Black Cat Brewery

Enigmatic one

2011-06-08T20:29:00.001+01:00

Kölsch. Surely the must elegant of beers. The most refined. Hence the fancy stemware. Apparently an ale but taste a lot like lager. Kind of lagery on the nose with a bit of sulphur and yeast. Pale as you like, with all the dryness and some of the fruitiness of white wine.

There is a certain aura around it; stories about Irish craft breweries falling foul of geographical protection law, begging to get permission to brew seasonal kölsch in Dublin. The tiny glasses it is served in in Cologne, carried around in purpose made trugs by slightly strange waiters who take their responsibility very seriously indeed all add to the intrigue.

Redeemer

2011-06-01T21:19:00.003+01:00

Every so often a beer comes along that makes you sit up and pay attention. The experience of a deep draught catches you by surprise and induces you to hold the glass before you at arm's length and stare in slight bemusement. Thornbridge's Kipling invoked just such a reaction in me. Never have I smelled such a potent and promising hop bouquet coming from a glass. The smell of fresh tropical fruit was so satisfying that I doubted the flavour could back it up. It did. In spades. The malt is on a par with the hops for freshness and body creating a beer that was designed to be guzzled.

The golden hue was threaded with haze, a sight in the past usually attributed to age or poor storage and generally foretelling an unpleasant experience before the glass got near your mouth. It now suggests the polar opposite. Haze in a great many commercial craft beers and all home brew nowadays is invariably chill haze and suggests a light touch filtration. This is almost always a good thing; it means that no flavour has been stripped from the beer. While beer can still taste exceptional after filtration, eliminating it altogether leaves the beer in its natural state. Cask ale lives like this all the time of course, but it is becoming more prominent in bottled beer and some keg. The most important aspect is perhaps the drinking public's acceptance of beer throwing a slight haze. Sure, those who slug pints of lager purely for the neurochemical effects will still baulk at a hazy pint but the steadily growing cohort of craft beer lovers are not at all put off. It is almost reassuring to see haze, and many brewers wear the unfiltered badge with pride.

This beer is what craft brewing is all about. It tastes as much like beer as Bud Lite doesn't. That makes for quite an experience.

To the Darkside

2011-05-27T20:26:00.002+01:00

It's always nice to find a twist in the mundane. I long ago started overlooking Krombacher Pils when gazing into pub fridges or perusing shop shelves. Many other lagers do exactly what it does and some of them do it much better. It makes me an ingrate I know, because at one time it was a welcome beer and I was happy to have it as an alternative to the macro lagers that swamped the Irish beerscape. The sight of the Krombacher label in dark ink grabbed my attention with precisely the equal but opposite degree of interest the pilsner label generates in my simple mind. We're quite well served for dark lager in Ireland. Budvar's is available, as is Köstritzer if you're lucky, not to mention the various more obscure ones found in the Czech Inn. Nonetheless, another is always welcome and Krombacher's proved to be very interesting, offering a little more than merely roasted notes on the back of an otherwise clean lager. I found lovely dark bread crust from the foam but more vinous alcoholic note in the mouth. Like rich cake with a hefty dose of dark spirit in it. It was surprise to find such dark ale like notes in a lager - perhaps they shouldn't be there at all, but it has certainly brought brand Krombacher back to my attention.

Limp Kiwi

2011-05-23T20:20:00.001+01:00

When I glanced at this beer on the shelf I initially dismissed it on the strength of the 'west coast' printed on the label. I thought it to be another American pale ale of the hop driven variety, that while more than likely a satisfying drop, could be overlooked in favour of something a little more eclectic. But then the '1868' in smaller print caused me to reconsider what with the craft beer scene in the US being unable to claim such a vintage. Turns out this beer is from New Zealand and so perfectly fitted my whimsy for something a little different.

I might have done better to leave it on the shelf. The label boasts of burnt sugars and blackberry - which are there without doubt, particularly the blackberry, but the whole thing is weak and insipid and even looked worn out, not managing to retain the slightest bit of the wispy foam that I coaxed from it. A bit of a disappointment but not entirely unexpected. Beer from the southern hemisphere isn't renowned for its challenging flavour but I held out hope after my experience of Brew Moon a few years ago. It's all part of the fun when hunting beer.

One wants more flavour

2011-05-18T22:13:00.003+01:00

Foolish notions of pouring the 'perfect pint' were beamed around the world this week thanks to the ever resourceful PR people at Diageo. It is unfortunate that such guff was attached to The Queen's visit but on the whole is was positive to see one of Ireland's traditional industries acknowledged, even if the brewing behind St James's Gate is carried out in a far from traditional way nowadays. The Queen seemed to look aghast at the pint as it was placed in front if her. No doubt the Diageo PR crew were willing with all their heart she might reach out, lift the pint and take a sip. But no. The reason for this may be many; it was a little early in the day, or perhaps she couldn't risk spilling any on her designer outfit. I know the real reason. She was disappointed that she was served a pint of very average ice cold nitrogenated stout when she in fact was hankering for a bottle of Foreign Extra off the shelf. Yes, that's the reason for her abstinence. There is no compare between the nitro pint in the pub and the full bodied, bitter roasted goodness of Guinness Foreign Extra. It seems that Guinness don't just do PR well, they can brew the odd decent beer too.

Hello old friend

2011-05-14T12:00:00.002+01:00

In the past on my walk home from work I was fortunate to have the option of two off licences selling good beer in the days when good beer wasn't all that common in Dublin. Closest was Sweeney's, a small pleasant smelling shop with a vast amount of wine crammed in it and, for the time, an excellent selection of beer. I distinctly remember having my first conversation about craft beer - Sierra Nevada pale ale - with the bloke who worked there and was astounded that, firstly, he knew what SNPA was and secondly, he actually had an opinion about it. Sweeney's was a wonderful source of decent after work beer for a few years until the shop was closed and the business moved to a much larger, finer building a kilometre away, but sadly not on my work route. It was bitter sweet because while I was irked by the removal of a very handy supply of good beer, the new shop expanded its stock and really took craft beer to its heart, stocking a very impressive range of beer, and not all that far from where I lived.

This left me with my second home bound off licence - Sheils, about 400 metres up the street on the opposite side to Sweeney's. The selection was never as good as Sweeney's but it was solid and more importantly for today's missive, it introduced me to Jever Pilsner. Back then I found it on special offer in a six pack of 330ml bottles. I had never heard of it, but it was cheap, German and in a handy cardboard carrier. All positives to my mind. I took a pack home and never had reason to regret my decision. It was packed with flavour and hugely satisfying. I later found out that Jever has something of a cult following in parts of its homeland. I can see why because it does offer a great deal more than most of the mass produced German lagers. Sadly Sheils has also closed down, a victim of the recession rather than any hopes of expansion and thus I am left bereft of beer options on my walk home.

I chanced upon Jever once again a few weeks ago in Mc Hugh's, another fine Dublin off licence. This time it came in a more respectable 500ml bottle and while purchasing some for the bank holiday weekend I mused over whether this beer would still offer me what it did all those years ago. There are many more miles on my palate since then, including beers that are more than a match in the flavour stakes for Jever. Thankfully it stood the test of time, offering a crisp hop profile and uncompromising bitterness. I appreciated the malt aspect a bit more, not really recalling it at all last time, but the hops and bitterness were a novelty back then.

St Petersberg. Leningrad. A stout by any other name....

2011-05-10T20:48:00.001+01:00

Stout, but with more. Even the bottle means business. It is pointy and purposeful, swathed in foil and adorned with strange, dark Gothic symbols. In short, it's an attractive bottle fully worthy to house the imperial stout within. The beer itself doesn't disappoint, pouring as black and ominous as the creepy symbol on the bottle neck. Yet again I served this stout too cold but a little time spent enjoying the coffee and dark chocolate aroma while also admiring the tightly packed foam topped inky blackness in the glass passed the ten minutes or so required to get the most from the sumptuous mix of roasted malt this beer was engineered with. At 7.7% abv this is a proper stab at an imperial stout, if perhaps a little on the low side, but the alcohol doesn't really feature in the show at all. Sure, you're aware that this beer is not to be trifled with, but the effortless blend of bitterness and coffee wrapped in full body is the memory taken away.

Get your Freon on

2011-05-08T20:19:00.005+01:00

I wouldn't want to hazard a guess at the the finishing gravity of this beer. It is a big, big beer tasting all of the 10% abv crammed into the equally imposing bottle. The good people at the Cigar City Brewery recommend that any Floridians drinking this beer crank the air conditioning way down low to maximise the winter warmer effect. A winter warmer this beer is without doubt, but I find it hard to imagine any air conditioner could provide the temperature required.
It's a strange encounter. Rich, sweet malt and sugar mingled with a reasonable dash of hops manages to get through the whipped cream tan foam and grab the nose giving the expectation of the non negotiable bitterness associated with so many American barley wines, but it doesn't come. Instead there is an immense sweetness that lingers, and lingers until sensory habituation of the sweet receptors occurs and some bitterness creeps in where it is apt to do so. It makes for a boozy, heavy, toffee/liquorice affair with hops playing second fiddle - the way a winter warmer should be.

Nice stout. Pity about the label

2011-05-01T12:50:00.000+01:00

Stout in a clear glass bottle is curious thing. It is never seen. In much the


Oirsh. To be sure.

same way paler ales are alluring in flint - and no doubt this is why brewers do it - the black bottles on the shelf of my local Lidl grabbed my attention. That was the first thing to attract me, followed very shortly afterwards by the appalling label. I understand that this label is likely to be an affront only to those who are fully integrated into Irish society, and no doubt not an eyelid was batted in other countries at those shamrocks. Indeed shamrocks are doing quite well at the moment with approximately two billion people spying them on the collar of the newly married Duke of Cambridge as he stood resplendent on the alter of Westminster Abbey in the dress uniform of the Irish Guards last week. To put it in context, overdoing the blarney on Irish beer labels is like the offensive Dolmio adverts featuring those bushy eyebrowed Calambrian puppets. No doubt a lazy stereotype that would never be aired in Italy.

Anyway, the beer. It looks like stout, smells like stout and pours like stout complete with appetising tan foam. My first few mouthfuls suffered a little because the beer was too cold and I casually dismissed it as a Diageo clone, my attitude tainted a little by certain of English brewers to be in thrall of the almighty G, but then things started to get better as the stout warmed up; hops appeared, roasted notes surfaced and the lovely vanilla like hint found in the best of stouts emerged. A nice pint and in keeping with many stouts, best served off the shelf.

A big, busty, boozy babe

2010-11-23T21:05:00.002Z

I haven't had much luck with strong Italian beer. Most of the time it is merely a stronger version of a bland thirst slaker that curiously manages to taste of just as little.

I picked up this 'Birra Artiganale' in a fabulous Roman shop richly stocked with a truly mind boggling selection of wine, olive oil, pasta, meat, cheese and chocolate. Predictably the beer selection was limited, but it gave an inkling of the small yet tenacious craft brewing industry that is taking shape in Italy.

The marketing is crass (this is but one of the beers I bought. The others included a busty red head and curvaceous brunette) but it is not entirely surprising coming from the land of Silvio Berlusconi. I can't imagine that the matronly woman on the label would be invited to one of Berlusconi's infamous 'bunga bunga' parties. He likes his women younger and slimmer if the tabloids are to be believed.

La Tabachera is a big hitting beer - the 10% abv is evident on the nose and on the tongue, but is surprisingly light for such a big beer. It is warming with whipped cream foam that faded all to quickly. The colour is an attractive copper, something not very often seen in Italian beer and more surprisingly it throws a chill haze demonstrating the brewer's commitment to unflitered ale. There's plenty of sweet honey malt to keep up the interest without any cloying, no hops to speak of but a slight chemical note bordering on industrial makes it hard to fully enjoy things.

This beer certainly stands out from all other Italian beer, even the handful of craft ales available. You can't help but think that the future of Italian craft beer rests on the ample shoulders of this woman and her equally well endowed friends.

Three in a row

2010-11-15T21:00:00.001Z

Lidl often have a few Shepheard Neame bottles about the place but I tend to shy from them because of the clear glass and homogeneity of hue. This time I decided to grab all three on offer and taste them all at once.

They share a lot in common; all are 4% abv, all require a degree of scrutiny to distinguish a difference in colour and all are faintly light struck. How do they differ? By quite a bit thankfully. When tasted sequentially they prove to be an interesting waltz through the world of Kentish ale. Autumn Blaze is perhaps most quintessentially English giving toffee, a full body, lovely Goldings hops up front and some cold tea tannins. Tapping the Admiral is a lighter affair - sweetish with a marshmallow like sensation on the tongue, little on the nose and worst afflicted by light strike. Can't say I tasted too much of the brandy mentioned on the label, but the sweetness got to me after a while. Thumping in last of all came Rudolph's Revenge, a seasonal offering packed full of earthy hops and a lingering bitterness resting on reassuring malt. There was something festive in there that I couldn't quite place, but it added a little something to an already solid ale and made it the best of them for my money.

Dog Beer

2010-04-29T16:03:00.000+01:00

I've been a away a while. Partly taking a break from the world of the internet and also because I was busy working on other things. This is not the best beer to give my blog the kick start it badly needs, but it'll do. Gimmicky doesn't begin to cover this stuff but I was unashamedly drawn right in. I bought it for the hound dog that patrols the land around my in-laws farm in Mayo. He loved the stuff, as well he might because there is a healthy does of beef extract in it. Along with the beef there is lactic acid and malt extract. I can't give you any tasting notes because I was reluctant to drink it. Also the ingredients don't inspire confidence, even for our canine friends; 'crude protein, crude fat, crude fibre and crude ash' are the main constituents, so I'm thinking snouts, trotters and tripe as the source. The glaring exception in the make up of the 'beer' is of course hops. None to be had, which is probably just as well because I more than likely would have tasted it if there had been. Wouldn't you?

Doppelgänger

2010-02-15T17:05:00.002Z

Does this label look a lot like Pilsner Urquell, or is it just me? It provoked a double take on my part when I spotted it out of the corner of my eye in the local Spar. For a moment I thought it was some manner of re-branding by the big Czech brewer, but soon realised it was a lookalike attempting to piggy back on hard won marketing of Pilsner Urquell. Interestingly this beer is brewed in Slovakia by a no doubt once proud independent brewer that is now owned by Heineken. I wonder if Slovak brewers are at all jealous of the huge success enjoyed by their once countrymen in the Czech Republic? Zlaty Bazant isn't quite as enjoyable as Pilsner Urquell; it is harsher without the effortless mellow character that I like in latter, but the nose is similar with wonder floral hops and the body has the same satisfying and distinctive malt found in lager from around those parts. Overall it's a heavier, boozier affair with a bit more DMS too, giving a slight veggie note that I don't particularly care for.

I suppose I have fallen into an inevitable comparison with Pilsner Urquell, but that's what you get when you market your beer in a perilously similar way to one of the most enjoyable lagers in the world. Sadly it was also inevitable that the comparison would be unfavourable.

Just Peachy

2010-02-10T18:04:00.000Z

One of the finest aspects of the many hop varieties available to brewers is the myriad fruit flavours and aromas that these little green leaves add to beer. Citrus notes are very pleasant, as are tropical fruit flavours such as mango. Golden Glory from Badger has a 'floral blend of aromatic and bitter hops', but there is no way that these hops alone can account for the fruity smell and flavour. The beer reeks of peaches and melon - surely the result of the addition of some fresh fruit or essence. I have never come across an ale with such a fruity aroma and flavour and find it hard to believe that it stems from hops alone. There is no mention on the label of fruit being added during the brew but the 'unmistakable peach aroma' is acknowledged.

Despite the fruity kick in the face, this beer is quite pleasant. It is sweet but not in the sickly way that Blandford Fly assaulted the palate. The body and bitterness blend well with the sweetness and make this an enjoyable experience. Summer is undoubtedly the time to fully appreciate this beer - it is refreshing, but the pong from the glass really takes some getting over.

It looks good, tastes good and, by golly, it does you good!

2010-02-02T21:33:00.001Z

I'm doing well in the low alcohol beer stakes. Manns Brown Ale satisfied me earlier and now a few cans of Mackeson Stout picked up during a trip to Northern Ireland are doing the job just as well. I've had an interest in Mackeson stout ever since my father declared that one of my first attempts at a home brewed stout tasted like it, and recited with gusto the now defunked Mackeson advertising slogan: "It Looks good, tastes good and, by golly, it does you good!" He remembered clearly the days when this stout was recommended to nursing mothers and anyone else in need of nourishment. Nowadays such statements fall foul of all kinds of advertising standards political correctness insanity despite the obvious truth to the statement. It is nutritional, and taken in moderation is a valid and welcome part of anyone's diet.

Looking back it is no surprise he drew the comparison between my stout and this one. Mine was made from heavy, sickly bitter sweet dark liquid malt extract and finished up with a high final gravity, providing plenty of residual sweetness. That's what Mackeson stout gives up too - a sweet/bitter mix with plenty of body. The full body and sweetness comes from the addition of lactose, a sugar that brewers' yeast cannot metabolise, leaving it in the finished beer. Once again, like Manns this little beer is satisfying and full despite the wee 3% abv. I must admit to having more respect for Manns because the brewers have made the beer satisfying through skilful use of malts and mashing, while brewers of Mackeson stout use lactose to pad things out, which let's face it, is cheating. It is a shame that Inbev now produce this lovely little beer because it is the very antithesis of big industry, in its little can that provides all of one unit of alcohol.

Beer, but not as we know it

2010-01-31T17:58:00.001Z

Ginger is featuring a lot in my beer drinking. This time it's a bit different. This is ginger beer in the true sense of the word - an alcoholic version of the stuff bought in the local shop. I suppose it's a viable form of beer - it's all too easy to get trapped into the restricted thinking of beer being composed solely of malt and hops, but ginger beer has neither. Most of us can live with our beer being spiced with vegetative items other than hops, and can also countenance grains other than barley, but is this stuff beer in the sense we understand it? I don't really care to be honest.

The ginger leaps from the glass and pulls the hair from your nostrils, making the eyes almost water. I love this in decent ginger beer. The heat on the tongue matches the zing in the nose, but it's sweet - too much for me, but to make things worse there is an unpleasant after taste that is the unmistakable faintly bitter note of artificial sweetener, which is a shame. Perhaps a dose of hops might fix that...

Recognition

2010-01-26T22:00:00.000Z

M&S can always be relied upon to provide some of the tastiest nibbles on the high street. Sadly the beer selection often does not match the quality of the food on offer. In Ireland we generally don't get the beer that is on sale in the UK. I do not know who decides which of the available M&S beers make their way to Irish shelves, but he/she must be influenced by sales alone because until recently only the blandest of English ale made it. I imagine their thought processes were along the lines of the Irish not being interested in English ale, what with all the Guinness we have to drink over here. In part they are correct - except that the Irish are in fact much like the British in that the beer of choice is lager, every bit as cold and bland as that on sale in the UK. Being persistently disappointed by the beer on offer has curtailed my trips to M&S, but last weekend I hit pay dirt in one of the larger stores in west Dublin. I was greeted with a wide range of beers from around Europe, not to mention some promising English ale. I grabbed a few and headed for the till.

Another strange aspect of the beer from M&S is the mysterious nature of it. Rarely is the brewery listed on the bottle - we merely have to accept that M&S source only the very best of food and drink. This practise left Irish beer lovers trying to figure out who was brewing the M&S Irish Stout that was on sale all over the UK. It turned out to be The Carlow Brewing Company, and true to their selection strategy, they couldn't have picked a better stout. Another example of this was their Cornish IPA, which turned out to be St Austell's hop packed Proper Job - a beer not made available in Ireland.

The guessing games are over now. On these most recent bottles full recognition is given to the brewery, and not before time. As a result we now know that their solid Norfolk Bitter comes from Woodeforde's. While the silky sweet Cheshire Chocolate Porter comes from Unicorn Brewery of Stockport, and their rich malty Southwold Winter Beer can be attributed to Adnams and is likely a derivation of their Broadside recipe.

It is important to know who brews the beer we drink so we might give recognition for great achievement, or know to steer clear in the future.

Sweet Fire Fly

2010-01-24T16:11:00.009Z

My last run in with an ale spiced with ginger was a hit and miss affair. The colour was great, as was the dry warmth the ginger added, but it was gassy and thin. Blandford Fly from Badger is an eqully mixed bag, but for different reasons. Once again the colour is alluring, as is the distinct ginger whiff from the rich foam. On the tongue the ginger asserts itself as a none too subtle heat that lingers on the roof of the mouth. The carbonation is just about right, and this, coupled with full body makes for satisfying drinking. Something didn't quite sit right though. The mild bitterness seems to fight against a distinct sweetness that grew more unpalatable with each return to the glass, until, with half the bottle gone, I declared myself sick of it. Where does this sweetness come from? Maple syrup. I hadn't given the label my full attention and did not notice it on the blurb, so was quite surprised when I scrutinised the bottle more carefully. I don't see the need for it. The ginger addition was well balanced adding a nice zing, but the sweetness overpowered my ailing palate. Perhaps the beer would not be the same at all without the maple syrup - it is very likely responsible for the full body I enjoyed. It seems like a strange combo too, making the beer like some manner of dessert. Perhaps a small glass, just after dinner is the way to enjoy this strange ale.

