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On the town
Late last year I mentioned that The Porterhouse had created two summer festival beers but that I only got to try one of them back at the pub. It turns out that either there was an overlooked keg of the...
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A Song of Bees and Castles
A fancy took me for some Polish lager, which resulted in me leaving Polonez with three cans and a bottle.Kasztelan is a Polish brand from Carlsberg that I hadn't seen before, though it claims to be...
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The black pool
I wasn't able to make the Craic Beer Community pub crawl in January but did catch up with the beer launched at it a few days later in The Black Sheep. It's that rarest of beasts a dark mild, brewed by...
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Compare the Cashmere
Three new beers from Trouble Brewing today, all with one thing in common.Limón is a pale ale of 4.5% ABV and brewed with Cashmere and Cascade hops, plus a cheeky fistful of lemongrass. It's amber...
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All the family
O Brother's place on this blog tends to be in the regular Irish IPA round-ups: they do like an IPA or two. Today, though, there's enough diversity on offer from them to warrant a standalone post.Talus...
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A sorry stout
I do love an apology beer. This one was very kindly supplied by an off licence to atone for a small mistake in an online order. It's called Catch Me If You Can and is a 10.3% ABV imperial stout,...
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Mellowing with age
Since its very beginning, The White Hag has made its name primarily on big, bold and strong beers. At first glance, today's three recent releases don't seem like they're in the same race at all. Let's...
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Thiols and barrels and bears, oh my
"Does it have thiols in it? I'm not drinking anything without thiols." This appears to be what brewers are banking on their end users demanding these days, because there's a lot of thiols-as-marketing...
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X hits the spot
I'm not sure what was behind the arrival last year of Xibeca, a lager from Estrella Damm, which comes in a full litre bottle. The World Cup? Regardless of unseasonable reasons, it's a new beer to try.I...
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Playing at craft
An afternoon out and about in central Dublin 8 brought me in contact with the craft-style offerings of two multinational breweries and a chance to see how the big guys are doing when it comes to the...
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A long Laois
An overdue catch-up with Ballykilcavan today, still sporadically popping out beers in its Clancy's Cans series. Taking these from the fridge I noticed they were all a bit soft, making me suspect...
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Season's leavings
I don't often buy beer in Marks & Spencer, and I think Marks & Spencer knows that people don't buy beer there much either, as the range in their Dublin shops is severely limited, to the point...
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Pump and dump
These two Jolly Pumpkin beers came my way via the bargain bin of Craft Central. I figured that an extended period of ageing would do these particular styles no harm.First up is Blanca, ostensibly a...
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From Sweden with bugs
My erstwhile Swedish drinking buddy Mats arrived over in Dublin several months ago with a handful of cans he thought I ought to try. There was a general wild-ish theme about them, which is fair enough....
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A different hymnsheet
Like any right-thinking drinker of Belgian beer, I consider Troubadour Magma to be one of the greats, taking strong influence from powerhouse American IPA and giving it just a little bit of a classy...
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The single Irish
Poking around in the back of the fridge for something suitable to post about on St Patrick's Day, I noticed a few long-term residents in there, standalone beers from Irish breweries that I hadn't...
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This must be the place
When I ran the numbers for last year, it turned out I had drank more beers from DOT than any other producer. It's possibly not surprising as they're a busy lot, utilising multiple breweries for...
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The murky world of BrewDog
My excuse? BrewDog Cork is right opposite my employer's Cork office, and most of Cork's good beer pubs, including nearby Impala, don't open until evening. With twenty spare minutes at lunchtime it was...
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A date with density
I'm hearing that Hopfully has been doing well for itself locally since setting up in Waterford as its forever home. That's good news, both for the drinkers of the sunny south-east, and for me as a...
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On the mean streets of Brussels
EBCU business brought me to Brussels a couple of weeks ago. And of course, in between meetings there was a chance to drop in at some favourite pubs and breweries around the city. Assembly point on the...
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