer being aged on pine resin.

In the mouth I got citrus, pine, alcohol, peach and orange. Very nice sipper. Drying finish. Similar to an IPA in some ways but without the in your face hopping. Quite bitter. In reality it's a 3 grain tripel according to the label. Then again, don't trust the label because this 660ml bottle has a label that thinks it's 330ml and is translated in to Engrish.

Sticking with de dochter, we have Bravoure, our first smoked beer for the evening. It's an amber with an ABV of 6.5%. The smoke on the nose is quite subtle but undeniably there. I also got a whiff of prunes and alcohol. This was a bit of a bottle bomb with beer geysering everywhere before it was directed in to a glass. To say it was over-carbonated is an understatement, it was almost painful to drink. It sort of tasted like fizzy prune juice with some kippers thrown in. It sounds unpleasant but it wasn't as bad as all that. Still, I won't be rushing out to obtain a bottle for myself.

On to a different brewery this time and a different country, and a Black IPA from Emelisse. An aroma of milk chocolate and fresh cut grass. On tasting it starts off bitter a little grassy with an alcohol burn. On to some caramel then. It's not as bitter as I might expect. There's a little citrus and as the carbonation dies, some smoke comes out. It's a beautiful beer and quite subtle too.

On to the ridiculous now. Southern tier's black water series Imperial Choklat Stout is a 10% beast of a beer.

First off, the aroma, it's like like chocolate syrup used to pour on ice cream with a slight cherry liqueur.

On tasting, I'm met with what can only be described as a desert beer. I seriously believe I could pour this over ice cream, though that would be a waste of good beer. There is lots of cherry, a hint of coffee and so much chocolate. The beer keeps giving, the chocolate stays with you long after you have taken a mouthful. It's very sweet but a marked bitterness towards the end. I'm not sure how much of this beer I could honestly handle before becoming diabetic but as a beer to share it's brilliant. It makes a great digestif!

Pijiu Goji is a 5% sort of fruit beer. It's very fizzy, incredibly tart, fairly sweet but also a little sour. Quite interesting I suppose but I'm not sure I would be looking to drink another one. Not having had a goji berry before, I was unsure what I should be tasting but tartness seems to be the main thing. I will say this, having looked up goji berries to see what they are exactly, it seems they can be somewhat dangerous. They are used for medicinal reasons in Chinese medicine and can have some nasty unwanted effects. I can't say for certain if it was related but I did feel a little nauseous and had some bad intestinal cramps and diarrhoea later that night. Initially I just put it down to too many Scotch eggs, I don't do very well with too much egg but it might be that the goji berries didn't help either.

Catso is a 5% Saison/Blonde from the Struise brewery in Belgium. It's part of a cartoon series, so pay attention to the label. I found it slightly sour, like a good saison should be, at least for me. It's also quite floral and bitter, packed full of herbs and spices. There's some slight cheese funk. Does it use American hops? It seemed to, pine and citrus, especially lemon made me think that. The finish is spicy and fairly astringent. I liked it but it's not easy to drink though neither is it difficult.

Still with the Struise brewery and our final beer for the evening, we have Coffee Club Black Damnation IV, a 13% barrel aged imperial stout. From what I can tell, the base beer is called Black Albert, something that already gets 100 on ratebeer. It's then matured in old rum barrels for 6 months.

The aroma is a woody vanilla, sour espresso and alcohol. Moving on to the taste, it's very much like a strong espresso. While quite sweet around the edges, the overriding feature is a sour espresso. Dark Berries and some cherry along with a little rum try to make their presence known but this is all about the coffee.

Unfair Play? Or Solid Business Sense From The Macros?

2013-04-11T12:59:00.002+01:00

Before I start this rant, I should say that this is hearsay and rumour. It's the word of some people on message boards or in passing who were talking to bar men or even just some lad down the pub. It's not fact so don't take it as such. It does however sound like the sort of thing I expect.

Here is something that is fact though, so gives credence to these claims. On Arthur's day just gone, and for those not familiar with Arthur's day, it's now a yearly celebration to celebrate Arthur Guinness and his legacy. There's a sort of festival atmosphere with free or cheap pints of Guinness and entertainment all around the country. In other words, it's a way for Diageo to promote their products.
What they did last year, and possibly even previous years was in a number of pubs around the country, they demanded that non Diageo taps be covered up and there's a real feeling that it was mainly the craft beers that were targeted. The reason they could demand that is simple. They were providing the pubs with free stuff, be that free kegs of beer or free entertainment so it's reasonably fair enough for Diageo to make that request I suppose. In case there is doubt, here's an official source from the Belfast Telegraph.

There was also the crap they pulled at the BII awards last year where they threatened to pull sponsorship if Brewdog were given the award. This was at the last minute. Brewdog already knew they won, the trophy had their name on it so when someone else was called... well you can imagine the result. This got plenty of press so there's no need to expand on it here.