No better Mann

2010-01-14T20:22:00.002Z

Brewing beer with low alcohol content and therefore utilising small quantities of malt during the brew, but still managing to make the beer satisfying is quite a challenge. English brewers are rather good at it, knocking out any number of moreish ales at 3.5% abv. However most of these beers are at their best on cask and do not take well to being captured in a bottle. Young's Bitter comes to mind - gorgeous on cask but thin and gassy in the bottle. So, how have brewers of Manns Brown Ale managed to produce an ale of a mere 2.8% abv that is very satisfying despite being shoved in a bottle? It's a trick I would like to learn. I don't like the way that the label seems to push the beer as a mere cooking ingredient because it holds its own very well as a stand alone drink. There is surprisingly rich roasted notes, but more importantly the malt satisfies, and this is often the big let down in beer of this strength. What am I saying, 'this strength'? This stuff is far weaker than the average pint of session ale on offer in Britain which makes its drinkability all the more surprising.

Surprise delivery

2010-01-12T20:17:00.001Z

I've been away awhile. Haven't much to write amount in truth. I had the privilege of working Christmas day in the lab, which proved to be more depressing than I thought it would be. I was kept busy with incidents of gastroenteritis, no doubt a result of poorly prepared Christmas dinners. I didn't get out to a single pub over the holiday season either. A couple of days before a roaring open fire in the windswept West of Ireland did my heart good as did a lively wedding just after New Year. There was little in the way of interesting beer to be had until a surprise delivery from the nice people at CAMRA arrived. It seems the lads at Realale.com fixed their delivery issues by using a courier that I suggested to them. So bottled real ale is flowing in my house once again. I grazed on the delivery over the last week or so and declare myself quite happy with it.

Hobson's Choice proved to be a golden ale I could really get on with. I have griped about English golden ale in the past, with good reason, but this one really bucked the trend with lip smacking bitterness, full body and rounded malt.

Cheddar Ale's Totty Pot started a little weak wristed but soon gave up the goods upon warming - treacle like roasted notes were the reward for not rushing.

Grumpling Old Ale was a solid, if uneventful ruby ale. Plenty of malt and fullness but fairly typical of many other ales. There are a lot of these ales in CAMRA deliveries, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

Palmerston's Folly was unusual for a winter selection - a sweet ale with a decent dose of wheat made for refreshing drinking, but seemed incongruous among the heavier ales.

The most striking ale came from Wiltshire in the shape of Chimera IPA - heftily hopped with English fare and authentic at 7% abv. A fine beer with uncompromising bitterness and malt to match.

Deliveries are bimonthly now, instead of quarterly so I can look forward to even more tasty beer this year than last. True, there are quite often a dud beer or two to be had but on the whole my CAMRA beer instalment is well worth anticipating.

Run for the Border

2009-12-07T22:01:00.001Z

It's not really lager weather but I seem to have stumbled upon quite a few over the last few weeks. Some were very good while others missed the mark by a country mile. A trip to Newry a few weeks ago brought some lager to my attention that generally I wouldn't bother with, but the cost of alcohol in the North of Ireland is dramatically cheaper than the south, partly due to the British government's policy of effectively devaluing the pound against the Euro through various means, but also the VAT rate is lower up North. Excise is lower too. All this makes for dirt cheap consumer goods and explains why shoppers from the South of Ireland have spent over half a billion Euro in the north over the last twelve months.

My main beer objective up north was to put a dent in the selection of British ales on offer in Sainsburys. I bagged a number of ales but couldn't help picking up four cans of Basic Lager for 99p. I wouldn't have bought the stuff if it was regular strength, it was the 2% abv that got me. I had to try it, but got exactly what I anticipated - the wateriest beer I have ever tasted. There was a twinge of malt at the end and the overall flavour wasn't unpleasant, perhaps if the flavour was twice as strong it would have passed for a half decent lager. The second lager tangent was Biere des Moulon Continental, a first for me in that it came in a green plastic screw top bottle. The beer was awful, - nothing to do with the packaging, it was just a musty, bland lager, which isn't typical of most French lagers, though most can hardly be accused of a strong, distinctive flavour.

Frankfurter Premium Pils surprised me during a brief stop off at my local Aldi. Nothing new had turned up for a while on their shelves so it was nice to see a new beer on special offer. In my experience the lager in Aldi is generally good. Sure it's hop extract laden and somewhat industrial feeling, but the purity law in Germany, though not strictly binding any more, means that most brewers do not water their grist down with adjuncts. Therefore I am always hopeful that the malt aspect will satisfy. Frankfurter Pils hits the spot in this regard along with crisp bitterness and a whiff of hops. Great stuff and just as cheap as anything available up North.

Out with the old...

2009-11-21T17:47:00.003Z

Some American wheat beers do not measure up at all. The very worst of them seem to use the requisite measure of wheat that might be anticipated in the more traditional wheat beers found around Europe, but then neglect to use a suitable strain of yeast. Often a standard ale strain is used that contributes little to the flavour and leaves a beer with an insipid palate, lacking any of the usual wheat beer flavour. Speakeasy's White Lightning springs to mind in this category and Sierra Nevada's wheat beer was guilty of this to a degree, but it wasn't the worst of them by a long stretch. The brewers a Chico must have become a little self conscious about the poorer quality of their wheat beer when compared to the rest of their generally outstanding work because the SN standard wheat was replaced with a Kellerweis.

This one ticks most of the wheat beer boxes when it comes to aroma and flavour. It looks the part too, holding on to rich foam and pouring a hazy gold. Plenty of banana and cloves along with a pronounced phenolic note suggesting that a very flavoursome yeast was put to work. Initially the phenol was so strong it bordered on the sort of intensity I suffered in home brew that went bad. But this passes after a few sips leaving a more authentic Bavarian style wheat beer, a cut above most other American attempts.

I suppose the question has to be asked if American brewers actually want their wheat beers to taste like Bavarian clones. The lack of spicy character in most suggests that this was a deliberate attempt to make a beer style all of their own. This seems to be the case to me because experienced American brewers know exactly why Bavarian wheat beer tastes as it does; the yeast strain is key to it, yet many American brewers deliberately neglected to use these strains resulting in a beer with a very different, and for my money, far less satisfying flavour. Sierra Nevada saw fit to change the profile of their wheat beer. It is a change for the better, but it makes me wonder what was key to their decision. Sales I imagine, but perhaps the previous incarnation is just an unsustainable style of beer.

Ginger nut

2009-11-12T20:47:00.002Z

I can't recall having a ginger ale before. Of course I've had the alcohol free version many times - it's a favourite of mine, especially Fentimans interpretation. (Their cola is pretty damn good too, and something of a curiosity to me because I find it tastes exactly like cola bottles, which is great, but I would never have considered cola bottles to be a very authentic cola containing foodstuff, but Fentimans cola is definitely more natural than other of the major producers, so perhaps the humble cola bottle deserves more respect).

Anyway, back to the alcoholic version. In Keystone Brewery Gold Spice the ginger is vaguely present in the form of a mild, yet pleasant dry heat in the back of the throat. Even without the ginger this would be a dry beer; it has little residual body and an irrepressible stream of bubble sustaining frothy foam throughout. The bottled yeast were clearly hard at work during the conditioning of this beer. There is English hop character in there somewhere too, both aroma and a distinct bitterness, but the intense condition makes the carbon dioxide burn a little and a metallic note creeps in with it. The best part in the colour of the beer; it really lives up to its name, sporting a stunning golden hue with brilliant clarity.

This beer arrived with my last CAMRA beer club delivery, but disaster has struck. CAMRA recently outsourced the distribution and selection of their beer club to realale.com - a company I recently visited in London and were very impressed with, however they claim to have had bad luck with deliveries to Ireland in the past, with missing boxes and broken bottles occurring all too regularly. One or two of my deliveries suffered this fate, so realale.com are struggling to find a more reliable courier firm. The problem is that most couriers want to charge a fortune for delivery to Ireland. The cost isn't much of a surprise - the average box of goodies from CAMRA weighs in excess of 20 kilograms. So it looks likes no more deliveries for me in the near future until they broker a better deal. I must confess to being a little irritated.

Light surprise

2009-11-10T18:44:00.000Z

It's always nice to see a new beer on the shelves, especially when it turn turns up in an unlikely place. I spotted Wolters Pilsener in my local Spar convenience store while wandering around on mundane domestic duties. The green bottle frightened me right off, as all victims of noxious light struck beers will no doubt understand. But on closer inspection of the stock I spied six packs of the beer, with the bottles huddled tightly inside, shielding themselves timidly from the skunk inducing light. I grabbed a pack and made off home.

It is very light for a traditional pilsner - only 4% abv and sadly this comes through in the palate. While the classic lager malt and slight DMS are present it has none of the malt fullness usually found in such beers and all flavour is rinsed from the mouth far too quickly.

Perhaps I am scrutinising this beer to closely. In different conditions, a long, cold draught of this stuff would hit the spot nicely and the low alcohol content might tempt you to try another. It sure beats most of the other light flavoured lagers that we all turn to on holiday in sunny climates, but knowledge of its country of origin sets you up for a fall. Perhaps it would make a good mystery beer.

Spanish concentrate

2009-11-02T20:15:00.002Z

I can't say I've had much luck with Spanish beer. My recent trip to Barcelona introduced me to some interesting craft beer, but on the whole things aren't that inspiring when it comes to Iberian offerings. While snooping around the Playa del Ingles I stumbled upon the fancy part of their supermarket, a small section full of very expensive chocolate, pasta sauce, cold cuts and various other treats. In amongst all this was a very small beer selection, mainly consisting of strong lagers that no one in their right mind would drink while enduring Barcelona in August. I grabbed a few bottles and stashed them for consumption in a more suitable climate. Dublin in November fits the bill.

The heavy alcoholic nature of these beers suits a colder climate but alcohol is about all you get from them. Both taste damn near identical, with perhaps more sweetness from Legado de Yuste - likely stemming from the corn mentioned in the ingredients, and a slight cardboard note from Cerveza Especial, but there is little else going on. If I wanted to be cruel I'd say that these beers could be arrived at by taking a measure of the standard Spanish lager, be it Estrella or San Miguel and concentrating the solution through thermal means to produce a lager of just under double the average strength. As a result the beer would be more alcoholic, sweeter and fuller bodied, but that's about it.

Bringing that Belgian funk from Brooklyn town

2009-10-25T22:56:00.000Z

This bottle of Local 1 has spent the best part of a year in my beer fridge. Not for any reasons relating to maturation and such, merely a matter of waiting for the right moment. Monday evening last week fitted the bill; it had been a mother of a Monday in the workplace and I had some tasty cheese and cold cuts left over from the weekend. The popping of a cork from a generous bottle of beer such as this is always very satisfying. The hazy golden beer eagerly filled the glass only to retreat rapidly again leaving little foam, but the lively effervescence brought a distinct Belgian funk to the nose along with a malt sweetness that translates into a honey sweetness on the tongue.

I suppose this beer is a take on the Belgian Tripel - the label speaks of raw sugar additions from Mauritius which serve to thin out the body and make the beer very drinkable despite the hefty 9% abv. It works very well in this sense. The '100% bottle refermentation' make this a lively beer and I imagine the cork cage has its work cut out containing the pressure. The carbonation sits nicely, and carved through the heavy cheese and other oily treats I had with it.

As an aside, you might have noticed yet another dark, flash washed out, shadow strewn picture of a beer bottle accompanying this post. It's not ideal, but at the time of drinking I just want to get the beer in the glass and enjoy it. I usually throw down a few notes, but breaking out the camera and taking a picture often ruins the moment for me. Does anyone else who indulges in this beer blogging lark feel the same, or am I just shamefully uncommitted?

Death in the northern hemisphere

2009-10-19T20:50:00.001+01:00

Summer is reluctantly giving way to autumn in Dublin. The weather is still pleasantly mild, but the state of my wife's once glorious sun flowers tell a different story. They are sorry sight but the only clear sign to me that we are careening towards less temperate weather. To my mind it isn't quite time enough to break out the winter warming beer and don't really feel like committing something dark, rich and alcoholic to a glass is fully justified.

I made do the other night with something rich and alcoholic, yet crisp and full of fresh hop character. Unsurprisingly from the West coast of America, Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale is very bitter and bursting with hop flavour. It is satisfyingly full bodied and thanks to all those floral, spicy hops it holds onto rich foam all the way to the bottom of the glass - a characteristic that always pleases me greatly in any beer. Plenty of sticky body and malt holds its own against the hop onslaught resulting in a well balanced, all too easily drinkable warming ale. A few more of these will do the job nicely until such time I can happily hit the the more traditional cockle warmers.

How to make your taste buds disappear completely

2009-09-29T18:35:00.000+01:00

Damn this stuff is bitter. I mean coat the top of your mouth make you pull a funny face, still in the back of your throat an hour later bitter. It makes even the most intense American hop bomb taste like a pint of mild. It's hard to see the point of it. I read a while back that plenty of rich malts were used to balance the intense hopping in this lightweight beer, and at the time this intrigued me. Was it possible to add that much hops to a beer of a mere 3.5% and make it any way balanced? The answer's no. The hops are so intense they burn, and the body gives up long before it has a chance to contribute anything. It does smell amazing though, and the pungent hops would make you think that you are in for a big heavy hitting alcoholic hop bomb.

Care should be taken when drinking this beer. After I finished the bottle I was ravenous despite having my dinner shortly before. The intense bitterness stimulated my appetite ferociously, and I found myself raiding the fridge before bed for just about anything I could get my hands on. Not one for the diet conscious.

I didn't enjoy it, but as an experiment this beer is superb. It highlights everything that is right with the new breed of craft brewer at work today.

Hardness and alkalinity Part 1

2009-09-23T20:55:00.001+01:00

Water hardness and alkalinity are some of the trickier aspects of brewing to get a grip of but the benefits and improvements it can bring to your brewing make it well worth looking into. Suitable water improves every step of the brewing process. I already outlined the importance of calcium in a previous post. This post is a guide to assessing the hardness of your water supply and its suitability for mashing. First we need to get some definitions straight as it is these phrases that often cause the most confusion:

Hardness: This is essentially the concentration of calcium and magnesium in the water. It is divided into two further sets of terms:

Permanent hardness also called non-carbonate hardness. This cannot be removed from the water by simple means. It is made up from calcium and magnesium compounds such as calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.

Temporary hardness also called carbonate hardness or alkalinity. This can be removed through the various treatments that brewers use, and is responsible for the lime-scale on household appliances. It is made up of calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate.

The significance of the distinction is seen when we consider what the two types of hardness bring to brewing. Carbonate hardness increases mash pH by neutralising the natural acids contributed by the mash, dragging the mash pH away and above the 5.4 that is optimal for malt amylases to work. Non carbonate hardness lowers mash pH and is beneficial to meeting the optimal mash pH.

The contrasting action of these differing forms of hardness leads us to another important term in brewing water chemistry: residual alkalinity. This is the net effect of the water hardness on the mash, and the extent to which the water will have to be treated to meet requirements. For most Irish water supplies carbonate hardness will out-weigh non carbonate hardness and the water will require a degree of treatment to lower the alkalinity.

Water reports state water hardness in 'equivalents' of calcium carbonate or bicarbonate. This is necessary in order to compare the different types of hardness in the water on a equal footing. When compared in this way it is seen that 3.5 equivalents of permanent calcium hardness or 7.5 equivalents of magnesium hardness is required to offset the pH raising effects of 1 equivalent of carbonate hardness. It is clear from these figures that carbonate hardness is very potent at increasing mash pH. If your water supply is low in carbonate hardness it might be possible to offset the residual alkalinity through the addition of calcium sulphate or calcium chloride, which is likely to be added at any rate in order to increase the calcium concentration to a more suitable level. However, if the carbonate hardness is very high, adding calcium to the water will not be sufficient to overcome the residual alkalinity and the carbonate hardness must be removed.

In my next post I will provide some simple methods for estimating alkalinity, and how to remove it.

Bigger than planned

2009-09-22T21:44:00.001+01:00

I haven't brewed nearly enough over the last few months. It was time to remedy this with a bang, so last weekend I planned to brew an American IPA. It got away from me a bit thanks to some overly zealous hopping (is that possible in an American IPA?) and a better than expected extraction of sugar from the mash.

25 litres
5 kg Maris Otter
2 kg Munich malt
500g Cara Munich

35g Galena 13% AA 60 minutes
25g Centennial 10.5% AA 20, 10, 5, 0 minutes

OG 1.078

60 IBU estimated

Saf 05

I gave my mash tun a serious workout and it held up admirably. Once again I treated my water, bring the calcium up to around 160 ppm through additions of calcium sulphate and calcium chloride. I rid myself of around 130 ppm of pesky alkalinity using carbonate reducing solution and everything went very well indeed. I planned for 75% efficiency and an OG of 1.070, but achieved about 80% and ended up with 1.078. Very gratifying but the fact that my last runnings came in at 1.030 indicates that I just can't get the damn fermentable sugar out of the mash tun. The chemistry was perfect; the temperature held at 66 C and pH fell in a spot on 5.4, but the damn grain held on to the sugar. Not to worry. I'm not a penny pincher and have no problem dumping the grain. Perhaps in future I'll do some small beer.

I opted for some first wort hopping because Galena can be a little harsh, and also the hop rate was quite liberal. I used pellets for the Centennial and had to break out some extra kit to cope with all the pellets. I planned to make a big beer with plenty of rich malt for quite some time, the hope being that the richer Munich malt will provide a decent base for the hops.

Below is a video of Saf 05 yeast hard at work. The wort looks like swamp water because my set up dumps all the break material into the fermenter, but the beer generally drops bright in the end with no ill effects.

Jack Russell not Great Dane

2009-09-16T22:09:00.001+01:00

With all the hype around Brewdog's heavy hitting beers it's easy to forget that they produce beer of average strength too. Well, easy for me to forget at any rate because until recently I couldn't get my hands on any of it. This was happily remedied with a recent trip to The Drink Store of Dublin's Stoneybatter. A number of Brewdog beers have turned up there including The Physics and 77 Lager, both of which are lightweights compared to Brewdog's more potent beers, but they do not suffer in the flavour stakes and will stay in my memory just as long as their bigger beers. It is clear that the philosophy of packing in the flavour is avidly adhered to in these beers despite the pedestrian nature of the style, being far closer to the average beer on the street that Brewdog swore not to emulate.

77 Lager is unlike any other lager you will try. The hop choice is not one associated with a lager (Amarillo, I think) but the taste and aroma is very satisfying. I wouldn't class it as a lager on a blind taste and it likely only masquerades as a lager because of a period of cold storage that the majority of ales undergo anyway. It's certainly clean like a lager but the orange fruiy flavours probably undo the work of the lager yeast strain, if indeed one was used.

The Physics falls directly into standard British ale territory, but with more teeth in the form of a surprising bitterness. The malt that drives this beer is superb and probably the best I have tried in quite some time. Crystal and Caramalt is mentioned on the label. I will be seriously looking into this combination to get that juicy, chewy malt aspect into my own beer.

Proper, Proper Job

2009-09-07T20:57:00.007+01:00

I knew when I read the back label on the bottle of St Austell's Proper Job I had tried the beer before. The front label tells us that it is 'powerfully hopped', but in general, unless it's BrewDog telling me that, I tend to ignore it, knowing that my idea of powerfully hopped and the average British brewer's idea are two quite distinct things. A further study of the label makes for very interesting reading; Willamette, Chinook and Cascade are listed as the hops employed and it is at this point that punters might have reason to think they have something quite special on their hands. As it turns out this ale is powerfully hopped in a very satisfying manner. Frankly, for a British bottled ale it is astounding, full of hop flavour and resins all wrapped around a satisfying malt base. I could drink this stuff all day, but at 5.5% abv it would take its toll.

I mentioned that I thought I had crossed paths with this beer before, well, I am certain that it is none other than the Marks and Spencer Cornish IPA I tried in London earlier in the year. In that post I begged M & S to unleash this beer on the Irish market, and I will once again reiterate this plea; Take back the Yorkshire Bitter and give us this wonderful IPA instead!

Happy birthday Grandad

2009-09-07T20:12:00.004+01:00

The weekend found me visiting the English suburbs of my early childhood for my Grandad's ninetieth birthday. We had a get together involving four generations of my father's side of the family, something that really drives home just how old my grandfather is. He was born in 1919 and spent all his life in the historical town of Egham, except for a stint in the army which found him carrying a Bren gun around the deserts of Africa. That's him on the right in the 1940's, in uniform enjoying a pint of something dark, more than likely Guinness.

Egham is only around 20 miles form London and the most direct route to London from Egham takes you straight past Chiswick on the M4. I discovered this while being ferried to the RealAle.com bricks and mortar shop near Twickenham. Chiswick is of course home to Fuller, Smith & Turner, the producers of any number of great beers, and usually there is some Fuller's to be had in the pub that housed our family get together. I was surprised to find that the biggest seller the pub stocks at the moment is Doom Bar from Sharp's brewery of the Southwest. My uncle had travelled from down that way and was disgusted that a beer from his region was on offer near London. His other options were Courage Best Bitter, which was thin and bland, and Bomardier which surprised me with a distinct and very pleasant English hop flavour I can't say I really noted before. Apparently Doom Bar is the most popular beer the pub has ever stocked, but I can't say I rated it all.

Having checked out their website, my trip to the RealAle.com shop was much anticipated. As it turned out, the website does not do justice to the selection on offer. BrewDog are well represented and I took advantage of this by grabbing some Atlantic IPA, How to Disappear Completely and Storm. American beer was present in force, though a little pricey so I restricted myself to Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron and Victory's Storm King Imperial Stout. Out of curiosity I bagged some Thornbridge Brewery Jaipur IPA to see what all the fuss is about and in keeping with the Corninsh beer theme, some St Austell Brewery Proper Job, which I am sure I have tried before, but more about that in a later post.

