Irish Red Ales

A Friday evening in Dublin City, and there's a good choice of places with Craft Brews, but one of the oldest and most established is The Bull & Castle, over by Christchurch Cathedral. Famous for both it's Craft Beer selection, and excellent food, downstairs is a restaurant, and upstairs boasts a German Style Beer Hall. It was here we found ourselves in the early part of the evening for a few pints and a bit of grub.

They have a rotation cask, and when we were there the ale was Metalman Brewing's Windjammer. This is a lovely amber coloured brew, starting off slightly sweet, and with a fairly subtle hop refreshment in the finish. Great for a session in the springtime. I've no picture of this one, unfortunately, but being from the cask, it was slightly cloudy. Slightly less in-your-face hops than their Pale Ale offering, but still well worth seeking out whenever it's available. It's a seasonal, so won't be around throughout the year. I look forward to sampling their other seasonals as they arrive.

Next up were two bottles of beer, both Irish Red Ales. A staple of most of the Irish craft brewers, red ales span the spectrum from malty to robust hoppiness - so it's probably unfair to pigeonhole them all into one category. Some of them could be called Red IPAs, while others could be light-coloured porters. Both of these ales hail from the northern part of the island.

The first one was a Devil's Backbone from Kinnegar Brewery in Donegal. They have a strange way of labelling their beers, I've never heard of a Northern Pale Ale, or a Northern Amber Ale - this one is the Northern Amber Ale, but to all intents and purposes, it's a red coloured ale, so fair game for this I think.

I quite liked it, some lovely hoppy flavours, nicely balanced by caramally malts and roasted chocolate notes towards the back. I also saw available it's sister brew Limburner, which is a paler ale. Devil's Backbone is another quality ale in the ever growing Irish Craft scene and if you are a fan of darker beers with a more pronounced malt profile, then this is for you. The hops are there, but they don't dominate the palate, again, a good sessionable ale.

The third ale sampled on this visit was McGrath's Irish Red, from the Clanconnel Brewery in Co. Down.

The hops are much more pronounced in this one than in the previous two, and it's not a bad thing. This dark ruby ale is very good, and along with their Porter, McGrath's make a welcome addition to the Irish Craft Beer world.

We get some good initial biscuit and caramel sweetness, but very quickly find cleansing hop bitterness. Another fine sessionable ale, and well worth seeking out.

All in all, this section of the Irish Craft Brew market is well stocked, session ales with a red tint, so it can be hard to distinguish one from another - however all three beers sampled here are distinct and different enough to warrant a sampling of each.