The new claims that I've heard go a lot further though. If true, this is a targeted and malicious attack on the small independent breweries of Ireland that have little to no marketing budget and certainly none to fight back such media giants. To me, and this is a gross exaggeration obviously, but to me, this targeted campaign is not far off something that happened in Germany to a certain population in the 1940s.
What I've heard is that Diageo are offering pubs significant sums of money of they take out their craft beer taps. It might not even be all of them, it might just be on a certain side of the bar, perhaps where the Guinness tap is. but they are still making the offer. One such pub apparently refused the offer. If this is indeed true, then it's very worrying.

I have also heard that Molson Coors have replaced genuine craft beer in some pubs with their own "Craft Collection". Now, it may very well be that the craft beer was not selling well and it was simply replaced by the pub rather than Molson Coors muscling in. I still have quite a high opinion of Molson Coors as a company.

If anyone from Diageo or indeed the other large breweries are reading this, I implore you to stop bullying pubs into getting rid of the small independent breweries products and instead concentrate on the quality of your own product. Take a leaf from Molson Coors perhaps and bring out your own craft range. Re-introduce Guinness on cask using the original recipes from 250 years ago. Produce limited batches in your pilot brewery if needs be. Increase your market share by making quality products that people want to drink. You already do that for the majority of stout drinkers in this country so why you see the need to bully the little breweries is beyond me. If Guinness was available on cask, I might drink it. If it's good, I would continue to drink it. And don't just stick your normal stuff in a cask. Brew it properly with a variety of malted barley and not just pale malt with extract to darken it. Use an old recipe from before the introduction of the nitro keg. There will be too much flavour for the modern Guinness drinker but for those of us that like a good hearty stout, we will probably love it.

I know Guinness released their recipe variations years ago, the brewhouse series. I for one enjoyed trying them all. It would be nice if a small batch of old original recipe Guinness was released and was only available in Ireland. Guinness is already a great tourist attraction for Ireland so the draw of a special batch of original recipe Guinness would boost our tourist industry somewhat.
I think the main reason the brewhouse series failed was firstly, the Irish people were not ready for it. The craft beer revolution only started after North Star disappeared.
Secondly, it was still a nitro stout so many of the variations in flavour were lost.

I'm going to finish here, I doubt anyone from Diageo reads this and if they do it will likely be ignored but just please.... stop with the bully boy tactics. You do yourselves absolutely no favours and worse, you do the pubs no favours. Irish people (some) are starting to vote with their feet when it comes to choice of beer. If you "encourage" a pub to only stock your products and take away the independent beers, that pub could lose customers who will nip down the road and get the drink they want to drink elsewhere. And if this latest rumour is just that, then please don't start doing it.

Return Of The Mac

2013-04-10T12:34:00.000+01:00

While in Cork for Easterfest, I stopped at the Woolshed which is an Aussie bar beside the new Porterhouse. There's one in Dublin too, well known for their sports, especially American stuff.

It could be that the beer selection in Cork is better than in Dublin though. In Dublin, I only recall some Coopers stuff as being anything worth drinking where as Cork had some Mac's (New Zealand) beers as well as Sierra Nevada. All bottles though, the taps were all the usual macro crap you get in Ireland.

Not having had these two Mac's beers before, I decided to have a go.

Starting off with a witbier, Great White is 5% somewhat typical wit. I often find that Mac's like to play with styles. Their Hop Rocker Pilsner with cascade and nelson sauvin is a lovely beer. Anyway, Great White has hints of lemon, bubblegum, coriander as you might expect and it has a slightly sour finish. All told, it's a little watery for my taste but does have enough flavour to keep it interesting. It's certainly a step above Blue Moon surely? Well, I'm not so sure about that. Perhaps on par but Blue Moon on tap is a fuller mouth feel. I don't like it in bottle but on tap it's not too bad. Perhaps Great White is better still in tap? No way to know without going to New Zealand.

Shady Pale is a little bit more up my alley. I do love my pale ales so I had high hopes for it. Not bad and quite nice are about as much complementing as I can do here. It's just dull with a little bitter orange pith and some slight tropical fruit not able to come out and save it. I could have happily had another one if I was not on my way to a beer festival but only because Porterhouse next door was not open until 2pm.

So far, Mac's have not endeared themselves to me. My experience with New Zealand beers is pretty limited. I guess I'll just have to visit some day. Maybe next year.

Easterfest - Cork 2013

2013-04-08T11:56:00.000+01:00

Over the Easter weekend, I was back down in Cork for the Franciscan Well's Easterfest beer festival. This used to be the largest beer festival in Ireland (Republic) but the more recent Dublin festivals have topped it in size. This was also the first year of the festival since the Molson Coors buyout of the Franciscan Well brewery, though I'm not sure about the pub itself which might be independent of the sale.

There is however a Sharp's bar in the little known upstairs bar, well little known by us visitors but no doubt well known by Corkonians. I counted 7 casks from Sharp's but not just for the festival, this is a regular feature I believe. Doom Bar, Cornish Coaster, Sharp's Special, Sharp's Own, Sharp's Ice, Black Rock IPA, Panzerfaust. I wonder if they will continue to have about 7 cask ales from Sharp's or will that be reduced? I would like to see some White Shield on cask and maybe even P2 or Monsieur Rock.