Barcelona

2009-09-02T12:35:00.005+01:00

I know what you're thinking: this is not a city for lovers of beer, and in some respects you'd be correct. You won't find any cask ale here and for the most part the beer on offer is very bland and very cold, but happily the beer consumed in Barcelona, particularly in the heat of an August afternoon hits the spot nicely. You hardly find yourself drinking for gastronomic reasons, more as a means to stay alive, lest thirst and heatstroke kill you. Perhaps I'm being a little melodramatic, but ice cold beer in these conditions really does offer a revival to a body past its thermal comfort zone.

Our hotel was in the Exiample quarter of town, and area north of the old town and built after the old town burst through the city walls during a period of rapid expansion. Exiample sits in stark contrast to its older neighbourhood; a strict grid like lay out of smaller streets crossing larger avenues similar to New York makes for easy navigation, while the Barra Gotic and La Ribera of the old town are a confusing, seemingly random network of small streets that once sat within the old city walls, and savagely bisected by the relentlessly busy La Ramblas. As it turned out the Eixample proved to be an excellent location for beer bars, or 'cervecerias'. The Pilsner Urquell boards outside Mengi Mengi drew us in while out for a stroll after dinner on our first night. Along with quality Czech lager on tap, the bar sported a number of beer fridges stocking a solid if unspectacular selection of beer from Germany and Belgium as well as some Argentinian Quilmes Lager, which I tried for the first time. The Pilsner Urquell came served in a glass from the freezer and, unsurprisingly was very cold indeed. Luckily this lager still gives plenty of flavour at that temperature and it went down very nicely.

Lunch for us generally meant tapas. There are many places around the city to try it, but once again our hotel proved to be right next to one of the best tapas bars in town that also just happened to have a decent beer menu. Cervesia Catalan is a very busy spot, but thankfully our custom of eating quite a bit earlier than the locals meant that getting a table was straight forward. It appeared to be something of an extreme sport later in the evenings when the locals emerged from their labours for a spot of supper. Walls lined with beer bottles surround diners, and good selection is offered on the menu. Standard Spanish lager is available on tap, which I washed down some omelet and potatoes with. I followed this with some Timmerman's Kreik - a mistake I realised too late. Timmerman's appear to be one of the many Belgian brewers out there making a very good living from putting E numbers and fruit syrups into weak lambic, not to mention an unhealthy dose of artificial sweetener. Nasty stuff and a lesson learned. After lunch we exploited the most civilised of Mediterranean traditions - the siesta, a healthy dose of tapas and cold beer aids this no end.

Two minutes west of the Placa de Catalunya will find you in the incongruous medieval hard wood and wrought iron interior of Alt Heidelberg, a German bar serving a decent selection of beer nicely complemented with tasty German fare and traditional local tapas. Once again Pilsner Urquell is the main beer available on tap - a little confusing because the aged menu suggested that other beers are available. The same thing occurred in Mengi Mengi, where the menu would have you believe that Spaten is on draught, but a request for draught beer will get you Pilsner Urquell. It seems that SAB Miller have muscled into the better beer bars and forced all other producers, except for the Spanish macros, from the bar. Confusingly the menus are often not updated, and the waiters will not inform you that the beer you think you are ordering isn't in fact on offer. The highlight of this visit for me was some Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. It was all brown sugar and treacle, the ordering of which raised a smirk from the waiter who I am sure thought I had taken pot luck from a Spanish language beer menu and didn't realise what I was letting myself in for. I washed down some excellent sauerkraut and bratwurst with the porter and topped it off with a sweet and refreshing Lindeman's Peche - which raised yet another smirk from the waiter.

Our last evening found us enjoying after dinner drinks in D'Or, yet another bar with a respectable beer selection only minutes from our hotel. Large ornate German beer fonts on the tables immediately alert you to the possibility of a decent pint, but it was the more obscure Catalan beers from Cerevesera del M ontseny that caught my attention. Nonchalantly dropped in among a list of European beers of note was Lupulus. Thankfully my extensive knowledge of Latin meant that this beer did not slip by and I was rewarded with a healthy dose of American C hops more intense than I ever dreamed of from a Spanish beer, and on top this delight it was bottle conditioned to boot. It was a little soup like but really delivered. Happy with this find I opted for another beer from Cerevesera del Montseny, this time their dark beer described as 'cervesa negra Irlandesa', so it was not hard to see what they were driving at. Unsurprisingly it didn't quite hit the mark, resembling a thin, weaker English stout rather than the fuller Irish interpretation. Once again a funny look met my request for this dark beer. Spanish waiters seem concerned that a punter will, heaven forbid, stumble into a dark beer. This is ice cold lager country after all. A curious thing, but it's nice to know that the waiters have the beer novice's well being at heart.

Calcium

2009-08-27T21:05:00.006+01:00

Calcium is essential to every step in the brewing process. Most water supplies used in brewing are deficient in calcium and additions of salts are required to increase calcium to a more suitable level. The main actions of calcium are:

It influences mash pH in a beneficial way, ensuring that the pH is kept low enough for effective mashing. This is achieved through interaction of calcium with carbonates in the water. Carbonates tend to increase wort pH, dragging it away from the optimal pH of around 5.2. Calcium binds to carbonates forming compounds that precipitate out of solution and remove the ability of carbonates to influence mash pH.

Calcium protects malt amylases against heat inactivation during the mash. Malt amylases steadily lose their ability to convert starch into simpler sugars during the mash because the mash temperature is a compromise between the optimal operating temperature of both alpha and beta amylase. Alpha amylase suffers most during the mash, but a sufficient calcium concentration protects the enzyme from heat inactivation.

During the boil trub is formed by the precipitation of protein matter through thermal degradation, but calcium plays a significant role in trub formation by neutralising protein molecules through electrostatic interactions. A minimum calcium concentration of 100 mg/l is required for good trub formation.

Yeast flocculation is aided by calcium through the interaction with proteins on yeast cell walls. Most strains require at least 50 milligrams/litre (mg/l) for good flocculation.

Beer stone is formed from a build up of oxalate on brewing equipment. Oxalate in packaged beer provided nucleation sites for carbon dioxide that promotes gushing upon opening of the package. Values of 70 - 80 mg/l are sufficient to remove excess oxalate from the brewing process.

When making calcium additions it is important to account for the significant amount of calcium that is retained in the grain during mashing. The calcium that ensures effective mash pH is sacrificed during the acidification process in the form of calcium carbonate, a solid that precipitates and sticks to the grain. This loss can account of or 50 - 60% of the calcium in the mash.

Increasing calcium values to 200 mg/l has shown to increase run off from the mash tun, improve extraction and also increase free amino nitrogen - an essential nutrient for yeast. As the the wort gravity decreases during run off the pH tends to increase, promoting the undesirable extraction of tannins and silica from malt husks. However, it has been noted that increasing calcium in sparge water to 200 mg/l can prevent the wort pH increasing and reduces the extraction undesirable compounds.

The amount of calcium in your brewing water can be measured using test kits that are commonly used for aquarium water analysis. However, it can be assumed that most brewing water does not a have the 100 - 150 mg/l calcium that is desired for brewing. Below are some simple calculations for making calcium additions using minerals commonly used in brewing.

The water will have a some calcium already present, though it will very likely be sub-optimal. When calculating the amount of calcium to add, the quantity of calcium in the water already must be subtracted. So that's the first step.

This value is then divided by the percentage of calcium present in the salt you have decided to add. This value differs depending on the salt used and the extent to which water is bonded to it. Calcium sulphate has the chemical formula CaSO₄.2H₂O. A bit of chemistry tells us that calcium accounts for 23% of this molecule, so the value of calcium in mg/l that we want to add is divided by 0.23.

This value is then multiplied by the litres of water that you want to treat.

The most common calcium additions in brewing water come from the following salts:

Calcium sulphate: CaSO₄.2H₂O - 23% of which is calcium

Calcium chloride: CaCl₂.

Calcium chloride is very hygroscopic, which means it readily absorbs water from the atmosphere. As a result it is found in a number of forms. This influences the amount of the salt that must be added. If the molecule has two water molecules attached calcium makes up 27% of the molecule, but if has seven water molecules attached calcium makes up only 18% of the molecule. That means our numbers in the calculations in step two are 0.27 and 0.18 respectively.

An example might help clarify this:

Take some tap water with a calcium concentration of 60 mg/l. Let's say we boost the calcium to a more respectable 150mg/l, and we're brewing a stout so we should use calcium chloride to add some body.

There's 60mg/l calcium in the water already, this means we need an additional 90 mg/l to meet our desired value of 150 mg/l. Calcium chloride takes up water readily so we'll assume that your supply of calcium chloride is fully saturated with water thanks to the shoddy way you store it. This means you have:

CaCl₂.7H₂O - 18% of which is calcium.

You want to add 90mg/l:

90/0.18 = 500 mg/l

You have, say, 30 litres of water to treat, so:

500mg/l x 30l = 15000 mg = 15 grams of calcium chloride in 30 litres.

The scenario is the same for the addition of calcium sulphate to water used to brew a crisply hopped pale ale.

We need to add, say, 100 mg/l calcium so,

100/0.23 = 435 mg/l

And we need to treat 40 litres of water:

435 x 40 = 17391 mg = 17.4 grams of calcium sulphate in 40 litres.

As can be seen, it is easy to boost the calcium levels in brewing water, but it is important to consider that in each of the examples above addition of chloride and sulphate were also made to the water, which might result in a unsuitable balance of each of these constituents. A blend of both can help too much of either dominating, while ensuring that calcium levels are met.

Dark beer and dark evenings, all fit for writing

2009-08-25T19:18:00.004+01:00

The Beer Nut's musings on the joys of 'having written' gave me much to think about yesterday. I agree with him entirely, particularly about the joys to be had from a disciplined approach to writing. Sadly, I don't feel as disciplined as perhaps I should be, and my rigidity of thought with respect to how important it is to be disciplined and my apparent lack of it, is a source of consternation to me. I mean, take a look at Ron, he's a blogging machine, driven by what precisely I don't know, but you know he just loves it. Not just the having written aspect but the process of cramming all those facts and anecdotes into his posts. Mark Dredge is similarly prolific, but he just wants to write, it is essential to his well being and his beer blogging is a means of combining two things he enjoys. If you query The Beer Nut about why he blogs, he'll give you a glib answer along the lines of the need to document the beer he drinks, but it's clear there is far from mere ticking at work on his pages - you just don't have to write that well to make a list of conquests. The beer community is the better for it.

I'm glancing to my back garden while I painfully hammer out these words. Things are starting to stir. The tail end of hurricane Bill is heading this way, the depression slowly moving eastward across the country, promising heavy rainfall and a night of blustery mayhem that will no doubt slaughter the impressive sun flowers my wife has tended to over the summer. Much like other beer lovers, on evenings like this my mind turns to dark beers, particularly stout.

I am shameless in my promotion of American dark beers, but I feel this enthusiasm is entirely justified by the shear quality of those I have tried. The uncompromising nature of American brewing suits stout particularly well, mainly because flavour is packed into them but not in an overpowering one dimensional hop bomb way. It's just full, rich, complex roasted goodness with the occasion always just right measure of hops. The strong pedigree that this Oatmeal Stout traces its family tree from whet my taste buds from the off - Goose Island's IPA is a world beater, and the stout delivers in a similar manner. It's a cliché to say that an oatmeal stout is smooth, that's the very reason the oats are added, but this one really is. This may well be as much to do with the perfect carbonation as anything else. The one thing I didn't expect, but welcomed greatly was the quite pronounced smoky, phenolic note on the nose, very similar to Islay scotch. The smoke didn't follow through onto the palate, instead was replaced with wonderful bitter chocolate, coffee and a long lingering bitterness. I'm not surprised really, the damn label even looks tasty, and is the most striking manifestation of Goose Island packaging I have seen.

I feel much better now, having written.

Berliner Weisse for kids?

2009-08-21T13:04:00.003+01:00

This bottle of Berliner Kindl Weisse has hung around in my fridge for quite some time now. I didn't worry about it going bad, the lactic acid content took care of any spoilage issues, but also the right moment to drink it just didn't present itself. It is a style of beer I've been eager to try for quite some time with the promise of a sharp tang and low alcohol content. Sadly this brand of Berliner weisse left me a tad unsatisfied.

What little I now about Berliner Weisse is this:

Low abv (2.5 - 3.5%)
Very low IBUs (3-8), no aroma hops are added, and often the beer isn't even boiled, with the hops added during the mash.
A good measure of of unmalted wheat is used in the grist.
There should be a pronounced lactic character without any acetic notes.

Everything you need to know about this history of this beer can be found at Ron's, of course. I was keen to see if it really measured up in the taste intensity stakes, like Cantillion's Lambic and I thought I was in for a treat if there is any truth in the stories about barman in Berlin looking at you curiously if you don't drink the stuff "mit schuss", the idea being that it is intolerable without some syrup to ease the palate somewhat. From the off I was determined to drink it without any flavour additions but need not have worried as this particular Berliner weisse is very tame indeed - almost to the point of a slightly sickly blandness. The lactic character is there alright, but it doesn't bite and leaves a vacuum on the tongue where you might expect the pleasant acidic tingle to satisfy. The carbonation wasn't as high as anticipated either - three to four volumes of CO2 are common, but the malt was reasonably with a grainy/bready contribution.

This lack of flavour and intensity has led me to believe that I have got a form of Berliner Weisse Lite on my hands. The cheeky sprog on the label makes this seem even more likely. Perhaps Barry can shed some light on this beer from his newly adopted home in Germany?

I knew I'd regret it

2009-08-20T15:50:00.005+01:00

I feel as if things have been busy lately. Perhaps they have, but I still can't justify the degree of neglect this blog has received. My laziness came back to haunt me again earlier this week when I decided to stuff my Cobweb Ale into a Cornelius keg that was in no way ready to hold it. I bought the kegs a few months ago, but owing to lack of space I have yet to get a fridge to put them in or any gas to run them. But that didn't stop lazy old me from racking 18 litres of ale into one. It was part laziness - the thought of preparing and sanitising sufficient bottles horrified me - but also I thought I had found a way around the gas problem by buying some small 16 gram CO2 cartridges that I could prime the keg with. I knew I would run into trouble but it didn't stop me because the beer had sat on a bed of dead yeast for far too long and a move had to be made.

So I whacked the ale in the keg along with some finings and priming sugar just before I set off on holiday for a week, and returned to find the keg nicely pressurised but not at all bright and tasting kind of sharp. I think the beer was off before it went in the keg, but it became clear that any chance I had of properly carbonating it was ruined after a glimpse at the gas pressure tables told me that at the ambient 20 C the beer was sitting, a pressure of around 24 pounds per square inch is required to get sufficient gas into the beer. That's higher than the keg is rated for, I think.

A fridge is definitely in the pipe line.

Kilkenny City: Epic Beer Fail.

2009-08-03T20:34:00.006+01:00

Well what do you expect from a small town with a Diageo run brewery sitting at its very heart? It's called a city for some reason. I ran through the various explanations I had heard for this designation; a cathedral, a castle, sufficient population, but in the end you can't help but come to the conclusion that it is a town, and a delightful one at that. It has a distinct medieval feel, mainly from the large amount of old rock and stones about the place. There are plenty of cobbled streets and ancient walls, as well as the castle, of course which sits on the river Nore and has no doubt seen a fair bit of action over the years, what with the bellicose nature of the natives.

Diageo's St Francis Abbey Brewery was closed last Saturday when I dropped into town with my wife to quietly celebrate my 30th birthday. I had nosey around the outside of the of the brewery, but nothing of interest was going on despite Diageo's claim that Budweiser is brewed 7 days a week on the premises to satisfy the seemingly unquenchable Irish thirst for this uninspiring beer.

Kilkenny is a town of pubs and churches (much like many Irish towns), but the quality of them is very high. The beer in the pubs sadly is not; the usual fare of Budwesier, Guinness, Smithwick's, Carlsberg and Heineken. I couldn't help but try some Kilkenny Irish Ale while there because it was one of the first beers I tried all those years ago. It was a go to beer for me around a decade ago when it was launched, but very few drank it and it was something of a gamble when ordering it in a Dublin pub. It tasted of far less than I recalled - unsurprising really because back then Kilkenny was damn near a speciality beer. Nowadays, to my more experienced palate, it tastes of damn all. The overriding flavour was nitrogen, I reckon. I also sampled some Smithwick's over the weekend, and came to the conclusion that it and Kilkenny Irish Ale are one in the same, save for the nitrogen adulterant.

The weekend wasn't a complete beer wash out, mind. Thanks to Laura I found The Wine Centre, a blissful oasis in this beer desert. When I walked in two guys behind the counter were discussing the merits of Fuller's ESB. My kind of place! It contains a very respectable selection of world beer, more than enough to keep the average beer geek content, and well worth visiting if you're in town. Laura alerted me to The Wine Centre after I had arrived in town, but fearing things would be a little barren on the beer front I brought a few bottles from home to stock the mini bar and aid my comfort while in the hotel. These included some Zeitgeist from Brewdog, and a bottle of Fuller's Summer Ale. I can't recommend the Summer Ale at all; it disappoints in so many ways, but Zeitgeist proved to be top notch, full of roasted malt and very clean. But it can't replace Brooklyn Lager, despite what some Irish Twitterers have suggested.

The Black Stuff

2009-07-28T20:57:00.005+01:00

British dark beer is a bit hit and miss to my mind. I rarely get to visit England, but when I do the lack of stouts and porters on cask in the pubs I visit is quite plain to see. The GBBF is the best opportunity to try British stout and porter and I plan to take full advantage next month at the trade day. When dark beer does turn up I usually find it lacking in character. Many times dark ales have let me down on bottle and cask. I can't say they are bad beers, but I just expect a little more from a stout or porter. Perhaps I am too well served for for decent stout in Ireland; the craft brewers of Ireland brew stouts that deliver big time. Stouts from the UK rarely do. Luckily I found an exception to this sweeping generalisation in the form of Hook Norton's Double Stout. It is full and sharp with roasted grain in the way stouts should be. Old Slug Porter from RCH Brewery satisfies too with distinct wood notes, as if the beer had been matured in oak. Sadly, Rhymney Dark supports my view about stout from across the Irish Sea. The label states that the beer is 'hopped with a true stout uppermost in our brewer's mind', but the beer is decidedly light in colour for a stout and also too thin. It's not a stout, but interesting none the less, particularly the distinct flavour of blackened bread crust that dominates the palate.

It is a curious thing, but it seems to me that UK brewers are afraid to take on a full bodied stout. Perhaps they are intimidated by a particular well marketed Irish stout - I can recall a UK brewer (I can't remember which) stating on their bottle that they consider their stout very good but not as good as Guinness, the insinuation being that it would be foolish to attempt to brew a stout as good as this.

Listen guys, it's not that hard. I've done it at home in a bucket more than once.

Cobweb ale

2009-07-11T17:23:00.004+01:00

I dusted the cobwebs off my brewing equipment yesterday. Literally. Too long a stint in the attic draped them with silken threads. Another golden ale was my plan yesterday, but this time with a little more body than the last one. To this end I added 10% dextrin malt to the grist, which will fill out the body but will not alter golden colour I desire. It looked like this:

3.9 kg Maris Otter
400 g Carapils

35g Northdown 60 mins
15g Cascade 20 mins
15g Centennial 10 mins
15g Centennial 0 mins

Mashed at 66 C

40 IBU

Saf o5

OG 1.040

I made modest additions of calcium sulphate and calcium chloride to boost the calcium in my liquor and add some fullness. I had to make some major adjustments to my tap water because a grist that pale will not tolerate 200 ppm alkalinity, which is what I found in my water. I used lactic acid to bring the pH down to around 5.5 which corresponds to alkalinity of around 25 ppm.

While brewing I sampled two ales from this quarter's CAMRA beer club delivery. Interestingly, in the literature with the delivery CAMRA almost apologised for the inclusion of a golden ale, noting that a great many of them are not up to standard. I have whinged about this for quite some time, having been plagued with entire deliveries from CAMRA of listless, thin and gassy golden ales. Crop Circle from the Hopback Brewery was the worrisome golden ale in this delivery, but it can't be dismissed as bland. In fact this ale packs quite a bit of flavour, with a harsh hop character. Lemons strike you on the nose and the addition of maize to this beer gives it a lighter body. Along with this I tried Potholer from Cheddar Ales. This is my kind of English ale. Full biscuit malt with lip smacking, well rounded hop bitterness, topped off with rich foam and a mouth watering copper hue.

This is American beer

2009-07-04T10:33:00.004+01:00

July fourth rolls around again. There is no real need for celebration in Dublin but a number of theme events are held around the city. It seems only fair that a nod is given, what with the warm American embrace our very own St Patrick's Day enjoys across the pond. None of these events are related to beer sadly, but that must surely change in the near future because there is vast selection of excellent American beer available in the city. Most of it is in bottles but a willing publican would not find it difficult to muster all these bottles together and stage an American beer festival all of our own.

American craft beer is excellent. No qualifications or caveats are required. American craft brewers are leading the way with a spirit of adventure without compromise, creating the best beer in the world. In celebration of this intrepid journey I opened a bottle of Flying Dog's Gonzo Imperial Porter. I sampled this beer in Copenhagen last year and was torn by it. A beer as black as that should not smell like an IPA. It just shouldn't! Thankfully I can say I have grown since then. Become more open minded, and had a whale of time in the process. From the bottle the hops are greatly subdued but still present. Luscious brown foam tops the ominous black lurking beneath. Treacle, tar and some smoke fill the mouth all rounded off with big body and warming alcohol. Unsurprisingly it is damn bitter, but perfectly balanced. A impressive beer that perfectly mirrors the no fear attitude of American craft brewers.

