The Beer Nut

I happened to be in the UK when Boak and Bailey announced that they were hosting the 88th round of The Session. Unfortunately I wasn't in one of the good bits, so my plans to pick some new-to-me British beers in traditional styles for mixing was somewhat scuppered by the awful selection at Sainsbury's in Armagh, itself the nearest thing to a decent off licence open in the town on a Sunday.

The best I could do was two of the Greene King IPA brand extensions, and though I don't see IPA and IPA on the list of traditional mixes, I reckon these two are different enough from each other to yield a meaningful result.

But first, to try them separately so I know what I'm dealing with. Greene King IPA Gold is a 4.1% ABV golden ale. There's a very pleasant honeyish aroma to begin with, followed by a floral meadowy flavour. It's on the sweet side, but not overly so, with a definite lagery crispness to it as well. It's simple and clean but without being boring and only just a little bit skunked through the daft clear glass. As a beer for drinking cold while outdoors on a sunny day it's nothing to be afraid of.

Greene King IPA Reserve is almost as different as a beer with more-or-less the same name can be. It's a dark copper colour and smells of ripe forest fruits, blackberries and damsons in particular. There's more of a summery quality on tasting, with strawberry and raspberry coming through, though nary a sign of a hop in all this. The caramel stickiness does start to get a bit much, but there's enough of a tannic element to keep it just about drinkable. Overall it's harder work than the Gold.

My hope for combining them was that I'd get the fresh cleanness of the Gold coupled with the fruit and dry tannins of the Reserve while thinning down the sugariness of the latter. Is this something real people might do in a real pub if such practices were still socially acceptable? Yes, maybe.

The result is closer in colour to Reserve than Gold, just a little bit paler. And the flavour combination does actually sort-of work: the floral honey element is the first thing to come through, but instead of a simple lager-fizz base, it's sitting on the summer fruits from the Reserve, conjuring a marvellously bucolic picture of copse-smattered rolling downs. English with a capital E. You can almost hear the birdsong. The tannins haven't quite disappeared but only flash briefly right at the very end. But it's neither sticky nor watery and actually quite a decent, balanced complex English session bitter. I really didn't want to use the hackneyed "greater than the sum of its parts" in this review, but it's apt nonetheless.

A fun experiment with an unexpected result. I will leave this post in the hope that someone seeking advice on what to do with two Greene King IPA offshoots they have acquired, but aren't especially keen on drinking, will find it and benefit as I have.

"Voted 'Best Homebrewed Beer in Belgium 2010'" it says on the label of Hopjutters Mouten Kop. This bottle hasn't been sitting in my fridge quite that long, though it is a few months past its best-before. Such is the lot of Belgian beer in my house.

A modest 6% ABV, there's still a powerful whiff of hot sweet sherry and whiskey liqueur off it. A closer sniff of the highly fizzy orange body adds a bit of cereal complexity and, tragically, the ghost of a departed peachy aroma. It's not the sugar bomb I was expecting: the texture is quite light, attenuated nearly to the point of being sour, tempered by a breakfast-juice blood orange and pineapple fruit sweetness plus just a brief flash of toffee on the end where it doesn't quite belong.

From this jumble I suspect I'm not seeing the whole thing as the brewer, amateur or otherwise, intended. I assume that instead of the awful boozy aroma there's supposed to be a blast of citrus, and that the light toffee is meant to accentuate a massive juicy flavour. But that's just speculation. Whatever this beer was meant to be has been lost, like tears, in rain.

Time for another Irish beer round-up, prompted in part by the arrival last week of a new beer and a new brewing company. Andrew Murphy and Feargal Chambers (one teacher, one pharmacist) have just established Four Provinces Brewing and the first beer was launched in L. Mulligan Grocer.

The Hurler, brewed at Trouble Brewing, is intriguingly styled a "copper ale" rather than a red. I can see why too: it's a fair bit paler than most Irish reds though stained in a way most pale ales aren't. It was pouring beautifully clear as well, despite not having been through Trouble's filter. I wasn't so keen on the aroma: there's a little bit of stale grain and old hop. On tasting there's a mouthwatering punchy grapefruit bitterness up front from the extensive use of Chinook and Cascade. The guys said they were looking for an Alt-like melanoidin effect, and I can sort-of taste that in there, but the hopping leaves little room for anything else. Joyously, The Hurler comes in a tidy 4.2% ABV package and is light enough to be properly sessionable. I'd happily drink several.

To keep matters dark 'n' hoppy, the next newest Irish beer is from Blackstairs, a Wexford-based brand. There are plans for a brewery in 2015 but for now the beer is in the capable hands of Brú Brewery. The first out is a Ruby Red IPA, though I'd go so far as to say the red is a darker, browner hue than that. The smell is very strange: heavily roasted and almost meaty. The burnt flavours of dark malts are to the fore on tasting but the sharp ashen dryness is accompanied by a strong vegetal bitterness leaving an acrid sensation in the back of the mouth. There's a resinous dank centre and a faint trace of tart red berries. Flawlessly brewed, this is a very grown-up beer and while I'm sure it will have its admirers it was just a bit too stern for me. Maybe it's the disapproving gaze of the wolf on the label but I never really felt I could relax with it.

One that eluded me on my last trip north was Farmageddon India Pale. Fortunately, Richard has my back. This is 5.5% ABV and a dark gold colour, with an slightly off-putting sweaty lemon biscuit aroma. On first sip it nails its colours to the mast with an astringent lip-curling bitterness followed by a rather harsh acid burn. Oddly for a microbrewed IPA, the ingredients list maize, for head retention I'm guessing (edited to add: this is a typo, apparently. Thanks to Steve for the update). There's no sign of it in the flavour, and very little by way of grains at all, in fact. I found this beer to be all sharp angles without any mellow warmth or fruity fun. A bit like the Blackstairs above, it's definitely well made, but just too severe for my liking. Given another bottle it's possibly one to settle into, once the palate adjusts, but as a one-off sipper it's hard work.

I was a little disconcerted when I saw there was a new pale ale from Carrig Brewing. Their Pipers Pale Ale has been around barely a wet week, and now here's another session beer: Poachers Pale Ale is 4.7% ABV, just a notch higher than Pipers' 4.3. It seems a little darker, pouring out a dark gold shade with lots of enthusiastic fizz. While Pipers is all soft and fruity, this is sterner stuff, with quite an astringent bitterness: lemon peel just shading towards washing-up liquid territory. The malt element shows up more in the aroma than the flavour, adding a spongecake effect to the waft of lemons. The bit of wheat they've thrown in adds nicely to the texture making it a full-bodied beer and I can see why the label recommends hearty food as an accompaniment. I enjoyed it as much as I did the Pipers, but for different reasons: that one is all soft luscious fruit while this is invigorating bitterness. No harm having both in one's portfolio.

