#223: Reverence

The first time I had Orval, about a year ago, I just didn't get it.

It was good, it tasted nice, I enjoyed it, but it didn't approach the depth, complexity or assertion of flavour that I expected from a beer so revered. That was a relatively fresh bottle, and thankfully I retained a bottle from the same batch to try now, at an age of one year and three months. 

Pouring amber with a rocky, ice-cream head, it certainly looks the part in the end-of-spring sunshine. The aroma is a gorgeous feast of fruity, citrus sherbert, a sharp tang of sour grain and a lick of cool, herbal, floral hops. The palate gets a treatment of bitterness to the fore, but in a distinctly spicy, coriander sort of way. This is old world. Earthy floral and herbal notes galore, and the base is of candied fruit, digestive biscuit and slightly syrupy malts, all the while supporting a refreshingly prickly, wheaty, citrus zest leading note. 

With its richness and complexity, Orval of just over one year old blows the younger beer out of the water. I'm now beginning to understand why this is one of beer geeks' most loved beers.

#222: Franciscan Well Easterfest 2014

Three weeks later, I think it's right about time I digest the goings-on of the Franciscan Well Easterfest. The blogging hiatus that followed was brought on by end-of-year college activities that are pretty much unavoidable, but henceforth I should be devoting more time to the important business of beering. What better way to kick off a summer of beer than to recap an Easter beer festival? 

Well, there are plenty of better ways, but que faire, that's life. 

My beer festival M.O is generally to appear early doors on the first day and get all my work done before the atmosphere gets too jovial for my liking, but fate conspired that I wouldn't be able to show my face until the ungodly hour of 8 o'clock. By now the place was a heaving pile of humans and I wasn't much in the mood, so I went for a quick half of Hugo's Pils from JJ's Brewing Company in Charleville, which I found at first to be decent and balanced between grainy, biscuity sweetness and a tingling floral bitterness but ultimately my mind was wandering before I'd finished the glass. To avoid some of the crowd I ventured into the upstairs bar, where Sharp's were hiding away. Both the 6 Hop and Sharp's Special were incredibly, offensively bland and watery, and represented a genuine waste of time and money.

Totally disenchanted and still jostling for space, I decided to head for the Bierhaus, where I knew I would be able to find some of the festival fare.

Everything new from 8 Degrees piques my interest and the Full Irish was no exception. Nor is it exception to the rule that most of what they brew is delicious. It's fresh and intensely hopped, shoving plenty of pine needle and orange and lemon zest into your face, while the sweet malt base remains very much in the background. Loads of grapefruit to the fore and marmalade in the back, this is a true Irish-American that leaves astringent fruit notes on the sides of your mouth for yonks. 

Next up was Unite, a collaboration brew for International Women's Day that's been brewed the world over; a brilliant idea, whereby each individual brewery puts its own stamp on the 4% pale ale recipe. This was brewed at Metalman by Gráinne (Metalman), Adrienne (Beoir Chorca Dhuibhne) and Sarah (N17), alongside other brewsters on the day (as far as I can tell). It's all bright, bitter Cascade with an assertive biscuity, grainy base and a good fist of bubblegum sweetness. Good stuff, though it probably suffered from following the Full Irish, with its palate-ravaging power.

I couldn't pass up the chance to try Helvick Gold from the keg, and I wasn't much disappointed. Sure, it's not as bold as the Unite or Full Irish, but I was delighted to find the same light, bright citrus highlights and woody undertones as in the bottled version.

Fortified with hops from the Full Irish, as well as optimism from the other two, it was time to head back to the festival proper. Once I'd returned, I followed some sage advice from Bierhaus resident beer geek Ronan to try the Independent Pale Ale, my first from the Connemara outfit. It is class. Potent hopping delivers plenty of bitter citrus fruit rind on a meaty enough body. Sweetness is there for balance and doesn't much figure in the grand scheme of things. Look out for this in bottles. 

Following this was another pale ale and another new brewery for me, more specifically, UCC's Specific Pale Ale. This was not unpleasant at all, but quite weird. Green apple-flavoured Hubba Bubba was the keynote speaker, with everything else a rabble of sweet fruitiness that does well not to cloy. 

