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Back to the source
It's like The Sessions of old this month: Mark the Bend Beer Librarian has picked one beer style for us all to write about, and a broad one too: Porter. I decided to go in search of porter's roots,...
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Small and far away
Cerveza DouGall's is based in Santander in northern Spain and for the last while its beers have been available in Dunnes. I finally got round to picking up two of the dinky 33cl bottles recently for...
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Tinned Swede
I picked up this random can of pale ale from Stockholm's Södra Maltfabriken the last time I was in Belgium.Almighty is 4.3% ABV and quite a dark amber colour. Not much of a smell from it: a little...
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What's new with you?
St. Patrick's week is upon us, the next Beer & Whiskey Festival is opening at the RDS on Wednesday, so time to catch up on some of the new Irish beers I've found around the place lately. Well, when...
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Green and black
Always one for smashing national stereotypes, I'm writing about Irish stouts this St. Patrick's Day.As it happens, there's a plethora of them about. When I started planning Monday's general Irish beer...
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Pocket change
Ten euro and one cent is what this lot set me back. Five beers from Rye River Brewing released under Lidl's cringeworthily named own brand: two of them new, three previously available as four-packs of...
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A question of latitude
Yet another IPA by Sierra Nevada today, this one a spring seasonal from their Beer Camp project. It seems very on-trend, named as it is Tropical IPA and promising mango and papaya fruit flavours....
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Cheap ticks
The Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock really pulled it out of the bag for the most recent JD Wetherspoon Real Ale Festival. Eleven beers, almost the full compliment of handpumps, were pouring when I called...
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Summoned to the flag
Several years ago I was browsing through the trademarks directory of the Irish Patents Office and noticed that the Dingle Brewing Company, of Tom Crean's Lager fame, had trademarked"1916 Centenary...
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Trojan work
I found these three Raudonų Plytų beers in the shop at Vilnius airport on my way home from Lithuania last year. The name means "Red Brick" and it's a sub-brand of local giant Švyturys, itself a...
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The wire service
Sean from Beer Search Party is at the helm for this month's Session and has centred the topic around Twitter. I'm a big fan of the microblogging platform and it has certainly had a huge impact on the...
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The new order
I had been meaning to go on a trip to Belfast for some time, to check out a couple of new pubs which seem to have brought the city's beer offer to a whole new level. When Matt from Boundary Brewing...
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Get up!
Beers from Crew Republic have come and gone from Irish shelves over the years and I've never taken the time to get to know any of them. They're a self-consciously "craft" label from Munich, their...
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Dog's life
Four recent releases from BrewDog up for scrutiny today.A black IPA to begin. Possibly, in fact, the first BrewDog black IPA I've met. Arcade Nation is a pintable 5.2% ABV and a clear cola red colour...
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Beers in spaaace!
The Irish Beer & Whiskey Village returned to the RDS in mid-March and I went along on St. Patrick's Day for a sedate afternoon's beering. Brewery numbers were slightly down on last year, but the...
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Like it or not
It's another One-Shot Wednesday: beers that don't really fit into any other theme so get a mid-week post to themselves. The series will continue until my notebook and beer fridge are both cleared.This...
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Belly up
On my way out of the Franciscan Well winter beer festival at the end of January, Declan from Yellow Belly gave me four bottles of his beer. It took me a while to get around to them, but here's the...
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Four of a kind
Multiple, near simultaneous, releases from Galway Bay today. Despite breaking in a new brewer, or perhaps because, they've been hard at it over there. First to come my way, with no fanfare whatsoever,...
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Not on your life
I had no idea what this beer was when I acquired it, only that it's Danish and has a green label. So, hops, right?Kissmeyer/Ølkollectivet '45/'85 was brewed as a salute to the Danish army's Royal...
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Meanwhile, down at the pub
The newest trend in Dublin's beer scene is one that's caught me by surprise but is pleasing to see. For the first time, pubs are being acquired by breweries other than the producers who primarily sell...
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