In terms of new beers to me, there was very little from the Irish market since I had recently been to two beer festivals already. I did get to try two new beers though.

From Metalman we have the latest in their Chameleon range (experimental brews). It's called Equinox and is styled as a Wheat Lager. I know of no other commercial wheat lager which made Grainne (brewer) very happy that she was a style breaker. No doubt, there are wheat lagers out there but certainly not in Ireland. Equinox is a little hard to describe. Think of a crisp and refreshing lager and a crisp and refreshing WitBier and then combine them and that's what you have. There's coriander and spice galore along with a sort of lemon citrus. On a strangely cold Easter weekend, it's a good beer but on a hot summer day, this would be hard to beat as a thirst quencher.

Also new (to me) was the return of White Gypsy's Mustang. This is an American style IPA with an ABV of 6.5% and packed full of grapefruit-citrus hops and an impressive caramel malt driven backbone. It's how I like my IPAs, bitter, fruity and chewy.

Also making an appearance was the new Galway Hooker Irish Stout. This is a beer they have been brewing for at least a year for Tig Neachtain where the stout is called Napoleon. They also had Opus II on tap which is their dunkelweiss. Since Galway Hooker plan on producing it normally rather than just for one pub, they are releasing it simply as their Irish Stout and no fancy name. It's a typical dry stout on nitro and better than most.

Dungarvan were there with their usual beers, though most of them with a difference this time. They were dry hopped with different hops than usual. I finally had a chance to try their Mahon Falls RyePA which was lovely.

Helvick Gold was dry hopped with Citra and I have never encountered the cat piss/ammonia aroma that Citra is famous fore like this before. It really did smell like I was changing my cat litter out. Thankfully it tastes of no such thing and the result is very refreshing indeed.

There was one new brewery there. Like Metalman, they are appearing before they have a physical brewery with the beer being brewed at the Franciscan Well at the moment. Seven Windows it turns out are those responsible for the wonderful Mi Dazza stout that appeared at the RDS last September on the Franciscan Well stand. They have another beer now called Sunbeam Pils which I only had a taste of. TheBeerNut had a little more and liked it well enough.

For me, the only one of the 7 Sharp's beers worth taking a serious look at was Black Rock IPA. It's a black IPA as you can guess. There is a very fresh hop aroma off this, like opening a bag of hops and taking a big whiff. It's sort of like a hop tea, very tannic and a little spicy with a little ammonia. It does start to get a little odd after a moment though with a real treacle like sweetness. Had I the time for more beer, I would have had a pint of it.

I did almost miss out on Panzerfaust until TheBeerNut came back all excited. I only had a sip of his and I recall it being interesting but I took no notes and by now I was buzzed enough to just not care. It turns out it's a Gose, a style that's practically extinct and not something I have had before.

With that, it was about 6pm and time to leave. I was staying in Cork so I could stay if I wanted but it was getting busy, I had everything I wanted and since the other guys had to get the train after 8, we went to the new Porterhouse bar at the Mardyke building. I had been there earlier for lunch but it was not open yet and I settled for lunch at the Woolshed next door.

Apart from heading to the Porterhouse for some decent beer, we were mainly there for the shuffle-board a bar game that's far too much fun in my opinion. The €5 charge per 30 mins will put some people off, though sometimes being beer bloggers has advantages with some freebies at the festival and free shuffle-board at the Porterhouse.

The concept is simple, you have a long smooth table covered in sand. You push the puck with your hand and it slides down the table. You want to get the puck to stop in a scoring area without falling in the gutter. I turned out to be rather good at it, though I progressively got worse, possibly down to drinking Chocolate Truffle Stout. Mobile phones don't make very good pucks either.

The bar itself is very nice with the typical Porterhouse copper pipes. Most of the porterhouse beers are available, though hop head was all gone. There was no TSB either though I think they do have a hand pump for it. The ceiling is a cool vaulted brick so you are really in what seems to be a cellar or old storage building and the food is excellent quality too.

After the guys headed off for their train, myself and my wife stayed for one more drink and then headed back to the B&B after a brief walk. I still had to drive home the next day so I was playing it sensible.

No more beer!

2013-04-01T11:53:00.000+01:00

I recently discovered wine. Beer snobs anonymous, of which I am no longer a member, would have you believe that beer is a far superior drink for complexity of flavour and pairing with food. Having tried a wine tasting recently, I find I can no longer agree with that assessment.

So I'm no longer going to be writing about beer, how can I in good conscience write about beer now that I know the joy of wine and its superior flavour profiles. It would be like cheating on my wife or something equally unthinkable.

So, from next week, this blog will be known as The Tale Of The Grape. Please change all shortcuts to www.taleofgrape.com

And now for something completely different: Good Friday

2013-03-29T14:44:00.000Z

Oh the most hated day in the Irish calendar. We loath it, despise it, curse it above all other days. Such hatred, derived from a religious holiday might seem strange or ironic but when you think about it, religion is the cause of some of the most vile and despicable moments of hatred in history. I often think the world would be a better place if there was no religion.

