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Oak or nope?
Time for a regular check-in with what DOT Brew has been sending my way lately. As usual, it's a varied bunch: some going big on the barrels and blending; some not.Barrel-aged beers at 3.8% ABV are...
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The Thing from outer space
Is it a drugs reference? I don't get the reason for the latest in Sierra Nevada's Little Thing series of beers being called Cosmic Little Thing. Is it, like, "woah, cosmic, maaan"? I don't know. On the...
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Big dig energy
Martin's of Fairview is one of the top-tier beer shops of Dublin, and though it's quite far out of my way, I do make occasional trips there. That stopped when a major roadworks project made getting to...
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Just because you could...
Someone's been mulin' De Molen. The following beers were suitcased back from Amsterdam by my lovely wife, who chose them from the wide selection on offer in De Bierkoning. They're not what I would have...
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House!
I'm sure I'm not the first beer commentator to make this observation, but dark lager should be a lot more common than it is. Just like its pale counterpart, when made well it's clean, accessible and...
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Holding the course
I noted back in March that Galway Hooker had started releasing new limited edition beers after years of sticking to a core set. Now a second pair has arrived for midsummer, once again giving us styles...
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Summer and all the beers are sour
The arrival of warmer and sunnier days, beginning in May, coincided with a steady stream of fruit beers from Irish breweries.At the bottom end of the scale, the one I'm expecting most to be sour: Púca...
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Cloisterphobia
They've been feeling social again at Weihenstephan. Last time, they made a collaborative weissbier with Sierra Nevada. Now it's a blonde ale with the help of St Bernardus: Braupakt Blonde.Despite being...
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The grain and the grape
Have you heard of fonio? If you haven't yet, you will, at least according to Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver who has become an advocate for this climate-resistant African grain. Its most important...
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A whip round
Today I have a selection of beers from Whiplash. I've been making good use of their Dublin bar, Fidelity, which has made finding some of their more esoteric output easier to find than hunting in...
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Schar'd for life
I mentioned that when I visited Lambiek Fabriek on this year's Toer de Geuze, I took a bottle of theirs away with me. And here it is: Schar-Elle, their Schaarbeekse kriek. I've quite enjoyed these...
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Good Spanish lager
The presence on the Irish beer market of A Coruña's Hijos de Rivera, via their partial stake in O'Hara's, yields the occasional interesting beer. I picked up two recently, in the 1906 series from the...
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Wild Westmeath
I wasn't counting heads, but the third iteration of the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival seemed a little more subdued, and I somehow doubt that the audience for wild fermented beers from Belgium, Britain...
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Baltic amber
Amber lager: it's not a genre of beer that gets a lot of attention in the media. Nevertheless, in the parts of Europe where it's in the mainstream, breweries are plugging away at making it. Today's two...
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Left cold
Ireland has a number of very small breweries, mostly in quite touristed parts of the country, whose beers don't get very far from their place of production and are rarely if ever seen in Dublin. Today...
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Best of British
The days of hyped-up English beers seem to have passed. There are certainly plenty of breweries who have excellent reputations, but those are at least as likely to be decades old than new start-ups....
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Psst!
Dampfbier. Now there's a beer style you don't see very often, at least in the commercial sphere. Many a home brewer is drawn to the idea of using a cool-fermenting yeast in a warm-fermenting...
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The parent trap
Co-option of local vernacular is one of the best things about microbrewing, a fun way to learn about other cultures and to give a shout-out to one's own, via the medium of an endless parade of samey...
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There's IPA... and there's IPA
Time for another rapid run through what's new and hoppy in Irish beer.We begin at Rascals, and a Session IPA they've made for Aldi, taking the brave step of brewing under the 4% ABV mark, where Irish...
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Roll out the Barrel
That pub I go to celebrated its 7th birthday recently, and seems to have hired Third Barrel to bring the party favours. That took the form of a tap takeover, which included a couple of beers that my...
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