Meet the Hebrews

Tom is a beer geek from Israel, currently seconded to a work project in Dublin. Back in June he offered to bring some beers over from home for a tasting. A group of us got together in the Bull & Castle one quiet Sunday afternoon to get an idea of what's happening in the Israeli craft beer scene.

Under Tom's direction we started, perhaps unusually, with an Oak Porter from Negev brewery. It's only 5% ABV but smells a lot stronger. It doesn't look great in the glass, all murky and opaque. The wood has been laid on very thick with massive amounts of vanillin and a sharper lactic quality too. The heavy-handed ageing means any trace of the porter that used to be here is now gone.  Even drinking a small sample was tough going and I can't say I enjoyed it. Shapiro Oatmeal Stout was a much better proposition. 5.2% ABV and again smelling hot, this time with a kind of acetone quality, it's actually smooth and sweet on tasting with no off-flavours at all. There's lots of lovely chocolate and cream, to match the texture. Alexander Black is a more orthodox (not, not that way) stout: 7% ABV and looking clear, pure, but most definitely black, in the glass. It smells oily, like strong coffee, and has an almost Caribbean brown-sugar sweetness. That's about all it delivers, however.

From stout to black IPA and Ha'Dubim Paradox is next, another nasty-looking murky one. It has the spicy vegetal aroma which I'm coming to regard as one of the hallmarks of the style and makes excellent use of its hops. A beautiful chocolate and fresh mandarin flavour opens it up and there's a sharp biting bitterness in the finish. An absolute classic, this, and packing a lot of complexity into 5.6% ABV.

There were two more from Ha'Dubim ("The Bears") and we followed Paradox with Kodiak, badged as an "IPW", so what generally gets called "white IPA", then. It's yellow and cloudy and the aroma is all over the place: a little bleachy, a lot sugary and with added plasticine notes as well. It gels together a bit better on tasting with the sweetness dominating, creating a strong impression of drinking vanilla ice cream, helped along by the creamy texture. The hops arrive late, adding a pithiness to the finish. It's an odd beer and I'm not sure I'd want to investigate it further.

The inevitable Grizzly is Ha'Dubim's special edition double IPA: 9% ABV yet a rather wan and hazy witbier-yellow colour. The aroma is gorgeous, pelting out bittersweet mandarin spritz. The strength is immediately apparent on the first sip, but it's a clean heat, not heavy or boozy, reminding me a little of Trouble Brewing's Hop Priority triple IPA. But it's not all alcohol; the hops are working very hard in here too with an oily dank base cheered up by bursts of citrus zest. Double IPA wouldn't be my favourite beer style but then not many of them are as well executed as this one.

More IPAs next, starting with Pressure Drop by Ha'Shakhen. This 6%-er claims to be an "Extrememly hoppy craft beer" and I'll grant that hops play a big part in how it tastes. Onions on the aroma; mango, papaya and lime rind in the flavour: that's all hops. But there's a lot of caramel in here also and the whole is just a bit too sweet to be enjoyable. We had it next to one of the original Israeli IPAs and one considered to be among the best still: Srigim Brewery's Ha'Hodit Ha'Mekhoeret, "The Ugly Indian". 6.5% ABV, a brownish-orange colour (murky again) but smelling lovely, simultaneously sweet and spicy with lots of citrus promised. The flavour is very unsubtle, being big on bitterness but there's enough malt body to carry it. The murk lets it down a little however, allowing a savoury yeast coating dull the otherwise bright and fresh flavours. This one could do with a little polishing but is still perfectly enjoyable for what it is.

A couple of odd ones to finish. Dictator Irish Red has, for some reason, been blended with Laphroaig whisky, and plasters this fact across the label in huge letters. It's a pale murky orange and smells massively peaty. Peat is there again on the first sip but goes away quickly leaving a fresh, soft, peachy hop flavour. The old peat 'n' peach one-two is not something I've ever experienced in a beer before and it's not at all unpleasant. Shapiro's Jack's Winter Ale has also been liquored-up, this time with the addition of Jack Daniel's oak chips. They impart lots of oaky vanillins but no real whisky booze effect. Instead, this 8.2% ABV ale is big on warming toffee malt, all smooth and mellow. Even in the eastern Med, they like something for the fireside, it seems.

Overall impressions? Israeli craft beer is a little rough around the edges and not all of its experiments are worthwhile ones from the drinker's point of view, but there's some real talent on display in this lot. The beer fan certainly won't get bored. Thanks to Tom for the insight.

Brave

I'm not given to amateur industry analysis but it's always pleasing to see signs of maturity in the Irish beer market: indicators that it's not all lowest-common-denominator recipes being thrown out for mass consumption, but that there are also enough interested drinkers to support a more diverse offer. And, of course, that there are brewers and breweries with the talent and resources to do such diversity well. Today's beers are both types that we haven't really seen here before and I'm delighted to have them breaking new ground.

Desperate Mile is by Galway Bay Brewery and makes much of its daring combination of hoppiness with sourness, in what seems like a reasonable 5.4% ABV half-litre package. It pours out a slightly hazy gold and smells at first just like a fresh pale ale, all juicy mandarins and pineapples to begin. But a second sniff revealed the signature nitre brickiness of top-notch Belgian lambic and suggests there's a tart treat to come. And sure enough, there on the first pull is a popping, puckering full-on sourness, but one which instantly gives way to the hop fruit. I don't know if it's the varieties chosen or if it's the extra acid loaned by the souring bugs, but the hop flavours are especially pithy here: lime and grapefruit are in the ascendant. Perhaps surprisingly the finish is quick, with neither hoppiness nor sourness sticking around for long on the thin body.

Desperate Mile launched as a limited bottle-only special, but like its predecessor Heathen, I reckoned it would work best as a down-the-hatch refreshment delivery system. I was able to put that to the test yesterday at The Beer Market, Galway Bay's newest Dublin outlet and one which takes the brave ethos to the city's on-trade. Desperate Mile may have lost a little on the hop front in the intervening weeks but still makes for a beautifully invigorating pint.

Meanwhile, Trouble Brewing has released what I think is Ireland's first triple IPA. Hop Priority is 11.1% ABV, which sounds about right to me. I caught up with it on keg in the Bull & Castle shortly after it was released.

The aroma isn't really up to much, just some light pine; I expected more from a beer that isn't shy about its all-round bigness. There's an immediate smack of hard liquor bitterness on the first sip and a waft of booze vapours up the nose. But, bizarrely, while it's heavily textured and clearly as high-octane as the ABV suggests, it's not hot as such. Instead of a warmth akin to sherry or brandy, it burns with the clean blue flame of an overclocked vodka. The knock-on effect is that it provides a perfect neutral base for bright and fresh hop flavours, so you get lots of mango, pineapple and even a dash of coconut. This sweet fruit far outweighs the bitter qualities and makes it a remarkably easy drinking beer. Served cold by the half pint it would be very easy to knock back, and that would not be a good idea. Overall a very impressive offering and a real testament to the brewers' skill.

So there, then, are a couple of new benchmarks for daring Irish beer. Beat that, everyone else.