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Lightness into dark
Is Lineman eventually going to run out of telephone-themed beer names? Dial Tone feels like we're starting to get down to the hard core already. It's a pale ale of 5.3% ABV and steadfastly...
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More contrast
Another brewery that likes to give us a bit of stylistic diversity with their specials and one-offs is Kinnegar. I've had to skip number 16 in the Brewers at Play series as it was an exclusive for top...
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Suckin' Diesel
Shout-out to Blackrock Cellar for having a bunch of Dead Centre beers in stock when I called in a couple of months ago. These are very thin on the ground in Dublin. Today's theme, namewise, seems to be...
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Denied boarding
Latvia was top of my travel list for 2020 and, well, I guess it can stay there a bit longer. I don't think I have so much as drank a single beer from Latvia so when a range from Ārpus Brewing arrived...
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Gone mainstream
It looks like Wide Street has taken a strange turn and gone straight. The mixed fermentation specialist, friend to yeast strains other breweries shun, has released a pair in seemingly very conventional...
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Hello and goodbye
Today's brewery is the ever-prolific Wicklow Wolf, and five new special release beers.First off it's the second in the 2021 Locavore series, a Foraged Gorse Saison, the shrubbery augmenting hops from...
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Farmhouse fruit
Ireland's pale ales are released with such frequency as to necessitate a regular round-up on here. Maybe it's just because it's summer, but it's looking like the same may be necessary for wild fruit...
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Still alive
In all the recent controversy about employment practices at Big Craft breweries, I couldn't help feel a little sorry for Stone. They weren't named, as far as I'm aware, and I wondered if that's because...
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The test
Back when walking into an unfamiliar brewery taproom and trying a few beers was a thing I did, I instituted the habit of starting with a pils or similar. Most places had one and it's generally a good...
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Pirates, dragons and monks
All going well I should be in Belgium at the moment. Like all seasoned travellers I did some acclimatisation before setting out, with the help of this six-pack of strong beers I found in Lidl.Piraat...
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Lager blues
Oskar Blues is back on a lager kick, with two that are new to me.With its plain packaging, Oskar's Lager looks like it's been around forever but it was added to their line-up only last year. "American...
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Welcome, strangers
It was a pleasant surprise to find beers from two Irish breweries we don't see much of here in Dublin. It was especially surprising that it happened in Aldi, but I'm not looking a discount horse in the...
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Give us a Kees
Yeah, OK: my title doesn't really work. The brewery helpfully explains on the cans that in English phonetics it's pronounced "case". Kees (or "Kees!" as it used to render it, more dramatically) is a...
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Elders and betters
Do I detect a subtle shift in the way Galway Hooker goes about its business? As a stalwart traditionalist it came late to canning, non-beery ingredients and cartoonish branding, and when the market...
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Ein, zwei, drei, bier
The Helles from Saxon brewery Einsiedler has been around for a couple of years, in both supermarkets and specialist beer shops. The distributor has now seen fit to venture three more from the brewery...
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Token Vocation
It's quite a few months since I've featured any beers from Great Britain on here. That's not deliberate; I think it's just a reflection of the sort of British beers we get imported: a lot of very samey...
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I'll be quirky
Two whimsical special editions from St Mel's today. Distribution of these is sparse in Dublin but luckily 57 the Headline had me sorted, still holding on to its shop function while reopening as a...
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Two faces of pale
I like that we've got to a stage in Irish brewing where the top tier do more than merely say "here's a lager and a pale ale". We get details, sub-genres, and I'd like to think that's more to do with...
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After the hops of summer have gone
It's time for another round-up of pale ales from Irish breweries, this lot covering releases from the tail end of summer 2021. One of them even came in a pint glass in a pub!But we'll begin in Lidl....
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It's a box social!
The White Hag tried really hard to get their birthday festival running again as normal for 2021 but couldn't quite manage it through no fault of their own, so instead of Hagstravaganza 4 we got...
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