Lipids

2009-06-27T13:15:00.001+01:00

Lipid is the chemical name for the many types of fat in animal and plant matter. They are the things of love handles, saddle bags and muffin tops. We're drawn to them and can't help the attraction because they are packed full of energy, and our modern lifestyles are still dictated by the needs we had on the plains of Africa 20 thousands years ago when fat was in short supply and the humans that survived tended to be those that deposited fat for later use.

Lipids take the generic form shown below:

The simplest form is glycerol and lipids of this structure are called triglycerides. The R group on the left hand molecule represents long chain fatty acids of various lengths. Triglyceride is the storage form of fatty acids and these long chains can be cleaved off the molecule and metabolised when energy is required. The long chains have further variation in the extent to which they are saturated. Saturation refers to the type and number of bonds between the carbon atoms in the chain. Fatty acids are grouped into saturated and polyunsaturated. The classic animal fat that we eat is stearate and looks like this:
It contains 18 carbon atoms with single bonds between each of the atoms and forms a solid at room temperature due to the tendency of the long chains to tangle and clump together. Lard is the classic saturated fatty acid presentation.

Unsaturated fatty acids contain double bonds between one or more of the carbons in the chain of the molecule. This prevents the chains from tangling and produces the liquid forms of fat we usually associate with vegetable oils. Linolenic acid is a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) with 3 double bonds that kink the molecule and prevent packing together of the chains:

Lipids are pesky things in the brewing process. Malt contains about 3.5% lipid material but less than 5% of this material usually makes its way into wort. Mash filters, used by the big time brewers are the worst offenders for this. During the mash filter process the mash is squeezed by an air compressed membrane, removing every last drop of extract from the process but squeezing out a lot of undesirable elements too. This represents the higher end of lipid extraction, while traditional mash tuns can cut this back to around 0.3%.

The presence of lipids is quite obvious; turbid wort contains greater lipid content. This can be clearly seen during the recirculation of wort in batch sparging at home. In general it is beneficial to reduce lipid content in wort, and brewers have differing requirements for the turbidity of the wort they produce. Yeast benefit from lipids in wort and a more vigorous fermentation is often noted, but this must be balanced against the potential problems later in the production line.

Lipid extraction can be increased through a number of ways:

The use of over modified malt

A finer malt grind - particularly hammer milling used in mash filters

Higher mash and sparge temperatures

Fast wort run off

Lack of adjuncts

Squeezing the mash to recover residual extract

Lipids can be removed later in the process during boiling and clarification steps, particularly through the removal of break material, but generally brewers like to prevent excess lipids entering the wort in the first place. The most common supply of excess lipid in wort comes from the last runnings. In the home brew setting this is of little concern because we rarely look to extract every last drop from the wort, but for commercial brewers working on tight margins the few degrees of extract left in the mash tun at the end can really start to add up. It is common for brewers to remove the lipid laden last runnings and add them to the strike water in the next mash.

Lipids can cause a number of problems in the brewing process. The most common of these is the undesirable oxidation steps they undergo at the hands of lipoxygenase enzymes, the result of which is potent, unpalatable off flavours that make the beer stale. The classic off flavour stems from trans-2-nonenal, the molecule that provides the cardboard flavour in oxidised beer. The main concern about oxidation of lipids in the mash is the formation of compounds that are more polar and therefore more water soluble. Water soluble compounds are far more likely to make it all the way into the finished beer and cause problems with shelf life.

Further to this most obvious and common lipid problem is the more obscure interaction of lipids with other malt constituents. For example, amylose - the form of starch found in malt, complexes with lipids forming molecules that are inaccessible to the malt amylase. The unsuccessful break down of malt starch during mashing causes all sorts of problems with extract recovery and, later on, haze in the finished beer. Alterations to beer flavour also stem from lipid interactions through the formation of complexes with esters during fermentation. Esters provide most of the fruity and aromatic flavours in beer that do no stem from hops. These flavours can be diminished by lipid interaction and alter the flavour of the beer.

Not quite dark enough

2009-06-25T21:13:00.006+01:00

Brown ale always leaves me cold. As does its less sun tanned Irish cousin red ale (your Irish cousin will always be redder and less tanned than you are). Perhaps I desire too much, but a straight up brown ale lacks flavour. I tried some good brown ales in my pre-blog days but they were from the Dogfish Head stable and heavily adulterated. The first was Raison D'Etre, a very complex ale made with raisins. The second was their India Brown ale, again tinkered with, but this time with copious quantities of hops. More recently Brooklyn Brewery's brown ale didn't hit the mark either. For me brown ale becomes interesting when a brewer takes the bull by the horns and adds a decent measure of roasted malt and transforms a limp brown ale into a porter or stout. The vast majority of brown ales cannot stand alone. The metallic notes particularly irk me.

Cooper's call this beer their Dark Ale, but it's a brown ale, I'm sure of it. Aside from the deep brown colour it also has the metallic flavour I associate with these beers. And yet I cannot gripe too much. It has porter-like qualities in the form of port and malt loaf, yet it is also slightly stout like too. It has a lingering bitterness and distinct alcohol heat despite the modest 4.5% alcohol content. As with all Cooper's beers it has copious amounts of yeast in the bottom of the bottle - far too much. I agree with my father who says there is eating and drinking in bottle conditioned ale but I couldn't bring myself to put quite that much in the glass. So, something of an in-between beer with too much flavour to be the brown ale I dislike so, but not quite enough to push it into true dark beer territory.

I don't know why I bother

2009-06-17T13:09:00.003+01:00

I have a rule that compels me to sample a beer on the menu if I have never tried it before. I should revise this rule for Irish ethnic restaurants because it invariably leaves a beer glass shaped hole in my soul. It happened with Tsing Tao. It happened with Shiva. Singha and Cobra hurt me too. I will never learn. I am doomed to play out these petty follies forever. It happened again with Alfa Beer in my local Greek restaurant. In truth I knew what I was getting into but couldn't help myself. The lager is just like every other beer produced in hot countries; it tastes of very little, with perhaps a twinge of malt at the end. The label does not mention any adjuncts, making this beer all malt and quite an achievement to get so little body and flavour into it. Once again this is a beer I would probably drink while basking in the Greek sun but it just doesn't cut the mustard here. For sure it washed down dinner very well - all these beers do that, but the food tasted far better than the beer and it was a shame to rinse the flavour from my mouth.

A big bottle of small beer in big glass

2009-06-15T20:39:00.003+01:00

I tried Anchor's Old Foghorn on a blustery evening in Dublin a few months ago and declared it my kind of barley wine. I stand over this judgement, so it was with great anticipation that I tried Anchor's Small beer, made from the weak sparge from Old Foghorn's meaty mash. Further to this was a long held desire to try this beer stemming from the glossy picture filled beer books of Jackson and Protz fame that I pored over many years ago. I can't explain why these beers stuck in my mind but I was dead keen to try them and in some sad way never thought I would because things were decidedly grim in the Irish beer scene back then.

At a mere 3.2% abv it must surely be one of the weakest beers on the American market today, save for any of the diluted excuses for beer that are presented to drinkers in some of the dry states. The most striking thing about this beer is its excellent clarity and liveliness - a persistent stream of bubble surge from the bottom of the glass, peppering the wonderful copper hue with activity. The foam is dense and long lived, offering plenty of hops and malt. This beer would make the perfect aperitif - it is bitter as hell, far more bitter than any English brewer would make the standard bitter that is alluded to on the label. The ghost of Old Foghorn is definitely in there, betrayed by the same, though understated sweet malt favour that makes the barely wine so enjoyable. It seems that Americans can do low alcohol beer every bit as well as the big hitters that are so popular at the moment.

Tasty Dublin

2009-06-13T00:46:00.008+01:00

This was my third annual trip to Taste of Dublin culinary event. Each year has seen a steady increase in the amount of beer related stalls and events, culminating this year in an event organised by the Beer Naturally Academy specifically to pair food with beer and raise the public awareness of the complexity of flavour that beer can provide. Now, this sounds grand indeed, but the Beer Naturally campaign was established by the big boy brewers who are feeling the nip at their ankles from the nascent craft beer industry in Ireland. It is therefore difficult to imagine that this concept was developed with the hope of getting more people to drink craft beer. On the contrary, the goal of this project is to sell more macro beer by dressing it up in the same way that wine is so readily pushed as a gastronomical experience. On whole this is a good thing for beer in Ireland because consumers are far more likely to listen to brands that they are already familiar with, and brand loyalty in Ireland is unparalleled anywhere else in the world, if recent research is to be believed.

Our host for the half hour session was Master Beer Sommelier Mark Stroobandt, a man I had never heard of, but he has a mighty impressive title. Some craft brewers present elsewhere in the venue told me that Mr Stroobandt was goaded for carrying out these sessions, that playing up to the likes of Diageo and Co. is no way for a beer enthusiast to go about his business, but even master beer sommeliers need to pay the bills.

The first beer for tasting was Carlsberg paired with cheddar cheese. The cheese was good, as was the idea of getting the group to spoon some foam out of the glass and taste it. It was explained that we were tasting the dry bitterness of hops when we taste foam like this and it is in this respect that bitter beer acts an excellent aperitif. An important message, I think, and one that I have espoused for quite some time. As for the pairing itself, I can't say it did a whole lot for me because the beer didn't taste of a whole lot.

Heineken was our next stop, paired with Thai chilli prawns. Heineken was described as having a sweeter maltier nose to Carlsberg, with less hop character. Sadly I couldn't eat the prawn - a pesky mild allergic reaction prohibits my enjoyment, but I listened while he talked the others through it and explained that the beer washes away the flavour of the chilli leaving an emptiness on the palate, but the chilli soon reasserts itself. I can't say this was ground breaking stuff and of the pairings on offer I imagine that lager and hot spices was the most familiar to the group.

Moving swiftly (too swiftly I thought) to Paulaner and smoked French sausage, a demonstration was given on how to pour wheat beer (very important) followed by a chastising of those who put lemon in white beer (even more important). Mr Stroobandt went so far as to say that it was often dangerous to float wax laden lemons in your beer.

Without a second to fully digest any sausage or wheat beer we were on to a 'local' beer - Swithwick's Irish Ale. Mr Stroobandt was concerned that the uninitiated among us might find this ale a little sharp because of the use of roasted barely in the grist, but a non beer geek friend of mine and a few others present seemed to really enjoy it, suggesting it was far better than they remembered. Sun dried tomato and mozzarella were paired with this, an uninspiring match - the nibbles were tasty and the beer was alright but I didn't sense any great synergy between the two.

On the table before us throughout the event was some very rich looking chocolate cake. Initially I thought it would be matched with the Smithwicks, the only beer on offer dark enough to suggest a pairing, however at the end of the other pairing we were presented with some mini glasses of Guinness to go with the cake. This proved to be the best pairing of the day by a country mile. The rich Belgian chocolate cake brought out a sweetness in the Guinness and was likely the most eye opening aspect of the day for those present. Guinness is normally seen as a heavy, bitter drink that many find hard to stomach but this pairing altered the way that Guinness was perceived by the group. The mini Guinness glasses were given to us at the end as a gift from the Beer Naturally Academy - a wise thing to do because many of us were going to nick them anyway.

Over all this was a great event that will have helped to promote beer as a complex addition to food, equalling anything that the wine world can offer. The action is aimed at more mainstream beer, but I know from personal experience that even a slight shift in attitude or perception can lead to a very enjoyable journey of beer appreciation.

A not so bitter little gnome

2009-06-10T20:39:00.005+01:00

When I spied La Chouffe's Houblon IPA Tripel I imagined is was in the same vain as Duvel Tripel Hop, the beer I rang in 2009 with. Lots of hops and alcohol on the label suggest a similar drinking experience to the Duvel beast but this didn't prove to be the case. I over chilled the beer in the kitchen fridge, as opposed to the more temperate climes in my beer fridge. The chilling happened because the bottle is green and my beer fridge has a glass front and sits next to a window. This combined with the promised hop content of the beer make me very wary of the demon skunk aroma. Thankfully I avoided any unpleasantness, but ended up with a very hazy, thick, soup like liquid which could have passed for freshly squeezed orange juice given the heady citric fumes stemming from the glass. It is not hugely bitter but does give up plenty of alcoholic warmth. This is not a triple IPA in the American mould at all; there would have to be an order of magnitude increase in the bitterness for that. I don't like to pin down beers into categories and styles, but the concept of a triple IPA is entirely American and it seems strange to me that La Chouffe would make a beer, call it a triple IPA and then make it dissimilar to the expected beer style. Why not just call the beer something else? The Duvel tripel hop does not proclaim to be an IPA of any sort but I recall noting it was in fact like a very well refined big hitting IPA. Curious. Perhaps La Chouffe are hoping to penetrate different markets. As the beer warmed up much more complexity came forth mainly in the form of chewy malt, balancing things out nicely. This is a tasty beer but won't go down well with BJCP types.

Back to it

2009-06-10T12:03:00.002+01:00

Things have been quiet in the Black Cat Brewery. A spell of exam preparation put pay to much activity - a similar thing happened last May when I had another round of exams to do. Happily they are all over now and all going well I should pick up a diploma in brewing science in the near future that I plan to conjure into a masters degree with a little more writing and research but thankfully no more written exams.

During this quiet spell I sustained myself on a number of German lagers that I picked up from the German discount stores. These were easy drinking, in small measures which helped with keeping a clear head and also suited the scorching weather Ireland was blessed with over the last few weekends that always seems to arrive when students are locked away in dark rooms . Boak and Bailey preempted my thoughts on hop extract last week with a post mirroring my attitude to the ubiquitous use of hop extract in German beers. I can't say I tasted anything too bad in these beers - the malt tended to more than make up for the lack of hop character because it is invariably quite satisfying, but its use does smack of a certain industrialisation in the brewing process which is something I like to avoid whenever possible. Still, they more than did the job over the last few weeks and I will continue to keep a few stashed in the fridge for easy drinking.

Two beers of note that broke the mould of my Continental lager frenzy were Fuller's Chiswick Bitter and Young's Bitter. I have waited quite some time for these to turn up in Ireland, the anticipation was ratcheted somewhat over the last few weeks by the promises of off license owners who spoke of an imminent influx of English ale, which never seemed to materialise. Eventually they arrived, but I'm not certain they were worth the wait. Fuller's Bitter is very promising on the nose; all ESB and Pride and just asking to be gulped, which I did, only to be met with a thin and slightly metallic body. Some nice crisp English hops made up for some of the lack of body but overall it was disappointing. I know, I know it's only 3.5% and by now most of you know how much I love this sort of beer, but it is entirely possible to have this little alcohol and have a bit of padding in the beer. The funny thing about drinking this beer is the way it outlined the degree of conditioning I have undergone while drinking Fuller's ESB and London Pride. Each time I brought the glass to my mouth and got a whiff of that unmistakable Fuller's aroma I was tricked into thinking it was going to be something special, but was let down each time. It was quite demoralising by the last mouthful.

The Young's was a little better, and stronger in the bottle form. I recall having a few pints last year and enjoyed every last drop of its 3.5% incarnation on cask. From the bottle it is live and lacks the hops in the Fuller's. The extra malt gives a fuller body and makes it more satisfying, but I enjoyed it more from cask. Is this always the story with bottle versions of iconic cask ales? It seems like that to me most of the time, but perhaps it should be borne in mind that the beers were brewed to be served from cask and perhaps will never fair well in the bottle when compared the cask. Young's beefed up their bitter for bottle perhaps in the hope of making it better suited to this from of serving and it certainly does give a better show than the unadulterated Chiswick Bitter. I'd certainly have the Young's again but the Fuller's may well be ignored the next time I drop by the off license.

Glasses a plenty

2009-05-19T20:50:00.003+01:00

Remember I said that Fürstnenberg glasses can be found in abundance in Irish charity shops? I walked into one today near my job to nosey through the books, and look what I spotted on the shelf:

No, the beer wasn't in the glass when I bought it.

Out and about

2009-05-12T22:29:00.006+01:00

I don't get out to the pub nearly enough. I read with envy other bloggers who frequent their local, especially if their local stocks and understands good beer. Most of this envy is directed at UK bloggers who have an abundance of great pubs to patronise, but here in Dublin there is but a handful worth visiting and all of that handful are a long bus trip from my house. Last week I visited the Bull and Castle for some long over due Irish craft beer but while their managed to take in some American beer and some not so Irish, Irish beer. The American beer was Sam Adams Double Bock, sadly a let down and all the more sad because I really like Sam Adams beer - most of it is excellent, but this didn't really work. It was very bock like I suppose; sweet, sticky and heavy with nice warmth but a little sickly and just didn't sit right.

The other non Irish beer is in fact Irish in the eyes of many who are not fully informed because the marketing is superb. If the label is to be believed this is the most Irish beer ever in the history of the world. Much debate has been spawned in Irish craft beer appreciation circles by Árainn Mhór's beer mainly because it aggravates us that this beer is pushed as Irish when it is in fact brewed under license in Belgium and then shipped off around the world benefiting greatly from the awful blarney that is spouted on the label. For example the label states the beer contains:

'...a secret essence of Árainn to deliver an aura reflecting the authentic romance of this Irish island...'

And later:

'Árainn Mhór Bán. One of our own. Brewed in the EU. Árainn Mhór Island, County Donegal.'

The first piece of blurb is bullshit. The second is just plain misleading, though no doubt within the letter of the law. It's the brewed in the EU part that is so perfidious because it is entirely accurate but the addition of the island after it would lead most to think that is where the beer is brewed. It is not, and despite suggestions by the guy who set up the business, it will never be brewed on the island.

In some respects I am torn about what this business man is doing. He wants to be involved in the brewing of good beer, and the beer is good, but not remotely Irish tasting - it is a solid Belgian ale through and through with lots of fruit, bottle conditioned to boot and is a welcome addition to the Irish beer scene, but I don't like the way he is doing it. It is misleading and purposefully so.

Blast from the past

2009-05-11T22:15:00.004+01:00

I was surprised to see a bottle of Furstenberg lager on the shelf of my local Tesco. This is one of those beers from the murky past of Ireland's licensed trade, much like Oranjeboom lager. Very occasionally I see a very old and weather beaten sign for one of these beers hanging from the much neglected façade of a dirty Dublin pub. The beer has not been available on tap in these pubs for the best part of 20 years, but the signs persist. This could be put down to the lazy and complacent nature of the average Irish publican who sees no need to refurbish their establishment or get rid of advertising for beer that no longer exists. No doubt the signs were put up for free by whomever was pushing these beers and the publican sure as hell isn't going to pay to have them taken down.

If you haven't spotted one of these signs, there can be no doubt that you have spied an ancient pint glass with Furstenberg emblazoned across it. There is one of these in every Irish household (strictly, in the family home, in a cupboard that your mother can't reach to the back of) or, for some strange reason they are also found in large abundance in charity shops . I am fascinated to see these glasses and signs because they suggest a time in Ireland when half decent German lager was pouring from the taps of pubs that now only stock the most mundane macro swill. As for the beer itself, it is harmless but well crafted, with a typical slightly sweet malt nose and satisfying fullness. It is nothing special at all, but I wish it was an option in the average Irish pub.

Stick to the cigars

2009-05-11T21:45:00.007+01:00

I haven't been to Cuba but I hear it is hot. Really hot. This sort of information brings to mind my theory that bland beer or beer that you usually wouldn't touch with a long canal related piece of wood suddenly becomes quite pleasant and satisfying under such conditions. It has happened to me in various Canary Islands and on the sun scorched rock of a country that is Malta. I contentedly chugged back light and bland lagers while on holiday in these sweltering places, temporarily suspending the beer snobbery that my friends assure me I exude. So when I was distinctly underwhelmed by Cubanero Fuerte - it is a sweet and heavy lager with an unpleasant alcoholic heat - I of course can't help but wonder if I would happily neck this stuff if I was in the land of Mr Castro. It's a question I don't think I can answer with any degree of accuracy, but highlights once again the powerful influence of mood and environment on the way we appreciate and judge the beer we drink.

I need a bigger lawn...

2009-05-02T18:28:00.005+01:00

It's the May Day weekend, and all the better for me because I have Tuesday off work too. What better way to celebrate hanging around the house with nothing more more to do than a bit of gardening and some study for my last brewing exam than imbibing five litres of quality German lager? I chanced upon this big tin of beer in my local German box of tricks Lidl store. There is always something tasty and unusual to be had from these stores, and in the current economic climate the German discount stores are all the more appealing.

I have had a few of these mini kegs in the past and always found them thoroughly satisfactory. The funny thing is that the beer that is served from them is rarely the very best available, but I always find the pint drawn from them excellent. This keg of Grafenwalder Pils is no different and is serving me well this weekend. It is the perfect lawnmower beer offering superb refreshment with solid lager malt padding things out. It also packs decent bitterness, providing a satisfying lip smack. It took me a while but I have pinned down why the beer from these mini kegs is so satisfying; the carbonation is perfect. It is smooth and oh so easy to drink, but at the same time gives a rich foam that lasts and lasts. In many ways it is similar to the pressure barrel I use for my home brew, though the method of dispense is different.

I am always a little confused about how to serve from these kegs. Allowing the beer to come forth under its own trapped carbonation is a disaster; a glass of tasty looking foam was the result, so I twisted the valve on top to allow air in and this fixed things. However, as most beer lovers will be aware, this signed the beer's death warrant, resulting in a shelf life of around 3 days - similar to that of a cask.