Why do we Irish hate today so much? Well the answer to that is simple. It's the only day of the year where the sale of alcohol is prohibited. Well not quite true, the same is true for Christmas day but no one goes out on Christmas day to a pub so we don't really care about that day. Perhaps we should.

We do however care about good Friday because it's the beginning of the Easter long weekend. Most business's are closed on Easter Monday, in fact many are closed on Friday as well but that's not even the real reason. What gets up my wick, what pisses me off about today is the reason we can't buy alcohol. It's bad enough that alcohol sales are restricted until after 12:30 pm on Sunday afternoons but to have days where it is outright banned for religious reasons is just backwards and fundamentally wrong in a multicultural and modern society.

The reason for restriction would historically be to make sure Irish people, men in particular had nowhere else to go except to church. Once mass is over, usually by 12:30 on a Sunday, the pubs open and everyone spills in to try and forget the last hour of mind numbing boredom they just went through.

In modern day Ireland, I believe less than a 1/4 of the population of Catholics actually go to mass. Many consider themselves Catholic, as if it's a badge of honour but probably don't believe a word of it. They probably have not set foot in a church since their communion and that was only to get their gifts, usually money. Ireland has a high population claiming to be Catholic, 84% at the last census in 2011 although I highly doubt a fraction of that number is real. If 1/4 of Catholics go to mass, that might be closer to the truth.
With an ever increasing number of non Catholics in Ireland, why are we still subjecting citizens to this archaic law? Why is our government still allowing the Catholic church to dictate when we can buy alcohol?

I could now go on and rant about the ever increasing restrictions on alcohol trading in Ireland, such as reducing the opening hours of off-license (liquor stores/supermarkets) to 10pm at night. Or this bollox about minimum pricing but anyone with an ounce of sense knows that the more you restrict something, the more it will be consumed and you only end up hurting responsible people, those that make up the majority of the population. Rather than do that, I will direct those interested to an article that Beoir chairperson Séan Billings wrote last year. He uses fancy graphs and everything.

The funny thing is, there are exemptions to the ban. I can go to a theatre or concert at the National Concert Hall and take in a little culture and a few pints. Or I could go and gamble at a greyhound stadium and enjoy a drink to celebrate my win or drown my sorrows after losing all my money. Or I could book in to a hotel and as long as I'm resident in the hotel, the hotel bar can serve me. I wonder do hotels in Ireland see an influx of people on good Friday?

I think alcohol should be available to any who want it on any day of the year and at any time. If I'm at a 24 hour supermarket doing some shopping, I should be able to grab some beer or wine for the next day.
If the reason for the alcohol sale ban is the Church, then they should be told to fuck off.
If it's another ridiculous attempt to reduce how much we drink, then the government should fuck off and have a long hard think about things. They should be changing the way people see alcohol instead of restricting it.
One politician did try to do just that. Michael McDowell proposed to grant licences for café-bars in 2005. These would have a limited capacity to serve alcohol and food. It was hoped that this would combat binge drinking by introducing a more European "café culture". This initiative was dropped owing to objections from publicans. Many politicians are also publicans, so you can see where the real problem with our drinking culture might come from. The very people who say we drink too much, we better restrict alcohol are the very people who likely cause us to drink so much in the first place.
The best way to tackle alcohol abuse is to make it socially unacceptable to be drunk. Let people drink as much as they like, when they like but keep it in check and go home sober without causing disruption to anyone else.

What's going on with the weather?

2013-03-26T10:21:00.004Z

It's March 26th and it's snowing in Dublin. Not bad snow, it's not even sticking to the ground but the fact it's now mid spring (yes mid in Ireland) and it's still cold out is very odd. In fact, we had a warmer February. Actually we had some nice sunny days.

One sunny morning was actually fairly recent. Two weeks ago, on Saturday the 16th for instance, the day started out gloriously. I was standing at the train station in Blanchardstown (Dublin suburb) waiting for the train with clear blue skies, hot sun and wishing I was not wearing a long sleeve underneath my Beoir T-Shirt.
I would be somewhat glad of the extra layer a little later. Sporadic hail and rain assaulted us later.

I was on my way to the Irish Craft Beer Village which was located near the IFSC down by the docklands area. This is either the second or third year we have had a craft beer festival for the St Patrick's (Paddy's) week festival. I only know it to be the second but I have heard it said it's the third. Anyway, I was there last year and while it was great, there were some lessons to be learned for this year.

Sadly, the use of plastic cups are still forced upon festival organisers for health and safety/insurance reasons. It was a shame last year because they had ordered thousands of glasses for the festival but could not use them. Thankfully they were still usable in September for the much bigger beer festival in the RDS.

