A liquid poem to the glory of the hop

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

"...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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.