It's been a while since anything that Trouble Brewing have made has impressed me as much as their delicious Dark Arts, but they seem to be knocking out winners at the moment; by all accounts their menu of an IPA, saison, brown ale, rye red ale and wheat beer (alongside regular Deception) was top notch. Unfortunately, I only got to try the Lazy Sunday Saison, but boy was it delicious. Tart lemon curd, dry cereal grain and loads of fruity goodness. The lingering grain and yeastiness is accessibly farmyardy. This is incredibly refreshing stuff, and it compares favourably with the also-delicious Clementine and Rosemary Saison from the Franciscan Well.

The final beer of the evening was Cotton Ball's Indian Summer, a beer pieced together from their lager malts, ale yeast and American hops. Strange and beautiful, with its bright fruity and herbal highlights fighting back a toffee and biscuit malt backbone, it remains cool and refreshing, while never threatening to blow one's mind. 

All in all, the festival was as ever a huge success, with my Beer Of Fest™ a toss-up between the Full Irish and Lazy Sunday. Track both of these down, it will be worth it.

#221: Weird Beard

I step out of the woodwork today to remind you that this blog remains in existence as well as to celebrate two years of the Drunken Destrier. For the past couple of weeks, just as with the next few, I'm pretty busy with college work, so any drinking that's being done is usually restorative and the painful activities of photographing, note-taking and blogging of the beers have largely been relegated to obsolescence.

There were new beers though, and I just can't get out of beer nerd mode in such situations. These three are part of the Weird Beard range now stocked in Bradley's, and all are pretty fresh, bottled only in February.

The first I had was Mariana Trench, so named for being in between the American and English styles on the pale ale spectrum, and I had it with a very hot curry. Luckily, this beer is choc-a-bloc with hops. A beautiful orangey, citrus pith and candied peel nose is its first greeting, before going further down a grapefruit and tropical mango route. West Coast pine notes are just about suggested, as is a lick of lime marmalade. As you can imagine, the palate gets equally fantastic treatment, with the tropical grapefruit, mango, pineapple and bitter peel attack leading the charge. The hops are grounded by the pessential caramel malt backbone, providing just the right amount of balance while letting that sharp, pithy bitterness shine.

Try this with curry, you'll be surprised how well it cuts through the heat, and then you'll be seduced by its all-round loveliness.

Fade to Black is the black IPA of the range and as the aroma shows, it's very flipping hoppy. Citrus and pith are there just as in the previous beer, but there's a much sharper coppery highlight hanging over this one. It's bold and punchy to taste too, with those bitter tropical fruit notes supported by toffee and plenty roasty, bitter coffee. The length is great, and you'll be sucking the grapefruit peel notes off the sides of your mouth for the rest of the night. 

Another great beer, but second fiddle to the Mariana Trench.

Finally we get to Hit the Lights, the second Metallica-referencing beer of the trio (that may have been a deciding factor), that describes itself as a 'mixed-up IPA'. This refers to the Anglo/Euro hops, English malt backbone and American yeast used in the making. For those who care, Target and Aurora are the hops used. 

And they are gorgeous, if the aroma is anything to go by. Grapefruit and pineapple, candied lemon rind, soft and round notes of apricot; there's a lot less aggression to the hop profile here, and all the fruit expressed is bittersweet. This continues on tasting, with bitter orange pith and flesh opening up among softer mango, peach and apricot notes. A touch of golden syrup sweetness sticks the digestive biscuit malt backbone to your mouth, rounding out the impact of such potent hopping, but just as in the previous two beers, there's a long-lingering bitterness regardless.

Another instant classic.

These are three seriously good beers from a crowd who clearly know what they're doing, and who appear to revel in being trigger happy with the hop gun.

Go in, get.

#220: Vitesse Noir

Hardknot blew my proverbial socks off with core beers Azimuth, Infrared and Queboid, so when a beer of theirs labelled as a 'triple imperial mocha vanilla stout' appeared in Bradley's purchase was simply inevitable. 

Predictably, Vitesse Noir pours pitch black and with 11% ABV, struggles to form any meaningful head. The aroma is powerful to say the least, with alcohol and black marker taking over from the beginning. If you manage to keep your nose alive you might find blackberry jam, liquorice and dark sugary malts, but it's tough going. The body is thick and oily with a spirity finish, but thankfully the palate doesn't get the same abuse as the nose, with dark malts being very much the order of the day. Sweet toffee chocolate, maple syrup and an almost physically detectable residual brown sugar do rather well not to leave a cloying taste in the mouth; bold and harsh without being cheap and sticky. 

