Baying for more

With Beoir's Beer of the Year for 2014 and a gold medal at Alltech under their belt, Galway Bay Brewery is not exactly short on laurels, but they certainly haven't been resting on them. This last few weeks has seen a new pub, Alfie Byrne's next to the Conrad Hotel in Dublin, bringing the estate to nine. And there have been several new beers.

It was at the opening night in Alfie Byrne's that I met Galway Bay American Amber Ale -- as a child of the pilot brewery it doesn't appear to get a proper nautical name like its full siblings. It's a little on the pale side for the style, more a dark orange than properly red, and it smells of... swimming pools? One mouthful in and my pint was confiscated by the management. Incomplete line-cleaning, it seems. A replacement was immediately provided. This had significantly less chlorine and a lot more mango in the aroma. At its heart is the big illicit buzz of dank hops: funky, oily and all-pervading. It gradually fades to a pine bitterness with a spike of gunpowder spice. This is a serious beer for serious hopheads but its dark malts make it approachable for normal people too. The biggest surprise came some days later when I discovered it's 7.4% ABV. It really doesn't taste as strong as that. Highly enjoyable, but handle with care.

Before the Amber arrived, the Next Big Thing in Irish beer was Two Hundred Fathoms, a 10% ABV imperial stout aged in Yellow Spot whiskey barrels and released in a limited run of just 900 bottles. I'm not familiar with Yellow Spot though am a big fan of its Green brother so this, coupled with rave reviews from other drinkers, had me very keen to get the waxed cap off. (A word to brewers on waxed caps, though: don't). Gloopy is the first impression, pouring like some diabolical combination of Tia Maria topped by Baileys. When the foam subsided I got in for a sniff, finding dry cocoa powder and a non-specific spirituous vapour. The first pull was hard work, intense viscosity meant a beer which put up a fight leaving the glass. Once in the mouth it explodes in several directions at once: there's the definite burnt-toast dryness of classic Irish stout, then the harsh ball-of-malt burn from the whiskey. More comforting dark chocolate follows and is the lasting impression, simultaneously bitter and sweet. My preference would be for some softer floral or fruit notes, but perhaps these will develop with age. More than anything, I'm reminded of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout. That's the sort of league we're in. For all the weight, heat and complexity, it's actually pretty easy drinking, another feature it shares with Brooklyn Black Chocolate. It lures the drinker in to its dark world, hence the name, I guess.

Alfie Byrne's has dedicated a tap for special edition beers, named "The Vernon", after the pub Alfie himself ran, down on Talbot Street. That'll be the first place I look on future visits.

Knock-out stout

In the black corner, the champ -- brewed since the 1780s at the Barclay Perkins brewery in Southwark, surviving the merger with Courage and now, following nearly twenty years on hiatus, revived under the stewardship of Wells & Young of Luton: the original of the species, Courage Imperial Russian Stout!

And in the other black corner, the contender -- from darkest Yorkshire, representing the entirety of progressive British craft brewing, sporting the modernist typography of the Soviet Ewe-nion: Black Sheep Imperial Russian Stout!

At the weigh-in, the champ had a few points on the sheep: 10% ABV vs. 8.5%. To keep things fair the bout was fought blindfolded. Seconds out; round 1!

No real head on either beer when poured, though what little foam there was showed much darker on the Courage. This extra density came through in the mouthfeel too, with the Black Sheep thinner and fizzier than the beautifully full and rounded Courage. Looks like this might not be much of a fight.

Black Sheep put in a good showing in the aroma, lots of lovely sweet treacle and molasses against Courage's rather bitter liquorice offering. But the knock-out punch is delivered in the flavour: Black Sheep drops its guard with an autolytic tang, producing a kind of unpleasant sour coffee effect, while the Courage avoids any big risky manoeuvers, instead going for a subtle dark smooth caramel with just a mild metallic hop tang. Deft, graceful, and the unanimous winner for the judges.

For its mix of heavyweight brawn and classically traditional flavours I don't know whether to match it against Guinness Foreign Extra or Brooklyn Black Chocolate in the next bout.

Put your faith in cheeses

Jay Brooks has set the challenge for this month's Session, based around the theme of beer and cheese. There's a rather convoluted and specific set of instructions on his announcement post here, but if enough people do it right the results will make very interesting reading. However, given my location there's no question of me being able to toe the line, so instead you'll have to settle for a solo run by me on some Irish cheese and Scottish beer, chosen more-or-less randomly and thrown together to see if anything clicks. Let's meet the participants...

Williams Gold is a blonde ale, the colour of shining bullion. I get light bubblegum and golden syrup from the aroma and the carbonation is relatively soft: definitely unlagerlike. A mild sweetness is the dominant flavour characteristic, with hints of lychee, though the finish is a little watery. Simple fare.

Joker IPA is almost the same colour, leaning a little more towards amber but not much. It's a sessionable sort of IPA at just 5% ABV and a little parsimonious with the hops. A strange aroma: sugary artificial fruit, like Tizer or Irn Bru. This is subdued in the flavour, coming across more like orange boiled sweets plus some earthy notes as well. I liked it; it's interesting.

Williams Red is last of the three. No aroma at all here, and a gentle flavour of caramel with a light lavender complexity underneath. Again, a solid, well-made but quite quietly-spoken beer. I felt a bit guilty about what I was about to put them through...

My first cheese choice was Wexford Cheddar. Cheddar is a lot like pilsner: a category that tends to get used as a catch-all for all manner of bland and unpleasant crap, but when you meet a good one, properly made and sufficiently matured, you know about it. Wexford is definitely a proper cheddar: slightly sharp at first, then rich and creamy.

