Getting Lough'd

I had somewhat lost track of Lough Gill Brewery since the beginning of the year, having last tried a new beer from them just before the Alltech festival in February. So when I made enquiries in DrinkStore I ended up coming away with three cans from the Sligo brewery I'd never tasted before.

First to get opened was the Sour Wheat Ale. I was hoping for something light and refreshing, but the 5.7% ABV suggested otherwise, as did the dark and murky appearance. I had plenty of time to contemplate that as I waited for the foam to subside sufficiently to allow me a sip. It's as heavy as I expected, with a slick and briney salinity. There's a touch of lemon behind this which, combined with a grainy crunch, calls witbier to mind. Overall I'm not keen on it. The sourness is too strongly lactic, more like something gone off than deliberately inoculated, and the grain tastes stale and husky, possibly as a result. It's doesn't compare well with the cleaner and lighter Irish sour beers out there.

Time for a complete contrast: 'Round the Clock is a coffee and oatmeal stout, a path that has been trod by many breweries previously. It's 5.2% ABV and a rich chocolate brown colour. They've gone all-out for the coffee here, and there's a lot of dark roasted, even gritty, espresso in the flavour and aroma. The harsh bitterness isn't helped by the thin texture and if that's all there was I'd be giving it up as a bad job. But! This beer does have a redeeming feature in a floral complexity that runs backwards and forwards through it. It's a meadowy sweetness that doesn't quite take the edge off the sharp roast but does manage to distract my attention from its worst excesses. It's still some fairly tough drinking, lacking smoothness. You'd really want to be into your coffee, or at least your beer that tastes of coffee, to enjoy it fully.

Finally for now, Lough Gill's Irish Sloe Barley Wine, the first in a series of strong beers, and at 9.5% ABV it definitely qualifies. I was struck by the colour of this: after two cans of murk it's a gorgeous crystalline garnet. On sticking the nose in I'm met with typical barley wine characteristics: heavy slabs of alcoholic toffee, but there's a cheeky sour twang suggesting the sloes are mixing right in the middle. And so it proves on tasting: there's a chocolatey syrupy sweet thickness that would be cloying if left to its own devices, and where a classic US barley wine (hi Bigfoot!) would lash in a load of big citric hops, this utilises the fruit to give it a tangy edge that cleans up the malty excesses and renders it drinkable, while also giving it a uniquely complex flavour. It's almost plummy, like you might find in a Belgian dubbel, but lighter, spritzier, and altogether cleaner -- think cranberries. For a high-gravity palate-thumper this has been carefully and subtly put together. It's not often you encounter an Irish beer that isn't just slavish copying the way they do things abroad but this expresses a terroir all its own.

So, one super-impressive beer out of three. Not bad. There'll be more from Lough Gill in my round-up of the Irish Craft Beer Festival in a few weeks.

Trans-Shannon exports

On the daytrip to Galway back in July I managed to sneak a look-in at the Fine Wines off licence just down the street from The Salt House. In there I grabbed a handful of local beers I hadn't seen around Dublin to take home with me.

First up is the charmingly named Bogman from Spiddal River Brewery. "Spiddal River Brewery is based in Spiddal, Co. Galway" says the label, and also that the beer is "Designed in Galway... product of Ireland", indicating that Spiddal River isn't a brewery at all. As far as I know the beer comes from Trouble Brewing, closer to home in Kildare. It's 4.9% ABV and an unattractive murky orange-amber colour, putting me immediately in mind of those rough-and-ready brewpub beers you get in central and eastern Europe.

 A slightly short fill on the bottle left it low in carbonation, and pleasantly so, with a nice cask texture. Though self-described as a "US pale ale" it is extremely sweet, showing a big malty Ovaltine flavour at the front and even a kick of milk chocolate. The hop flavours are almost non-existent, so as a pale ale it's nearly a total failure. The label also describes it as "earthy" and although the suspended yeast doesn't really get in the way, I could just about see how you would describe it as earthy. "Rustic" is the word I'd use. It's not a beer designed to impress the cosmopolitan beer enthusiast, that's for sure, but I guess the name makes that clear from the outset.