Kinnegar's latest, in its handsome tall bottle with minimalist labelling, is Otway, a 4.3% ABV pale ale. It's a hazy, farmhousey, pale orange and nicely light on carbonation, with the big loose bubbles of the head subsiding quickly to a thin skim. There's a light waft of spiced mandarin from the aroma plus some sweeter cereal notes. The texture is very thin, even at this modest ABV, and the flavour is as minimalist as the label, offering just some light pine resin and frankincense spicing set against crisp grain husk and finishing with a pithy bitterness. As sunny day thirst-quenchers go, this offers a more interesting flavour combination than most, but the teasing hops have me immediately hankering for something bolder.

Finally we come to Eight Degrees, a brewery which is on something of an upswing at the moment. Amber-Ella, The Full Irish and Hurricane have landed punch after delicious hoppy punch lately. Their latest offering is a white IPA (hoppy witbier) created in collaboration with London's By The Horns brewery and called (wait for it) Horn8's Nest. I caught up with it at Beerhouse where it arrived a just-off-clear pale lemony yellow. There's what I'm beginning to think of as the signature Eight Degrees aroma of fresh and spicy herbal hops. There's a wheaty softness in the texture and a generous dose of coriander though not so much evidence of the orange peel. It's probably safe to guess that the fruit has been buried under an aggressive bitterness, lightened only by zesty lemon and deepened by oily dank. The thirst-quenching power is a good as any wit you can name but this is still yet another Eight Degrees beer for connoisseurs of big hops.

I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing much slowdown in Ireland's current boom in hop-forward beers.

Say what you like about the gypsy brewing phenomenon, when beermakers are freed from the distractions of brewery administration they can produce some amazing results.

Exhibit A is Mikkeller's American Dream, as found on tap in Farrington's (now The Norseman, again). This 4.6% ABV lager is an exercise in perfect balance. The initial sharp jolt of aggressive citrus is suddenly smoothed by a candyfloss sweetness which takes enough, but not too much, of the edge off. The end result is that rarity: a highly complex, hop forward, delight that invites an immediate second pint.

To the dark side next, and To Øl's Black Ball porter: a different Danish gypsy but produced at the same Belgian brewery. Fans of smooth sinkable porter will be disappointed, though possibly only for the first couple of seconds. 8% ABV lends this a substantial weight, pouring gloopily into the glass. There's a little treacle in the flavour but the headline act is hops: Simcoe, Centennial and Cascade are the varieties but they deliver little by way of citrus and instead give off a fresh vegetal effect, like walking into a greengrocer's cold room. Thanks to Brian, who shared a bottle at The Brew Dock.

Back to Mikkeller, finally (without moving from De Proef), and Green Gold. It's been sighted on a number of bars around town but I eventually caught up with it at The Black Sheep. Ever the literalist I was shocked to find it's not gold, or green, but quite a dark amber. 7% ABV but it could pass for stronger on the basis of the thick texture and slightly hot alcohols. The aroma is a bit lacking but it makes up for that in flavour: spices, then dank, then a long-lasting pine bitterness. A sipper not a quaffer it really holds your attention all the way through.

Of course, you could say that there's no real skill to just whacking a load of hops into a beer, but the more I drink -- of beer brewed on the brewer's own kit or elsewhere -- the more I realise that there's a definite knack to it which some can pull off and others can't. If in doubt, check with a Danish gypsy.

I don't think I've ever reviewed any beers from Romania before. I have Richard to thank for this lot, acquired via a colleague of his.

Taking them in order of strength, we start with Timișoreana Brună, from Ursus, the Romanian incarnation of SABMiller. This is 5% ABV and an attractive chestnut red. Sweetness is the modus operandi here: a major dark molasses treacle tang. It does benefit from the modest strength, however, as it doesn't get sticky or difficult as it goes. Instead it's a perfectly decent and clean, if rather plain, red lager.

Silva raises the stakes a little, bringing us up to 6% ABV. This offering from Heineken Romania is red again, though a little paler than the foregoing, and there's an extra complexity with that extra alcohol. Starting out with a kind of burnt caramel flavour, it then mellows to a sweet fruity strawberry effect which I rather enjoyed. Only the building alcohol heat takes away from the drinkability.

And at 7% ABV there's Ursus Black, which I'm presuming like the others is a lager, so broadly a Baltic Porter, I suppose. Balkan Porter, anyone? It certainly has the heavy liquorice effect that's normally found in Baltic Porter, though not really a whole lot else. There's a back-of-the-palate dryness which adds an Irish stout note to proceedings but does little to improve the flavour. The same can be said of the pervading mustiness. This is very nearly an excellent beer and is probably the one I'd end up drinking most of if I were in-country with only these options, or crappy pale lager. I'm sure it gets better after the second one.

And because it doesn't deserve a post all of its own I'm throwing this in here from the same tasting, kindly (?) supplied by Reuben. It's called Euphoria and is one of those central European hemp beers plainly intended to appeal to stoner kids. I am genuinely a fan of hemp in beer: when it's done well it adds a lovely peppery piquancy to the taste. But such examples never come behind lurid labels like this one. Instead, this sort tend to be very sweet and taste horribly of melted plastic, and here we have no exception. It's a particularly sweet example, being all brown sugar and bad lager. There's maybe, maybe, a hint of green herbal sharpness on the end, but nowhere near enough to justify any time spent drinking this. Leave it to the teenagers to bring back from the school trip to Prague in order to impress their friends.

I spent a long weekend in Edinburgh back in April, revisiting a few old haunts and ticking off some new ones. The area's beer scene is brimming with quality these days so I made a concerted effort to keep it local as much as possible. Here's what I found.

On the edge of the city there's Stewart Brewing, a brewery which is becoming nearly omnipresent about town. In the convivial surrounds of the Stockbridge Tap I found one of their more traditional beers: Pentland IPA, 3.9% ABV and pouring a perfect clear gold. It's simple and lagery, with a nice dash of golden syrup malt. The hops don't have much to say for themselves, but then it's not that kind of beer. It's a downable, sociable conversation IPA.

Stewart's more craft-ish offerings tend to come in bottles, though Ka Pai is one I noticed on cask as well. This is a 5.2% ABV "South Pacific IPA". While the hops are certainly louder than in the Pentland, it's still a little understated. Yes there are some pleasant peach and mandarin notes, and a whiff of Nelsony cattishness in the aroma. The bottle-conditioned bottle did have an added yeast bite that wasn't present in the very well-kept cask pint in The Blue Blazer. Overall a pleasant beer though far from the ideal showcase for southern hemisphere hops.

Which leads us neatly on to First World Problems, a Belgian-style IPA of 6.2% ABV. There's proper hop action in this dark orange number, a powerful bitterness cutting right through the slightly sticky malt and warm fruity yeast. The latter runs interference against the hops, throwing out a distracting funk and an earthy sharpness which prevents the hop flavours from really shining. I'm sure I'm not the first to point out how much of a first world problem this is.

We finish up on Radical Road. 6.4% ABV and this time definitely not messing around with the hops: five kettle additions and double dry-hopping, though still a modest 50 IBUs. The result is a big blast of fresh orange from the aroma and a zesty citric refreshing quality on drinking. Again, not an eye-popping bitterness bomb, but nuanced and very grown-up.