The main reason I was at the beer festival on the Saturday was to give a talk at 4pm about the history of brewing in Ireland, mainly from the time of St Patrick until today. It was supposed to be a quick 20 minute talk with three free tastings of O'Hara's beers. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan. The Ireland - Italy rugby match was on and went on longer than expected. Once that was finally over (we lost), the band had to go back on for a while. I had three people waiting with me for the talk but they eventually had to go.
It was 6pm by the time I was able to make the announcement and only 5 or 6 ended up coming over for the talk. In some ways, it was a good talk because there was a lot more interaction due to the intimate group. We were celebrating Irishness and there is nothing more Irish than starting something 2 hours later than billed.

The delay meant I could drink more beer though, so from my perspective, it was not such a bad thing.
There were not too many surprises at the beer festival, most of the beer is stuff I have had before so I avoided them knowing I can drink them any time in more comfortable surroundings and with more appropriate glassware. Instead I spent most of the day going back and forth between two new beers.
From Carlow (O'Hara's), we had probably the first real attempt by an Irish brewery to bring out a double IPA. This is similar to the regular O'Hara's IPA but it's 7.5% and clearly has more hops thrown in. I'm not sure if it's dry hopped, while the aroma is stronger than its little brother, it still seems less aromatic than one might expect. I look forward to trying this dry hopped on cask some time but even at the festival, the beer was moreish.

The other new beer was a whiskey barrel aged stout from 8 degrees called Kindred Spirit. This was 7% and surprisingly good. The vanilla/oakiness were huge in the beer, almost in your face but without distracting from the rich dark chocolate and stout underneath. To me, it was like an 80% cocoa dark chocolate bar. There was a hint of coffee hidden underneath the vanilla along with notes of honey. This beer was pure heaven for me, the only problem was that it was served far too cold. It seemed colder than the pale ales even.

The only other beer I had was just before I left, I tried the Trouble Brewing sabotage just to see if it was the same or had matured. It was the same, again not a bad beer at all and in fact a firm favourite among many attendees but for me, it's an unfinished beer.

A big thanks to the Carlow Brewing Company for organising yet another fantastic festival. I saw no real issues this time around. Thomas was in charge of the bar and since he works for The Bull and Castle, he certainly knows his craft beer and how to serve it.

The Beer Nut has already written his report and is worth a read.

Brew #52 and #53 #IHP2013

2013-03-24T21:05:00.003Z

Here are my last two homebrew recipes. The first is my IHP 2013 recipe. This is a re-creation off a Burton pale ale made by Truman's called No.4 from the 1970's.
The recipe is simple with only pale malt and two hop additions. The bitterness is ridiculous though.
I expect a somewhat interesting beer only because of its heritage but I don't expect there to be much subtlety. I kegged this last week so will probably tap it next week or the week after. I drank my sample when taking the SG as I always do. It's rather bitter and might be quite nice with some conditioning.
It's worth noting that the beer is supposed to be 7.3% and I only got 5.8%

IHP 2013- 1870s Burton PA - Truman No. 4

14-A English IPA
Author: Reuben Gray (Saruman)
Date: 23/02/2013

Size: 20.64 L @ 20 °C
Efficiency: 66.06%
Attenuation: 67.7%
Calories: 219.6 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.065 (1.050 - 1.075)
|=================#==============|

Terminal Gravity: 1.021 (1.010 - 1.018)
|=============================#==|

Color: 13.25 (15.76 - 27.58)
|====#===========================|

Alcohol: 5.8% (5.0% - 7.5%)
|=============#==================|

Bitterness: 125.2 (40.0 - 60.0)
|================================|

Ingredients:

6,830.0 g (100.0%) Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt - added during mash
100 g (47.6%) Cluster (6.3%) - added during boil, boiled 90 m
100 g (47.6%) East Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 30 m
10.0 g (4.8%) Fuggle (6.1%) - added during boil, boiled 30 m
1 ea White Labs WLP013 London Ale
1 g Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 m

Notes

SG was 1.062 at 30c which adjusted is 1.065

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.24

While I was Kegging tye above, I was also brewing a porter. I usually do stouts but I decided to give a porter a go and throw some hops I have never used before in to see what I come up with. I hit my SG perfectly so hopefully I will also hit my TG.
I piched this beer on the yeast cake of IHP2013 so that might make it interesting.

Muddy Waters

12-B Robust Porter
Author: Reuben Gray (Saruman)
Date: 18/03/2013

Size: 20.64 L @ 20 °C
Efficiency: 66.06%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 171.99 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.052 (1.048 - 1.065)
|===========#====================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.013 (1.012 - 1.016)
|===========#====================|

Color: 54.84 (43.34 - 68.95)
|===============#================|

Alcohol: 5.08% (4.8% - 6.5%)
|==========#=====================|

Bitterness: 55.0 (25.0 - 50.0)
|===========================#====|

Ingredients:

4396 g (76.0%) Maris Otter Pale Ale Malt - added during mash
550 g (9.5%) Crystal Malt 250 - added during mash
480 g (8.3%) Brown Malt - added during mash
204 g (3.5%) Special B - added during mash
156 g (2.7%) Roasted Barley - added during mash
25 g (50.0%) Bravo (16.7%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
25 g (50.0%) Brambling Cross (7.3%) - added during boil, boiled 5 m
~~1 ea White Labs WLP013 London Ale~~
1 g Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 m

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.24

Krakow as a beer destination? Absolutely!