Next, some Mature Ardrahan, a semi-soft cheese with more than a hint of gym sock in its pungent aroma. The taste is quite busy, with lots of nuttiness and butter, though that aroma never goes away until you're finished. It's an end-to-end cheese experience.

And then there's Bellingham Blue, a cheese with the texture of wet sand, tasting supremely earthy backed up by lots of mouldy funk. Definitely from a place next to the bass amps in the cheese orchestra. It's one to nibble.

With the line-up beginning to look a bit one-sided I set to, and here's what went with what.

The Gold was no match at all for the cheddar, disappearing under the cheddar cheesiness with barely a murmur. The Red threw out some interesting sweet flavours to contrast with the sourness, but again the cheddar flavours just shouted the beer down. The Red's fizz did a great job of clearing my palate afterwards, however. The big winner was the IPA, doing that sweet-and-sour thing with gusto: a delicious blend of soda-pop sugariness (the sort you might find in a quince jelly) and bitter-yet-creamy cheese notes. Magic.

Oddly the Gold wasn't drowned by the Ardrahan. I found the two flavour profiles kept to their respective corners and I got the best of both simultaneously. I guess that's a win. The same can't be said for the IPA: becoming the first of the beers to triumph over the cheese flavour altogether, and that's not a good thing with something as complex as Ardrahan. The reverse happens with the Red: the cream and butter flavours just wreck the beer. It seems that this cheese is a tough one to get the measure of: I think it merits further beer-related investigations. Something with serious hops would be interesting.

And lastly the Bellingham Blue. We have another non-engagement with the Red: the two elements are totally immiscible. It actually balances quite well with the Gold, however, which takes some of the funky edge off and makes this extreme cheese more readily palatable. The IPA has a very interesting effect, neutralising the gritty earth flavours and leaving behind lots and lots of blue mould. If you want your blue cheese tasting very blue indeed, this is how to take it.

So, not a whole lot by way of amazing discoveries there. I think perhaps the choice of beer had a lot to do with that so, as a bonus round, I decided to throw in something strong and dark to find out what happens, so I grabbed a bottle of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout from the stash.

With the cheddar this was the first full-on clash of the day: the bitterness of the beer does not sit at all well with the sharpness of the cheese. It's a similar story with the blue: a double dose of acridity and the chocolate subtlety of the beer just disappears. A last-minute goal came from the Ardrahan, as the stout brings out all the creaminess in the cheese and combines it with its roasted and strong alcoholic flavours, producing a gorgeous kind of Irish coffee effect.

And after all that, what are the patterns, lessons, principles and rules to be learned of beer and cheese matching? I have no idea. Everything was a surprise to me: the stuff that worked and the stuff that didn't. The worlds of beer and cheese are both so infinitely varied and nuanced that I'd say it's very hard to put down definitive markers, to the point where I say: don't bother trying. An array of cheeses on one side, and basket of beers on the other, and just let them at each other any which way.

Nordic Americans

The influence of American craft brewing on the Danish micros was very apparent at the European Beer Festival. It's not surprising, then, that the American industry was quite well represented among the various stalls.

I had missed Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA at the Great British Beer Festival this year so made damn sure to try it this time round. My interest was largely morbid curiosity and I didn't expect to enjoy it at all. But it's delicious: full of those orange sherbet flavours I associate most with Goose Island's marvellous IPA. Not at all the monster I was expecting. Mind you, I was drinking it straight after a glass of 120 Minute IPA, and that's a beer that will tone down the flavour in most things. Nevertheless, I found the 120 surprisingly drinkable. It has some big solventy alcoholic notes all right, but there's enough of a balance in there to make it work: bitter without being harsh; malty without being tramp juice. I'm no hophead, but this was an eye-opener.

Two more strong and hoppy ales, this time from Avery in Colorado: Maharaja is their Imperial IPA and is another orangey one with a particularly mouth-watering aroma. The 9.7% ABV gives it warmth without making it sticky. Also available was a Collaboration they did with Russian River in a Belgian style. This is an immensely complex concoction full of peaches and nuts and spices and cloves, yet remains light and drinkable at 8.2% ABV.

Avery had come recommended to us from the Bull & Castle's Declan who attended the Great American Beer Festival last year. Mephistopheles Imperial stout was his first recommendation. It's incredibly thick and loaded with sweet molasses and bitter black coffee flavours. It was the last beer I had on the Friday and awoke on Saturday to find the dregs had congealed into a tar-like lump in the bottom of my sample glass. The other big black American was Great Divide's oak-aged version of Yeti, a stout I thoroughly enjoyed in Amsterdam last month. It's pretty much what I expected: the usual big chicory maltiness, with a fresh acidic hop character, but smoothed out with that woody vanilla flavour that comes from barrel aging. A more refined Yeti than the plain one. My last big American stout was an east-coaster: Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout. It's hops in the aroma once again, with sugary molasses and more than a hint of delicious smokiness. I'd had a fair few beers that were beyond the 15% ABV mark at this point and this mere 10.1%-er was well able to hold its own in the flavour stakes.

And just to show that American beer isn't just about high alcohol, I was extremely impressed by Flying Dog's Doggie Style pale ale. Only 4.7% ABV, this is possessed of an intense citric bitter fruity character, yet is still light enough to be very easy drinking.

Yes, the Danes definitely have the right idea when it comes to picking a country to emulate with in their brewing culture. That the industry in both countries is feeding off both the experience and marketplace of the other can only be good from a drinker's perspective.