#389: Browning

Since the seeming retraction of Newcastle Brown Ale from its position of near ubiquity in Irish offies, the style hasn't tended to be one at the tip - or indeed any section - of the tongue. In recent years, though, brown ales have resurfaced among supermarket own-brand ranges, a welcome and genuinely interesting prospect. There was a time when the pale ale among the red ale, stout, pale ale trifecta of accessible and adventurous brewing was about as exciting as it got. Now we're getting dinky fruit sours, convincing saisons and, today, beautiful brown ales from the own-brand section.

I always have time for Dot Brew thanks to their commitment to leaning into niche styles and, more importantly, brewing them well. There tends to be a perceptible attention to detail and engagement with the style, and that's no different with this here Dot Brew Brown Ale from their current Aldi offering. In the glass it's a mostly clear mahogany with a glimmer of deep red rust, perhaps suggesting a slight murk. The aroma is a very faint dusting of cocoa powder, though to be fair I reckon I've served this colder than any brown ale desires to be. This presents as pleasant milk chocolate and brown sugar on the palate which, while sweet in the main, is not without its light brace of leafy bitterness. It opens up with warmth to a sort of soft cola or mixed berry fruitiness, but in the main it's plain, in a very good way. I could settle into this, and then settle right into another. At 5% it invites a session, a warm and cosy one.

If I had my wits about me I'd gather some other examples from the current micro-revival of accessible brown ales but we'll have to wait and see on that one. For now, take this to be a very lovely beer at a pretty good price, and far more interesting than Aldi probably needed it to be. 

#388: Yearning

Poperings Hommel Bier has appeared just once on this blog, and that just won't do. For the past three years or so it has been an essential purchase whenever I happened by Bradleys, the only local merchant I know to stock it. Recently the supply seems to have dried up, apparently the importing of the brand - at least latterly - was a temporary arrangement, which is of course devastating news if that's the case. Years ago it seemed to be a fairly regular presence, sometimes only in 750ml bottles, sometimes even popping up on draught, so hopefully its absense is not permanent. Let this overdue reappraisal not be an elegy.

There's an initial tangle of spice on the nose, a powderfine pepper and stalky celery splashing out of the glass. Dig through this and you find some familiar and enticing caramel. This caramel character is prominent on the palate, with that sweet cosy core wrapped in leaves of grassy, herbal hops. Lemongrass turns to orange marmalade and then to freshly shaven lemon zest, but all tempered by the honeyed and ever so slightly boozy malt core. A wonderful interplay, a joy. As the beer warms you get to appreciate that it is laced with as much yeast-derived character as it is hommel character, or maybe it's the dance of the two that makes it so enjoyable.

As the Poperings pipeline has more or less dried up it's necessary to scratch the itch some other way, and the way I've been doing it is with another of my favourite beers, also scandalously absent from this blog, De Ranke XX Bitter. A pale, hazy orange, it looks more substantial than the Hommel Bier, despite in fact being a comparitively light 6% to the former's 7.5% ABV. Despite a careful pour it's hard to avoid a bit of sediment in suspension, but this doesn't muddy things at all. A beautiful aroma of mixed noble and new-world hop forwardness, although only Brewer's Gold and Hallertau Mittelfrüh are used. It's juicy in a real grapefruit juice sort of way - bitter, waxy and pithy. This bracing rush is softened by a pleasantly grassy and herbal character with another flourish of citrus peel. Superb, moreish. In spite of the well advertised (and dutifully delivered) bitterness, there is a final little dollop of sugar to keep things fun and fairly balanced, even if that sweetness is manifested as a rather bittersweet and satisfying orange marmalade. 

Look, it's a stunner, I'm obviously a fan. While it lacks the rustic quality, dry spicing and yeast forward character of the Hommel Bier, it delivers instead a more robust bitterness with some genuinely juicy hop flavours, and there's still enough herbal estery nonsense to enjoy for the zymurgists among us.

#387: Mescing

At one point in time you might have referred to Mescan as Ireland's resident Belgophiles, but these days I can think of two or three other brewers who might count themselves as such a thing. Still, none other have opted for the stubby Duvel skittle bottles or have pitched themselves as something like a local village abbey brewery, and for that alone Mescan deserve some credit. And so, to celebrate Lá Fhéile Bríde recently it seemed apt to opt for Westport Blond, twelve years after its first appearance on the blog (and since the last mention of Mescan on the blog at all).

Such a plain billing as blond doesn't usually get me excited even when the beer comes from a Low Country but my pleasant surprise with Moinette Blond - along with the fact that so many of the world's most beautiful beers could concievably be called blond ale - leaves me hoping for something fun. What I'm hoping for from a sub-5%-er is a bit of quaffable and quenching yeasty prickle. It's not quite what you get. The spicing here (and of course I'm just referring to the fermentation esters on show) are more wit-like in character; lemon zest and lemongrass abound, with an almost juicy quality thanks to the slightly tart finish. As the beer warms a little there is a simply wonderful and uncanny ripe raspbery aroma that follows through on the palate. If blindfolded and going by the aroma alone, I reckon there's a good chance I might have pegged this for being fruited. There's no sugaryness to the taste though, to the extent where it could actually have used more. As a result it ends up feeling slightly thin and wan, relying on a rush of spirited carbonation, a mild wheaty body and just a hint of lemony tartness to quench the thirst.

And it does quench the thirst. A rainy bank holiday in February is not the worst time for any beer, but this will clearly come into its element in high summer. 

All in all, while slightly plainer than I'd hoped, it more than delivers as a plain Belgian quaffer, with more of a fruity wheaty slant than a dry spicy one. 

Stepping things up is the Red Tripel, which isn't really red but it certainly is a tripel. While lowish on aromatic heft the details are all there - the slightly heady strength, leafy herbals, a sprinking of pepper. The slightly hazy amber doesn't look particularly red but it does suggest some body and this is delivered in the form of honey, marshmallow and warm fermentation sweetness. Over time a touch of banana edges into the aroma and manages to add jollity rather than cloying nonsense. Warm, estery aromatics do develop further over time but never to the extent that you might get from one of the more aromatic tripels or even the (in my opinion) more sweet dominated Westmalle. Ultimately, it's a lovely simple sipper with plenty of cockle-warming credentials and that's more than enough for me. 

#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 a certified NZ enjoyer 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 spice additions have been successful 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.