The other local(ish) microbrewery is Alechemy in Livingston. I found their Five Sisters on the handpumps at the Cask & Barrel on Broughton Street, a pleasant neighbourhood pub near where I was staying. It's billed, excitingly, as a "red IPA", and it is indeed a coppery red colour, but the flavour is much more about crunchy oatmeal biscuits than big hops. Just a bitter acridity on the finish signals the hop involvement. It doesn't really gel together as an IPA, a pale ale, a red ale, or anything much else, unfortunately.

Alechemy's Ritual is another odd one. This is a dark gold pale ale at a sessionable 4.1% ABV. There's a stimulating bitterness though not much by way of hop flavour. Instead you get a big marzipan sweetness, presumably down to some alchemical combination of malt and hops. I found it rather enjoyable, in its weird bitter cakey sort of way.

It was Anzac Day on the Friday of my visit and the Bow Bar had a few thematic offerings in, including Alechemy (St)Ella Burst, a 5.3% ABV kegged golden ale which offers bubblegum up front followed by a dry and slightly tart red berry fruit effect. The promised burst of Australian hops doesn't quite materialise and the flavour is a little less intense than the strength and name might suggest, but it's decent simple fun.

The main event, however, was the Anzac Pale Ale from Elixir, a two-man operation which shares Alechemy's brewkit. The hook is that it's brewed using ingredients from the iconic Anzac biscuit: oats, golden syrup and coconut. It arrived accompanied by a couple of the biscuits and is a dark brown-amber colour with the aroma of New World amber ale: caramel malt thoroughly infused with spicy grassy hops. At its core is a massive oaty biscuit flavour, dry and almost crunchy, and this is followed quickly by a rising bitterness as well as a phenolic smoky quality. Then there's a sudden burst of fragrant orange blossom and juicy nectarine. This is a big and complex beer, making full use of its 5.9% ABV, but for everything that's going on in it, it's still perfectly balanced and very drinkable.

I'll be casting the net a little wider in my next post from Edinburgh.

The evening sun streaming in to my New Town lodgings raised barely a tint of redness in my Profanity Stout. The head is... generous, though the beer itself isn't especially fizzy, being quite silken-textured. The aroma is one that could easily be mistaken for that of a New World pale ale, all pineapple and grape with just a tiny hint of burnt coffee or molasses. Lots of fruit on the palate too, with autumnal blackberries to the fore. This is followed by an enticing bitterness derived, I suspect, from the combination of big hops and roasted grains. The finish is very dry, almost acrid, and with a tang of possibly oxidised staleness. It's a complex and uncompromising beer, one which takes a few turns that I don't think I care for, but overall it's hard not to respect it.

This was one of several beers from the Williams Brothers of Alloa that I encountered on my trip to Edinburgh back in April. They had just released a few new ones into the wild and I managed to pick them up in the excellent Beer Hive off licence. Among them was A Wee Bit, a smoky Scotch ale produced in collaboration with Brooklyn Brewery. I saw rave reviews after I tried it but have to confess I was less impressed: dark red, full-bodied for just 4.8% ABV and lots of lovely peat, but not much else. I'm not usually critical of one-dimensional beers that do things I like, but this was just too simplistic. Paradigm Shift was a better: a strong red ale with bags of dank hops balanced against freshly roasted coffee. It's all the things you get from good American amber ale made just a little bit more intense.

At the airport I just had time for a swift half of 7 Giraffes, a pale gold ale they've had out for a while but which I've never had the opportunity to try. It's smooth and sweet with nice golden syrup lager flavours. Light on flavour, perhaps, but clean and perfectly refreshing.

Lagery and gold is a bit of a theme. I mentioned Stewart's Pentland IPA in my last post, and I got a similar effect from Inveralmond's Ghillie Ale, the cask beer they produce for the monstrously touristy Ghillie Dhu venue at the end of Prince's Street. I enjoyed several pints of it there and reckon their cellarman is better trained than the hapless bar staff. And again, Scottish Borders Heavy Nettle, though claiming an unusual ingredient and having a beautiful sweet and slightly piquant meadow aroma, tastes mainly of that golden malt, the floral quality just barely coming through in the flavour. Orkney Best was the most enjoyable example. This 3.6%-er adds a gorgeous refreshing tannic quality and some lovely fresh hop spicing to the golden syrup sweetness.

My travelling companions were wowed by Broughton Coffee Stout at the Cask & Barrel. I liked it as a stout but would have preferred a bit more coffee: what's there is just some slight extra roast and none of the invigorating caffeinated oiliness or red fruit that you get when good coffee is used in sufficient quantities on a quality base stout.

We finish this round in the Stockbridge Tap and Cromarty's Red Rocker, a 5% ABV dark red ale with an intense, almost acrid, hopsack pungency. The flavour offers a twin stream of toffee malt and bright summer fruit. It's warming and quite heavily textured but neither too sweet nor any way difficult to drink. A wonderful mutisensory experience in a single glass.

In the next post I'll be turning my attention to beers from south of the border.

I have no idea what's in these glasses

Even though it has an on-site brewery and is a staunch supporter of local beer, the Hanging Bat beer café in Edinburgh can generally be relied on for a selection of English beers, especially from the more interesting and progressive breweries south of the border. And the readily available third-pint measures means ticking one's way through them is disturbingly easy. So...

A burgundy-aged version of The Kernel's Table Beer? Gimme. Bière de Table is a stonking 4.5% ABV and a very pale shade of yellow. There's little sign of wine or wood in the flavour, this highly attenuated beer being light, cold, clean and very refreshing. There's a very mild sourness but it barely impacted on the rich succulent Hanging Bat pulled pork. There was similar refreshment power in Rooster's Fort Smith: a lovely light lemony zip from the 5% ABV golden ale.

On the dark beer front, I found Henley Dark porter a bit sickly. The summer fruit aroma is enticing but the big milk chocolate gets quite cloying, even when only drinking a third of it. Railway Porter by London's Five Points is an unctuous coffee-laden affair with lots of oiliness and a strong liquorice bitterness. If you're in the mood for a coffee flavoured beer, this will keep you happy but it's not going to be for everyone. Best of the lot was the Dunkel Bock by Harbour Brewing, a long way from home in Cornwall. It's the appropriate shade of red-brown and with an unfussy mix of chocolate, coffee and bourbon biscuit, but then there's also a beautiful fresh green-hop nose which puts it ahead of any German version of the style I've ever tasted. Beautifully drinkable and one I'd be happy to have a larger measure of.

