#386: Decanting

Some Irish miscellany from the Christmas break just past. 

Kinnegar is a producer I always hold in high regard, insterspersing their excellent core range with genuinely interesting and reliably good specials. The latest across my path is this barleywine, snappily named Brewers at Play 48. I was impressed with no.28 in this series, also a barleywine, and this pours a very similar shade of slightly cloudy ruby. An aroma of crabapple, plum and malted biscuit is a total lurer, and immediately dispels any notion that this is going to be big, brash American number (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's moreish and quite balanced, with an air of the rustic about it. I don't know is it the jamminess, the faint estery vibration of it or the sweet, bready cocoa of the finish, but it feels like something you might make at home, and I mean that in a good way. Not the flabbiness of a Yorkshire Singo, but not the razor crystal and lupulin of a Bigfoot either. A wonderful beer.

In the mood for festive soup I popped over to Whiplash for the first time in a while. Down to the Well looks approriately thick and soupy and intially I wonder if I've made a mistake - the opacity gives a greyish sheen to the beer in the glass, not exactly the most appetising of appearances. Quite appetising, however, is the nose of tangy and sharp pithy citrus. This belies the thick and oaty mouthfeel on the palate, which carries another wobble with it - is this a bit trubby, yeasty, muddy? There's absolutely no tickle of yeast bite however, and no acridity whatsoever. It's just supersweet juicy pineapple and grapefruit the beer flashes its IBUs by way of balance. All told it's mostly sharp and juicy stuff and quite enjoyable throughout, and the slightly green edge I feel I detect isn't enough to seriously harm the occasion. 

As certified NZ enjoyers and with a built in professional interest in New Zealand IPAs, Wicklow Wolf's Still Far Away had to get a spin. It pours a pale and murky yellow and offers weet prickly juice of the tropical sort. Pineapple and mango perhaps, but in a watery way that's quite soft beneath the sharpness of those fruity highlights. In the end I settle on the notion that it's pear syrup that I'm tasting at the core of this, with a sweetness that dries up fairly quickly to leave a slick and easy kiwi breeze. Eminently drinkable and hiding a point of its 6% ABV. 

Lastly, emissaries from Killarney Brewing handed in a few samples to the brewery in happier times, and Christmas in Killarney was the bottle I pulled from under the stairs in that post Christmas fog. Billed simply as a Belgian style ale, this 6.7%er pours like a very convincing dubbel. A tad light in the alcohol, perhaps, but the first impressions are, well, impressive. Sugar and apice additions have been succesful here; a gentle waft of warm spice aux Belge and sweet raisiny malt makes for a pleasant and inviting aroma. This is replicated just so on the palate, with plum pudding spiced dark fruit, actual treacle notes and a long if faint rummy finish. It's genuinely impressive how much warming festive heft is crammed into this at such a 'low' ABV, but I guess that's the benefit of judicious additions.

I wish all at Killarney Brewing the best for the future, a sad and rather surprising casualty of the year. 

#385: The Debrief

There's no beerier time for me than Christmas, and few times more in need of beer than the cold and grim depths of winter. In the sweet height of summer I will no doubt believe the opposite is true but from this vantage point with those garden beer days a long way away I can only see the succor of big, dark, strong beers pulled dusty and gratefully from under the stairs. 

Truth be told, there was very little interesting drinking happening here this past summer, as we started a double bathroom renovation that has run from May to, well, present day, but with the back finally broken and the long-overdue end in sight, Christmas came and I was determined to get some interesting beer back on the table. Our own (Eight Degrees) pilsner saw heavy use over 2025, and it is by far my most consumed beer of year. It's up there with my favourites too, being a saaz appreciator, but I definitely won't be writing anything in depth about it or any of its stablemates.

And as an aside, many thanks to The Beer Nut for his call out shout out in this year's Golden Pints, and whose encouragement is appreciated and has helped to motivate me into finally bending some of these drafts into posts.