2013-03-17T13:05:00.001Z

Last weekend I spent an enjoyable long weekend in Krakow. I had always read that you don't go there for the beer or learn to drink vodka. I'm not a vodka drinker so it's a good thing I was able to find enough beer to keep me happy then.

Your average bar in Krakow is not only lacking in good beer, it's also hard to tell where they are and what they are like. In Ireland and indeed the UK, a pub/bar holds a place of prominence and usually has a window you can look in and see what the place is like. In Krakow, I found many of the bars were just signs on the street directing you down alleys and through unassuming doors. The only way to get an idea of what it's like is to actually open the door and walk in.

My first night I just tried some cans of regular Polish macro beer that was pretty OK. Okocim for instance and in particular, Mocne was rather enjoyable but bearing in mind that this was the first beer I had consumed in over 24 hours. Compared to the rest of the beers I had in Poland, it was pretty rubbish.

The next day, after walking around the city centre and making my way to the old Jewish quarter to see the number 1 beer bar in Krakow according to ratebeer, only to find it closed until 4 pm, we strolled back towards market square. It was well almost beer o'clock so we needed to find somewhere warm to sit and relax our weary and cold bones. We came across a Ukrainian place called Kawiarnia Ukraińska. There was some initial confusion because the Ukrainian restaurant appeared to be closed and opening in a few minutes at noon but we did not think it was the place we were looking for. Sure enough, there is a full restaurant but we were looking to get in to the little cafe that had beer on the menu. This turned out to be behind a wooden door that looked very official unless you speak Polish I guess. Once inside it was warm and delightful and we had it to ourselves for a while.

I started off with a beer that on the menu was called Lwowskie porter. The bottle arrived and said AbBIBCbKE and the word below it which sort of looks like HOPTEP literally says porter as it turns out.

Anyway it was a great start to the day because it's a warming 8% baltic porter. Pouring a deep ruby red witha frothy white head, it hit the spot with a lovely caramel base with chocolate and a hint of coffee. The alcohol was warming though not overpowering. Less cloying and more drinkable than many a Baltic porter, I could have had many more of these, well up until the 8% put an end to that idea.

Another Ukrainian beer, not knowing what most of them were, I pointed to one on the menu. My wife understands some Czech so thought the beer description (biala nic) said "Not White" which was the perfect description because what arrived was a wit that was not white. I think this may be the first dark wit I've had, plenty a German dunkelweiss but never a dark wit. The label said BiAa Hiu which I think is Beer Ahoy? Coriander and orange on the nose, Seems more like lemon than orange when tasting though. A mix of thin body at first then a stronger body later, seems a little odd in that respect. It doesn't taste like a dark beer as such but certainly a higher caramel content than your average wit.

Later we headed back to Omerta for Polish beer. This is the number one rated pub in Krakow on ratebeer and it's easy to see why. The pub is split in two. The first bar when you walk in the door contains all the Polish beers and not a macro to be seen. The second one on the other side of the pub has international stuff like Sierra Nevada, Brewdog etc. The menu is in the image above. Pinta seems to have plenty listed so I decided to start with one.

As you can see, there are two hand pumps but don't be fooled, there is no cask conditioned ale here. They are hooked up to normal kegs but the beer that comes out is still fantastic.

I immediately tried Atak Chmielu from Pinta. This was a gorgeous 6.1% IPA that's aggressively hopped and bursting with citrus goodness. At this time I assumed it was cask because it tasted like a dry hopped cask conditioned IPA to me. The beer engine must kill some of the carbonation. Luckily our barmaid had a good command of English and loved talking about beer so I had a very enjoyable time.

Next I had a 5.6% stout called Zawiercie Czekoladowe from Browar na Jurze. I think from the name that it's a chocolate stout but I can't be sure. A strong roasted malt backbone with a little chocolate, whether malt derived or added, I don't know. It's quite a nice stout with a light body and easily drunk but I prefer a little more character to my stouts.

Back to Pinta and Imperium Atakuje which as you can probably guess, is the big brother of Atak Chmielu. This is an in your face 7.8% DIPA. Absolute heaven, it had everything first one had only more so. Pure hop heaven. Handpump again but not real cask as I mentioned. Pinta has become my favourite Polish brewery.

By 8pm it got packed very quickly. Most people came in looking for craft polish beer and it was busier than the international bar. Omerta is an absolute must when visiting Krakow because of its dedication to small Polish breweries. The one thing to bear in mind is that it's a bit of a hike from the main market square area. Also nearby (around the corner) is BeerGallery and a few others dotted around so if you have the time, it might be worth visiting a few in the area. I did not alas so it was only Omerta for that night.