Evolver, probably

And IPAs? The 'Bat's got 'em. The nearest thing to ordinary was The Devil <3s Cascade by Summerwine, a big and sticky 7.2%-er, dark orange and almost headless. The unctuous candy malts are well balanced by a similarly oily resinous hop character, producing a peachy aroma followed by a more serious bitter pine flavour. Bit of a knife-and-fork job, but fun in small measures. Siren's Das Soundwave was the lightest of the bunch, a German-hopped IPA of 5.6% ABV, greenish gold in colour with a zingy orange sherbet aroma. There's a lot of heavy hop dank in the flavour and it leaves with a mouth-watering mandarin flourish. Overall, extremely drinkable yet marvellously complex. The outlier was Evolver from the Wild Beer Co. and I almost didn't order it. The description marks it as a brett IPA and I wondered who in their right minds would want something like that? Why soil the lovely fresh taste of hops with the dirty funk of brettanomyces yeast? I'm glad I ran out of options and had one before I left because it was gorgeous: soft peach and juicy mandarin to the fore, only funked up a little by some well-mannered brett. It's a beautiful blend of what the two elements bring to a beer, reminiscent of fresh Orval only with brighter, more exciting hops.

I returned to the Hanging Bat a couple of days later on a Sunday afternoon, hoping to catch a beer or two from the in-house brewery. But there was none of that, the blackboard was looking a little bare, and the place was loud and packed, so I nipped round the corner to the altogether more civilised Blue Blazer. No stuffy old-man beer here, however: I opted for 2014, a black IPA from Arbor Ales. It's 7% ABV and so densely black I could feel it draining colour from the pints on neighbouring tables. You get a big hop burn from the first pull: pine, mostly, but with some flowery perfume, a pinch of gunpowder and a generous helping of boiled cabbage. Light relief is provided by a squirt of grapefruit zest, but mostly this is a very serious beer. The dark malts and heavy texture lend a tarry burnt flavour, with a tiny hint of bitter dark chocolate peeping through the seventeen other kinds of bitterness it offers. Amazing stuff, and very good value, since it takes ages to drink.

I mentioned previously that there was a themed range of beers at the Bow Bar for Anzac Day. England was represented by Bitter Kiwi from Bristol Brewing. This is one of the best exhibition beers for Nelson Sauvin I've ever encountered. The aroma is beautifully flinty, like ultra-dry Sauvingnon Blanc, with a little bit of added peach nectar, and this theme continues in the flavour: dry white grape, some lychee and succulent sweet peach. Not bitter at all in fact, and not even a trace of cat piss, which is a win.

A bottle of Hobson's Kiss Me Now had found its way north with a family member. This claims to be a stout but its soft plumminess made me think more of warming winter ale, even at just 4.3% ABV. Keeping it sessionable, I found Cullercoats Lovely Nelly on cask, an oddly tart dark gold ale with strange but pleasant strawberry notes. Brewed as a lifeboat fundraiser, it's ironically very sinkable. This was back at the Cask & Barrel on Broughton Street where they also had Broughton Street Domestic Ale on. Never pass up the house beer is one of my rules. Turns out this is a re-badging of Gladiator Bitter, brewed by Hadrian and Border. First impressions are of an unexciting 3.9% ABV brown bitter: biscuity, shading towards twigginess, but a couple of sips in I got a sudden jolt of summer fruit: redcurrants and raspberries. A session bitter deserving of a second chance, then.

Last cask ale of the trip was at the airport where the Wetherspoon had the tail end of their latest international beer festival available in the form of Saint Archer Pale Ale, ostensibly from Saint Archer in San Diego but actually brewed at Banks's in Wolverhampton. It's good stuff: a healthy layer of dank hops livened by some lighter peachy notes and set on a light easy-going golden malt base. The perfect gulp-and-go airport beer in fact.

Judging from this lot, the Edinburgers are picky about which English beers they let in, and reap the rewards it brings.

Edinburgh Airport. Servisair lounge: the shitty one for passengers of loser airlines. Only five bottles of Efes Pilsener remain among the plentiful Beck's, Carlsberg and Kronenbourg. Maybe the previous passengers know something I don't.

I last encountered Efes a dozen or so years ago in the beautiful surrounds of Istanbul. It was a lot more forgettable than the city and I had no memory of how it tasted. With a few minutes before the Dublin departure was due to be called, I took the opportunity to refresh my memory and anything else the Turkish lager was capable of reaching.

As befits a hot-country lager, it's a very pale yellow colour, thinly textured with lots of prickly fizz. There's a strange candy-sweet aroma putting me in mind of the hard white sweetie cigarettes I rotted my young teeth on. Tastewise, it's properly pilsenerish to begin with, all green spicy nettles, if rather waterier than any German equivalent. Then the sugar starts to assert itself: sweetcorn, rising to candyfloss, and getting worse as the beer warms even slightly. By the end I was finding it a little difficult to drink, though I did stick it out.

On the way out I wondered if the stock was low because the airport is phasing it out. Let's hope so, for the sake of the travellers. Next time I'm having a Beck's.

The arrival of three canned American craft beers to UK budget pub chain JD Wetherspoon caused a bit of a stir among the UK beer bloggerati. Six Point in New York are well-regarded and have done several collaboration brews for Wetherspoon festivals in the past. Direct and exclusive shipment of their own product, at Wetherspoon prices, seemed a fair reason to get a little giddy.

We're still a few days away from Dublin's first JD Wetherspoon opening its doors but I caught up with these in The Standing Order, a vast former bank in Edinburgh New Town that now largely sells chips and WKD to stag and hen parties. On a busy afternoon I found what passed for a quiet corner and worked through the range.

I started on The Crisp, a fairly plain pilsner, if a little on the strong side at 5.4% ABV. The visuals are good: a fluffy white mousse on top; a slight haze to the gold below, to show that it's proper craft. They've paid careful attention to the specs for pilsner: there's the sharp, waxy green flavour of noble hops in a big way. Slightly metallic, but with a nice fresh crunchy spinach quality too. I tend to prefer a bit more of a rounded sweetness in my lager, but this is bang on for what it is. Not that I'd be ordering it again.

The inevitable IPA is called Bengali Tiger and is all of 6.4% ABV. Again with the haze. The smell was immediately off-putting, all toffee and swimming pools. Rather than thick and sticky like too many American IPAs, it's really quite thin. The flavour presents harsh acidity and oversweet toffee with no citrus or other late-hop fruity fun. A big disappointment for me here.

Lightest of the lot is Sweet Action at 5.2% ABV. The brewery deliberately avoids assigning a style to it, mentioning pale ale, cream ale and even wheat beer. It's certainly cloudy enough to be a wit: a veritable snowglobe of sediment rendering it opaque. But visuals aside, this beer is all about the green, starting with the spicy resin aroma and moving on to the bit of dank and lots of jaffa in the flavour. For all the hops it's not jarringly bitter and is instead smooth and very thirst quenching. As a mainstream non-aggressive introduction to what American hops do, it's up there with Goose Island IPA.

So coolly refreshing was the Sweet Action that the thought of going to the bar and selecting something warmer and less citrusy from the handpumps offered no appeal at all.