I follow it with Limerick Lady Irish Pale Ale from Limerick City Brewery, which doesn't exist either. The brewery pictures they've posted online look like the old Brú brewhouse so I'd take a punt on it being produced there, which would make it another Leinster beer in disguise. It's a similar unpleasant murky brown colour though a tiny bit stronger than the last one at 5% ABV and, oh, is that hops I smell? There's quite an English hop aroma -- slightly metallic -- though also a worrying marker-pen note.

It's all bait-and-switch because neither of these elements show up in the flavour. That has a floral sweetness, a savoury yeast bite, and a harsh melted plastic off-flavour. Not a winning combination. This tastes cheaply put-together and rushed out of the brewery: especially strange for a company that's presumably trying to build a reputation for itself as it gets going. At the same time, however, a cursory glance at Untappd yields not a single negative review, proving my theory that it's impossible to go out of business as an Irish brewer by making substandard beer. There's always a market for your product, regardless of how shoddy it is. Which is depressing, but moving on...

Finally a beer whose provenance is in no doubt. Galway Hooker Double IPA was definitely brewed in Galway and commemorates the tenth anniversary of the brewery opening for business. In Roscommon. Er. It's a downright handsome clear dark amber colour with a heavy aroma of big boozy malt pierced through by citric hops. The first sip brings... density. It's a trifling 8.6% ABV but feels a point or two above that. Bigfoot territory. Chewy malt is the main feature, then a supporting cast of harsh metallic bitterness, biting grapefruit acidity and a greener spinach and cabbage vibe. It doesn't sound very new-world at all, but there's a lightness of touch about it, a smoothness and a quickness in the finish that keeps it nicely drinkable while also being an unmistakable high-alcohol powerhouse.

This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a beer for special occasions. Something to be taken out and shared, or reverentially sipped. All of its different flavour elements come through clear and clean, despite the big boozy blanket on top of them. Both of the other beers have a lot to learn from the way Hooker turns out its product.

By the numbers

I didn't realise I'd bought an antique. But it turned out that the XVII barley wine from Utah's Uinta brewery which I acquired at The House of Trembling Madness in York during the summer has a bottling date of 23 November 2010: so over two years in the bottle by the time I opened it. Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?

At 10.4% ABV it's certainly a robust beer, pouring thickly into the glass and presenting a murky mahogany body under a thick old-ivory foam. There's that very American aroma of bags of crystal malt laced with bags of C-hops: a messy collision between the toffee lorry and the grapefruit train. The hop aromas are muted, though, and the sweetness almost shades towards syrup notes, indicating immediately that this is perhaps not the hop powerhouse it once was. It tastes beautifully warming and there's definitely still a sherbety freshness to the hops here, with hardly any trace of bitter harshness. The thick, linctus-like texture spreads across the palate and slips silkily down the throat, spreading smooth caramel and naughty liqueur chocolates as it goes. Only a slight twang of stale cardboard arrives at the end to indicate that everything is not as it once was.

I'm reminded in particular of Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot in its more mature form, so perhaps this one too is a beer that needs a year or two to calm down. A superb sipper, it's really hard to know if freshness would be much of an improvement.

Start spreading the brews

A couple of weeks ago my friend, The Dubliner's beer columnist and native New Yorker Richard Lubell called over bearing some interesting finds from a recent trip home to the Empire State. Would I help him drink them? Well, let me just check the diary...

Southern Tier's Un*Earthly is an IPA I enjoyed immensely a few years back. Richard brought the oak-aged edition over and I was hoping for a repeat, or improvement, on my recent fun times with Great Divide's Rumble oaked IPA. Unfortunately, balance does not appear to be in the Southern Tier vocabulary. The beautiful fresh hops are simply buried deep beneath layers of cloying loud and sappy oak. There's a small trace of fruit and spice: a bit of sandalwood and a dash of mandarins, but nowhere near enough big IPA character to justify the whopping 9.9% ABV investment in alcohol. It's the hops I feel sorry for. They deserved better.