One of my favourite beers of the past year was Lough Gill's wonderful Tara, so when it reappeared for this winter season it was duly squirreled away, along with a couple of its companion pieces. The last fancy beer I had of this past Christmas break was one such companion, the sherry brandy barrel aged Solera. It pours with ink black intensity and flashes just the briefest hint of marker pen booze, but this dissipates very quickly and the aroma opens out to syrupy date, malted milk and treacle. So far, so incredibly enticing. The bones are the same as in the Tara and while the dark fruit characteristics are quite similar, I suppose it must be assumed that the sherry brandy could be contributing some of this, as I seemed to get a lot of Pedro Ximinez-y character from the Tara. There's also a vinous tang and a shade of oxidation to this that the Tara didn't have, and possibly a spirity edge, but this never interferes with the slick and silky dark chocolate and raisin innards. If I had the constitution for such a project I'd like to do side by sides of all the Lough Gill stouts (assuming they are from the same base beer) to parse barrel influences. 

In all, Solera is another stunner, and gives you full value for its 11.9% ABV. This is the time to make hay, this is the time to put some of these away. I don't even know if this will improve with age - there's already more than enough nuance and maturity here - but I know I'll always be happy to pull one out of the stash.

Trinity is the bourbon barrel aged version of Lough Gill's shape shifter and this time the abv reaches a heady 12.9%. Considering this fact it generates a surprising amount of foam atop its oily texture, though dissipating quickly, while unsurprising is the rush of bourbon that greets you. There's no spirity bang though, as vanillin and dark chocolate round out to genuine mocha smoothness. It's lovely and rich and deftly balanced with coffee-bitter and raisin-sweet elements dovetailing beautifully alongside flashes of hazelnut, or even peanut. There's a final flourish of bourbon at the death bringing spirity warmth but not to the detriment of the complex and fruity intricacy of the rest of the beer. Once again, excellent use has been made of the alcohol content and the barrel. Another benchmark for thumping great barrel aged stouts.

All three (including the Tara) of these stouts are well worth the pickup, with the Tara and Solera being more my sort of thing, but only as a matter of personal taste for their quad-like dark fruit expression. The confidence I have in handing over €6 for a can of any of this range is rock solid, and you can't say fairer than that for an endorsement. Long may Lough Gill continue churning these out. 

#384: Not Like the Others

 Of Foam and Fury was a bit of a bombshell back in the day - rightfully scooping Beoir's Beer of the Year for 2013 (I think?) with it's proper heft and blast of hops. From my first draught pull I was impressed, but it's been years since I've gone back.

Good timing then for a bit of a revival, albeit modernised and embellished with some Riwaka in celebration of its twelfth year. There's something immediately anachronistic going on here, as Of Foam and Fury Riwaka Edition pours pale and hazy. Another crank of the 'modernise' dial has led to a nose that is sweet and juicy with passion fruit tropicals and a heavy lean toward stone fruit. So far so pleasant, if not entirely in line with the original flavour profile (which, to be fair, is loudly announced on the label of the beer). 

The true novelty and queerness of the beer is apparent on the palate though, where there's an initial wash of what I initially could only describe as butter. No, not diacetyl or any fermentation wonk; it's the strangest thing, a particular creamy sweetness that almost does suggest butterscotch and that is quite at odds with the zestier notes also making themselves known.  This might not sound too promising but arguably even queerer is how the palate quickly adjusts to it, as it turns to a more conventional vanilla. This vanilla along with lime maramalade, tangerine and sparkly sherbert are a sweetish bounty that fill the mouth before calming and rounding down to pineapple and apricot. It's unconventional, it's unexpected, it's delicious. Gone is the crystalline caramel of the old beer - this is almost always the first thing to go with these sort of throuwback beers - but the new hazy vanilla body is not quite the standard NEIPA mode, though it's clearly in that ballpark.

This is nothing like Of Foam and Fury of old, and more importantly - and impressively - it's nothing like most of the more modern/hazy IPAs around at the moment. Mission accomplished.