Bill asks us to make a connection to beers-gone-by for this round of The Session. With beer being a high-volume, rapid-turnover product its history is plentiful and varied. The contexts in which people have brewed and drunk beer, the types they made and the ingredients they used are manifold. In Dublin, porter looms over all. What Flann O'Brien aptly called"The Workman's Friend" was the first style to be made in industrial quantities to meet the needs of large urban population centres. And in maritime cities like London and Dublin, the plain people's drink went with the plain people's food: shellfish. Oysters, mussels, whelks and whatever else could be harvested from the shore in quantity and turned into food with minimal preparation. The Porterhouse has long commemorated this tradition in its Oyster Stout but more recently the Mourne Seafood restaurant chain commissioned one from the Whitewater Brewery in Co. Down. The company has just opened an outlet in the Dublin docklands, making Mourne Oyster Stout available south of the border for the first time.

It's a wonderfully velvety stout, smooth even by the standards of nitrogenated beer. Rich milk chocolate dominates the flavour but there's also a gentle green vegetal hop flavour in the background. A simple and pleasant beer overall, lacking the depth and complexity of the Porterhouse one, perhaps, but not likely to interfere with the taste of your seafood either. On the downside, a pint of this will set you back a whopping €6 so to get your money's worth you'd better enjoy the picturesque setting while you sup.

Porter spent almost two centuries as Dublin's beer of choice before its place was eventually taken by lager and, according to the most recent figures I've seen, two out of every three pints consumed in Ireland these days is lager. While Diageo and Heineken have most of that market sewn up between them, they weren't the first to produce golden cool-fermented beer for the Irish palate. That honour is normally accorded to the Dartry Brewery, in what's now a leafy residential suburb of south Dublin.

Reporting on this Teutonic curiosity while it was still under construction at the beginning of 1891, The Irish Times does note¹ that the founder, Herr Stoer, is seeking to meet an already-existing local demand for lager. Much like the porter brewers over a century previously, in fact. The Dartry Brewery was in a converted mill by the River Dodder and utilised the millwheel to run its machinery. "One of the special features claimed for the new beer," says our Victorian churnalist, "will be its freedom from injurious clarifying ingredients which are so much used in many other beers". The reader is advised that it may be February by the time this slow-to-produce foreign style is available for drinking, and indeed it's May before an ad in the 'Times² lists the nine Dublin pubs where it's available, including Neary's of Chatham Street, the only one still trading today under the same name. Also in the spring of 1891 The Whiskey Trade Review sent its reporter to Dartry³, who gushed "We have been Lager beer drinkers in many places and many climes, but never tasted a finer quality than the glass with which we toasted 'Success to the Dartry Lager Brewery' of Messrs. Stoer and Sons, Upper Rathmines, Dublin."

The fine tradition of riverside brewing in Dublin continues today at JW Sweetman on the Liffey quays, though they have yet to harness the free fluvial power that runs past the conditioning tanks in the basement every day. As it happens, they have a new lager on the taps: Maracanã, brewed for thirsty football fans in the pub for the World Cup. It passes the colour test for an accessible lager: perfectly clear and medium gold. I wish everything else about it were as clean. The hopping has been done generously so there's lots of wax and grass. But there's also a very high sweetness: spun sugar, caramel and a hint of butterscotch too. The effect isn't helped by a sweet-sour green apple aroma. It's back to lager school for Mr Sweetman, I'm afraid. A rare misstep, and it's just as well the whole brewery isn't dependent on this one brew for its success.

A little over two years after the Dartry Brewery began selling lager to the Dublin public, a terse notice appeared on the back page of the paper⁴:

FOR SALE: The Dublin Lager Beer Brewery, situated at Dartry, Rathmines, in full working order. An enterprising party with capital would find it a very good investment.

And with that questionable claim, Ireland's first lager brewery vanished into history.

Notes:
1. The Irish Times, 8th January 1891, p.7
2. 26th May, p.7
3. Reproduced in The Weekly Irish Times, 28th March 1891, p.6
4. The Irish Times, 12th August 1893, p.8

Dublin has been a little left behind in the Irish craft beer revolution. While breweries are sprouting from the topsoil across Ulster, Connacht and especially Munster, the big smoke still mostly has only the old guard of 20th century micros, the one exception being Five Lamps, itself heavily aided by funds from multinational macrobrewer C&C. It's a rent thing, I assume: there are lots of places far more economical to perch your new manufacturing business than in the re-bubblising Dublin property scene.

Bucking that trend, and a few others, comes Rascal's Brewing, the first new independent Dublin microbrewery since 1998, if I'm not mistaken. Award-winning former home brewers Cathal and Emma created the brand last year, with a superb Ginger Porter produced at Brú. Now they have a standalone brewkit, just inside the Dublin county boundary in Rathcoole. The range has expanded to include two more beers and the official launch was held in Rathmines a couple of weeks ago, showcasing all three with pairings by renegade caterers #BrewsWePlate (goat and kimchi sliders: yum).

Brian from the NHC pitches in

It was a warm summer's evening so I made a beeline for Wit Woo, a Belgian-style witbier. There's a generous hand on the orange peel in this, though it's not at all sweet like certain US-brewed witbiers I could name. Instead there's a fantastic crispness and a mineral, even sulphurous, quality. It's an extremely refreshing version of one of the top thirst-quenching beer styles and has a joyously low ABV of just 4%.

So, just a taste of the other new beer and then back to Wit Woo for the rest of the sweltering evening, then? Wrong. Big Hop Red is the other debutante, a 5% ABV American-style amber ale. The brewers admit they've missed a little of the intended aromatic effect, to be rectified in a later batch, and it's not meant to be a high-octane hop-bomb on tasting. Instead, it introduces itself to the palate with a pop of pine and follows it with a long beautiful tannic peach tea effect. The texture is light considering the strength which, combined with that flavour, makes for a supreme summer cooler. This is what I stuck with for the duration of the event.

Although it would have been rude not give the Ginger Porter a once over. I didn't notice any significant difference from the Brú-brewed version -- the same full smooth porter, allowed to do its own portery thing without too much interference from the ginger piquancy. This was a version aged on cacao nibs and did nothing to dispel my theory that cacao nibs have very little effect on flavour: I could distinguish no chocolate element other than what you'd normally find in a porter.

A solid bunch of beers, then. And while the styles might appear radically novel at first glance, it occurred to me afterwards that they're not all that different from the mainstream styles that Carlow Brewing produced for their first decade or so: a stout, a red and a wheat beer. Irish brewing is definitely evolving, but it's nice to see it's not losing the run of itself.

Thanks to Cathal and Emma, Eric and Flo, and all the Rascals-for-a-day who were so generous at the event. Look out for Rascal's beer around Dublin in 57 The Headline, Blackbird, The Norseman, The Bernard Shaw and probably a few places on the Northside as well, if you dare.

The European Beer Bloggers Conference came to Dublin a couple of weeks ago and I tagged along on the first night's pub crawl, an east-to-west trek from The Brew Dock to the far west end of Temple Bar. The route got edited a little on the way but there was no question of skipping The Norseman, probably the best bar for Irish craft beer in the city centre. I was determined to be sociable, casual: all pints and chat and no ticking. But The Norseman's blackboards got the better of me. There's a handful of new Irish beers I'd been meaning to try for ages and there they all were. Out with the notebook and down to business...