The other bottle was something of a mystery. Port Jeff is a small brewpub on the north coast of Long Island. They have seven regular beers, but Cold North Wind barley wine isn't one of them. Richard didn't know if the bottle he got was new, aged or what: just that the proprietor was keen for him to have it.

It's 8.7% ABV and poured gloopily to a bright garnet colour. Peaches in the aroma and a beautiful mouth-watering juicy mandarin and jaffa foretaste. The bitterness kicks in after but it plays things smooth avoiding all the pitfalls of big hop barley wines: there's no harshness, no boozy heat and no cloying syrupyness either. They could certainly offer the folks at Southern Tier a few pointers on balance.

We followed it with some 2011 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot barley wine, another beer that seemed hot and harsh in comparison. This one's a victory for the little guys.

Thanks for sharing, Richard.

Wheat beat manifesto

It's wheat beers on The Session this month, a genre I find it hard to get excited about. Sure, I like the odd Schneider-Weisse or Aventinus, and I'm perfectly content holding a Hoegaarden, but generally speaking I don't go out of my way for wheat beer. It's more of a fallback thing.

In an effort to rekindle my interest, I decided to open something a bit special for this post: Hvedegoop, the "wheat wine" brewed as a collaboration between Three Floyds and Mikkeller. Something about the -goop suffix had me expecting dark beer, maybe along the lines of Haandbryggeriet's Dark Force wheat stout. Instead it's quite a pale cherrywood colour, with a short-lived skim of ivory foam on the surface.

The brewers' renowned love of C-hops is immediately apparent from the aroma on pouring: sticky nectarine fruitiness made extra potent by sweet caramel-candy notes from the malt backbone. That this is a strong sipper (10.4% ABV) is never in doubt.

One expects a certain soft mouthfeel from wheat beers but there's none of that here. Instead the gentle fizz and powerful-yet-subtle booze heat gives it a definite wine vibe, much more like an American barley wine. And that continues into the taste: big big hops, but balanced by lots of sticky malt -- I really can't find anything to indicate we're dealing with wheat malt here rather than plain old barley, and I doubt that any of the yeast strains most commonly used for wheat beers have been employed.

More than anything, it reminds me a lot of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, which brings me on to Mrs Beer Nut's observation. She liked it a lot, but reckons it needs another year or two of maturation to mellow and soften, just like Bigfoot does. Me, I liked the in-your-face double IPA kick and didn't find it remotely harsh or difficult, however I can't help but agree it would be really interesting to find out what happens to it after a couple of years.

As a strong-and-hoppy late-night sipper-to-share I rate Hvedegoop very highly. Whether there was any point in making it with wheat rather than all barley, however, I really couldn't say. But if anyone's using this Session to argue that wheat beers are intrinsically dull or samey, here's the killer argument against.

The old boys

Back here I mentioned that I'd set aside a box of beers for a year or so, just to see what happened to them with a bit of aging. In fact, the box has spent two years in my oubliette, though hasn't survived completely intact. The strong Belgian ale that Barry and Kieron brewed didn't survive last winter (and was delicious); likewise the 2007 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, so I've started that process again by cellaring the 2008 and 2009 editions.

But the Old Engine Oil which prompted the experiment remains, and last week I nipped in to DrinkStore to grab a fresh bottle for comparison. The young one had the same rather subtle dark fruit flavours as I recall from two years ago: quality drinking, but with nothing really jumping out of it. And the older one was along very similar lines, but there was a noticeable difference. The fruity sourness had rounded out and become somewhat more pungent -- reminiscent of that almost solvent-like flavour you get with super-strength barrel-aged imperial strength stouts, only with half the impact and allowing all the gentle chocolate and coffee shine through as well. This extra complexity means that aging is definitely the way to treat this beer. It won't turn into the world's greatest strong dark ale, but it definitely adds to the enjoyment.

