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13-04-2018, 11:09
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These days, Irish beer isn’t all about Guinness, as demonstrated by this interesting bunch which ranges ranges from rye ale to ‘ice cream IPA’. Of course we used that awful, cliched opening line purely to troll the Beer Nut (https://thebeernut.blogspot.ie) whose suggestion it was*via Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/posts/tell-us-what-to-16430476)*to try some of the Irish beers in stock at Honest Brew (https://honestbrew.co.uk).


Yellowbelly Castaway Passionfruit Sour, £2.79, 330ml can
Boyne Brewhouse Vienna Lager, £2.39, 330ml can
Kinnegar Rustbucket Hopped Rye Ale, £2.49, 330ml bottle
Whiplash Scaldy Split Ice Cream IPA, £4.59, 500ml can
Galway Bay Solemn Black DBIPA, £3.69, 330ml bottle

We drank them over the course of a couple of nights while we were tied to the house for one reason or another, tackling them in ascending order of ABV, except that we got Rustbucket and the Vienna Lager the wrong way round because we weren’t paying attention.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/yellowbelly_sour.jpg
Yellowbelly’s passion fruit sour, at 4.2% ABV, fizzed like e a bonfire night sparkler then went completely flat in about four seconds. It had a great passion fruit aroma, billowing and beguiling, and, crikey, did it taste sour. Ray found it less heavy going than Jessica because he drinks soft drinks and she doesn’t (tea, please! (https://boakandbailey.com/2017/09/crimes-against-tea/)) and what it resembled more than anything was some new variant grown-up version of Fanta. In fact, we picked up two types of sour — the citric acid of fruit and the kind of sweaty funk we associate with Gose. On balance, though we found plenty to enjoy, we both wanted it to taste more like beer, and would probably rather have a can of Rubicon at a fifth of the price.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/kinnegar_rustbucket.jpg
Kinnegar Rustbucket, at 5.1%, was more our kind of thing. It smelled wonderful, taking us back to those days of a decade ago when Goose Island IPA was considered Way Out There, all orange and pine. Red-brown in colour, it tasted like a well executed, tongue-coating, jammy IPA of the old school, and gave the impression of being a much bigger beer. It was perfectly clean, nicely bitter, and just a touch peppery by way of a twist. What a breath of fresh air, and good value, too. We’d drink more of this.
Boyne Brewhouse Vienna, at*5%, had the sexiest graphic design of the lot with its black and purple can, and looked great in the glass, too, being a gorgeous gold with a cap of thick white foam. But unfortunately it tasted weird — bad weird — in a way we’ve never encountered. Some banana, maybe? Apple? Gritty, grainy, unfinished. As if it was a little unwell, and threatened to send us the same way. We couldn’t finish it. Sorry!
Whiplash Scaldy Split had about it the air of the main event: it came in the biggest can, cost the most, and is billed, rather excitingly, as an ice cream IPA.*The ingredient list included multiple malts, vanilla and lactose (milk sugar), as well as reliable old Citra hops. The beer was a sort of queasy, homemade custard yellow, cloudy but not soupy, with an attractive, stable head. The problem is — and this does happen from time to time — we each perceived it quite differntly. Jessica found it a mess, from the petrol aroma to a flavour so excessively dank it seemed to have gone through hoppy and come out the other side at student bedsit carpet. Ray, on the other hand, used words like smooth, subtle, tasteful, and fun… Again, we wonder if his relatively sweet tooth might make him feel warmer towards this kind of beer. Or maybe that long list of ingredients combined to create particular unusual flavours and aromas to which we might be respectively more or less sensitive. Anyway, if you like thick, hazy, hoppy beers, you’ll probably enjoy this one; if you don’t, you probably won’t.
https://boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/dbipa.jpg
Finally, there was Galway Bay’s Solemn Black double black IPA at 9%.* Phew, what a mouthful, and that goes for the description and the beer. From the first sip, we just straight up liked this one a lot. (Both of us, thank goodness — much simpler that way.) Thankfully its supposed status as a black IPA didn’t mean lots of clashing, clattering hops tripping over dark malt flavours, as is too often the case, and it struck us as an imperial stout to all intents and purposes. We found it a silky beer that was all melted milk chocolate upfront, and turned to port wine the longer it sat on the tongue. And it sat on the tongue for a good long time, reverberating almost forever. When we left it long enough, and it’s not a beer to rush through, some grassy hop character eventually suggested itself, along with a burnt-toast black malt note. A happy place on which to conclude this whirl through the world of Irish beer.
Patreon’s Choice: The Irish Set (https://boakandbailey.com/2018/04/patreons-choice-the-irish-set/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)


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