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Lowering the veil
I've written before about the inscrutable way Diageo conducts its beer business, with particular recent reference to the series of seemingly similar pale beers they've produced separately for different...
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Weird Spain
Or perhaps "Creative Spain" would have been a better title. Two beers from the east of the country today, both making use of out-of-the-ordinary ingredients.You have to know how most of the world...
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On the downlow
Careful what you wish for. I complained about how palate-clogging the beers were at The Irish Craft Beer Festival and then the next two Irish ones to come my way were, well, not exactly flavour...
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Next in line
You're not a proper craft brewer unless you do one-off beers in a sequence of related recipes or themes. Two such are the subject of today's post.Simcoe SMASH is the fourth and allegedly final in...
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Under the influence
For all that the UK has its own distinctive beer vernacular, UK brewers in recent years have increasingly taken on influences from abroad. This post looks at a few examples of that in action.Among...
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Press pass pilsners
Camden Exchange has been open since the beginning of the summer. It's the latest addition to the strip of bars running down Camden Street in central Dublin, already known for its late-night pack-'em-in...
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Welcome to Vilnius
I spent a few days in Lithuania last month, mainly because I'd never been but I was partially also drawn to what I'd heard of the beer scene. Lithuania has a long history of farmhouse brewing, one...
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Down on the farm (ish)
In his Bumper Book of Lithuanian Beer, Lars Marius Garshol sets out a hierarchy of breweries, with the industrials at the bottom, then the regionals followed by the modern microbreweries. Above this...
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Old Town brews
There are three brewpubs in Vilnius Old Town. Newest among them is Alinė Leičai, part of what seems to be a growing food and drink empire along narrow, twisty Stiklių Gatvė. I mentioned Bambalynė in...
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Brewing outside the box
The determined ticker will find Vilnius frustrating. Reliable information in bars about what beers are available and precisely which brewery supplied the ones on offer is often hard come by. You can...
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Saison all over
Everyone's doing saisons these days, and I'm not sure why that is. It's a fairly broad style and you can do a lot with it, like making it strong and fruity or using it as a base for adding strange...
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Hey pesto!
This guy is a post-script to the Vilnius trip I wrote about last week. It winked at me from a high shelf in Alaus Biblioteka, the 75cl bottle resplendent in the swirling art nouveau stylings of...
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Starting low
The Borefts Beer Festival rolled round once again in late September. As always, De Molen had invited a wide range of breweries from around Europe and across the pond to exhibit, all bringing a...
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Northern delights
Among the beers I was most looking forward to sampling at Borefts 2015 were those of Swedish gypsy brewer Omnipollo. I've enjoyed several of the collaborations they've done with others and they have a...
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Where will we put the guests?
There was a bit of an odd arrangement with regard to the American beers at Borefts this year, where one brewer had a standalone stall as part of the main festival in the De Molen brewery yard while up...
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A farewell to Borefts
My last Borefts post looks at the British and German offerings, and one Spaniard.Alien Claw by Naparbier is no stranger to the taps of Dublin but I'd always missed it so when it showed up, unbilled, on...
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Going to meet the owl
A highlight of the 2014 Borefts beer festival was the Haarlem-based brewing company Uiltje, so when I heard they'd opened a bar in their home town I decided to make a point of visiting at the next...
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Where eagles dare
The empire of Amsterdam publican Peter van der Arend has begun extending its reach out of the city centre. Until 2009 it was just his Dutch-only beer bar Arendsnest on Herengracht, and then the...
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Food for thought
Celebrity chefs and beer. Why do they do it? Has there ever been a convincing tie-in, one which makes the drinker think "Wow, this guy really put his finely-honed gastronomic abilities to work here and...
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While I was away
In between my excursions to Lithuania and the Netherlands which have been occupying this blog of late (and the one to Belgium on the way) the Irish beer scene has been chugging along as usual. I've...
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