The last Rip Van Winklebrouw is a Thomas Hardy's Ale, purchased from Redmond's in 2007, though dating from the 2003 vintage. The nip bottle does its best to justify a €5 price tag with a unique number, gold foil and some neck bling. It'll have to do better than that, I thought, taking the cap off. The aroma asserted itself immediately -- that rich sweet pudding scent which I got from the fabulous Samuel Adams Triple Bock. With a slightly murky dark ruby colour, the texture is thick and heavy, but there's definitely a light sparkle there, and no syrup or unpleasant stickiness. The flavour has the sweet, yet bitter, yet dry character of crumbly high-cocoa dark chocolate. It's also nicely spirituous, which all adds up to a wonderful cherry liqueur chocolate effect. End-to-end quality and not a single bum note anywhere.

Apart from the question I ask all beers -- "I wonder what that stuff's like" -- the only other question I had for Thomas Hardy's was "Should I buy some more?", especially now that O'Hanlon's have stopped brewing it so there's only a limited supply floating about in Dublin. That'll be a yes.

Division of labour

The six-pack I bought at the Big Mikkeller Launch back in September has been sitting quietly in my attic ever since. Most of the bottles could do with a bit more ageing, I reckon, but a couple had dates recommending drinking by next autumn, so I figured they were ripe enough already.

At first glance it's hard to tell what separates silver-labelled Kølle from bronze-labelled TræKølle: both barley wines are the same strength, same bitterness level and from the same company (Amager, in association with Mikkeller, with co-operation from retailers Ølbutikken and ØlKonsortiet). Rather than try to pick a drinking order, Mrs Beer Nut and I decided to open them both at the same time and take it from there.

Kølle has that typical heady, alcoholic barley wine aroma: sweet yet hoppy. It follows this with a massive super-concentrated grapefruit hit, then comes a big metallic, galvanic tang -- nasty, like licking a pencil sharpener -- and then a long slow burn of citric hoppiness. It reminds me a lot of the insanely unbalanced Mikkeller Simcoe IPA being served at the European Beer Festival. A glance at the label suggests that Simcoe is indeed the single hop employed here. A bit more ageing might have let it mellow, but I couldn't be sure that something as good as, say, Bigfoot, would be likely to come out the other end. It's an awful lot thinner, for a start, making it hard to believe the strength is a stonking 10.5% ABV.

TræKølle, it seems, is the same beer matured on bourbon barrels. It's a little darker and strikingly lacks that fresh citric hops aroma -- all taken by those greedy angels, I guess. Unsurprisingly, the flavour is dominated by vanilla oak notes, the bourbon history being more than suggested. I'm inclined to say that the hop character is low, but that could be just by comparison with the other Simcoe bomb. It is bitter, however -- both beers claim 90 IBUs -- though here it's more of an acidic character against Kølle's sharp fruitiness. TræKølle is a mellower, calmer, sipping sort of barley wine, even though it does share the skinny body of its wilder sibling. We both preferred this version.

So there we have an object lesson on the effect of bourbon barrel ageing on outrageously hoppy beers. I reckon we can expect more of this kind of thing as 2009 progresses. Barrels are in.

A completist writes

OK, it may well be some time before I encounter Brew Dog's Buzz, since it's not likely to be imported on cask, and one sort of Paradox isn't really the complete set, but I was still really happy when I saw the two Brew Dog bottled beers that I had yet to try on the shelf in Redmond's last week. (Most of the rest I covered here, with a pint of Hype in Manchester last year).

Hop Rocker is the inevitable pale lager, and one I might not have bothered with if I hadn't been wanting to try them all. An odd beastie of very bright but pale yellow hue, with just a hint of a haze through it. The aroma is bitter and almost lemony, though not especially strong. They've struck just the right balance with the carbonation, giving that refreshing cleanness you want from this style without it being too much of a bloatmaking fizzbomb.