#383: Bullish

To break the monotony of German or German-inspired beer I've got some actually fresh IPA to chew through from the lovely Bullhouse Brew Co.

First up is the NEIPA Merc Bro, which pours shockingly dark for the style, a shady orange as opposed to the usual pale yellow. The nose is immediately met with sweet strawberry and apricot jam, enticing and genuinely interesting, but the promise of this is not really matched on the palate. Not that it's unpleasant - it's not - but it's also not the cleanest or brightest example of this sort of thing going around. It tastes almost as murky as it looks, a but muddy and indistinct, and is far stickier than the 6.5% ABV would normally suggest. Some of the fruit survives, again in the form of stone fruit and sweet jam, but I was quite glad to move on to the next one.

Which is King Size, a double IPA of 8%. This one is immediately more promising, or at least more conventional for a modern hazy IPA as I expect to find them; it's a good deal paler, even if it is still just as opaque. Again there's oozing sweet juice and again there's sweet strawberry, but this time there's a lot more fun to be had. Heady, fumey pear makes that 8% initially seem closer to 10%, but this is just aromatic bloom. What follows is a suerbly indulgent and enjoyable modern strong IPA, with all the trappings of such; sweet, juicy, tonnes of fruit and a distinct lack of yeast bite. That last bit is in spite of the fact that there are definitely yeast solids in the can, so pour with care. 

King Size is definitely the more successful of the two for me but the Merc Bro could well be doing something for you.

#382: Gafflasch

Gaffel Kölsch is a new one on me, and the style is another slightly mystifiying one for me. My only experience of a Kölsch is with the obviously ubiquitous Früh, which I fancy a pleasant pillowy quaffer even if I don't often get around to it. 

At the core of the Gaffel is a nice cereal sweetness, and this core expands almost to fill the whole experience of the beer. With a bit of diligence and optimism you can pull accents of celery, leafy greens and a touch of apple seed, that bitter, woody punctuation. It's almost pilsy and doesn't seem as soft and round as the Früh but at this stage I'm just splitting hairs.

In all, its just simple and pleasant and that's enough. 

To beef up this post and give this stray German a home, here's a quick cameo from Andechser Weissbier Hell, trailing behind his stablemates from the previous post. Unlike a Kölsch, which is a regular enough pickup for me, it's some time since I've had the hankering for a weissbier, but here in the first stirrings of warm weather the fancy has taken me, and when it does, nothing else will do.

Honey, sweet lemon and lemon balm leaves are the immediate impressions and I am impressed. In fact, this is a quite refined weissbier; it's not dry of course, but there's a certain quickness to it, where the sweetness is more aromatic than anything else if that makes sense. No cloying banana or bubblegum here, just an enticingly juicy thirst quencher that, like the Gaffel above, lends itself readily to quaffing, but with far more panache along the way. 

#381: Kloster Buster

All of Klosterbraueri Andechs' beers are new to me, and we start with their helles, which I guess they are calling Andescher Hell. Lo! Melanoidin! Munich malt is presumably the heavy contributor here though the beer is as pale as any other helles, but that intense malted biscuit and light toffee is there, almost suggestive of a darker beer. A great example of what helles should be in contrast to, say, German pils. Bitterness is fairly mild as expected, just a rock solid rounded lager that leans enthusiastically into its Bavarian malt heritage. Dare I say a textbook helles.

Andechs Doppelbock Dunkel pours a clear mahogany, truly a perfect appearance. The aroma is faint enough though, offering only transient whiffs of coppery cola and marzipan. Not the most promising opening for a dark beer of 7.1%, but thankfully its a classic case of under promise, over deliver, because this is rather delicious. Cola dominates again, that softly bittersweet brown sugar and warmly spiced character that is so pleasant in a beer (and indeed a cola). It's also raisiny, but it defies all of these dark and quite rich flavours by remaining quaffable, perhaps dangerously so. This is because the palate is actually quite dry, helping that moreish quality. Which time, it becomes chocolatey, but as the head retention wobbles and fades, you start to notice that the alcohol leaves a tickle of a burn in the throat but, mercifully, not to the sever detriment of the the beer's drinkability. There's even a touch of marker pen in that latent bitterness, another half mark to be docked. 

