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Doubles and quits
It's the last post of 2014, a very busy year for beer and for Irish beer in particular. New breweries popped up all over the place and I paid overdue visits to Carlow Brewing, Porterhouse and Galway...
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The gaze of Janus
Hidden Agenda joins Graffiti and Vietnow in Trouble Brewing's OMG All Teh Hopz family of pale ales, this one at the 4.5% ABV mark. Australian varieties Vic Secret and Summer are providing the show here...
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Ringers
"Are you here for food, or just a look around?"Yes, Wetherspoon has certainly been something of a curiosity since it came to Dublin last year, hence the smiley greeter at the door of The Forty Foot on...
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Free schipping
Two beers from Schipper's of Mount Eden in New Zealand today, both acquired at the Alltech festival waaay back last February so sadly not on the Irish market, as far as I'm aware.First up is Scallywag,...
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Out for a scoop
Word arrived via the Beoir forum recently (cheers Cathal!) that a pub in the northern Dublin suburb of Swords had set up a brewery in its basement and that the first beer was now available. As it...
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Egged on
They make a cute couple, this pair from Den Ouden Advokaat, a Belgian maker of egg-based liqueurs. I've no idea why they felt the need to commission two beers, but when in Belgium... Neither of them...
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That's refreshing
At last! A white IPA that's comfortable with its true nature. While the civil war rumbles on over black IPA with neither the hoppy porter faction nor the IPA purists gaining ground, white IPA is simply...
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Two portraits of hops
Another rattle of the Brown Paper Bag last month yielded two new beers from the Dublin-based gypsy brewing collective, both created at Gadd's Ramsgate Brewery in Kent.On a Thursday evening in early...
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Beercelona
My most recent New Year jaunt was to Barcelona: the hub, I'm told, of Spain's expanding craft beer movement. And while that may be true, interesting beers are fairly tightly contained within a small...
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Visiting dignitaries
The same smallish set of foreign breweries tended to show up on the blackboards of Barcelona's craft beer bars when I visited, though all obviously chosen for their geek-drawing power. The Brits seem...
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Up Andorra
Drinking in a micronation: is there any sweeter feeling? My New Year trip to Barcelona incorporated a day in Andorra, a grey little country perched high in the Pyrenees, three hours by bus from the...
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The West
A couple of weeks ago I took up the invitation from Aidan of Galway Hooker to visit the new brewery site in Oranmore with a group of fellow Beoir members. It's a hell of a set-up, all shiny and...
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... and the rest
Galway Hooker isn't the only brewery I've been getting in the way at lately. I attended the brew day for Beoir#2 at Trouble Brewing last month, nosing around the sizeable facility they now have in...
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The third way
Joan from Barcelona-based Blog Birraire is at the helm for this month's Session, seeking opinions on the purpose of beer festivals: "geek gathering or beer dissemination?"There's no doubt that both are...
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More than just IPA! (but mostly IPA)
This poor tasting note on Odell's Tree Fort tripel has sat alone and unloved in my notebook since the middle of last year. Today I'm sending it off into the world with a couple of its compatriots. Tree...
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Head 'em off
The annual Cask & Winter Ale Festival at Franciscan Well in Cork kicks off tomorrow. It's a few years since I've been, but I'm travelling down on Saturday to see what's what. Limited time means...
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Let's get this party started
The Irish beer festival calendar got officially under way at the weekend with the Winter & Cask Ales Festival at Franciscan Well in Cork, now in its 5th year. I travelled down a little earlier than...
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Bad hatter
From the people who brought us that weird but strangely pleasant pineapple lambic, a banana lambic. Chapeau Banana is 3.5% ABV and the label admits to 20% of it being banana flavouring. I was expecting...
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England streaming
I've no idea why I've been dodging Thornbridge on this blog, but it seems I have. A notebook clear-out revealed a string of their beers that I'd drank on draught in Dublin over the last seven months...
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Imperial realm
Two imperial stouts from the realm of New Zealand today.Moa Imperial Stout has some classy presentation, though the black-on-black label is quite difficult to photograph. This is 10.2% ABV and,...
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