The flavour is... interesting. The citric notes are there all right, presumably deriving from a light hopping, albeit with some pretty pungent varieties. But there's also a strong sugary character to it as well. It's not the syrupyness of your typical tramps' lager, but more like the candysugar flavour from certain Belgian beers. The two flavours don't sit too well next to each other for me, and I'm not sure how a committed lager drinker would find them. It's an interesting beer, but just not in the right way.

I'm consistently amused by Brew Dog's labelling (even if certain humourless busybodies don't get it). I also used to live in Aberdeen, just down the road from the brewery. I found it impossible to read the description of Hardcore IPA without hearing the lilting Grampian tones. The text is reproduced on the right. It's the word "relatively" in the last sentence that's pure Aberdeen to me. Roll that R.

Like the brewery's lighter Punk IPA, this 9% ABV bad boy is pale yellow in colour. Hardly any head is produced on pouring, nor is there much aroma -- just a vague hops-and-boiled-water smell of the sort you get on a brewery floor. The first taste leaves you in no doubt of how much alcohol is in here: big, high intensity boozy warmth fills the mouth. But that's not to say it's malty, oh no, the bitterness actually stings. There's no trace of the fun-and-frolicsome fruity, citrusy gee-whizz American hops. This is a serious hard-as-nails Calvinist IPA with no quarter offered. Well, almost no quarter: as it warms up the caramel malt notes begin to make themselves felt and the sweet-bitter flavour takes on nearly a perfumey character. But the aftertaste remains big boozy bitter hops. Hardcore, as the label says.

I don't really know many other IPAs of this kind of power and strength, but if I had to compare Hardcore to another beer I'd be more inclined to point at Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot barley wine than, say, Great Divide's Hercules IPA. There's a definite market for this sort of beer, and I'd say it'll sell well on the other side of the pond, but extreme experiences like this aren't anything I'll be running to repeat on a regular basis. Now and again, however, it's worth it.

And just as I post this, I discover the brewery has started a blog announcing a new bottled imperial stout in their range. My completist plans are in ruins. Thanks a lot, guys.

Unendangered species

I feel I'm letting the national side down on this month's Session. A couple of weeks earlier and I'd be adding a Headless Dog to the Brew Zoo. My quest for unusual animal-themed beer took me to off licences right across Dublin, but there were no really weird creatures to be found. So instead, I present three beers that are new to me, but which are probably common-or-garden varieties to the rest of you.

First up is Badger Ales' Tanglefoot, which proclaims on the label to be "light", "crisp" and "smooth", which immediately set my alarm bells ringing. It's not all that bad, though. Sure, it's not a classic by the standards of English ale, but there's a lightness of touch about the mellow fruit flavour and gently bitter aftertaste that's rather pleasurable. The fact that it's 5% ABV is astounding and I guess it would sneak up on you quite quickly after a few. But then, everyone knows how vicious badgers can be.

From an English ale to an American take on an English ale: Goose Island Honker's. To my mind, this migratory bird is much more at home among its own kind to the west of the Atlantic. The characteristically American hops bitterness is here tempered by a certain candy sweetness, but frankly there's not enough of either to make this truly enjoyable. Like the Tanglefoot, however, it is well made, and would make a great quaffing ale if it only were sold in quaffable quantities.

What makes the Brew Zoo better than the other sort is its cryptozoological section, where they keep the Hobgoblins, les Chouffes, the Kelpies, and my last candidate: Bigfoot. This is Sierra Nevada's 9.6% ABV barleywine, and for once you won't hear me kvetch about the bottle size. Bigfoot is a huge beer. Somewhere there's a rich caramel flavour and a citrus hoppiness trying to get out, but they're utterly crushed under the harsh alcoholic bitterness. This guy needs a cage to himself.

Thanks to Rick of Lyke2Drink for hosting: I really had to do my homework on this one, but it was definitely the most fun Session yet.