The next day, after a long walk around Auschwitz and Birkenau and then a further 3km walk under ground in the salt mines, we were seriously ready to sit down and have some beer. I was in charge of the pubs so I decided it would be shame not to visit the cities only brewpub, even if reviews are not very favourable. It's called CK browar.

I'm going to give them points for this alone. You can, of course order beer by the glass/pint or you can order 3.3L or 5L tubes with a tap. We got a sample tray and settled on the dunkel as being by far the best beer. Looking around, we were the only ones else everyone else had pale beer in their tubes.

I actually did enjoy my time there. The main complaint is the loud music, though it's not so loud that we could not talk, the problem is that it was terrible music, well to me anyway. I have no interest in top 40. We decided to move on after our beer was done. By the way, you might be wondering about the beers? Well the dunkel was pretty good as was the wit. The others were pretty meh and one was completely undrinkable, I think that was the ginger beer? It tasted like Becherovka. One last thing, I had heard that this was one of those pubs that charge to go to the toilet. This is the case but not if you're eating and we had some snacks. Somehow the attendant knew this when my friend went before leaving. Maybe a big brother type thing where she takes note of those eating and those just drinking? It was the only bar we were in that had this stupid practice.

We decided then to go to The Beer Gallery right in Market Square, sister to the one near Omerta. It looked pretty empty at 10pm on a Sunday.

Indeed, it was empty and we were told they were closing in a half hour. This was a pity because the place was warm and welcoming with soft couches all around. We sat at the bar with a view of the beer. The beer selection is mostly bottles but they have a fair few taps, it just did not seem to be as good a range as Omerta.

I decided on a Pilsner called Miłosław from the Fortuna brewery but to be honest, it was the wrong choice for my last beer of the night. I found it a little heavy and sickly for my taste.

I could easily have spent the entire day relaxing here and drinking. They had what seemed to be the whole range of Pinta beers in bottle, though not on tap. A couple of English men did come in while we were there giving the bar 6 patrons instead of just 4. The bar tender did not seem very friendly but perhaps that was because he was busy getting ready to close up. He had a lot of cleaning and accounting to do so maybe that was why.

So a surprisingly good range of beer and places to drink it in Krakow, added to the fact that beer in a bar costs about €2 and flights can be good value, it makes a weekend in Poland very tempting. Our hotel only cost €64 for three nights and it was an Ibis budget right by the train station. You can get to said train station from the airport. Everything seems to be about a third of the price it would be in Dublin. I managed to not drink any vodka on my trip, though perhaps that was a mistake? Maybe next time I will try one.

Kinnegar Brewery - Donegal

2013-03-04T09:47:00.001Z

Kinnegar claims to be probably Ireland's newest and smallest brewery. I can't dispute that claim as it probably is even if about a year old, though more are opening for business in the near future so it will be short lived as newest.

Finding bottles is not an easy task because the brewery is set in the wilds of Donegal and since the brewery is, from what I've heard, a large home-brew sized setup, production is very limited. Nano-Brewery might be the buzz word of choice here.

I've only had one bottle of their Devil's Backbone and I'm not sure what to make of it. Without slamming them completely, I will say that the beer has potential but seems to be suffering some production issues. As you can see from the image above, even a carefully poured beer results in pretty much half a pint of foam. It's far too carbonated and this ruined a lot of the beer for me making it hard to pick out any real character and what I could pick out might only have been because of the biting fizz.

There might be a missed opportunity to tap in to the surfing population that travel to Donegal each weekend to catch the waves. Kona does very well in Hawaii with such tactics. Perhaps a special summer beer aimed at surfers, they can even stick their bunny on a surf board, it already looks like it could be on water.

Anyway I think that's all I will say for now because they are pretty new and it's always great to see new Irish breweries, especially out in the back-o-beyonds. I hope they sort out the teething problems and move on to making fine beer. Perhaps it will even be available on tap in Dublin some day. For now though, Donegal has a local brewery that its inhabitants should seek out and support.

I'll have some Japanese craft beer on tap with my sushi please

2013-02-28T18:25:00.001Z

I recently tried Dublin's Yamamori Izakaya for the first time. Yamamori, for those that do not know is a chain of Japanese restaurants in Dublin. There used to be just one on south great Georges street but in recent years they opened two more and each one now specialises in something. The original is now Yamamori Noodles. A newer Yamamori Sushi opened a few years ago opposite the ha'penny bridge and the most recent one is Yamamori Izakaya pretty much opposite the original one on south great Georges street. The fact of the matter is that no matter which one you go to, you can have more or less the same types of food so you don't have to go to the sushi restaurant to have sushi.

Izakaya though does boast a Hitachino Nest beer on tap, where as the others only offer them in bottles. In fact it has a proper bar you can sit at. Imagine it as a Japanese drinking house.

The beer in question is called Nipponia. It's a 6% strong golden ale featuring Sorachi Ace hops. I would consider this semi-sweet and I reckon the finishing gravity is high enough. The hopping is middle of the range so it does little to counteract the sweetness. That said, the beer is anything but cloying and the hops provide a grassy, lemon citrus quality that pleases. Overall the beer is surprisingly easy to drink and downing two of them was easy enough. The only thing preventing a third (which I wanted) was the lack of space in my stomach after all the sushi (which is brilliant by the way).