With the head gone, it feels more like a doppelbock than a dunkel, and the alcohol does begin to show, even in the appearance. Compared to the two doppelbocks featured in my previous post it definitely skirts closer to the excellent Illuminator than the Salvator and does display an impressive level of compexity even accounting for its strength, but it's only fair to say that a few of the rougher edges you naturally encounter when making a big beer like this haven't been fully smoothed out. 

Still, it's a very pleasant affair that I'd be happy to see again, even if it's not going to be the final word in doppelbock.

Andechs Spezial Hell is a festbier of sorts, according to their website. The strength has been dialled up to 5.9% from the core's 4.8% but I don't see what we're getting for that. Ultimately it's another helles. Not as melanoidiny as the above, showing just sweet grain, soft caramel and a wisp of vegetal bitterness. It's very sinkable, enjoyable and forgettable. That's fine, not everything needs to be remembered. Sometimes a beer is just a beer. That being said, we get more from the 4.8% helles than this rather un-festive festbier. 

The standard hell is the pick of the bunch here, but all of these beers are at least worthy of a punt. I look forward to trying any more I come across, extra points granted for beautiful packaging and monkish credentials. 

#380: Seeing Doppel

A couple of years ago I found a pair of Paulaner Salvator mugs in a Mitchelstown charity shop. They date from the 60s or 70s and carry a respectable 25cl each, perfect for splitting a half litre of doppelbock in front of the fire. It's been years since I've had Salvator but when I finally picked one up again, it had been shrunk down to a disappointing but arguably sensible 330ml package. Nevermind sharing then. 

Paulaner Salvator pours mostly clear and paler than I expected, a bright muddy red. Marzipan and milk chocolate ooze from the aroma and follow though to the palate, but there's also a touch of the permanent marker I found off-putting all those years ago. Initially the beer passes by pleasant, though one-dimensional, but after a while the sense of hot booze only grows more prominent. 

Like pretty much every time I've had a Paulaner Salvator it starts fine but tapers eventually towards slight disappointment. It's seemingly more available these days in its new (and admittedly quite nice) packaging, and while maybe not an essential classic it's a compelling enough  purchase at the price and I'm glad to see it knocking around. Still, it has a long way to improve before becoming anything like a go-to pickup for the style. Not that you asked, but that would be Celebrator (for nuance) or Doppel Hirsch (for brute force).

Or it might even be Galway Bay's Illuminator. I've had this a handful of times since release (editorial-repeat purchases are essential, especially in a world of such infinite and ever-changing choice and high competition as beer) and it is easily one of the best doppelbocks I've ever had. By comparison with the Salvator it's a good deal darker, with a red glow emanating from its mahogany tone and offering a beautiful aroma that suggests raisin and concentrated chewy toffee. The palate is stunning, mouth coating without being sticky and giving milk chocolate, toffee, figs and even a hint of that Pedro Ximinez dark fruit concentration that delights me in a strong dark beer. Still, we're only at 7.9% and we are getting serious value for that; it feels bigger. Not boozier, or even stronger at all, just bigger, broader and more long-lived on the palate. 

There's a proper robust bitterness too, that lingers like a wisp of coffee but also cleans up that malt intensity to make it far more drinkable than my tasting notes might be suggesting. Yes, you can quite justifiably sip this fireside as a digestif (and I kind of did, from my wine glass) but you can also grasp a ceramic mug and quaff this (which I definitely did), much like those pious lads depicted on aforementioned mug.

Where the Salvator feels like a good song but with the bass stripped out and the treble all dialled up, Illuminator has the full dynamic range; its rounder, fuller, more complex and far more interesting. Having both of these beers in the same evening was, in hindsight, a terribly unfair exercise for the poor old Salvator.