The Kilkenny Strategem

Early July saw the third iteration of the Kilkenny Craft Beer Festival, spread across five days and multiple sub-events during the week. It's the brainchild of Kilkenny brewer Ger Costello and serves a higher purpose than simply creating an occasion for lots more beers than usual to be available to the drinking public. Threaded through the schedule and forming the backbone of the whole thing is the Kilkenny Ale Trail. Here, a number of pubs and restaurants in the city -- ones that so far haven't been too concerned with the independent brewers' wares -- have been paired with a Leinster brewery which doesn't routinely distribute locally. A leaflet allows locals and visitors to follow the trail throughout the week, bringing footfall to pubs that wouldn't otherwise get it, and additional share-of-throat for the brewers. It's a clever and noble idea, and Ger very much intends it to act as the thin end of a beery wedge, aiming to make the local outlets think more about the beers they're offering and perhaps making the arrangement permanent. In that sense, it's perhaps more appropriate to think of Kilkenny Craft Beer Festival as "Kilkenny Craft Beer Week", and there's a good model there, if any other towns would care to adopt it.

There was a festival in the traditional sense in the line-up, held in the spacious and comfortable beer garden of Billy Byrne's pub on the Saturday afternoon. Ger very kindly invited me to come along for a looksee. All of the participating Ale Trail brewers had beers on offer: Trouble, Rascals, Stone Barrel, O Brother and Hope. Costellos had a couple of taps on the board as well, of course, and with a brand new brewkit to play with, had even produced a special for the occasion.

Costellos Coconut IPA was the offering in question. It's not a style one sees a lot of, to say the least, so I was sceptical. It's not quite a brand new recipe either, having been constructed from Costellos' Beyond A Pale IPA with added toasted coconut, and then blended back with more of the beer until the desired level of coconuttiness was achieved. It looks like the base beer, being a bright and hazy orange colour. And it still smells like a hoppy pale ale. The coconut aroma sits comfortably beside the beer one, neither integrating nor interfering with it. The extra addition really makes itself felt on tasting, giving so much of the classic oily sweet Bounty-bar flavour that I'd probably have mistaken this for a dark beer if I hadn't seen it already. It does largely drown out the hop flavour, which is unfortunate, leaving just a pithy bitterness in the finish. For all that, I enjoyed the beer. It's certainly novel, and I can tolerate the gimmickry when the end result is perfectly pleasant to drink, like this was.

A big congratulations to Ger and the team. The Ale Trail is still up on the website, if you want to call in to the participants and see if they're still stocking the independents.

Cruiskeen Lawn

A balmy afternoon of dodging the showers in Phoenix Park was had on the June Bank Holiday Sunday when the Bloom garden festival rolled back into town. Organisers Bord Bia kindly sent me a ticket and, with one brand new beer making an appearance in the drinks tent, I had all the motivation I needed.

The format is pretty familiar by now: everything a gardener could wish for with regard to supplies and inspiration, and a major food and drink element too, showcasing independent Irish producers of pretty much everything consumable. Beer, cider and spirits get their own roomy tent, called The Bloom Inn. And new to the line-up was Costello's which, after several years as a client brewer, now runs Kilkenny's only full-production brewery and has finally expanded the range beyond its flagship red ale.

The new one is, perhaps inevitably, a pale ale. Beyond a Pale is 4.9% ABV and a dark orange colour. It's no middle-of-the-road milksop, however, and comes out fighting with a pithy, punchy bitterness. There's a gentler juicy orange middle, and a nod to modern tastes with a caraway savouriness. Overall it's nicely balanced, packed with flavour yet very accessible. With Kilkenny pretty much sorted for red ale brands these days, this will be like a breath of fresh air in its pubs.

(And speaking which, the Costello's-organised Kilkenny Craft Beer Festival is on this week, with various events around the Marble City. I'll be down tomorrow for Craft on Draught at Billy Byrne's.)

With the roster of new beers completed I dawdled around the other stands, enjoyed a couple of different Stonewell ciders, and dropped by the Hope stand to say hello. The guys had brought their prototype dry-hopped lager and, unsurprisingly for Bloom, it had run out. So it had been replaced incognito with their new dry-hopped lager ahead of its official release the following week.

It's called Underdog (not to be confused with the new Dublin pub of the same name) and is a bright golden colour with just a very fine haze in it. New World hops are very much the modus operandi here, but presented cleanly, simply and with the lighter flavours forward. So you get a spicy, spritzy, citrus-skin aroma, followed by a zesty mandarin punch that's just bitter enough to balance the sweeter peach element that follows. A sprinkle of heavier dank and a tiny white pepper complexity finish it off. It's very tasty and easy to drink. A criticism, you say? Well... one thing that bothered me is that it's not very lagery. It could quite happily pass as a pale ale, if a particularly light-bodied and crisp one. I drank it and enjoyed it but I was secretly thinking of Saaz the whole time. It's a difficult beer to be angry with, however.

That wrapped up Bloom for another year. As always with these events I hope that a few punters who were new to small-producer drinks took some new-found preferences home with them...