My wife went for the white ale which comes in a 330ml bottle. Be advised that the bottle is €6 which is the same price as a full pint of Nipponia, and that's 6%. The point is, you get a lot more beer for your money by getting the Nipponia and my wife made that her second beer. OK enough digressing, the white ale is pretty much your standard witbier affair. A little watery, some lime and coriander It's nice enough but do yourself a favour and go for the Nipponia, you will not be disappointed.

Winter Ales and Cask Festival 2013

2013-02-24T00:37:00.000Z

From the Franciscan Well Facebook page.

This day last week, I hopped on a train at 11 am and arrived in Cork at 1:45 for the 3rd annual Winter Ales and Cask festival at the wonderful Franciscan Well. I popped in to a pub beforehand to meet up with some Cork friends we have not seen in ages. Damn babies get in the way of everything. I arrived at the festival at about 3 pm. There were two beers gone from the Friday, Barrelhead pale ale and Trouble Sabotage, both of which I have had so only a minor loss.

I started off with the two Metalman Chameleon beers I have not had yet. Bräu (left) is a lovely and refreshing pseudo lager that by all accounts is going to be a regular. A hint of honey to balance the spicy, grassy saaz hops they threw in the cask. It's an excellent summer beer.

Garnet (right) is a little different. It looks like a red ale and indeed contains the malt profile of one from what I can tell. However they hopped it heavily with New Zealand hops and Japanese hops: Pacific jem and Sorachi ace. And in case there wasn't enough in the boil, they bunged them both in the cask too. The Chameleon range is spur of the moment brewing at its finest. It was hard to get through the bitter hops to the beer below but I really enjoyed it. I think a slight twinge of metallic notes spoiled it somewhat, something I expect from Kentish hops. I look forward to trying this again if it appears. The infamous (in Ireland among a select few) Metalman Pale Ale (beoir beer of 2013) came on when the garnet ran out. I skipped it since it's regularly available in Dublin on cask and is always wonderful.

I then had the Jameson cask aged version of Shandon stout, though perhaps you need to call it a different beer since it's 7.8% as opposed to the 4.2% of the regular beer. I had a half of the Jameson version and a full pint of the regular Shandon on cask a few minutes later to compare. At first I had a hard time seeing what the Jameson did for the beer other than an oaky vanilla but when side by side with the regular offering, I think it becomes a lot more obvious that it's a bit special. By all accounts the original cask at the launch was the better beer and it's a shame I missed it. Personally I think I would be happier with the regular Shandon on cask (not nitro kegged). The Jameson aged Shandon almost made my beer of the festival but is a worthy runner up.

Next up I grabbed some similar pale ales. It's nearly impossible to tell them apart. A rocky and slanting table in a beer garden during a beer festival is not the place for a blind taste test, however tempting, so I just went ahead and drank them. From left to right, we start off with the Well's own Alpha Dawg, their 5.9% IPA and I think this is the first time I have had it on cask. This is a much better offering than the bottled version. I think they took note of the "needs more hops". A lemon citrus hop bite in the end topped off a lovely IPA. It they bottle it again, I hope they dry hop it first. Also from the Well is an old favourite of mine. Purgatory changes from year to year and it seems the years it comes out dark are the best. Not this year then from the look of it. It was better than I expected, like Alpha Dawgs little brother. I always enjoy Purgatory but I found myself looking back to Alpha Dawg.

And finally on the far right, the best till last I think. Trouble Brewing's Ór, yes you heard me right! For me, beer of the festival was Ór. Now don't get me wrong, regular Ór is a fine beer but it's like a stepping stone for macro lager drinkers to the craft beer world. It's inoffensive and downable. If I was having a beer tasting session, Ór is a good one to start with because there is little hop character to interfere with the taste of the other beers. So why is it beer of the festival? I don't know, maybe it's just so unexpected. They seem to have dry hopped the crap out of the beer for a start and it was able to stand up to the other two which are always much more hop forward than Ór. I just loved it and could have had it all night. I hope to see more of this appearing in Dublin's (and indeed the country) ever increasing number of cask ale pubs.

That was all the new stuff to me, though most I have had before in different serving types. I have included a copy of the beer list for anyone interested. I had to leave before 8 to get the train back to Dublin. That's the time it starts to get busier at these events and there was little to no beer left for Sunday. Not sure what they did.

If I had one criticism of the event, and it's one that comes up at some of their beer festivals is the advertised all day BBQ. For one thing, there was none. They had pizza, and excellent pizza it is too but only from 4PM. Knowing this was likely, I ate at the pub before the festival so Pizza at about 6ish was at the right time for me. They do usually have a BBQ at the larger Easterfest which is on next month.

The only other slight criticism, and this is more down to the breweries is that unlike in previous years, there was no actual winter themed ales so it was really just a cask festival. It was good enough for me though.

From the Franciscan Well Facebook page.