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Double dare
Five breweries and three beers in today's post: yes, it's collaboration time! Breweries doing things that they wouldn't normally dream of themselves, but when another boy dares them to, away they...
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Unexpected items
Perusing the selection in Molloy's off licence on Francis Street, my eye was caught by these three from Lithuania's Rinkuškiai brewery.First up, Alaus Kelias, at 5.5% ABV. It looks like an average...
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Bonus Basque
Well this was a nice surprise: one of the visitors to UnderDog donated a bottle of Basqueland's Imparable IPA to the management, and the management were kind enough to share it round when I was in....
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Let loose the moose
Hop City's HopBot IPA has been around on the local scene for some time now, though only recently has my curiosity graduated beyond the "idle" phase and caused me to buy a bottle. Despite the innocent...
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Visitors in the hall
As usual, September brought the Irish Craft Beer Festival to the RDS. The proliferation of beer festivals across the country means that this isn't the massive showcase it once was, but even with...
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As fresh as they get
The Irish Craft Beer Festival at the RDS in Dublin last month saw the début of a brand new Irish brewery, so new it didn't have a logo on the substantial stand. It's always good to see the product come...
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The regulars
Continuing this week's posts on the Irish Craft Beer Festival 2017 at the RDS, we come to the usual suspects, the breweries that show up year after year but always bringing new, interesting and...
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An American beer booth in Dublin
It was a very pleasant surprise to learn, in the run up to the 2017 Irish Craft Beer Festival, that the Brewers Association from the US would be taking a stall there. It seems to be a thing they do at...
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Next!
I've been writing about the Irish Craft Beer Festival at the RDS all this week, but before we tumble headlong into the rest of September's festivals (four more countries to go, folks) I want to catch...
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Hypetrain USA
I left off on Thursday talking about the special exclusive American beers that the Brewers Association brought to the Irish Craft Beer Festival last month. The following day I was away to London for...
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One busy beaver
Part two of my look at the Beavertown Extravaganza which happened in London last month. I mentioned on Monday that the festival was spread over three-and-a-bit halls. The "bit" was a darkened corridor...
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A mile in my booze
What to do in London the day after the Beavertown Extravaganza? I wasn't going back for the Saturday session but had booked a late flight anyway, confident that I'd figure something out. Months later,...
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Tarnished spoon
Is it me or is the beer selection at the Wetherspoon Real Ale Festivals getting worse, year-on-year? Nothing struck me as of interest from the 30 beers on the advance list for Autumn 2017 and there was...
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Ghost, train
It was the distinctive branding that first attracted me to Stone's Ghost Hammer IPA, and a canned-on date showing under three months since it left San Diego sealed the deal. So it was a big...
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Mild enthusiasm
Eoghan at the Brussels Beer City blog hosts November's session, on the intriguing subject of missing local beer styles: the kinds of beers you'd like to be able to get your hands on regularly but...
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Popernicus rises
My beer bucket list, is, was, a short one. Bamberg came off it in 2014; Portland last year; and the Toer de Gueze back in May. The only other item is one that had been on the list since the very...
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Bruges, properly
I had been to Bruges three times previously, once even (just) within the purview of this blog. But there remained the nagging knowledge that I'd never done it properly: I had never stayed over and had...
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Just passing through
Time to put the hammer down on the whirlwind tour of northern Belgium I've been reliving on the blog this week. But first a slight rewind. Before Ypres and Poperinge we landed in Brussels on a Friday...
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Hello stranger!
The Borefts Beer Festival is a constantly evolving event, each year introducing a couple of changes which in aggregate mean it's a very different gig now to the first one I attended back in 2011. I...
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In from the cold
Sweden, Norway and Estonia provide the beers for today's post from the 2017 Borefts Beer Festival. Närke Kulturbryggeriet attends pretty much every year and has never once, to my knowledge, supplied an...
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