Why is that man photographing his pint?
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…
Three new beers from the generally reliable Our Brewery of Randalstown showed up locally recently. This producer has a pleasing tendency towards style variations, so I was a little disappointed to find that all three were pale ales. Still, at least they're different kinds of pale ale, and that's often the best we can hope for from beer these days. The label of Next Time Around doesn't make it…
"Just stay out of Temple Bar" is my general advice to anyone coming to Dublin and looking for beer. Today's subjects were both found in pubs, and both of them technically in Temple Bar, although they're some distance from the Auld Dub/Oliver St John Gogarty/Quays/Temple Bar/Fitzsimons's central parade of shame. I mean, The Porterhouse, Dublin's longest-surviving vendor of decent beer, is only a…
A completely random pick from the fridge at Craft Central landed me this can of triple IPA from Canadian brewer Nano Cino. It's called Innovation #6 , it's 9.7% ABV and it cost more than €10. What does that get me? The big floaty gobbets aren't an innovation: I've see those before. And it's quite an average shade of medium opaque orange, darker than the triple kind of IPA tends to be. The aroma…
The Glider is a modern marvel. Belfast's metro-like bus-with-notions runs transversely across the city, from west to east, passing plenty of the city's beer destinations on the way. A new curiosity has arrived at the eastern G1 terminus in Dundonald. As has been reported far and wide, Lidl NI has chosen to open a fully-operational pub in the same building as their supermarket, to subvert local…
In the discourse around beer, one often sees it noted that the simplistic veneration of ever-bigger numbers, common a decade and more ago, has subsided. The IBU race is over, and conscientious beer drinkers, some of them even in the US, have come to recognise that stronger beer is not automatically better than weaker beer. However, I think there are still vestiges of The Old Ways to be found,…
On a recent trip to Blackrock Cellar I picked up a couple of bottles from two of the lesser-seen Donegal breweries. At least I think it's two breweries: they have a brewer in common and I see their bottlecaps are the same. Otterbank seems to be doing a bit of a Wide Street, pivoting away from the wild fermentations on which it built its reputation in favour of safer, presumably more saleable,…
Tuesday last saw the eagerly-awaited soft opening of The Christchurch, the newest addition to the specialist beer side of Dublin's licensed trade, such as it is. The premises on High Street was Galway Bay's The Beer Market in a previous incarnation, then became the more tourist-orientated Christchurch Inn, though despite its location on the well-trodden path between the city centre and the…
Dublin's Hope brewery is celebrating ten years in production this year. They've come a long way from the contract brewer I first met at the RDS beer festival in 2015 , growing into one of the established mainstays of Irish brewing, via the radical and daring strategy of making nice beer and then selling it to people. Celebrating with it is its Dutch twin sister brewery, and homophone, Hoop . Hope…
I hadn't realised that Dutch brewery Swinkels, formerly known as Bavaria, was still selling Bavaria beer after they got in trouble with the people of Bavaria for calling their beer Bavaria when it's not brewed anywhere near Bavaria. They are though. Bavaria Ultra ("Ultra", no less!) is easily overlooked, by me anyway, because the turquoise and white branding makes it look non-alcoholic. It is,…
Another Monday, another blog post, another round-up of recent Irish pale ale. This one is the blog's 3000th entry. It's best not to think about what that means, and move right along with the reviews. Spent bread beers were a bit of a thing a few years ago. Wicklow Wolf still has one in annual production and now Lough Gill has added one, getting their crusts from the O'Hehirs bakery chain. Oh! is a…
The United States of America will shortly be celebrating 245 years since it achieved independence and I thought I would mark the occasion with some American beers. As it happened, there was something of a theme to what was in my fridge when I went looking for candidates. Another Sierra Nevada brand extension? Hell yeah! This is Mango Little Thing , number eleventy-seven in the hazy IPA series,…
Today's subject is something of a sequel to Victoria Málaga, which featured in a post about Spanish beer last year . Rosa Blanca is also from the Barcelona beer giant Damm, and is sold in a 66cl bottle. That becomes rather less indulgent-seeming at an ABV of only 3.4%. From that I expected it to be pale and sickly looking, but it's quite a rich golden colour in the glass, with a positively…
Work had me in Glasgow for a few days earlier this month, a city I had never been drinking in before, so was pleased to get it some way ticked off, though far from comprehensively, I'm sure. I was based on the western edge of the city centre, where there were a few noteworthy pubs (thanks Rob !) within easy reach. The State, for example, is a pleasant bit of dark wood and brass Victoriana. The…
They like their hops, up in the northern latitudes of Europe. By way of demonstration, today I've got three beers from three different Nordic brewers, all in the double IPA style. The first is by a new brewery to me, Friends Co. of Helsingborg in Sweden. It's called All Citra DDH IPA , expanding on that by telling us there's 20g per litre of the titular American hop. There's also an instruction to…
If hazy IPA is loosening its grip on the independent beer scene, nobody has told Whiplash. They're still churning them out in Ballyfermot, doubtless to a still-appreciative audience. It falls upon your correspondent to pour the requisite scorn, where appropriate. There are two new ones today. The first is Hail the Apocalypse , a collaboration with occasional visitor to these shores, Mont Hardi…
It's three months since the most recent JD Wetherspoon beer festival , and three months to go until the next one. I thought this would be an opportune moment to have a look at what's been new (to me) in the Dublin branches. Moorhouse is a regular at the chain and Pendle Witches Brew is a beer I've certainly heard of, but was surprised to find I'd never drank. "Strong ale" is something of a rare…
Two years ago I had my first encounter with the beers from Tom Crean Brewery in Kenmare, and for the most part I wasn't impressed. Still, they're rare enough in Dublin, so when I recently found a different three in Blackrock Cellar I thought it only fair to give them another shake. I say different, but one of the last set was called Killowen Kölsch, and now there's a beer with identical branding,…