Why is that man photographing his pint?
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Last read 4 days ago, longer than this feed's 1 day schedule.
Three new beers from Heaney Brewery to round the week off. Correct Me If I'm Wrong , with the brewery's sober logo playfully scrambled on the label, is a "farmhouse ale", which I'm taking to mean a saison. Reading that it's brewed with sichuan pepper made me do an involuntary approving lip-pucker. It pours hazy and golden, with a short-lived head. The aroma is all fruit and no spice, though still…
What more appropriate drink for a summer midweek than shandy? The Shandy Shack would like us to believe there is no better proposition. "Shandy's a British treasure that gives everyone pleasure" says the unlikely copy on the cans I bought in a northside Dublin supermarket, adding that it was "ripe for a refresh, so we [who?] quit our jobs, built a Shack and started the revival". Err, OK. I began…
The uncertainty that surrounds the rest of Diageo doesn't seem to be affecting the folks at Guinness: the one bit of the drinks multinational which looks to be washing its face, and no doubt the faces of Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan too. At The Open Gate Brewery in Dublin, they're continuing to turn out new product, and the recipes have been particularly weird creative recently. "the classic…
I've left it late getting to Beak, a brewery which shares its Sussex home town with the redoubtable Harvey's. But it looks like they complement each other well: Harvey's being staunchly traditional while Beak is colourful, playful and very much down with the non-bitter-drinking kids. I opened my account with a small assortment of the dozen or so Beak beers currently on sale in Dublin.…
Jubel lager "cut with" fruit has, it seems, been going great guns over in the country next door. It's possibly too early to say where this sits in the specialty beer segment, since it's definitely not in the geek-coded global-Brooklyn craft end, nor is it any way presented as traditional, be that authentic or fake. Maybe it's a sector by itself. The arrival of two blatant knock-offs from Irish…
At time of writing, the long hot summer of 2026 is continuing. You won't catch me on holiday in southern Europe, but today I've brought it home with four beers by Basqueland. I thought 5.6% ABV was a bit strong for something called Bavarian Pils , but that's exactly the same as the arguable archetype from Augustiner, so I'll give it a pass. It's an appropriate clear golden colour, though its head…
I have some tripartite brand extendery for you today. The three beers are from Horizont of Budapest, who made one beer, and then tried to sell tweaked versions of it to idiots who just want new, slightly different, beers to satisfy their weird cravings. Fancy that! Our basis point is Hazy Queen , an IPA in the New England sub-style; 6% ABV and a bright and sunny opaque orange colour in the glass.…
Sometime wild beer specialist Wide Street Brewing continues to pursue other goals with its two latest releases. "Wakame" is mentioned four times on the can of Umi Lager , so its inclusion in the ingredients is a big deal. There's no explanation as to what it is, however. Turns out it's a seaweed, used in Japanese cuisine. The beer is a pale muddy yellow, its head lasting only briefly. It's not…
The beer range at Marks & Spencer is something I tend to pick at, rather than actively pursue. But there's a bigger range of them in the UK, and I couldn't help but grab an armful of randomers last time I was passing through that way. Nothing fancy, mind. First it's an extremely straight-up Helles Lager , stating what it is in large capital letters on the 33cl can. It's brewed by Cornish brewery…
I had enough fun with the beers from Croatia's Garden Brewery recently that I picked up cans of the other two beers of theirs currently in circulation in Dublin. The first is a hazy IPA, and if I hadn't been specifically chasing the brewery's wares, I would have ignored this. Sure they all taste the same. The numbers on Oseka are boringly orthodox too: 6.2% ABV at 30 IBUs. It's brightly yellow,…
Co. Mayo's Belgian-style brewery, Mescan, has added a new fruit beer to the range. Kriek Silín is, I think, overstating the case with the K-word: I put aside any notions of this being a mixed-fermentation barrel-aged marvel before opening the bottle. Mescan tried its hand at lambic a few years ago and it didn't go well. This one is a straight wheat beer at 6% ABV, relying on the cherries for any…