Not to worry, it'll be gone by then.

A liquid poem to the glory of the hop

2009-04-27T20:59:00.004+01:00

Stone are at it again. The blurb on this bottle of Ruination IPA isn't as polarising as that of Arrogant Bastard, but the need for the brewers at Stone to talk to consumers is just as strong.

I've waited some time to try this beer. It is supposed to be a must have for hop lovers but I am not drawn in by the 100+ IBU boast on the bottle. It's bitter; big deal. IPA and hop bombs are about hop flavour and aroma to me and thankfully this beer has this trait in spades. Lots of citrus and sherbet wrapped up in oily resins. And of course it is bitter, but not shockingly so, and it certainly wasn't the ruin of my palate. Along with all the hop goodness is a sugary but not too cloying malt body that gives up a distinct alcoholic warmth. It suits the rich golden colour of this beer, but the bits floating in the glass suggest I left this one a little too long before sampling. Or perhaps the floaters are the very essences of hops precipitating out of the beer before my eyes.

Such Arrogance

2009-04-24T19:57:00.008+01:00

"...this is an aggressive beer. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory - maybe something with a multi million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it's made in a little brewery, or one that implies that their tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi million dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste better. Perhaps you're mouthing your words as you read this..."

And so Stone Brewing Co. introduce you to their most infamous beer. I like this bit of blurb because it's undeniably true. If you are a macro beer drinker this beer will smack you about the face and call your mother a very rude name. I can't say it is a very complex beer; the intense bitterness swamps a lot of the flavour, but the malt is heavy and sweet and holds its own rather well. It's a big hitter at 7.2% and tastes it too. The foam is rich and here to stay, lacing the glass all the way, marking the tentative sips that this intoxicating beer persuades you to take.

Worth the hype? Perhaps. It undeniably does what it suggests on the bottle, but the marketing approach taken is strange to pushers of craft beer in Ireland and the UK. Here craft brewers want a small share of the macro market and attempt to lure in the more adventurous drinker who might want to try something new with promises of a rewarding experience. Stone, with this beer at least, are using some form of reverse psychology to goad drinkers into trying their beer. In reality we all know that this beer will almost never fall into the hands of committed light lager drinkers and it won't get the chance to hurt the feelings of too many people.

The shop around the corner

2009-04-24T09:00:00.004+01:00

Well, it's not exactly around the corner but it is close enough to get to with ease. I was very surprised to see home brew equipment and ingredients available on the shelves of my local ~~Nature's Way health store~~ The Health Store. I know it was once quite a common occurrence but I never saw it personally. Perhaps it is recessionary cliché thing, but I'm happy that it is there both as a source of the simpler bits of kit (I spotted finings, bubblers, caps and campden tablets) but also because it might encourage more to take up home brewing, which can only be a good thing for craft beer in Ireland.

Home away from home

2009-04-22T18:50:00.008+01:00

I've been busy of late but have not neglected these pages as much as it would appear because my last post corrupted itself and held my entire blog hostage. I had to delete the blighter to get things moving again. I'm told it has to do with pasting from MS word. Damn you Word.

The weekend of the 11th of April had me and other Irish beer enthusiasts in Cork for the Franciscan Well Beer Festival, a showcase event for the best beer in Ireland and a rare opportunity to have Ireland's most talented brewers all under the same roof. It was a super day punctuated with excellent beer and great conversation. Highlights included yet another win for the boys at Galway Hooker for their hoppy pale ale and beer of event for the Carlow Brewing Company's Druids Brew - a one off cask stout produced especially for the event and much anticipated each year. I had the good fortune to chat tech stuff with the students of the University College Cork micro brewery who had a refreshing Swiss Pale Bock on. It smelled quite distinctly of green apples so perhaps some more conditioning was in order, but it proved to be a refreshing beer despite the high alcohol level. It appeared that the brewers at the university are itching to make a commercial venture of the 10 hectolitre set up in the college grounds but the professors will not allow them to do so because the operation of a brewery, they fear, will get in the way of studies. It wouldn't be the first time that beer got between a student and his/her books, but perhaps no quite in this way.

Ireland's latest beer adventure was represented by The White Gypsy Brewery from Tipperary. Set up by Cuilán Loughnane of Messrs. Maguire fame, this new business has a number of beers on offer the best of which was an English style IPA. This beer had the distinctive Messrs Maguire malt character that I find very appealing along with a decent measure of earthy hops. It was very drinkable indeed but perhaps deserved more respect than the flavour suggested because at 5.2% abv too much could be consumed far too quickly. Nestled within the walls of The White Gypsy Brewery lies another smaller one by the name of Barrelhead. Bull Island Pale Ale was on offer from them but needed a little work as it sported the slightly sickly sweetness of diacetyl which ruined any chance of fully enjoying what could have been a solid ale.

Last weekend gave me reason to head to Cork once again for the Irish Craft Brewer, Brew it Yourself 2009. Once again the Franciscan Well played host, but this time Ireland's smallest breweries were represented, namely the home brewers of Ireland. I loaded my car with a few cases of Pilgrim Ale and Old Smoky and dished the stuff out with gusto to the enthusiastic patrons of The Well who dropped by to learn how to brew for themselves. My beer was in bottles but two other lads had a very professional looking keg dispense set up which really impressed the home brew uninitiated. On the whole those who sampled our beer and had a chat with us were very impressed with the quality of the beer on offer, and we did much to dispel the idea that all home brew is noxious stuff, best not sampled in any great quantity. For my part I chatted with a mixture of younger people (mainly men) who were interested in starting up for the first time, but also a number of older people who brewed a number of decades ago and are keen to take it up again.

It was very enjoyable day and we can but hope that we did something to both encourage home brewing in Ireland, but also generally increase appreciation for beer crafted in small quantities whether that be 25 litre batches in an enthusiasts home, or 2500 litre batches from the fine microbreweries operating in Ireland.

Drinking out West

2009-04-13T19:01:00.000+01:00

Life moves slowly out West. It is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Dublin that I have become so accustomed to. I always look forward to a stay in the West of Ireland with my in laws; it is a welcome break from city life. There is nothing in the way of decent beer out there except for the nearest Tesco which stocks some English ale along with a more recent addition of Brooklyn Lager, but I purposefully steer clear of this fancy stuff and stick to more mundane beverages. Usually I resent not having a good choice of beer, especially if I am in Dublin where I pay through the nose for it, but in the country beer is far cheaper and the atmosphere suits this kind of simple drinking. For example, the other night I sat down with a can of draught Beamish. The wind whistled around the one hundred year old farmhouse and a turf fire burned in the hearth, belching sooty smoke into the room on occasion as the pressure in the house was altered by a particularly strong gust of wind. If I was asked I would tell you that Beamish is my least favourite of the major stouts available in Ireland, but in those surroundings served at perfect temperature from the unheated adjacent dining room the stout attained a far greater degree of quality than I would ever dream of attributing to it. It was sweet and toffee like and made me want more.

Later that evening I went to the local town, a tiny place sporting horrific potholes and a population of about 500. At the moment it has 4 pubs on 3 streets but I was jauntily informed that a few years ago it had nine pubs and all of them did very nicely indeed. This is typical of towns out here; one church and a plethora of pubs that would make a marketing analyst scratch his head in confusion, but everyone has their local in this most local of places and the pubs thrive. Unsurprisingly the pub I visited had only three beers on tap which the locals differentiate by the terms beer and stout. Stout covers Guinness – the only stout available, while beer covers ale and lager. Only pints of Swithwick’s Irish ale and Guinness were present on the bar and the barman knew everyone’s drink. There was a not a woman in sight and only one curious incident when a notorious local man was driven from the bar because he nicked the remote control for the television the last time he was in. For my part I opted for a pint of Smithwick’s – once again a beer I can’t say I enjoy when I drink it in Dublin, but I was happy to drink it in this environment among a group of men who were very content enjoying a simple pint and talking in accents I could quite decipher. The simple country pub image was distorted somewhat when a middle aged farmer dressed in cap and woolly jumper was presented with a Corona and lime when he stepped up to the bar. I suppose it passes as a cocktail around those parts.

There are two monastic ruins in the vicinity which I visit on occasion. The link between monasteries and brewing is never far from my mind when I wander around the old walls. They are sombre places and it is hard to believe that they once housed a communities of devout of people. I imagine they were peaceful, but grim to some extent and I also like the idea of passing travellers perhaps stopping off for the night after a long day's travel across the wind swept land from parts that are no more than an hour away nowadays. No doubt some ale was on offer (though perhaps not the very best stuff) and a comfortable bed until the next morning. There is a fresh water well nearby the ruins of this monastery that has become a point of pilgrimage for local people. The cynic in me sees why this became a holy place - for brewers this supply of clean spring water was surely sent from on high and reason enough to make it a place of devotion.

It's all in the marketing

2009-04-07T10:00:00.001+01:00

Selling beer is as much about what's in the packaging as what the beer tastes like. We all know that macro producers sell their beer by the oil tanker full despite its less than breathtaking flavour so the notion of sharp marketing isn't that new to us. This can of beer I picked up in my local supermarket tickled me because of its simplicity. All the bases are covered here. On one side we see:

And on the other, for the all important international market we have:

All the bases are covered. I do find it a little shameful that the people at Euro Shopper think that the English speakers in their market won't figure out what is in the can without the word 'Beer' on it. I would have opted for the Continental feel that 'Bier' conjures in the mind of sophisticated types who by cheap lager. It's a positive surely, that continental allure.

The Big Fella

2009-04-05T10:00:00.001+01:00

I have yet to brew a big beer in my home brewing career. Yesterday I decided to make the move and put together this:

20 Litres
Maris Otter 5.4 Kg
Dark Crystal 400g
Special B 400g

44g Challenger @ 60 mins

1 sachet of S0f 04 + 1 sachet of Danster Nottingham

OG 16 Plato (1.064)

This should be plenty rich and if I have the will power I'll leave it for a great many months to mellow out. All did not go well with the mash, though. Dark crystal and Special B pack a great deal more acidity than I thought and as a result the pH of the mash dropped to around 5.0 and without any carbonate to correct it I could do nothing but hope it worked out. Mash pH that is too low is always preferable to one that is too high but a low mash pH causes increased extraction of nitrogen compounds and a longer time is required for extraction to occur. To try and counter the effects of the low pH I mashed for 30 minutes longer than usual, but this didn't fix the matter entirely because the OG is lower than I had anticipated. Not to worry, it is respectable and should make for a decent strong beer. I mixed yeast because I didn't have two matching sachets and needed the extra pitching level for the high OG. Let's hope the two strains play nice in the wort and don't do anything petulant like refusing to flocculate.

While I had all the brewing kit out I took the opportunity to bottle my last beer. It is something of a disappointment, but in some respects exactly what I was shooting for. I used solely base malt and got exactly what I expected; a light beer lacking in body. The hop character isn't too bad, mainly due a healthy measure of dry hopping with Cascade, but the over all impression is one of a thin beer with no length. It reminds me of a number of unsatisfying golden ales I have had on cask around Britain. I often wondered how they managed to make a beer that had so little body, and now I know. A measure of speciality malt is definitely required to pad out golden ales; cara pils is great for this, but Munich or Vienna malt will do the job without darkening the beer too much.

Five for five

2009-04-04T21:27:00.004+01:00

My latest CAMRA beer club delivery arrived yesterday and in a fit of gluttony fuelled by high spirits due to a spell off work I got stuck into the 5 ales on offer. First up was Ridgeway's ROB, an organic ale which assures you on the bottle that organic malt is a bugger to work with but organic hops are the business. The beer itself has a pronounced malt character like I have never tasted before, it is biscuity, almost wheat like and lingers forever. The hops are indeed good, plenty of orange and spice but over all it's an unusual ale and I'd struggle with any more of it.

Next up was Hopdaemon Brewery's Skrimshander, named after a character in Moby Dick. It pushes itself as an IPA and doesn't disappoint on the hop and bitterness front. Plenty of hops on the nose and in the finish, an attractive copper colour and brilliant clarity along with low carbonation make for a top English ale.

Meantime's Wheat is far from English but it is by far the best non German wheat I have stumbled across. It's all about the yeast selection with these beers but the grist composition is important too. Meantime have nailed both with this beer producing a true weisse in the Bavarian tradition.

Liberation from Suthwyk ales is another honest English ale sporting a mouth watering golden hue accompanied by a slight haze despite a careful pour. It has the cold tea tannin character that I don't get to taste enough and has even less carbonation than Hopdaemon's Skrimshander resulting in near perfect cask character. The hops are earthy, and once again I would say this is an example of a solid English ale save for the use of American Liberty hops, but Liberty is not an American hop in the mould of Cascade of Centennial - it has a earthy character more typical of English hops so the over all impression is of a well crafted English ale.

Last of all is Otley 08, a bitter sweet barley wine from a relatively new brewery in Wales. The 8% ethanol swimming around the glass is evident in a comforting warmth, but there is plenty of bitter orange from the hops to balance things out. The citric hops match the golden colour well, and it is a thin beer for its weight without the cloying that can make some heavy hitting beer hard to manage.

A satisfying selection this quarter made all the more so by the relatively little cost thanks to a weak Sterling. Sure, the Euro is crippling Ireland's exporters, but it's not all bad....

Brutality at its best

2009-03-28T21:16:00.009Z

A name like Brutal Bitter might get you into trouble these days. Couple that with 6.9% abv and you're certain to piss someone off, especially if you live within the reactionary reach of the Portman Group or Britain's Independent newspaper. It has taken a while for the mainstream media to get a hold of Brewdog's wrangling with the Portman Group - this has been a talking point in beer interest circles for quite some time, but now it has escaped into the world and it is saddening to see that those who chose to bring it to the attention of the wider public are as ill informed as those who took umbrage with Brewdog in the first place. Thankfully we have Pete Brown to take these people to task.

Rogue Brewing Company should consider themselves very lucky indeed that they live in a country where strong beer that is cleverly marketed is not seen as a worrisome thing which will result in the inevitable destruction of the very moral fabric of society. Of course there are parts of America where alcohol of any description is decried - Alabama comes to mind, but generally you will not note the level of hypocrisy that is levelled in Britain when it comes to sharply marketed strong craft beer. After all wine is lauded in every foodie supplement and not a mention of the mind bending alcohol levels is made. I find it very strange indeed that wine is thrown back by the half bottle by many people without a second thought, while the mention of a beer that weighs in at 9% sends the very same people scurrying under the table. Nobody would drink 750ml of 14% ale by themselves, yet the same volume of wine disappears with little thought or effort at all. I'm sure a beer like Brutal Bitter would get the same reception from the hand wringers as Orkney Brewery's Skull Splitter - it sounds aggressive and nasty and totally unsuitable for the public to cope with. No doubt they would want to drink pints and pints of it with the intention of getting smashed. Perhaps millionaires might enjoy getting hammered on craft beer, but let's face it, if the average person wants to drunk he/she grabs numerous tins of something cheap and nasty and gets on with the job. They are not going to spend 3 or 4 quid on a sufficient number of 330ml bottles of craft ale to do it. Why the hand wringers at The Portman Group and other nanny state organisations don't see this I have no idea.

The beer itself is typical Rogue with plenty of orange/citrus notes, an intense bitterness and a substantial rich malt backbone to bear the strain of the hops. The alcohol is evident but only in the background where is warms nicely, but otherwise lets the malt and hops get on with the show. Why it is called a Bitter I don't know. It's not Bitter as I and a couple of million British beers drinkers know it, but that's not a problem. My only sadness about discovering its true nature was a fleeting thought that an American brewer was attempting to brew this classic beer style because it is always fun to see what Americans make of a straight up interpretation of old beers styles rather than pimping them to extreme levels that are so common at the moment.

Rising Tides

2009-03-26T18:06:00.004Z

It's been a great few weeks on the Irish craft beer front. It started with the first Irish stout to be pulled from a cask in an Irish pub for over 50 years during the St Patrick's Day celebrations, and this week we have the 6th Independent Irish Beer and Whiskey Festival being held at the Porterhouse. I chanced an invite to the press launch and must confess to thinking this was the first festival of this kind, being unaware of the previous ones. During conversation with Oliver, one of the Porterhouse founders, and the head brewer Peter, I witnessed Oliver turning to Peter and state that they should never have stopped holding these festivals. There appears to have been a hiatus between the last festival and this one, but Oliver's earnest tone clearly displays his love of the craft brewing in Ireland. He is firm believer of the rising tide lifting all boats and as a result, despite the Porterhouse's huge success, they refuse to be complacent and actively seek to help other craft brewers who do not have the luxury of a brew pub to sell their beer, relying upon the caprice and greed of the average Irish publican who for the most part is not the micro brewer's friend.

On the whole, the Irish craft brewing scene is an open collection of people, almost all of them will allow you to root around their breweries and offer you a glass of the very freshest craft beer from a conditioning tank. Yet the Porterhouse lads have come across some very strange attitudes over the years in their attempt to share some of the vast experience they have at producing and marketing craft beer. One brewery (now defunct) reluctantly dealt with them, guarding their 'trade secrets', and was generally very secretive about their operation, yet they still expected the Porterhouse to sell their beer. This is the antithesis of the current craft brewing scene in Ireland and might go some way to explaining why that brewery has been dispatched to the annals of Irish craft brewing history.

It's not very often you get the chance to talk at length with a master brewer so I, along with a few other keenly interested individuals, grabbed the opportunity to get some technical information out of Peter the Porterhouse head brewer. Snippets about recipe formulation, dispense systems and general problems with getting keg carbonation just right were touched upon and eagerly devoured. Interestingly Peter appeared to hint at a small degree of envy towards the length of time the head stays on a pint of Guinness. I was quick to reassure him that while a Guinness head might stay around longer, the head on a pint of any of the Porterhouse stouts looks far more appetising than other stouts, having a more luscious appearance and richer colour. It's interesting to note that even the most successful micro brewers might cast an envious eye towards St. James's Gate once in a while.

The beer available consisted of the best that Irish micro breweries have to offer. It was wonderful to have them all in the same place it is inevitable that much good will come from the attention drawn to this small niche in Ireland's multi billion Euro beer market. The beer that interested me most came from the boys at Galway Hooker, who kick started the Irish craft beer scene again with the introduction of their iconoclastic hop driven pale ale a few years ago. Dunkel weisse is their latest venture which fills a gap in the Irish Craft beer scene in that no other brewer has made this style of beer before. It fills the need quite well with a refreshing spiciness mingling with a light roast character. The biggest surprise of the night was Clotworthy Dobbin from the Whitewater Brewing Co. This beer had received extensive hype last year when it was given very high praise from an international voting panel. I tried it in the bottle shortly afterward and wondered what all the fuss was about, but it has become clear to me why this beer was so well received having had a pint of it from keg; it is full of wonderful hops backed up superbly with rich chewy malt. Clearly this beer doesn't do too well in the bottle. Another very satisfying beer came from Messrs Maguire who offered a malty bock from keg. At only 4.7% abv it wasn't exactly in bock territory but didn't suffer at all as a result. The last time this beer turned up it was 6%, but apparently caused problems in the bar it was served in with punters getting smashed on it rather too quickly.

There were many other beers available but I couldn't hope to get to them all on a work night, but I plan to drop in tomorrow and have a few more. The official judging for the beer of the festival was carried out today. I don't know who won, but keep an eye on Aran Brew where Laura (that's her looking coy on the left) will no doubt announce the winners because she was part of the judging panel. Everyone who can should make an effort to get to a Porterhouse and sample some of the wonderful beer on offer. I speak especially to those in and around London who might be able to get to the Covent Garden branch because this is a golden opportunity to try some quality Irish craft ale. I'm not sure how much of it will arrive in London, but at the very least you might get to try some Galway Hooker Pale Ale and that alone will make it worth the effort.

Real pumps and real ale

2009-03-20T19:52:00.005Z

A number of pubs around Dublin have what appear to be hand pumps on the bar, positioned in view of all but utterly useless, serving only as a perverted tease to poor cask ale lovers like me. My latest encounter was in Gibney's of Malahide where these three prominent pumps sat upon the bar. I have no doubt they are left there as an attractive feature adding, in the mind of the average money grabbing Irish publican, an authentic air to the bar. Not that they would have the first clue what to do with a cask if it was given to them, but they almost seem to understand that things were not always as they are now, once beer was pulled from these archaic devices and it wasn't a few degrees above freezing when committed to the glass.

You can imagine my excitement when I got wind of the news that The Bull and Castle, that bastion of great beer and progress, planned to have a cask stout on for the St Patrick's Day festivities. I was optimistic that the cask would be emptied very quickly indeed but others in the Irish beer lovers group were not as bullish. I am glad to say that I was correct, the beer was gone is twenty four hours - quite an achievement in an Irish pub where cask ale does not exist. Fair enough, it was a public holiday and there were a great many tourists about the place but it was still very impressive. I managed to grab a pint just as the cask neared its end and was thoroughly satisfied with what I got. The stout in question was Leann Follain brewed by The Carlow Brewing Company. It weighs in a 6% abv so wasn't exactly a session pint but I still sank my pint quite rapidly and went for more. Dark roasted malt was to the fore made all the more enjoyable by the warmer serving temperature and perfect carbonation. It was just super to get a pint of stout in an Irish pub which didn't freeze your hand to the glass when you carried it back to the table. There were a number of teething problems with the set up that will no doubt be ironed out, but Geoff, the tireless and industrious manager of the bar, has assured us that more cask will be available in the future. Unsurprisingly the brewers he has spoken to are very happy to provide him with cask ale because it is far easier to produce than keg, dispensing as it does with all the filtration steps which strip the beer of some flavour.