The beer is hot an has nothing like the complexity you might expect from something that is a) brewed to 11% and b) flavoured with coffee, chocolate and vanilla. For all that, I found it a positive experience. It's demanding and intense, but once you get a third of the way down the sheer power of the malts and the booze reassure you that you're having a jolly good time. 

#219: Here It Gose

Following on from the previous post's anomaly - a dark saison - the weirdness continues with this beer from the Brown Paper Bag Project and Fanø Bryghus. This time, it's not a stylistic deviation that delivers the weirdness, it's the style itself.

The beer is Gøse, and it is in fact a gose. No, not geueze, gose. Ever since I heard of this style seasoned with salt, I've been marvelling at its weirdness from a safe distance while ultimately desperate to try it. Thankfully, Ireland's only gypsy brewing outfit have teamed up with Fanø Bryghus in Denmark to give me the chance. You know things are good when you can go to town and buy a gose in Bradley's.

Pouring a pale hazy yellow, the first nose receives plenty of herbal, lemony and spice treatment, not giving away any of the sourness that was to follow on the palate. Having not read the label beforehand (and therefore not knowing this was spontaneously fermented) I wasn't expecting a hit of sourness at the very beginning, but it's a cleansing hit that fades to leave behind lemon sherbet and prickly spice. The body is light enough to make this a very refreshing beer while the aftertaste is of wheaty biscuit that lingers for a brief, delicious moment. I was almost hoping to find salt, in a horrible 'I accidentally swallowed some seawater' way, but thankfully I didn't. 

This is great stuff, and that's coming from someone who still makes a concerned frown when encountering any hint of sourness in a beer. It goes far beyond that though, and delivers spicy, grainy goodness aplenty. 

#218: Pepe Nero

This is the last of the beers gifted to me buy a travelling acquaintance, so it's been sitting in the cupboard for a few weeks. Only the other day, right before opening it up, did I discover what it actually is. 

Goose Island's Pepe Nero is supposedly a dark saison (a first for me) brewed with the addition of peppercorns. My first instinct is to reckon that this addition (as well as the presumably darker malt flavours) would contradict the saison's raison d'être - to be a bright and refreshing summer beers.

This is how it continues to appear when it pours an opaque dark brown with an eggshell white head. The aroma is gorgeous, no matter what the weather; spice reminiscent of a decent tripel with just a hint of prickly sourness, backed up by sugary dark fruit and malts. Any particularly peppery influence is more or less absent in the initial stages. The palate doesn't get as much of the complexity as the aroma suggested, but there's plenty of sweet caramel malt and dark fruit flavours with some coriander and, finally, peppery spice, but even then it doesn't attack the palate like that of a tripel. Also absent from tasting is any hint of the 'farmyardy' tartness or earthiness that I expect from a saison.

Overall it's actually a pretty positive experience, even though it fails to fully deliver the best qualities of a farmhouse saison or indeed a beer with peppercorns added. All the same it remains drinkable and quite interesting to pull apart, and for that alone deserves consideration. 

Only in a small bottle, mind.

#217: A Late Early Summer Weisse

I would say I've been too busy to post, and that wouldn't be a complete lie, honest, but really it's because I'm incredibly lazy and besides, there just hasn't been much to report of late. And so I flick a few pages back to find this last unreported beer in the notebook, Schneider's Tap X 2013 - Meine Sommer Weisse. Of course, this being 2014 the beer is a good few months past its ideal drinking time (you know, the summer) but still just within its BBE date.

Unlike the Tap 7, this hefe pours a very pale, hazy yellow with white soapy bubbles constituting a somewhat weak and withered appearance. Plenty of brawn in the aroma though, with lemony, herbal and floral notes in place of the banana and clove weightiness of the Tap 7. At times it leans into sharp farmyardy stuff, a thread continued on the palate with ever so slightly tart citrus fruits backing up a lemon sherbert opening. The finish is sweet and leaves a lasting impression of overripe fruit and biscuity malt on the tongue.

It's tasty stuff, as with everything Schneider make. Keep your eyes peeled for this year's Tap X, Meine Porter Weisse, which will surely be an interesting one.