Summertime!

Headed out for a walk on a sunny Sunday and ended up in The Black Sheep, which is one of the pubs run by the Galway Bay Brewery, it's a lovely pub with good food and, of course, fine beers.

I started off with a Clotworthy Dobbin from a cask. This beer is nice from the bottle, but from the cask it is absolutely delicious. A dark, ruby-red beer with up front hop flavours, and a sweet caramel and toffee finish. As you can see from a previous blog entry, I've been sampling the Whitewater brews for some time now, they never fail to disappoint. The Clotworthy Dobbin is also available on cask in The Black Sheep's sister pub The Brew Dock. Go and get some while you can.

TheBeerMistress set up the chess board, then while I was pondering my next move the decision was made for me. Spotted on the menu was the Mongozo range. They have the Palm Nut and Banana varieties, but we decided on a Mango and a Coconut.

The Coconut pours a cloudy, off white as you'd expect from a beer brewed with coconut. A lovely clean, fresh flavour. Sweet too, so you wouldn't be drinking a lot of this, but it's perfect for a warm day. If you are planning a barbecue this summer, this coconut beer would be an impeccable choice. A good mouthfeel, and at 3.6% this is certainly quaffable and sessionable, reminiscent of Pina Colada.

The Mango pours a clear, golden yellow, the colour of Mango flesh. It has a lovely sharp, refreshing taste, with a slight underlying sweetness. This one would be nice after a good meal, also weighing in at 3.6%, so you can have more than one.

Both are pretty good beers, and really more than a gimmick, which I initially assumed they were.

Next up was Sierra Nevada's seasonal oferring, Ruthless Rye IPA. I'm not a huge fan of overtly hoppy beers, and first impressions of this were telling me it was just yet another in the ever growing list of IPAs, Double IPAs, Imperial IPAs, each vying to out-do the last in the Hop steaks. In The Black Sheep it's served from a keg, bottles are also available.

Yes, as with all IPAs there are big in-your-face hop characteristics, but the finish here is amazing. The Rye imparts a lovely spicey, pepperiness that takes the edge off the hops just enough to make this beer enjoyable. It's a very inviting warm amber colour, and the head stays on pint until the end, with lines down the glass after each mouthful.

An ideal beer for quenching a thirst on a warm day. I'll be searching out other Rye beers as a result of liking this one so much.