This is the start of something fabulous in the Irish beer scene.

Tangfastic

2009-03-11T20:39:00.002Z

I thought I might be a little sneaky and steal a march on The Beer Nut and Laura who will doubtless post very soon about their trip to the Cantillon Brewery by cracking open my single bottle of Cantillon Gueuze before they make it to print. This bottle has hung around in my cupboard since the now legendary ICB trip to Copenhagen for the European Beer Festival. I grabbed the bottle eagerly when I saw it on the shelf knowing full well that it is not available in Ireland and likely will not be for quite some time.

I love tart/tangy things. You know those fizzy cola bottles and other teeth rotting type tangy nasties? Those are my preference when it comes to sweets. In fact I love vinegar. I enjoy it on salads in various guises and I adore the acetic vapours that stream from a bag of steaming chips fresh from the chip shop. With this in mind it should be little wonder that I really get off on Lambic beers and this one in particular really hits the spot. It is almost acetic in its intensity with a wonderful lip smacking acidity that cuts through everything and lingers, tingling on the sides of the tongue for an age after the mouthful. I have tried other Lambic style ales over the years but this one fully delivers in a way that the tamer ones do not. The only beer I have tried that surpasses this for outright acidity is Stevns CCC from Norrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen which was uncompromising in its intensity and left even me pulling very funny faces.

I am always left a little perplexed by lambic because it contains flavours that I adore but at the same time signal death to any of my home brewed beers. I marvel at the cocktail of micro fauna that contribute to the incredibly intense and complex flavours in these beers, yet render them so enjoyable. Perhaps I'll swab down The Beer Nut next I meet him in the hope that some of the resident house yeast from Cantillion has ensconced itself upon his person and I might culture it here in The Black Cat Brewery and brew some of this tangfastic beer for myself.

The Session - Love Lager? Sometimes.

2009-03-06T07:30:00.001Z

Lager's a safe bet, isn't it? Even the slightly fuller flavoured ones are acceptable to the non beer enthusiast if nothing else is available. For my part I started drinking mass produced Irish ale when I became legal, it rot my innards and I was a one man bio reactor the next morning so at some point I migrated to Heineken. A step up? Hard to say, but the gastrointestinal issues resolved themselves only to be replaced with neurological ones. I don't go for all that chemicals in the beer stuff causing hangovers; ethanol is the most dangerous chemical in beer and it is the diuretic effect and nasty metabolic by products that cause your brain to shrink from your skull and tug rather painfully on the nerves in your cranium. So, lager is not nasty, even the mass produced stuff. Sure, it doesn't taste of much and in many cases I rather go without than chug down a few bland beers, but the common view that the most popular lagers in the world are full of 'chemicals' just isn't accurate.

Almost every country in the world that brews beer produces a lager of some form. It is usually very light in colour and tastes of not much at all, but that doesn't matter because if you are visiting that country you are likely at your leisure and there is a very good chance it is hot and if you are Irish it is a great deal hotter than Ireland. That's almost certain, and in my experience my tolerance for light flavoured lagers served bone chillingly cold goes up quite a few notches in that environment. In many cases I would go so far as to say it taste good. This is all part of the beer drinking experience and might go some way to explain why light lager is so very popular.

From the point of view of the consumer, mass produced light lager's appeal comes from its easy going nature; it doesn't ask much of you and if it is brewed with care it'll hit the spot rather well. The curious thing is that for the brewer it couldn't be more different. Lager, particularly a light one, is very unforgiving of bad practice in brewery. There is nowhere to hide the funk of a bad fermentation or sub standard conditioning, alterations in colour are as easily detected as a change of hue in a glass of water and complicated equipment is required to use the adjuncts that us craft brewers so readily harry them about. In short, it hard to brew good lager but consumers love it. The demand for mass lager is so great that the expense and effort put in pays off many times over.

There is the old adage that it is better to drink the beer in a country with a questionable municipal water supply than the stuff from the tap because no known pathogenic organisms survive the brewing process. This is solid advice because the pathogens living in tainted water would make my Irish ale induced sufferings look very insignificant indeed. I suppose the most fearful place we might think of for this kind of problem is Africa. I have never been, and have never tried an African an beer until now, but it should be little surprise that lager is available on the Dark Continent. Bell Lager of Uganda surprised me somewhat because I anticipated that if would have grain other than malted barley in its make up; but no, it is an all malt, very refreshing, lightly effervescent lager with a nice dash of hops and a classic European nose. The label gives me gives me pause for thought with respect to my earlier words on chemicals in lager though; it states that the beer contains 'permitted stabilisers and correctives'. Hmmmm, what exactly are they and who has permitted them?

Winter warmer still required

2009-03-04T21:47:00.007Z

Winter returned to Ireland this week. After a brief period of Spring warmth a cold front has come crashing into this small island nation and generally we don't cope terribly well with this sort of thing. I could complain about this I suppose - the walk to work is that bit more challenging, but instead I decided to counter the near sub zero temperatures with a toasty 'Barley Wine Style Ale'. This politically correct nomenclature is no doubt due to a pedant's confusion over exactly what is in the bottle. On this side of the Atlantic this beer is merely a barley wine. If my memory serves me well I recall reading that Old Foghorn was one of the first strong ales to be produced in America when Anchor Steam started producing craft beer. Perhaps this explains why it is more like an English barley wine that the super IBU versions that are best typified by Sierra Nevada's Big Foot. I much prefer Old Foghorn because it has a wonderful soft dry hop aroma and flavour without any of the intense bitterness in other American barley wines. It is lush and chewy with wonderful sweet sugary malt character, little of the 8.8% is betrayed in the body which is pleasant and not overly viscous. This beer was one that jumped out at me from the pages of the glossy beers of the world books I loved to read a few years ago realising at the time that there was almost zero chance of finding the beers in Ireland. I think it was talked up quite a bit and also was quoted as coming in a nip bottle which I thought rather quaint, but this bottle is a full 355ml American bottle measure which is all the better because it is wonderful stuff.

My gaff, my rules.

2009-02-26T21:10:00.005Z

Bottled Landlord is described as 'strong' pale ale on the label which is a little curious because it is only 4.1% and far from strong in my book. A recent trip to Doncaster sheds some light on this somewhat unusual nomenclature because I had the pleasure of drinking with a group of bone fide northern English blokes who loved their bitter. All the bitter I drank while over there was around 3.5% abv and very malty, with an almost total lack of late kettle hops, except for the beer at hand this evening: Timothy Taylor's Landlord. This is set apart from other Northern English ales primarily because of the more aggressive hopping and slightly stronger alcoholic strength. I must also add that I enjoyed this beer more than the others I tried that weekend mainly because I am a fiend for hops and find malty bitters without the addition of richer malts to add a bit of compexity a little unsatisfying.

While in London last week I chanced upon a bottle of Landlord and jumped at the chance to try it because I was fascinated to compare this award winning cask ale with the bottled version, which is filtered and force carbonated. There can be no doubt that it is a very different beer, arguable less enjoyable but still very good as bottled ale goes. My admission that it is inferior to cask will be music to the ears of the CAMRA member who engaged with The Beer Nut recently in a debate on exactly why CAMRA exist. He sees no real value in force carbonated beer, even if it is excellent, and makes me wonder just what CAMRA are up to. TBN makes the point that it would be better to fight the predominance of bad beer rather than worry about where the CO2 in the beer came from. There is plenty of awful cask and bottle conditioned beer out there. I have quite a lot of it inflicted upon me by the CAMRA beer club each quarter. They feature little on this blog because they just don't stir me sufficiently to write about them. Filtered, force carbonated beer on the other hand is very common on this blog, mainly because it is the most available form of beer I consume and also because it many cases it is outstanding in flavour and quality. What concerns me most about the discussion is the CAMRA member's opinion that every artificially carbonated beer he has tried is inferior to cask. Perhaps he has a point when comparing two indentical beers; often filtration and over carbonation will kill a flavourful beer - I have experienced this a number of times, but to suggest that all artificially carbonated beer is inferior is just rubbish. From my old pages here we need only look at Big Daddy, Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Sierra Nevada Stout as examples of outstanding filtered, force carbonated beers. These beers are world beaters in my opinion and deserve as much respect as real ale. They simply cannot be dismissed and anyone who would do so should question their ability to appreciate good beer.

Getting back to the beer in hand, it is an excellent ale brewed very well with mouth watering foam, full body and perfect carbonation. The hop aroma that I enjoyed from the cask is not there and I have at last experienced the harsh bitterness that The Beer Nut has decried. The bitterness is indeed rough and I can't say I have experienced this from the cask, but what makes this beer for me is the action of the yeast used in the Timothy Taylor brewery; it really gives this beer an extra level of complexity that has made this strain so sort after by home brewers. Wyeast offer it on a seasonal basis and I would rate it up there with the stubbornly flocculant Fuller's or Brakespeare house yeast which make their beer so wonderfully complex and chewy.

Not as enjoyable as cask but certainly not to be dismissed.

More Whisky Ale

2009-02-24T19:29:00.006Z

My last encounter with an ale matured in whisky casks was very pleasant but left me with a few questions about this style of beer. I outlined a bit of the chemistry involved in whisky maturation, particularly the aromatic organic compounds produced during the toasting of old bourbon and sherry casks. I was still left with the question of where the tart character came from and whether or not the beer would be better without it. Fullers Brewer's Reserve has the same lactic like tartness so I am leaning towards the notion that clearly microbes can reside in ex whisky casks quite happily and impart their own character to beer that is matured in it. This ale is more complex than Tullibardine 1488, the darker colour suggests richer malts and there is a definite English hop character about it. The whisky flavour really kicks in at the end along with warming alcohol. As a bit of a experiment I took a dram of scotch with the last quarter of the bottle to see what this might do to my perception of the flavour. I was glad I did because the scotch reset my palate's perception of the whisky in the beer leaving a complex, well hopped English ale.

Brewdog have fully taken on this style of beer, offering three different stouts matured in whisky barrels that I am aware of. I picked up this Paradox Speyside Cask Matured stout in Edinburgh last year, much to my delight. My recent conversion to smoky beer leaves me hankering after some their Paradox Islay which I happily learned today has turned up in Ireland. I hope that it has more whisky character than this stout because there is little in this beer. There is no doubt that underneath it all a superb imperial stout is a work, giving rich roasted notes and pleasant warmth but it carries none of the tartness or whisky depth of the Fullers or Tullibardine 1488. Speyside scotch is renowned for its easy going nature, often touted as a good introductory malt for those starting out in the very rewarding adventure of single malt appreciation and perhaps this might explain the very mild whisky character to this stout.

London

2009-02-22T19:22:00.007Z

My first pint in London during this trip didn't exactly go as expected. The plan was to dump the cases at the hotel and make the 30 second walk round to the nearest boozer for a much needed pint of something on cask. Unfortunately I was misled by a London pub guide that stated that the Carpenter's Arms did decent pub grub. I was politely informed by the barmaid that it does no such thing. Luckily for us right next door was a sparsely decked out establishment by the name of Imbiss Austrian Beer Food. It was a superb second choice, and we tucked into wurst and leerkase washed down with Hitter Morchl for me - a rich roasty dark lager, and a more lady like measure of Stiegl Goldbrau for my wife.

After this very satisfying meal we struck out on a bit of sight seeing which took us to Knightsbridge and the excesses of Harrrods where the only beery piece of news I can relate is a bottle of Harrods own brand lager that turned out to be bloody awful. It was produced in Germany and I have no doubt it tasted a great deal better when it left the brewery. There is no way the German's would allow a beer as bad as that pass quality control. My guess is that it had been mishandled quite badly in the interim, resulting in oxidation and a general funkiness.

With the pavement pounding done for the day we headed back to the Carpenter's Arms to sample some of the six casks on offer. The first and best was Cooking from the Grain Store Brewery - session ale at its very best giving plenty of flavour, begging you to drink pint after pint. I moved on to Titan which proved to be one of those overly malty sweet ales that I just don't enjoy at all. To get the taste of Titan out of my mouth I opted for a pint of Between the Posts Whippet Special Ale, a malty pale ale that for some strange reason tasted of chocolate. A strange sensation because the colour of the beer did not hint at this type of flavour at all.

On the way back to the hotel we opted for a final drink in the Mason's Arms, a nearby pub that only stocked Badger's ale on cask and gave me the chance to try some First Gold in its most natural form. The bottled version of this ale has let me down badly on more than one occasion, the carbonation is far too high and the single show case hop does not get the chance to shine. On cask it is a different ale, completely dominated by the hop choice and tastes very earthy indeed, much like mouthful of soil, but not in a bad way, if you know what I mean. The second Badger ale on offer was Hopping Hare, 'thrice hopped', one of these hops was Stryian Goldings I reckon, giving the beer a very typical citrus golden ale flavour.

Finally, for a little hotel refreshment I chanced upon some Marks and Spencer ale that M & S in their infinite wisdom have deemed unsuitable for the Irish market. The Cornish IPA is wonderful stuff packed with American hops including Chinook, Willamette and Cascade. It is a crying shame that this ale has been withheld from the Irish Market. Please M & S, take back the metallic Yorkshire Bitter and give us this one instead! The second ale withheld from Irish shores is a Welsh Honey Bitter, once again featuring a favourite hop of mine - Challenger. It is ferociously carbonated, attempting to jump out of the bottle upon opening, but for some reason the prickle on the tongue works rather well with this beer, giving a zing of refreshment to the golden ale. The honey doesn't really feature much, except for perhaps a slight sweetness, but no real honey flavour to speak of. I always enjoy a trip to London, but my next may well prove the best. I have been invited for a tour of the Fuller's brewery by the guy in charge of the laboratory there. It should prove very interesting indeed.

Single Malt Cascade Challenge(r)

2009-02-17T13:06:00.003Z

I like challenger. I like cascade. John suggests this combo in an ale is excellent so at the earliest opportunity I wanted to test this out. I'm off work this week so grabbed the chance to do some midweek brewing, something I never get the chance to do. The recipe looked like this:

4.3 kg Maris Otter

Challenger 40g 60 mins
Challenger/Cascade 20, 10, 5, 0 mins

Mashed 66 C

1.5 litre British ale yeast starter

OG 11 Plato

The most important thing about this brew was ensuring that I had removed all the alkalinity from the water because a grist composed of entirely pale malt will not tolerate much alkalinity and cannot produce enough acidity to counter the buffering effect of carbonates. I took care of this with an acid blend solution and the mash went well. The beer will be golden in colour but perhaps not as light as it could be due to some inevitable darkening during the boil. The beer is appropriate. The sun came out today and a distinct spring warmth was in the air and this beer will be a refreshing golden ale, slightly lower in alcohol than the beer I brewed over the winter and well suited to drinking in quantity.

No smoke without, erm...

2009-02-14T16:00:00.007Z

I transferred Old Smoky to secondary during the week. A new name might be required though. No Smoky might be appropriate because I can't detect any smokiness in it, and this is disappointing because I have just come round to the way of smoke. On the plus side it is the best beer I have ever tasted out of the primary fermenter with a balanced roast character and satisfying fullness that can be put down to the large amounts of calcium chloride and the high mash temperature. Time will tell on the smoke front, but I am not hopeful.

Today I had some spare time so I racked off my latest ale for bottling. Usually I put 10 litres in a barrel and bottle the rest, however this time I plan to bottle all of it with the intention of bringing it to Cork for Ireland's first home brew expo. This will hopefully prove to be a great opportunity to put home brewing into the consciousness of the average Irish punter and perhaps make them realise that great beer can be brewed at home, in many cases this beer can prove far more flavourful and satisfying than the macro produced beer on offer in most Irish pubs.

As a just reward for my hard work today I settled down with a generous bottle of Stone Smoked Porter and a plate of various meats, olives and cheese provided by my thoughtful wife. The porter is wonderful; full in the rich American dark beer sense with satisfying malt complexity, balancing bitterness and perfect carbonation rendering the beer superbly drinkable. The colour is alluring, as is the rich foam that settles upon it and it has the same spiciness that the Stone Imperial Russian Stout develops upon a little warming. All in all a wonderful beer, but not a hint of smoke in it. Perhaps I'm searching for the wrong type of smokiness, like the kind found in Bamberg style smoked ale, if so, it's just not present. No matter, it is a thoroughly satisfying pint and makes me feel a little better about the lack of smoke in my own porter.

I'm converted

2009-02-09T19:43:00.006Z

Last week a tip off from The Beer Nut had me scampering to an off license knocking out Schlenkerla at 2 quid a bottle. TBN has a thing for smoked beer. It's not quite decent and worries me a little, but he's a grown man and a free agent. I'm not sure the average rehab centre knows how to deal with this particularly pernicious addiction though.

Smoked beer and I haven't got on in the past. My most recent beer was a nod towards this style with a small addition of smoked malt mainly because I had developed a taste for phenolic Islay scotch. In the past Schlenkerla tasted to me like smoked bacon in a glass and I struggled with it, but being a tenacious beer lover I was confident that at some point in the future I would come to appreciate this style of beer. It had happened with other beers why not with this one? Well tonight my conversion occurred. The key to this conversion is the change in my perception of the beer. It now tastes more of smoke than bacon, much like Islay malt and I find this very pleasant indeed. It still smells of bacon but this doesn't put me off and without the flavour overpowering things the malt and roasted aspects of the beer have appeared. I did find it a little disconcerting that the beer slowly started to resemble flat cola as I let it linger in the glass for quite a while, but no harm. It has begun. Will I end up in rehab trying to kick this smoky habit?

The Daddy

2009-02-05T07:30:00.000Z

I missed this member of the Jonathan Spielberg import collection first time round. I feel cheated because it is by far the best of them. I said before that Big Daddy from Speakeasy just wasn't sufficiently different from Prohibiton Ale because the amber ale just gives so damn much. Double Daddy is the beer that I hoped Big Daddy would be. It is an amazing beer and as reported by The Beer Nut, a great many hours could be happily passed sniffing the potent hop aroma stemming from the glass. Mango hit me in the face when I tasted it, really proper chewy, stringy sweet dried mango. I love mango and loved this beer just as much. I could smell citrus hops five paces away from the glass, not that I wanted to stay away from the glass for very long; it has the most wonderful golden colour with the rich foam and lacing I have come to expect from highly hopped ale. The most striking aspect to this beer is the almost total lack of any unpleasant cloying often found in other Imperial IPAs. Yet it is full bodied, and the heavy hitting 9.5% abv warms you from the throat all the way to the belly. Fabulous.

Old Smoky

2009-02-01T18:35:00.017Z

I have avoided using smoked malt up to now because I find the phenols a little difficult to deal with. The Bamberg type smoked ales are like smoked bacon in a glass to my mind and a little hard to stomach. Recently however I have developed a taste for Islay single malts which are very high in peat smoke phenols indeed. As a result I decided a hint of this in a porter might not be a bad thing. There are problems with this because I had no idea how much smoked malt to use to get the hint of smoke I wanted. Anyhoo, the recipe looked like this:

Maris Otter 3.8 kg
Smoked malt 500g
Chocolate malt 250g
Black malt 200g
250g Muscovido dark sugar

Pilgrim 40g 6o mins
Pilgrim 15g 20 mins

Mashed at 67 C

OG 12 Plato

1.2 litre British ale starter

In the end I just added all the smoked malt I had. It didn't smell that strong from the pack and didn't dominate the wort in any way, so I shouldn't have to worry about an imbalance. I think my brewing software overstated the extract from some of the malts because the gravity fell short and I also took off a bit more sparge than intended, but I didn't want to boil for longer to concentrate the wort so threw in some rich brown sugar. It should add a little more complexity and brought the gravity up to a respectable level.

I also loaded the liquor with calcium chloride to make up for the poor levels of calcium in my water and add some fullness. I am interested to know just how high a concentration of various salts brewing liquor can bear before it starts to have a negative effect on the beer. Burton brewing water has around 700ppm sulphate which is very high indeed and makes for very hard water. Burton ales have always been known for excellent clarity, but it took an understanding of brewing chemistry before it was established that the very high levels of calcium in the brewing water was contributing to excellent break formation and yeast flocculation. I plan to play with water treatment over the next few brews to see what improvements various salts may add to my beer.

Brett, and no doubt about it

2009-01-24T21:11:00.009Z

So that's what Brett tastes like. One has to ask the question who in their right mind would add this wild yeast to their beer on purpose. The boys at Mikkeller have, but anybody familiar with the way these guys operate will not find this unusual. I was lucky enough to have the Mikkeller experience in Copenhagen at the European Beer Festival, which is where I picked up this bottle of It's Alight. As I said, a Brettanomyces strain was purposely added to this beer and the Brett character is clearly evident - its presence affects every aspect of the beer. It smells funky as hell, does not retain any kind of foam, and thanks to bottle conditioning is highly carbonated and almost painful to drink such is the level of fizz. All of this can be placed squarely at the feet of the wild yeast because it produces any number of pungent flavour compounds that the more familiar Saccharomyces cerevisiae do not indulge in. Also, the Brett has no problem chomping through the longer, more complex sugars that more traditional brewing strains leave alone to pad out the beer. Despite the pungent yeast flavours the hops do make a showing providing quite a kick of bitterness and a little zest. It is reminiscent of Orval in many ways, mainly with respect to the aggressive hopping, very high carbonation and a quenching dry finish, but at a modest 4.5% abv it'll make short work indeed of a dry throat and give a refreshing kick along the way.