The long-anticipated second and third releases from Donegal Brewing were both on tap. Sea Sessions is a very pale ale and has a fair bit in common with older sibling Donegal Blonde, being very clean and crisp, with just enough of a pils-like hop buzz to make it worthwhile. Not a stand-out given what else it shared bar space with, but I'd be very happy with this if I were on its own turf in Ballyshannon. Atlantic Amber offers more understated quality, this time with light toffee malt and a dry roast barley bite. "Amber" is a little bit ambitious if taken as the purported style: what we have here is a solid, full-bodied, Irish red ale.

Continuing the summer theme, Eight Degrees's World Cup offering is Olé Olé, a 5% ABV witbier. Surprisingly, given the brewery's recent stellar form, there's not a whole to this. It's maybe a little bit pithier than your average witbier but is lacking in both spice and fruit. You can't argue with its refreshment power or drinkability, however. I guess it's designed to not distract from the football, in which case it works. Dublin brewery Five Lamps also has a summer seasonal out: Summer Steam Beer. The brewery, as far as I'm aware, isn't set up for lager and has its own produced at Eight Degrees. Part of me wondered if this steam beer (lager yeast with ale methodology) was an experiment to see if they could take the lager in house. And I have to say, I'm convinced. It's perfectly clear and possesses that beautiful crispness of well-made lager. The hopping is generous too, with all the waxy bitterness of a quality German pils.

Elsewhere in Dublin, I found the revamped Kill Lager by Trouble Brewing on tap in L. Mulligan Grocer. No longer a rebadged pils, this is now a proper Vienna lager. Very proper, in fact. Well... it's maybe a teeny bit pale in colour, more of a Lucozade orange than the traditional red-brown. But there's all of those lovely chewy melanoidin cake-and-biscuit malt notes with extra raisin and candy sweetness, all set on the sort of flawlessly clean base that cool fermenting provides. The finish is a very central-European grassy flavour, plus a carbonic bite from the high-ish carbonation. We don't get enough of the darker lager styles around here so it's nice to have this bit of variety, especially at the reasonable 4.9% ABV strength point.

Not one to be left out of a new Irish beer round-up, Galway Bay released a Table Beer last week: 3.5% ABV, produced from the second runnings of their stonking double IPA Of Foam & Fury and hopped with Amarillo, Citra and Wai-iti, in a big big way. It arrived an opaque pale orange, looking unattractively soupy with a very short-lived head. The aroma isn't massive, but there's a generous slug of grapefruit zest in there. The flavour is lots of dank followed by loads of pith: brick-subtle. Somewhere buried deep beneath the alpha acid action there's a tiny malt backbone propping the whole thing up, but it's struggling and certainly not making much of a contribution to the very thin texture. For all its palate-stripping burn, I rather liked it and had very little to complain about at €4 a pint -- over 20% cheaper than any other house beer -- but I imagine it will split the drinkers into the bargain-hunters and hop-heads on one side and the balance and subtlety fans on the other. I know which side I'm on.

Finally, a slightly off-kilter new cask ale from White Gypsy: King Cormac. I really can't fathom what existing style this is closest to, it being 5% ABV, dark brown-red and with a bizarre -- but entertaining -- spicy incense flavour. I suppose porter is the closest, though there's also a fair bit of brown-ale-style coffee and creaminess. In short, after two pints in The Brew Dock I still didn't know what it is, but I liked it. Lesser breweries describe their beer as iconoclastic but this is what iconoclastic tastes like.

Today's beers answer a question that I've been vaguely curious about for a long time but have never taken the time to research. Belgian brewery De Proef is most famous as a contractor, making beers which are sold under dozens of different brands, including luminaries such as Mikkeller, 3 Fonteinen and BrewDog. But where are their own beers? How come you never see an actual Proef-branded beer? Turns out that you do, except the house brand is Reinaert, with its stark but classy label.

Reinaert Amber is 7% ABV and a little pale for its name: a sort of dark orange where I'd be expecting a deep garnet. There's a strong sweetness in the aroma, like being too close to an overly-perfumed fellow commuter. Who is also wafting a lit thurible. Behind the smells, there's lots of wholesome grain, like crusty brown bread, and also plenty of chewy buttery toffee as well as a generous dose of brown sugar. The hopping contributes nothing more than a very vague pithiness, barely audible over the rest of the din. A bad start, then: this is just too heavy and too weird to be actually enjoyable.

I hoped for something a bit cleaner from Reinaert Tripel, setting a low bar, I guess. It's a foamer from the get-go and it was a race to get all of it into the glass. After all that excitement, it was a little on the dull side which, following the Amber, is a bit of a relief. There are subtle jaffa notes at the centre, more crusty bread and a modest amount of alcoholic warmth, considering the ABV is 9%. No interesting spices, however. None of the flourishes that make good or interesting tripels stand out. Overall, it's very drinkable, in a plain and understated way.

We turn up the heat and turn down the light for the last one: Reinaert Grand Cru. This is 9.5% ABV and just the dark red colour I was expecting from the amber. The aroma is pure heat, almost oloroso-like, though I'm fairly sure it's not oxidised. The flavour is more subtle: a toffee apple balance of sweet candy and more tart fruit acidity. The texture is surprisingly light and, aroma apart, one might be hard pressed to guess the strength.

There's nothing here to indicate that the Proef boffins have been sneaking notes while Mikkel is in doing his thing. The Amber may be odd, but not that kind of odd. They may be the life force of some of the world's great beers, but when it comes to their own recipes, Proef do things their way, take it or leave it.

In general, I'm quite well-disposed to the craftification of the English regional breweries. It gave us Shepherd Neame in brown glass bottles and the lovely looking Revisionist range by Marston's. But I was disappointed to see Thwaites brewery being a casualty of the upheaval, shutting down its main operation and effectively becoming a microbrewery, with the main range of beers contracted out, for a while at least. I wasn't the only one to regard it as a poor decision.

The new Thwaites brand has been given the cringeworthy name of "Crafty Dan". There are three in the initial range. The first I tried is 13 Guns, 5.5% ABV: a US-style IPA bragging of "an intense hit of hops". Quite a big promise there. It pours dark amber with very little head and smells pleasantly of grapefruit and toffee. So far so unintense. It's very fizzy, a busy insistent sparkle and despite what the label says, the malt is driving the flavour: fruitcake and sherbet with maybe a little bit of an acidic burn. Even if it wasn't for the outrageous claim on the label I doubt I'd like this much.

Putting that disappointment aside, we turn to Triple C, a golden ale of 5.3% ABV boasting of Chinook, Citra and Centennial "for hop heads only". What could possibly go wrong with that? It's darker than I'd expect from something labelled a golden ale, but that's OK, and even pouring at arm's length I can smell the familiar herbal piquancy of Citra hops. A closer sniff confirms it but adds a distinct underlying whiff of toffeeish crystal malt too. And once again it's the malt in control: caramel and a bit of milk chocolate given little more than a spicing from the high-alpha hops. The flavour profile is probably closer to what you'd expect from an American amber ale, which again is no bad thing, but some distance from the promises made on that label. By the time it warms any way the hops have faded completely.

