In for a Penny
The Beer Nut
by
2d ago
It's funny how branches of pub chain JD Wetherspoon develop personalities for themselves. Of the three in central Dublin, The Silver Penny, in the north inner city, isn't the biggest, but it always feels like the busiest, the loudest, the endless party on the verge of kicking off. None of that has anything to do with cask beer, and yet it's the one that does the most to put cask beers on. At festival time, it seems to give everything its turn, where the other two branches don't seem so committed. That's a long introduction to say that virtually everything I drank at the Spring 2024 JD Wethersp ..read more
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An assortment of foreigns
The Beer Nut
by
4d ago
This is the final post from my recent trip to Vienna for the spring meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union. The meeting venue for the first day was Del Fabro Kolarik, a drinks importation and distribution company which has close ties to Vienna's Ottakringer. The company's ancestry also includes a spell as the local outpost of the Budvar brewery, not long after it was founded and when they were all part of the jolly Austro-Hungarian empire. Budvar is still a major feature of its portfolio, and for the meeting they kindly tapped up a keg of Budvar Nealko. I went in a little conflicte ..read more
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Ott or not
The Beer Nut
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1w ago
Yesterday we were looking at some of Vienna's many breweries and that's where we pick up today. I don't know if Ottakringer is the largest of them, but it certainly seems to be the most prolific of the large ones, with a sizeable range of beers. A visit was supposed to be on the cards for this trip but the scheduling didn't work out. I still got to drink quite a bit of their beer. Ottakringer Helles and Wiener Lager are ubiquitous around the city, but are far from their only pale lager offerings. I was intrigued by Sechzehn, also known as XVI when not in the yoof-coded, graffiti-clad, 33cl bo ..read more
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Viennagain
The Beer Nut
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1w ago
It felt like I had only just left Vienna, having last been a little over a year ago. The spring meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union had me back in early March, and it's just as well it's a city that keeps on giving, beerwise. I'll get to the new bars and breweries anon, but there was time at the beginning of the trip for a leisurely return to some old haunts. Ubiquitous brewkit manufacturer Salm's city brewpub had been explored in 2011, when I found it no great shakes in the beer stakes. It was the first port of call, and it was interesting to see how little the beer menu has changed ..read more
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I'd rather dye
The Beer Nut
by
1w ago
Time was, we used to scoff at the green beer phenomenon that foreign types, Americans especially, seemed to indulge in on St Patrick's Day. You wouldn't get that sort of nonsense here, and especially not in the microbrewed sector. That came to an end about 15 years ago when Dublin's then top beer bar, the Bull & Castle, began squirting food colouring into half litre mugs of Blarney Blonde. These days, it seems that The White Hag have claimed the green beer genre to themselves, with a disturbing number of verdant novelties on their logs. For 2024 it's The Serpent. We should give thanks tha ..read more
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A reawakening
The Beer Nut
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1w ago
"Here at Galway Hooker, we are always innovating with new brews and new ideas." Well, no. Since the brewery became part of the Connacht Hospitality Group in 2022 they've stuck resolutely to their core range while furiously rebadging them as house beers for pubs around the country. But it looks like that might be changing, with two new special edition beers arriving last month. Galway Girl is a bit of a route-one name for a beer from a Galway brewery, but maybe it'll help shift some units. It looks route-one too: a medium hazy orange, allowing a little more light through than the best of ..read more
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Wild journey
The Beer Nut
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2w ago
Today's beer is a collaboration in the truest sense. It started life several years ago in Bagenalstown as O'Hara's Red Ale and was then shipped to Firestone Walker in California to be refermented in oak foeders with Brettanomyces and finished with late stage additions of thyme and honey. Then it came back across continental North America and the Atlantic Ocean, which I'd say makes some contribution to the €12 price tag on my 375ml bottle. It's called Fiáin. The coppery colour of the base beer has survived everything it's been through, and the head stays put in a way that's unusual for wi ..read more
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Pick and Mikks
The Beer Nut
by
2w ago
It's a source of some bemusement to me how the breweries and beer brands which were bold and exciting, (if never actually revolutionary) a decade and more ago have become part of the mainstream, when they survived. I barely notice the wares from BrewDog, Stone and Mikkeller in the off licence fridges now. I see it as broadly a positive thing that they became so commonplace; that flavour-first beer is now easily available. It's just, as I say, bemusing that any sense of thrill or intrigue is completely gone. In fact, it was not boldness but the charming retro packaging of these two lagers that ..read more
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UnorthoDOTs
The Beer Nut
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2w ago
2024 for DOT Brew's beers began with a tap takeover at UnderDog and three brand new offerings.  A bold move to start: Micro Oak Fruit Thingy, reflecting the brewery's commitment to established beer styles and the perfection thereof. It's 2.4% ABV, which is brave, but suffers from no thinness, the sweet fruit refusing to ferment and giving it the necessary body. I thought I detected favourite DOT ingredient verjus at work here: that tangy lime-esque sourness, but Shane says it's too expensive, so instead it's simply grapes, hitting against whatever sour culture they've used. I got a hint ..read more
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Go fish
The Beer Nut
by
3w ago
Lough Gill features regularly on these pages. It's a brewery which turns out a lot of product, and one which appears to have an eye on the US as its target market. As such, it tends to go big: high-strength IPAs, barrel-aged imperial stouts and smoothie-like "pastry sours" feature prominently. Today, however, it's a change of tack, with two rather more sessionable beers, both appearing on draught at UnderDog recently. The first is Horizon, a pale ale at 4.7% ABV. It looks like the straightforward proposition it is: a mostly-clear pale amber with only the slightest cast of haze. They describe ..read more
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