It's been done before

2009-01-20T10:05:00.000Z

This is a strange beer but perhaps less strange to me than other people because I have done this experiment before. Stone Cali-Belgique IPA is a curious mix of their standard IPA with the addition of a Belgian yeast strain. I managed to do something similar quite by accident a few years ago when I brewed a hop driven pale ale using Amarillo and accidentally pitched a packet of Saf Ale T58 instead of the far more suitable S05. Both the packets are pink you see, and I hurriedly grabbed the wrong one. The result was a very strange beer that I didn't really enjoy. Much the same can be said about this IPA. It is immensely bitter, which is no surprise considering it comes from the boys at Stone, but there is little in the way of hop aroma because the pungent flavours produced by the Belgian yeast strain dominate everything resulting in a very bitter, funky beer that tastes a bit like bread along with other flavours I can't define. Curiously this beer tastes of the off flavour that has plagued my own beer over the last few months. This revelation has given me a great deal to think about indeed.

Pilgrim's Progress

2009-01-20T07:15:00.001Z

Last weekend saw another attempt to brew a straightforward ale. It looked a little like this:

4.6 kg Maris Otter
250g 120L crystal malt

Pilgrim 11.3% 60 mins
Willamette 4.4% 20, 10, 5, 0 mins

Mashed at 66 C

OG 12 Plato

Saf 05

This beer has a number of new elements; I have never used Pilgrim or Willamette before and look forward to see what kind of flavour they'll give the beer; I loaded the water with calcium sulphate and calcium chloride, bringing the the calcium concentration up to around 250ppm which will have aided the mash, break formation and the yeast in their work as well as adding fullness to the beer and enhancing hop character; finally I used my new wort chiller which proved very effective, dropping the temperature very rapidly initially but also got the wort to room temperature far quicker too. Along with this I tightened up just about everything else in the process to try and get a clean tasting beer. I'll keep you posted.

A big ol' can of beer

2009-01-18T20:31:00.008Z

I have spied this can of beer on my local supermarket shelf a number of times over the last year but relented for all sorts of reasons. Today I decided to buy it to wash down the juicy steak sandwich I had in mind for dinner. The can holds a litre of lager and is something of a novelty - to me at least. The sight of it is curious as is the sensation of holding it in the hand. It was dirt cheap too but sadly it let me down in its primary function with a nasty rubber like aftertaste. I was a little disappointed because I have tried this beer before from the bottle and it struck me as a solid if unremarkable German lager. I suppose I could look to the can as the cause of this unpleasant flavour, but cans are quite suitable for storing beer despite what is widely believed.

While I was in the mood to buy canned beer I grabbed some Newcastle Brown Ale. I last drank this many years ago and it wasn't as I remembered it at all. It comes across as very promising initially, looking pleasant enough and smelling quite complex in a fruity kind of way and seems like it is going to deliver some serious flavour, but then it disappears with a whimper and a nasty metallic tang. This metallic note is common enough in many English ales I find, and in the past I would have attributed it to the can.

It wasn't just a short lived can fetish that made me try some Newkie Brown. Oz Clarke and James May found themselves in the Newcastle Brown Ale brewery during the latest episode of their boozy adventures and Oz wasn't impressed with the beer at all. I thought I would give it a try for myself and see what it was all about. Laura over at Aran Brew has mentioned the appearance of the ICB crowd in the book of the series, and we can expect to see them all on the television in the next few weeks. My Centennial Ale was picked as their preferred beer of the evening, thanks to The Beer Nut, and as a result has made it into the book too. I really would have put more care into the label if I knew it was to be published.

Old School Extreme

2009-01-15T12:31:00.000Z

I enjoy comparing beer styles made by different breweries. It is interesting to see how individuals have chosen to interpret a particular style. This is never more enjoyable than comparing an English brewed beer with what an American brewer has decided to do with it. When you think about it, imperial stout is exactly what American brewers would love. It was extreme beer before beers became extreme. Standard strength IPAs were not enough for some American brewers and so imperial and double IPAs were concocted. Not so with Imperial stouts though. All they had to do was brew it as strong as they dared and more than likely it would be a perfect example of imperial stout because the uncompromising colour, flavour and alcohol content fits right in with the extreme brewing ethos.

Samuel Smith's Imperial Russian Stout is something of a tiddler in these stakes coming in at only 7.5%, but it doesn't disappoint on the flavour front with rich treacle on the nose that carries through into the mouth, supporting a pleasant fullness that is not overly viscous. It appears to be fairly well attenuated for a beer of its strength, not particularly bitter for a big stout and has the lovely velvet like roasted barley feel, but strangely I have experienced this to a greater degree in some stouts of normal strength. The carbonation is suitably low but still results in some satisfying foam cling to the glass at the end of it all.

Typically the American contender in tonight's events weighs in a little heavier at 10.8%. Stone Imperial Russian Stout is considerably more bitter, a great deal more viscous and amazingly, is impenetrable to light. Seriously. I held it up to the sixty watt bulb on my desk lamp and no light passed through. It's a black hole of a stout, sucking all light around it. It has little of the treacle flavour found in the English offering, instead giving up a small measure of the richer roast malt character that is typical of American dark beer. Coffee, liquorice and potent alcohol smack you on the nose, but it really comes to life after warming in the palm when a delightful spiciness develops. The Americans appear to have done it once again in the dark beer stakes. Someday a European dark beer will top them. I'd wager it'll come from Scandinavia.

Unexplored potential

2009-01-13T12:00:00.002Z

The potential is breathtaking. What you're looking at is 25 kg of some of the world's finest two row pale malt. Maris Otter, to those in the know. It is without form, ready for crafting into any number of fine beers. Crisp pale ale? Without doubt. Rich barley wine? Certainly. Smoked porter? Perhaps. Whatever takes my fancy. But my excitement is met by trepidation in equal measure. Sadly my brewing endeavours have not gone to plan over the last 6 months or so. I have ditched a hundred litres of beer because of a stubbornly persistent off flavour that I cannot shift.

Remember this ale? It was my return to the mash tun after a long break, and to be honest I was certain that it would be taint free thanks to a tightening of my brewing technique. Sadly it was not, so this is my next offensive against the nasty flavour; a new fully pimped home made wort chiller. It has far greater cooling capacity than my previous one and should cool things down far quicker and prevent me, through sheer impatience, from aerating the wort at too high a temperature. You see, my existing wort chiller takes an age to get wort down to room temperature. It'll drop the first fifty degrees centigrade very rapidly indeed which takes care of all my my cold break requirements, but I simply cannot wait the length of time required to get the wort down to 20 C. As a result of this, and other things peculiar to my brewing set up, the wort tends to get aerated at around 25 C and sometimes a little higher. My latest vexed theory is that this is oxidising my break filled wort and precipitating the pesky off flavour. This coming weekend should see the test of this theory, but in the meantime can any brewers out there let me know if they are impatient like me, or having greater brewing maturity, ensure that their wort is plenty cool before aeration?

Probably........not

2009-01-11T21:15:00.009Z

I chanced upon some Guinness Mid Strength the other evening. I had heard it was about the city but wasn't terribly bothered in hunting it down because I imagined it wouldn't be worth the effort. It turns out I was right; it really isn't worth the effort. Even the effort of raising the pint to your face is wasted on this beer. It looks just like full strength Guinness and for the most part smells just like it too but everything goes wrong when it enters your mouth. It has no length whatsoever and is miserably watery.

At the same bar I was very interested to see a tap for Carlsberg Mid Strength. I didn't anticipate it at all but of course had to try some despite rarely drinking its full strength namesake. Once again things didn't quite work out, but it wasn't so bad because I am familiar with non alcoholic lagers such as Beck's Unleaded, and in a blind tasting I would say that this Carlsberg was in actual fact alcohol free rather than the 2.7% stated on the tap. It has the classic alcohol free taste that is shared also with Erdinger's isotonic excuse for a sports drink. Laughably the blurb on the beer mats scattered around the pub suggest that the mid strength tastes exactly the same as the full 4.2% Carlsberg. Absolutely ridiculous, but if anyone knows the power of advertising, it's the peddlers of mass produced bland lager. I think I'd prefer go alcohol free and drive home than sink a couple of pints of mid strength lager and run the lottery of a roadside breath test.

The experience was interesting to me for a number of reasons. Firstly it highlighted just what ethanol brings to two different and distinct beer styles and just how difficult it is to make a tasty low strength beer when you are unwilling to up the malt or hops in order to add some character to the beer. Britain has any number of very tasty low alcohol ales, but they differ to this attempt by Guinness because session ales in Britain are designed to be tasty and low strength, while Guinness appeared to have merely removed the alcohol but left everything else much the same. Secondly it pissed me off that the mid strength was almost the very same price as full strength beer despite the reduction in excise that Guinness had to pay on the production of these beers. This is nothing new of course - a bottle of entirely alcohol free beer is the same price as normal beer in Irish pubs, but clearly Guinness have carried out expensive and extensive market research to establish a demand for this type of beer and perhaps might have considered making it a little cheaper to attract those who might be happy to drink this type of beer and drive home afterwards. Finally, despite the lack of satisfaction I derived from these beers, I am very happy to see them on the market. As I said, it is likely much market research pointed to a consumer demand for low strength beer, which is a wonderful thing as it can only inevitably lead to the availability of tasty bitters and mild in Ireland. Or maybe I'm just getting carried away.

Worth the wait

2009-01-09T18:27:00.007Z

I offer my sincere thanks and apologies to Velky Al for the gift of this bottle of wonderful Primator 16. My thanks because a beer given by a discerning beer lover is certain to be well researched and it was very kind of him to think of me during his visit to Ireland, but I must apologise for allowing it to languish in my beer fridge for so long. But that's how thing roll at the Black Cat Brewery; beers often disappear into the back of cupboards and fridges where they sit for an indefinite period of time, but they are never far from my thoughts. I just need the right occasion to enjoy them. On this cold night, weary after a game of squash, and sitting before a roaring (gas) fire the time seemed right. I have little experience with this type of beer, but my memories of a visit to Prague were vividly brought to the fore when I stuck my nose in the glass. It doesn't smell like other lagers, the body is richer and very satisfying and there is no DMS to speak off which was the only prediction I made for this beer, thinking perhaps that a strong lager would be strong in all lager aspects. In fact it is smooth with almost cask like carbonation, understated hops and not much alcohol really - surprising given the 7.5% swimming around in the glass. The Beer Nut was also gifted a bottle of this tasty beer, but his encyclopaedic beer knowledge provides it a place in the beer family tree, which sadly I cannot do.

Thanks again Al. Hopefully someday I can return the favour.

The Boil

2009-01-08T12:35:00.002Z

A solid rolling boil is essential in the brewing of good beer. It is energy intensive and potentially dangerous but a brewer skimps on boil time or intensity at his/her own peril. The boil must be vigorous and rapid, generally not longer than an hour. The intensity of the boil can be judged by the amount of water evaporated, with a figure of at least 10% being considered the minimum required to achieve what needs to done during the boil. The chemistry involved in wort boiling is immensely complex but can but can be broken down into a number of relatively straight forward mechanisms that contribute to beer quality.

Alpha acid isomerisation

One of the most important roles of the boil brewers carry out is the production of bittering compounds form the isomerisation of hop alpha acids. Isomerisation is a chemical process which involves molecules being converted from one configuration to another. Alpha acids are dubbed iso-alpha acids once isomerised but they contain the same amount of atoms, merely in a different configuration. The isomerisation reaction is favoured by alkaline conditions with a pH of around 9 being optimal, but these conditions are never met during the boil and this explains the notoriously poor level of hop utilisation during the brewing process which rarely exceeds 40%. Wort becomes steadily more acidic during the boil due to the formation of break material so the extraction of bittering compounds becomes less efficient as the boil goes on. Along with specific pH conditions, magnesium or another divalent ion and a vigorous boil are required to carry out the isomerisation reaction. The gravity of the wort can further influence the isomerisation reaction with high gravity worts impeding the progress of the isomerisation step. The loss of precious bittering compounds is bad enough, but the brewer can expect to further lose what little bittering has been achieved through adsorption to yeast and filter material and also some will be scrubbed by Co2 production during fermentation.

Colloidal stability

We all love bright haze free beer and this is one of the major reasons that wort boiling must be carried out properly. During the boil molecules called polyphenols stemming from malt and hops bind to the protein in the wort and form complexes that precipitate out of solution and comprise the hot break material. These processes can take up to 2 hours, but boils rarely exceed 90 minutes for reasons of economy. If the boil is not of sufficient duration to allow break formation, polyphenols and protein matter will persist into the beer and cause problems with clarity. After boiling, wort can contain up to 8000 mg/L of break material which is generally removed before the wort is fermented, though some brewers think that the break material provides additional nutrition for yeast and leave a degree of it in. Kettle finings such as carageenan moss is used to aid precipitation by binding the break material forming large flocs which fall from solution more efficiently than the break material would alone. It should be noted that specific doses of kettle finings are required to get maximum sedimentation and brewers carry out trials to determine the optimal dosage.

Sterilisation

The crushed malt that brewers mash in with is awash with unwanted and deleterious microorganisms such as bacteria and wild strains of yeast. The boiling of wort provides the very important role of sterilising the wort before fermentation lest the unwanted microbes present in the freshly produced wort wreak havoc with the fermentation process.

Enzyme inactivation

The fresh wort drawn from the mash tun is a cocktail of active enzymes that have been hard at work during the mashing process. This is a cause of concern to the brewer who has no doubt carefully selected the grain bill and carried out the mash at a specific temperature with the intention of attaining desired characteristics mainly pertaining to body and residual extract. If mashing enzymes such as the amylases are permitted to continue what they do best in the wort, the residual sugars which the brewer fought to keep in the wort will be degraded and metabolised during fermentation. Beta galactosidase is an enzyme of concern because it breaks down dextrins and makes them accessible to the remaining amylases. This enzyme has been shown to survive mashing and is exploited by distillers - who do not boil their wort - to ensure maximum fermentables are available during fermentation. Distillery fermentations often drop down as low as .997 thanks to the activity of beta galactosidase, so brewers would be best served to stop this enzyme in its tracks before fermentation starts.

Volatile Removal

The large plumes of steam that pour from the kettle during the boil carry out the important action of removing with it unwanted volatile compounds that would negatively impact on the flavour of the beer should they be permitted to stay in the wort. These compounds stem from the action of heat on hop constituents and also compounds present in the malt. Unpleasant, harshly bitter hop molecules are driven out in the steam along with dimethyl sulphide (DMS) which is present in lightly kilned malt. DMS is not a major factor during ale brewing because the slightly higher kiln temperature during the production of pale malt drives off most of the DMS. Lager malt has higher levels, but a slight DMS character is considered to be part of the style of European lagers so total elimination during the boil rarely occurs. An important practical consideration with respect to the removal of these compounds is to ensure that the kettle is not covered during the boil to prevent the volatile containing steam condensing and flowing back into the wort. Commercial kettles often contain a trap in the flue to prevent this from occurring.

Colour and flavour addition

The intense heat generated during boiling promotes various chemical reactions that contribute to the colour and flavour of the beer. Most of these are reactions involving sugars that are caramelised or complex with proteins in Maillard reactions to from dark compounds that influence beer colour. The degree of colour and flavour formation is influenced by the manner in which the heat is applied to the wort. Directly fired kettles can create large amounts of these compounds because of the high temperatures at the point of heat application. This scorching often adds specific character to the beer, but can problem because the scorched wort material may adhere to the base of the kettle and prevent effective heat transfer. For this reason kettles must be cleaned throughly to prevent build up of debris on heating elements.

Clearly Problematic

2009-01-05T20:34:00.003Z

Sulphur compounds are nasty things. Their presence is rarely welcome in beer, with perhaps the exception of small levels of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) in specific lager types. Hydrogen sulphide is another offender, being responsible for the smell of rotten eggs and the funkiness of primary fermentation. Yeast produce it at quite high levels during the frenzy of fermentation, but it is thankfully scrubbed from the beer by rapidly rising carbon dioxide. The classic exception to higher than normal levels of sulphur in beer is the 'Burton Snatch', famous in beer brewed with Burton water in the Midlands of England. It is caused by a very high sulphate concentration in the brewing water and has become a distinguishing feature of the style.

My personal sulphuric bugbear is the odour and flavour from light struck hops, more commonly known as skunking. It irritates me because it is the most easily preventable of all the invasive sulphur tints that plague beer - just stick the bloody beer in a brown bottle. The chemistry of skunking can be seen below. I love organic chemistry, but it's not for everyone and I am sorry for inflicting it on those who do not share my interest. The photolytic reaction to the left/down is the cause of my woes, the result of which is isopentyl mercaptan - the classic skunky smell. The top reaction running left to right is some clever brewing scientist's bright idea to prevent the breakdown of the hop alpha acid and remove the production of unpleasant sulphur compounds. These products are called reduced alpha acids (reduction is a chemical process involving the donation of electrons to a molecule). These reduced compounds do not suffer from light strike and also have the added bonus of providing more bitterness than an equivalent measure of standard alpha acids. Curiously they also promote far better foam stability, but at the risk of the foam looking rocky and artificial.

I stopped buying beer in clear bottles quite some time ago because of the unpleasant smell and flavour it suffers from. This is shame because there are quite a number of good beers sold in clear glass bottles. The difference between a beer in its intended state and the sorry condition it reaches us in clear glass has been highlighted to me on a number of occasions. The first was Marston's Old Empire IPA, an unremarkable beer in the bottle that tastes just like every other light struck beer, but a pint of it from cask at the GBBF proved entirely different and not just because of the cask/bottle divide. The most striking difference I have experienced was Bishop's Finger from a bottle that had been kept under wraps away from mischievous photons. It is a true strong malty richly hopped ale in this condition, but tastes like every other ale in a clear bottle when exposed to light. Happily I can say the same for this particular bottle of 1698 because the people at CAMRA must have kept it from the light during processing, and I, hopeful that they had done so, stashed it in the cupboard in the hope that it might be free from light struck off flavours. Thankfully it has not a hint of skunking. Instead it is a wonderful strong ale with full, sticky body and satisfying minerally English hops. I do not know why Shepherd Neame put all their beer in clear bottles. It seems crazy to me, especially with the generous hopping that is typical in most of their ale.

As an aside, in the above photolytic chemical reaction it is the presence of the oxygen atom and double bond that is responsible for light strike. Oxygen is very electronegative which means it really pulls on the electrons in the bond with the lower carbon atom. This weakens the bond and allows the lower fraction of the molecule to be cleaved off by an energetic photon. This same electronegativity is responsible for all life on earth in as much as it is the reason why a small molecule like water is a liquid at ambient temperature. So I'm left with a dilemma; all life on earth or skunk free beer?

Malto Cumulus

2009-01-01T13:26:00.007Z

A new year and what a beer to start it with. My wife and I took off to the house of a friend for the New Year celebrations along with a bottle of Duvel Special Edition Tripel Hop for sharing. These big beers in big bottles are always best shared with mates I find, and I am glad when a suitable event comes around that warrants the opening of a much anticipated beer. Once I had braved the cat's swift reflexes and razor sharp claws in extricating the bottle from his person we headed a few miles across the city and settled in with Indian food and other lovely treats. I decided to wait until after dinner to pop the cork on this beer, but it would have made very short work indeed of the spicy food we enjoyed. It pours almost the same colour of classic Duvel but the foam was more dense - inconceivably so, quite an achievement which anyone who has hastily poured a glass of classic Duvel will attest to. An arm's length sniff of the glass explains why the foam resembles dense cumulus cloud; it is hopped to within an inch of its life and hop alpha acids add superb support to foam. The dry hop aroma is pungent, the likes of which I haven't smelled since the home brew produced by the brewers at ICB where experimentally heroic amount of hops are often added to IPAs and pale ales. Spicy hops explode in the mouth, swifty followed up by glorious alcohol warmth that lingers all the way down to the belly, the combination of which gives a long, long satisfying finish. Intense bitterness also hangs around for a while too, but the immense malt body matches it perfectly and prevents it from dominating. I can't help but draw comparisons with American double and imperial IPAs and the like because they share many traits. The 9.5% abv is right up there with this type of beer and the immense use of hops and malt is similar too, but the Duvel strikes me as a far more refined beer, which while very heavily hopped doesn't have the rough edges that so many big hitter imperial IPAs have. It is a superb beer overall and well suited to a time of celebration. Sadly it isn't available in Ireland - I had to source this from England, but I hope it turns up soon because I want some more.

Ale Mary Full of Cloves

2008-12-24T22:02:00.010Z

It's Christmas Eve and never a better time to break out the dark and festive beers in my stash. Phúca was a wonderful introduction to spiced ale this Christmas and I was thirsty for more. Ale Mary arrived in my CAMRA delivery this quarter and seemed promising with its boast of cloves, coriander and ginger but even a cursory sniff clearly indicates that it has none of the subtlety found in Phúca. Cloves are to the fore, so much that it crossed my mind that this beer would be better served hot in a snifter glass. The coriander is certainly evident, which is hardly surprising because the label states that coriander oil is used in production. It is a very bitter beer indeed, and not all this bitterness stems from hops, though there is certainly a fair measure in there. The bitterness is harsh, a mixture of hops and intense spicing, and quite unpleasant until is passes from the back of the mouth and other more subtle flavours are permitted to speak. The malt comes through with a little ginger, but the bitterness really takes some getting over.

Flying Dog's Road Dog Porter is a different beast. Unlike a great many American beers, this dark ale is a fairly straight down the line porter without intense hop additions or excessive alcohol. It pours a beautiful dark rich ruby colour with mouth watering dense tan foam. Nothing is overstated in this beer. The rich roast flavour that I have come to associate with American porter is present and satisfying, and is perhaps best described as a combination of an absence of English porter flavour probably derived from brown malt, and the addition of richer malts used by American brewers, but it's not a complex beer and except for its 6% abv could be put away in great quantities.

