#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.