I took it as a relief that the final one of the set doesn't brag about how hoppy it is. Big Ben is a 5.8% ABV brown ale, and a rather pale one at that, showing distinctly red around the edges. "A bitter-sweet resonance" reads the strapline, and yes, I can detect the presence of a decent amount of hops in the aroma: some bitter citrus is mixed in with the caramel. The carbonation is pleasantly gentle and it's not overwhelmingly sweet or any way sticky. Instead there's a kind of candystore sherbet and fruit chews, with a slightly metallic dryness in the finish being the only grown-up feature. It's a little thin, especially given the strength, but overall it's decently drinkable in the way a brown ale should be.

Viewed from the front, you can't tell these beers come from Thwaites at all. Since none of them have the beatings of, say, Indus or Lancaster Bomber I do hope this all-craft-and-no-trousers model isn't going to be adopted by other English breweries currently turning out beers with not a damn thing wrong with them.

We had a couple of goings-on of beery significance in Dublin last week. Thursday saw 57 The Headline host the local launch of St. Mel's Brewing. St. Mel's in Longford Town may be a very new operation but it's helmed by Liam Hanlon, previously the head brewer at Carlow and the creator of the beers that went on to become O'Hara's IPA and Leann Folláin. He's operating on a 15hL Irish-built brewkit now, producing three bottle-conditioned beers to begin with.

Funny thing, bottle conditioning. Staff at The Headline were handing out the half-litre bottles with a 33cl glass -- perfectly normal practice in the Irish pub, but not ideal when you have beers that work best in a single careful pour. The samples at the event were in small tasters and after the first round I thought somebody might have to take the brewmaster aside for a talk about quality control. It seems just to have been an unlucky pour of concentrated dregs, however. Another taster later on was much better, and enough to convince me to trade up to drinking entire bottles. So what's in the range?

Interestingly, St. Mel's have opted for a Brown Ale over a red or stout, possibly the only one in permanent production in the country. It's a substantial 5.2% ABV though the texture is light and the taste crisp, prickled by quite a busy fizz. The centre is all chocolate, of the dry cocoa-powder variety. It's also dry-hopped, which lends it not so much a fruitiness as a green vegetal bitterness which lasts long into the finish. St. Mel's Brown one of those quite serious, solid beers, but very enjoyable for all that.

St. Mel's Pale Ale is a little lighter at 4.8% ABV and pours a clear shade of deep orange-gold. Cascade hops are doing the heavy lifting here, imparting a gentle flavour of ripe juicy peaches and some light herbal grassy spicing. Its best feature is the texture: a pillowy softness with a sherbet effervescence which leaves it exceedingly drinkable. Overall a well put-together and accessible pale ale.

Finally for the first round of releases there's St. Mel's Helles Lager. Not exactly Munich-grade, but there's a wholesome grainy flavour and some pleasant fruit ester sweetness. Plenty for lager drinkers to enjoy here.

Liam says that distribution of draught beer is likely to remain mostly local once that's up and running, but bottles should hopefully be easy enough to get hold of all around the country.

Also on Thursday, The Porterhouse kicked off a ten-day festival of pale ales across the chain. The line-up includes much to like from British and American luminaries Thornbridge, Camden, Founders, Sierra Nevada, and the promised first appearance of Magic Rock beer in this country. The centrepiece, however, is a new permanent addition to the Porterhouse range: Dublin Pale Ale, essentially a re-working of last year's Pale Face special edition brew. (I'm probably the only one sad enough to note that the name "Dublin Pale" has been used previously, being the cask bitter produced briefly by Messrs Maguire in the late '90s). Dublin Pale is on keg, at least for now, and is 4.2% ABV, hopped with Admiral and Styrian Goldings. The flavour is unsurprisingly very English: big thirst-quenching tannins at the front and a coppery tang in the finish. The crisp bitterness reminds me a lot of its cask sibling TSB. For those occasions when TSB is absent and Hop Head would be just a hop too far, this is a welcome addition.

Among the early guest beers in Porterhouse Temple Bar was the new black IPA from Eight Degrees. It's named after the single variety of Australian hop it uses, Vic Secret, and is 6% ABV. It arrived a dense black colour, showing hints of red at the edges, and density is a theme. It's very thick and extremely tarry, with lots of bitter roast coating the palate. Set against this is a gaudy galah of bright tropical flavours, starting with mango and pineapple in the aroma, bursting out into bitter grapefruit and concentrated peach nectar on tasting. It's an incredible experience and it's hard to believe that all that colour comes from just one hop variety. The finish is long and bitter, and I honestly couldn't say if that's a result of the big hops or the roasted grains, or both. Either way, it's another hoppy winner from the Mitchelstown brewery.

And there's yet more new Irish beer to come later in the week.

Some recent bottled additions to the Irish craft beer scene today, starting with two from Mayo brewery Mescan. I'd had their blonde previously but so far missed its companion beer until now. It's a red tripel. In fact, it's probably the Red Tripel as I don't think I've seen the style designation before, in Belgium or beyond. It's a bit of a misnomer, though, pouring more of a garnet-amber than the bright red I was half-expecting. Lots of very typical Belgian fruity esters in the nose, plummy like a dubbel rather than spicy like a tripel. All of the 8% ABV can be tasted: it's hot and fruity, in a sherryish kind of way. The darker malt really does bend its flavour profile more towards the darker Belgian monastic styles and there's none of the spice or honey of tripel to redress the balance. I like it; it's warming and very flavourful, but I'm not sure I'd put the T-word on the label.

The previous two Mescan beers are unmistakably Belgian-influenced in their taste and style. So I was highly curious when it came to Westporter Stout: a more Irish than Belgian 5% ABV. There's a slight yeast whiff, and lots of foam, which add to its Belgian credentials, but underneath it's all Irish. The texture is light and very sessionable and the flavour is dry, with the little sparks of gunpowder spice you sometimes get from roasted barley or black malt. Some lovely coffee and caramel finishes it off, and I'm reminded of both Dungarvan's Black Rock and Carlow's Leann Folláin, which is to say a thumbs-up from me. Those Belgian beehive bottles are very pretty and all, but I'd appreciate a pint of this.

Dungarvan's summer seasonal for 2014 is Mine Head, a 5.5% ABV American-style pale ale. It has been dry hopped with Cascade and there's loads of lovely juicy peach and passionfruit in the flavours, complemented by a sweet, but not sugary, nectarine aroma and finishing on a sharper bite of lime zest and orange pith. Where I think it falls down, however, is in the bottle-conditioning. For one thing it's very fizzy, and the carbonic bite is one element interfering with those delicate hops. The yeast is another: I poured as carefully as I could and left a couple of fingers in the bottle but still got a hazy glassful and a definite earthy cheese-rind tang right in the middle of the taste. It's a good effort, but you'd need to be a sucker for natural conditioning to rank it above most of the other beers of its style sold in Ireland.