I'm off to the West of Ireland for the rest of the holidays where the internet does not exist so I'll be quiet for a few days. For some Christmas entertainment might I suggest you check out The Beer Nut's very enjoyable work of fiction written to entertain the ICB community, and is deserving of a wider audience. Gargle's Brewery seems very familiar to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

Merry Christmas to those who tune in to my musings and a prosperous New Year to all.

Thom.

Ghost of Christmas Future

2008-12-18T21:46:00.010Z

The first of the seasonal beers arrived in Dublin this week. It travelled all the way from Cork city and will likely be the only one on draught this year, which is a pity, but I am optimistic that the future will be brighter for this type of seasonal brewing as the craft industry gathers pace. Phúca from the boys of the Franciscan Well Brewery in Cork, who have charmed me with Purgatory Pale ale and Shandon Stout in the past, kindly sent a few kegs North to the Bull and Castle so the inhabitants of Ireland's first city might enjoy it too. Phúca (pronounced fooka) is the Irish word for a ghost or spirit, which isn't particularly festive, it seems more suitable for a Hallowe'en beer. Perhaps the brewing schedule didn't go quite to plan in Cork.

It was hard for me to discern the colour of the beer because the entire beer hall appeared to be lit by candle light, but it was reassuringly dark with rich, light tan foam. The most pleasant surprise was the relatively warm serving temperature. I anticipated a thorough chilling but it proved to be just a little too cool than optimum, a testament to the B&C's love of beer and desire to get it to the punter in as good a condition as possible. It smelled suitably festive and well balanced too with the spices mingling amicably with malt. The taste is a similar experience, nothing appears to dominate and the body is nicely full with subtle cinnamon and clove notes. The only draw back is perhaps a lack of warming alcohol which would have set the whole thing off . At 5.2% it is stronger than the average draught beer available in Ireland, but a few more percentage points would make it a true winter warmer.

Letting the side down

2008-12-16T19:59:00.008Z

The American craft beer that makes it across the pond to Ireland is on the whole excellent stuff. Sadly we have have to pay a premium for the pleasure, particularly on the fare from smaller brewers. The larger brewers such as Brooklyn or Sam Adams are reasonably priced thanks to the economies of scale enjoyed by these guys, but the beer from the slightly smaller breweries seems to cost a lot more. Even Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is an expensive treat over here and thanks to the comparatively high alcohol content of Goose Island's IPA this too can also prove a little pricey.

The recent efforts of Jonathan Spielberg and his business partner mean that we can enjoy fine West coast American beers at far more reasonable prices thanks to the elimination of meddlesome middle men. It was with these prices in mind that I bought this evening's beers. At only 2.50 each I had a vague hope that these might be more tasty American beers bucking the trend of high retail price. In truth I knew that anything labelled a 'Cream Ale' had to be suspect and my suspicions were confirmed on the first mouthful. Genesse Cream Ale taste of very little indeed, but boasts of offering the smoothness of a lager with the flavour of an ale. My initial thoughts were of cream soda on the tongue, but dismissed this as the insidious action of their marketing on my feeble mind. It had a distinct American light lager flavour and feel about. I can't think of anything else to say.

JW Dundee's Honey Brown is a honey lager which doesn't taste of honey. It is sweet though. Unpleasantly so, and also harshly bitter at the same time. There is reasonable malt substance but it tastes a little immature, a little like some of the flavours from early fermentation. It wasn't for me at all, but my wife liked it, which avid readers of this blog will know is the touch of death for any beer. Bud Light is her benchmark and any other beer she favours is likely to be equally unchallenging.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful - great things are coming from The States, but you can keep these two beers for yourself America, if that's OK with you.

A low alcohol evening

2008-12-13T20:48:00.004Z

I dined in Monty's again last night. It wasn't planned that way but the evening was all a bit last minute and every restaurant we tried was booked up with irritating Christmas parties. Monty's isn't a second best option mind you, the food and service is excellent, we just hadn't planned on going again so soon. I started the evening in my study with a bottle of Sussex Bitter from the Marks and Spencer ale collection my wife bought me. I mentioned previously that my hopes were not high for these beers, based on previous experiences but it gave me great pleasure to be proved wrong about this particular ale. It was just what I was after in the form of a low alcohol hoppy beer with decent bitterness to stimulate my appetite before dinner. The malt aspect was quite striking for a beer of a mere 3.8% and when balanced with the English hop character this made for the perfect pint of session ale.

You might recall my experience of Monty's house beer Shiva that I wrote about a few months ago. I wasn't impressed with it at all, but The Beer Nut didn't note any major problems during his encounter with it, and I am aware that such problems are quite probably batch related so I opted to try it once again, only to be told by the very friendly waiter that their brewery had shut down. I'll make no further comment.

After dinner drinks were taken in The Porter House, Parliament Street where I had a couple of wonderfully on form pints of TSB. My last pint, albeit in a different branch of the franchise, was freezing cold and disappointing. I was very happy to sink a few pints of the full flavoured, cellar temperature bitter having forgotten just how pleasant an evening on this low alcohol beer can be. Perhaps it was a fresh cask, but rich malt really jumped out of the glass with little of the harshness that can sometimes plague this beer. I've said it before and I'll say it again; we need more full flavoured low alcohol beer in this country, preferably from a cask, but keg would do very nicely indeed.

So Much Beer

2008-12-10T15:26:00.003Z

And there's more to come in the shape of another CAMRA Beer Club delivery. I am awash with beer I have never tasted before. It is exciting and expensive in equal measure. Bottled beer is bloody heavy and when coupled with postage from Britain the cost really starts to add up, but I will not be denied and besides, sterling is taking a hiding at the moment so things could be much worse. This collection of beer came from Beers of Europe through their on line shop. I discovered this company through a tip off on Irish Craft Brewer and very nearly soiled myself with excitement when I saw what they had on offer and realised they would deliver to Ireland. There are a lot of Stone Brewing Company beers in there, including the infamous Arrogant Bastard and the very tasty sounding Smoked Porter. Flying Dog are represented too with a couple of dark beers I have wanted to try. Brooklyn Brewery's Local 1 has been of great interest to me since I read about it last year and I was surprised to see it in the catalogue. A very special one for me in the group is Anchor's Old Fog Horn which I have waited years to taste. For balance I grabbed a few English ales from Tadcaster's Samuel Smith's Brewery which are unavailable in Ireland. And I couldn't resist Duvel's Tripel Hop having come so close to getting a bottle last year through a friend who while on holiday brought me back plain old Duvel instead, thinking he had got me the desired bottle.

I also have some Mark's and Spencer re-branded ales presented in a wooden trug. (No, I haven't heard of the word either). Their beers are often a little bland and in this instance grossly overpriced at 23 quid for the four bottles and wooden carrier, but it was a thoughtful gift from my wife who lugged the thing home on the bus for me and I look forward to trying them.

Back To the Tun

2008-12-08T21:27:00.006Z

I have been away from these pages for a while but once again with good reason; I finished my brewing exams last Friday and found myself without a minute to do little else except work my day job and wearily trawl through study notes. I could have done the whole thing more intelligently. Last year I opted to cover all the really interesting brewing science aspects which I enjoyed greatly, but for the last six months I have struggled through hundreds of pages of engineering and process technology. Don't get me wrong, this stuff is essential to brewing, particularly at large volumes, but it was very mathematical, covering fluid flow, pressure changes and refrigeration cycles among many other topics. It was all a bit difficult for a lowly biochemist to cope with.

To ease the pain somewhat I dusted off my brewing equipment on Sunday and set about brewing a pale ale. I had in mind a winter type ale gently spiced perhaps but then realised that it was in fact nearly mid December and it would never be ready for Christmas and besides, my recent attempts at any beer had been awful suffering as they did with a flavour I can't account for but suspect stems from oxidation of hot cloudy wort. With this in mind I thought a straight down the line pale ale was in order to see if in fact I could brew beer at all, let alone fancy spiced ones. The recipe looked a little like this:

4.8 kgs Maris Otter
300g Crystal 60L

46g Target 9% AA 60 mins
30g Challenger 7% AA 20 mins, 10 mins
25 g Progress 5 mins, 0 mins.

Mashed at 66 C

Saf 04

OG 1.048

Some of you with a built in bittering units calculator might note that the amount of bittering hops is mental, and you would be correct. I had small amounts of hops lying around the place and just decided to throw them all in to tidy the freezer up. As I said, I am interested to see if I can brew beer at all, let alone a well crafted one, so I went a little slap dash and just used up all my spare hops. It might not be too bad; if that bloody flavour turns up again perhaps the hops will drown it out.

American? Heaven Forbid

2008-11-19T10:25:00.004Z

It is always fun delving into the lucky dip that is the CAMRA Beer Club quarterly delivery. I did well this time with XB Bluebird Bitter from the Coniston Brewing Co. It describes itself as an English pale ale with American aroma hops, but "not too much mind, or we might have an American pale ale on our hands". It need not worry about that, it has a bit to go before things stray into APA territory, but it is a tasty beer with distinct citrus hop notes in the American fashion but strange because it is carbonated like an English ale and the combination is a little unusual. The colour is very appealing, and a triumph of bottle conditioning in that it is very easy to pour without agitating the yeast sediment and has perfect condition.

Bottle conditioning is a tricky thing to do well. Brewers are given a number of options in the bottling of live beer and it's hard to know which is best. One question the brewer must address is how the yeast is to be provided with enough extract to condition the beer. One option is to halt the fermentation by cooling the wort before the yeast have used all the sugars. The beer can then be put into cask and bottles where the yeast continue to ferment the wort when things warm up and provide a degree of carbonation in the product. That's very bloody hard to judge, I imagine. Another option is to let the beer ferment out and then add some priming sugar to the bottling tank. This appeals to me as a home brewer because it is exactly what we do and works very effectively, but the volumes involved at the commercial scale might be impractical. Also, there are specific bacteria that just love priming sugar and ruin beer. Another appealing option is to add a measure of freshly fermenting beer to the bottling tank. Termed 'krausening' this has the double benefit of supplying extract for conditioning and also an infusion of fresh yeast that will carbonate the beer in peak condition, but again could prove difficult because the primary fermentation of one batch must be carried out with the bottling of another batch in mind.

Yeast counts are also a problem because too much yeast in the bottle will either give a sludge of dead yeast in the bottom of the bottle or a yeast layer that lifts too easily and fogs up the pint. Some brewers opt to reduce the yeast content to half a million cells per millilitre by cooling the beer in the fermenter thereby encouraging most of the yeast to drop out of the beer. Others roughly filter the beer to remove all the yeast, but leave the tastier components, and then re-introduce a specific amount of yeast to take care of things in the bottle. The yeast count in the bottle must be sufficient to allow conditioning of the beer within a few weeks and also enough to produce a thin uniform film over the bottom of the bottle preventing slippage of the sediment, providing ease of pour.

There is no doubt that it is easier, if a little more expensive, to run your beer through a fine filter to stabilise it and not worry about all these complex considerations, but I am glad that a great many brewers in Britain have persevered with this tricky business to provide us with live, flavourful beers.

Bigger Daddy

2008-11-15T19:19:00.010Z

I've had a chance to try a few of the Speakeasy brewery beers at my leisure over the last while, having had a small sample of them during a tasting evening last week, and can't find fault with any of their hoppy ales. Prohibition is a stunner with immense American hops yet balanced perfectly with rich malt. It is billed as an amber ale yet is very heavy in the alcohol stakes at 6.1% abv, which is something of a pity because it is the sort of beer I could drink pints of, if it were a little easier going. The level of hop character, rich malt, outright bitterness and alcohol content puts it in the IPA style as far as I'm concerned. However the Speakeasy Brewery do produce an IPA by the name of Big Daddy which overlaps with Prohibition somewhat because the hop character and bitterness do not stand out enough to set it apart from its stablemate. It is lighter in colour and slightly crisper, but the hop character is damn near identical, perhaps a tad more bitter, with a similar malt profile that is a little less full. What I'm getting at is Prohibition is a perfectly good example of an IPA with all the strength and flavour intensity we expect. I'm not complaining. They are both outstanding ales that satisfy the hop lover in me. Perhaps the people at Speakeasy brewed Prohibition first, fully embracing the explosion of flavour that the American craft brewing industry fostered, but then realised that they couldn't pack much more flavour into an ale when they brewed Big Daddy. Still, lets hope they keep trying.

Black Lightning & the DMS Issue

2008-11-12T20:30:00.008Z

This quarter's CAMRA Beer Club belatedly arrived yesterday, just as I was starting to get a little concerned about it. A previous delivery had gone missing in the post so I get a little nervous when it's overdue. This month's motley crew of real ale look quite promising. Among them is Entire Stout by the Hopback Brewery of Wiltshire. So effective is the marketing of their golden ales it is very strange indeed to see a black beer coming from one of their bottles. I have enjoyed Summer Lightning many times in the past both bottled in Ireland and on cask in England and each time thought it a wonderful beer. I was surprised when Tim said he noted a distinct DMS note to it, and swiftly commented that DMS in unlikely in a beer brewed with pale malts. I had to eat my words shortly afterwards when I tried a bottle out of curiosity and was met with a strong vegetal note, typical of high DMS levels.

I might take a minute to jot down a few notes on dimethyl sulphide (DMS) to clarify why it is unusual to note it in some beer rather than others. It is a sulphur compound as the name suggests, and like most sulphur compounds is quite unpleasant smelling. It is a common feature of some lagers because lager malt contains large amounts of the precursor to DMS, S-methyl methionine (SMM), but the levels are low enough to add a distinct character to the lager which is often desirable. SMM is broken down into DMS by heat which in brewing occurs during the boil and during kilning in the production of malt. Thankfully DMS is quite volatile so it is driven off to the atmosphere during these processes. Pale ale malt is kilned at a high temperature compared to lager malt and as a result most of the DMS is driven off leaving very little in the finished malt. This explains my surprise that a golden ale brewed presumably with pale ale malt would have a strong DMS element to its character. The smell of DMS appears to vary with its concentration. Bamforth describes it as 'cat urine' which I can agree with because this is the distinct smell I get from Heineken, particularly in bottles. This might sound like I'm slagging Heineken off, but in fact a high DMS aspect in a lager suggests that it is made with a great deal of malt, rather than cheaper adjuncts that might thin out the body. The other smell commonly used is cooked corn, which I must confess I have never experienced. Another common smell is a rotting vegetable like odour, clearly outlined to me during a brewing course I undertook during which a concentrated DMS solution was passed around for us to smell. It had the unmistakable odour of cabbage left to rot in the drain of a sink after the washing up is done.

Getting back to the beer in hand, it's a nicely bitter stout with some chocolate in there somewhere, which really comes through during the swig when your nose is buried in the glass. The roasted barely is clearly evident to me at the moment because of late I have been drinking my own dark beer which is without any roasted barley at all. The bottle states it is suitable for vegans because it is not fined and has no residue of marine swim bladders in the form of isling glass. It seems common enough practice for brewers not to fine or filter their stouts, the Porterhouse don't bother either because stouts will hide any haze issues. All the better for us because nothing is stripped from the beer. It might not be so good for a work colleague of mine with a yeast sensitivity who asked me a few years ago if there was any yeast in commonly available draught beers. In my then ignorance, I told her no, it is all filtered, except for wheat beer, so she'd be safe enough. Let's hope she doesn't get a hankering for decent stout anytime soon...

Dream Porter

2008-11-11T12:00:00.006Z

It's a damn fine looking beer and no mistaking. It tastes pretty good too, but not as good as it could and I have learned a number of lessons in the brewing of this porter; there is a limit to the amount of dark malt that can be added to a beer with the hope of making it black. Roasted barely or patent black malt will black it up a treat but you'll struggle with chocolate malt, even heroic amounts of it. I didn't want to use any of the more acrid malts so opted for brown and chocolate which accounted for around 15% of the grist. Despite this the roasted notes aren't what they might be and the beer is also a bit thin, much like home brew made with too much sugar. This is down to the the high percentage of dark malts which don't add much in the way of fermentable sugars and so left the beer a little thin with insufficient pale malt to pad the whole thing out. Next time I plan to ease back on the roasted malt, but add some black malt which is potent stuff and shouldn't be required in large amounts to darken the beer and add roasted character. I'm determined to crack porter brewing. I want a full beer with decent malt character complemented with a rich roast flavour and perhaps a hint of hops. Is that too much to ask?

Awards and Marketing

2008-11-10T12:00:00.002Z

Did I mention I brew award winning beer? There was a delay in delivery of this certificate because I couldn't attend the event myself, but picked it up at the recent beer tasting evening where I met up with the fellow brewer who presented the beer for me. I was surprised my stout did so well because thanks to a bottling mishap it was horrifically over carbonated and invariably provided nothing more than a glass of viscous tan foam. The judges must have expertly dealt with this problem and actually got some beer into the glass for tasting.

This isn't my only award you know, I also won first prize when Oz Clarke and James May spent an evening in the Bull and Castle pub during the summer filming the last episode of their beer tour of Britain and Ireland show for the BBC. My Centennial Ale was voted the best of the home brew on offer, though it must be said that the decision was based both on the beer and also the blurb that the brewer could give to the camera in support of their beer. I couldn't attend the event, but had none other than The Beer Nut to do my marketing for me. Any one who reads his blog knows he has a wonderful turn of phrase and expertly talked the celebs into picking my beer at the expense of the the beer they actually preferred the taste of, brewed by Laura of Aran Brew fame. I'm a firm believer that beer must speak for itself and to hell with the blurb that comes with it, but I'm thankful nonetheless that TBN talked my beer up a storm. Seemingly James May took a bottle of my ale home with him, which is a bugger because I'll not see that bottle again, and those swing tops are hard to come by...

Bugger the Middle Man

2008-11-08T12:00:00.002Z

I feel like I have missed out on quite a number of beer events this year, despite attending a record number and having a great time in the process. This is a good reflection on the beer scene in Ireland at the moment where there are in fact too many events to attend throughout the year. The latest event on the beer radar was a tasting of some new American imports which had been show cased previously. Sadly this was on the other side of the city and I was too busy too attend. Thankfully this time round things fell into place I was at liberty to attend this event in Lilac Wines off license on my side of the city. The main thrust of this event comes from Jonathan Spielberg (no relation, I'm assured) a New Yorker via California who now lives in Dublin. He and his business partner have taken it upon themselves to import tasty American beer to Ireland independently rather than through the tortuous route that most imported beer arrives in Ireland - mainly through Britain where any number of middle men take their cut with the result that the poor suffering Irish beer lover pays around 3.50 per 360 odd millilitres of beer. By eliminating these meddlers Jonathan's wonderfully tasty beers are available at around 2.70 per bottle. A bargain by Irish standards and long overdue.

The imports presented mainly came from the Speakeasy Brewery, San Francisco and Gordan Biersch Brewing Company, San Jose. I had tried Speakeasy's Prohibition Ale a number years ago, but couldn't recall it too well. It proved to be a solid well hopped amber ale which could be easily drank in great volumes except for the 6.1% abv it packs. Big Daddy was also on offer, Speakeasy's IPA, a fuller hoppier ale, but mild compared to some of the hop bombs coming from the US. Some on the most interesting beers came from the Weinhenstephaner trained Gordan Biersch. This European experience has clearly influenced the flavour of their beer, most strikingly the wheat beer which actually tastes like a Bavarian weisse - a rare thing in American wheat beer. This was starkly illustrated by the White Lightning wheat beer offered by the Speakeasy brewery, a beer in sharp contrast to the Gordan Biersch, that was just plain unpleasant and made me realise that American wheats can actually get blander than those I have already tried. Biersch's Blonde Bock wasn't too much to get excited about, likewise the Marzen, but the Pilsner surprised me greatly as it did in fact have that chewy malty sensation that the sweeter Czech pilsners carry, with a good measure of bitterness to balance it out.

In an attempt to sound out the market Jonathan had brought along some other American ales that are not yet on the shelves. He was sounding out the wrong market in some respects because the beer geeks who turned up loved the stuff, which may well mean that the average punter will turn up their nose. Butte Creek's Organic Pale Ale proved to be the most interesting with an intense hop aspect that was faintly English in an earthy mineral like way. Two very promising beers form the Blue Frog Brewery left us divided on whether their IPA or double IPA (Big DIPA) was the better. The Big DIPA boasted 83 bittering units, but the immense body and alcohol swamped this making it far more approachable. This is a common occurrence in these American big beers and it surprises me that American brewers persist with it. The IPA was ascribed 63 bittering units but thanks to the thinner body was an order of magnitude more bitter than the DIPA. Why put all those expensive hops into double IPAs if you just don't get any bang for your buck?

Dunkel Clarity

2008-11-05T12:15:00.001Z

My recent dunkel weisse experience left me feeling a little hollow because the flavour just didn't meet with my expectations. I ended that post telling you about the other Weinhenstephaner Dunkel that I had yet to try. This one is labelled Tradition and I thought it was perhaps a rougher, fuller version of the other dunkel weisse, but a comment by Barry about dunkel being dark beer in general rather than the darker weisses that I thought them to be helped explain why this beer was filtered and not at all spicy when I got it into the glass. At first I thought it was a kristal dunkel weisse, an interesting notion, but in fact this appears to be a traditional dark German beer and a damn tasty one at that. It delivers on the rich dark malt aspect where the weisses failed, matched with an amazing clarity and rich colour. It is one of the tastiest looking beers I have seen in quite some time. Hopefully we'll see more of this type of beer arriving on Irish shores in the near future.