To Kerry next, and the spring and summer specials from Beoir Chorca Duibhne, which I drank in reverse chronological order. Riasc Gold is very much a rose-gold colour rather than yellow, deriving its colour, I'm guessing, from the addition of rosehips. There's an earthy, yeasty aroma plus an underlying promise of fruity bubblegum malt. The first hit on tasting, however, is a lovely peppery spice, like fresh rocket. This is followed by mild floral notes and a crisp, wholesome grain husk character. It's very much not the wan, insipid golden summer quaffer I was expecting. At 5.5% it's an ale to take a bit of time over. There's maybe a hint of oxidation, but not enough to spoil the experience.

If the Gold is nearly red, Riasc Red is almost brown. This spring seasonal is also 5.5% ABV and has yet more rosehips in the mix. A comforting waft of milk chocolate and Turkish delight comes from the aroma. Despite busy fizz at the beginning, it settles down into a smooth weighty red with lots of cuddly caramel, more milk chocolate, and a more assertive herbal bitterness. While technically an Irish red I suppose, if a little strong for the style, there are lovely elements of porter and brown ale in the flavour profile. All-in-all a class act from the guys in Dingle.

I've just noticed that all of this week's bottles have been bottle-conditioned. While I appreciate the wholesome, down home qualities it imparts, I think all that fizz and that yeast does have a tendency to cover the more subtle elements of the flavour. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

The newest pair of beers from Dublin-based Brown Paper Bag Project arrived a couple of weeks ago, heralded by a barbecue and garden party out the back of L. Mulligan Grocer where projecteers Colin and Brian introduced the débutantes.

Look at that lovely head

Vlad the Baker is a lager, lagered the proper way in Vyškov, in central Moravia. American hops have been used extensively, leading its creators to badge it as an "India Pale Lager", immediately drawing a comparison with Williams Brothers Caesar Augustus. Vlad is the better of the two: the hops don't just provide a whiff of citrus on a clean lager base, they're the main act, as you would expect in an IPA. There's an almost sticky orange pith quality, aided by a generously heavy US-IPA-style toffee malt base. The aroma melds the West Coast grapefruit sharpness with a classic Czech fresh-cut-grass character: there's Columbus, Simcoe, and Summit in here, but not so much that they bury the Saaz. I'm amazed that such a weighty beer is a mere 4.8% ABV, and the bonus good news is that it comes in half litre bottles, the first Brown Paper Bag beer to do so.

The companion piece is a similar strength but couldn't be more different. Shmoake is a grätzer created at regular Brown Paper Bag haunt Hofbrouwerijke. I'd say that this smoky wheat beer is a difficult style to get right: the iodine intensity of the one Jopen brewed a few years back, which I'm sure was totally authentic, was just a bit too much for me, and it's probably very easy to go the other way and lose the whole point of the style: a refreshing summer quencher given an extra dimension by the assertive smoke. This one is lightly textured for easy drinking, and pleasantly dry, with the smoke flavours right at the centre where they should be, striking the palate immediately and lingering all the way through. But... there's something else. Something I've never encountered in my admittedly limited grätzer experience. It's a sweet fruit juiciness, like honeydew melon, utterly out of place but absolutely beautiful. Sadly, it almost disappears when the beer's lees are added to the glass, but on a clean first pour it adds a wonderful refreshing new dimension to the flavour.

An American twist on real světlý ležák and a hop-driven grätzer: that sounds like what the 'Project would be up to all right.

From the official brewery of the American outdoors comes Mama's Little Yella Pils, a 5.3% ABV pilsner lager. Yella is right: a brilliant glaring gold, shot through with just a slight haze and topped by a stiff white foam.

I'm sure a brewery of integrity like Oskar Blues brews this from an all-malt recipe, but there's a certain corny quality to the taste; a sweetness I normally associate with the cheaper 'n' nastier sort of lagers. The aroma is dry, grainy and not entirely pleasant. So where's all the Saaz at? There's a tiny bitter bite -- no more than a nibble -- in the finish, but none of the lovely grass notes you get in good pilsner. At this point I looked at the bottom of the can and noticed that this was packaged nearly seven months before I opened it. Perhaps that explains some of the problem, though I'm positive that the likes of Pilsner Urquell is more robust than this, distance travelled notwithstanding.

A bit of a disappointment then. It's even a little too fizzy to be properly refreshing. If I were hiking up the Rockies (don't laugh; it could happen) I'd be packing Dale's Pale Ale instead of this.

And staying in Colorado but flipping to the other end of the calendar, I recently acquired this unseasonal can of Euphoria, the winter pale ale from Ska Brewing. It pours the brown-amber of a twiggy English bitter, and it's fairly malt-forward, a warming 6.2% ABV with smooth chocolate flavours infused with oily mandarin and a classy touch of rosewater. While it's far from fresh at this time of year, there's still a lovely sharp citrus aroma, though that's where the big hop action starts and ends. Still, good in any weather, and very much preferable to the elderly pils above.

Have you ever drank a beer that became a battle, more than an enjoyable experience? asks Hipster Brewfus for this month's Session. Yes, HB. Yes I have. In recent months it seems to be black IPAs in particular with which my palate has a bit of rough and tumble: something about the harsh green acidity mixed with the big tarry texture in the likes of Arbor's 2014 and Revelation Cat's Bombay Cat that left me simultaneously horrified and enamoured while drinking them. But I've had plenty of beers that have been hard work to drink yet still worth the bruises.

I have Séan to thank for the example I've chosen for this post. I completely missed out on trying any new-wave German beers when I was in Berlin a couple of years ago and he was kind enough to bring me back this bottle of Schoppe Bräu's Roggen Roll Ale from a recent trip of his own.

A huge stack of ivory foam greeted me, topping a body which started out a beautiful clear red but turned murky brown when the yeasty dregs went in. The aroma is a bizarre mix of red berries, spices and and sour, like sweet incense mixed with balsamic vinegar -- not something that signals easy drinking. And unsurprisingly it's just as odd to the taste: the bite of a Flemish red, the intense spicy sharpness from the rye, lots of earthy brettish funk and a decently full texture from the 7% ABV.

I picked my way through it gingerly, utterly unsure if it's what the brewer intended since the label fails to provide any sort of direction. But by the end I found I'd quite enjoyed the experience: finding it complex and warming with an invigorating tartness.

It's not just big hops that can make the drinker feel they're being given a workout by their beer. Meanwhile Berlin's reputation for the avant-garde is certainly safe with Schoppe Bräu.

Like with like

Entropy is a bitch

Ireland calls

Learn from the Danes

The Balkan route

Beer in Lothian

Further abroad

Sassanachs!

Desperation

Canny move

Drink the past

Danger: Rascals at work

The urge

Going solo

Downsizing flavour

The week that's in it

Lotta bottle

Tinkering sans frontières

Summer in the mountains

Put 'em up