Football and a baga cans

European Championships just around the corner, and the weather is getting good. Rascal's Brewing have become the latest Irish Craft Brewer to go into a collaboration with an off-licence. They've teamed up with Molloy's Liquor Stores to bring us a Session Pale Ale. This is not a session IPA, so I'm not expecting an unbalanced, bitter, bodyless hop bomb.

They've called it All Night Long, part homage to Ireland's main man in France, and part description of the quaffable character of this refreshing beer.

Pouring a hazy dark orange, with a small thin head that dissipates quite quickly. this doesn't look as light as it drinks. Looks are deceiving though, the beer is refreshing, light of body and extremely drinkable.

There is a slight sherbet sweetness on the nose, underlining grapefruit and the slightest hint of tropical fruits.

The flavour of the hops are not overpowering, they are providing bitterness up front and a great finish that doesn't hang around very long - this means the 4.2% ale here provided is eminently sessionable, no lingering aftertaste, but the flavours are excellent, especially the citrus pith right at the end, and do enough to keep you coming back for more.

This does exactly as it says on the tin - juicy, fruity and delish, and at 5 for a tenner in Molloy's you'd be mad not to pick up a handful of these for the evening of a game, sit back, relax and enjoy.

Session and an Adventure

Last week O'Hara's dropped a few samples around, and I have to thank them for sending some my way. A nice presentation box contained one bottle each of the new 'OPSession - a session IPA at 4%, and the latest in the Hop Adventure Series, a pale ale featuring the French Aramis Hop.

I'm not a huge fan of Session IPAs, I find them unbalanced and a bit harsh, so I was intrigued to sample this offering, to see if it brought anything different to the party.

I really enjoyed the Galaxy version of the Hop Adventure series, and I've never heard of Aramis before, so again, I had some curiosity around this one too.

I started off with the Hop Adventure. I know nothing about the Aramis, so I was going into this one blind. I didn't look up any hop profiles or characteristics before drinking the beer, I didn't want any preconceptions.

It pours very clear, with a small enough head, that dissipates quickly. The beer is clean and just lets the hops come to the fore.

Herbs and Spices are the order of the day here, peppery to start giving way to herbal vegetable notes. Quite understated, but pleasant nonetheless.

This is a pretty good beer, unmistakably O'Hara's, but certainly new and different enough to be worth a purchase.

I moved on to the 'OPSession after that. Again pouring incredibly clear, it is a shade or three darker than the previous. The head doesn't fade so quickly, and leaves some lacing down the glass.

There's nothing on the nose, which surprised me given this is ostensibly an IPA. Upon drinking you do get some bitterness, but not a lot of aroma, or anything really. 

That bitterness could probably be construed as crispness, and this is a different take on the Session IPA style, but I find myself pining for some late addition hop character. The bitterness is not balanced by anything from the malt side of proceedings, but I expect that with Session IPAs.

The Aramis is definitely the best of these two beers, and I'd certainly encourage anyone curious about what that particular hop is about to give it a try.

Sour & Sweet

I started my love affair with sour beers late in the summer of 2015 when Siren's Dry Hopped Berliner Weisse Calypso made an appearance on the shelves. This was a refreshing, sharp, tropical beer perfect for lawnmowering away Saturday afternoons.

At around the same time Galway Bay had started to introduce a full range of soured beers to the market. Heathen was the early entry, in fact it came in the winter, then Godspeed arrived in the summer and was a peachy and mangoey lip-purser and the collaboration Maybe Next Monday was a more straight-up sour, with some tropical Citra in the mix. In bottles was the more adventurous The Eternalist, oak aged on raspberries.

At the big Festival in late summer there was the excellent ultra-tart Kinnegar Guezeberry, with Gooseberries in the mix. A real tooth stripper of a beer. It was very elusive though.

I picked up a 375ml bottle of Galway Bay Space Suit, this one an Amber Sour, fermented in Oak, dry hopped with Galaxy.

It pours a slightly murky dark amber, with a thin head. The sourness is pretty much all you get in the aroma, and it's pretty good. It gets those saliva glands interested straight away.

The flavour is complex, with the lacto and brett immediately evident, but the oak is slightly there in the background along with some balancing sweetness. Then there's the aromas from the Galaxy hops, tropical and juicy - it's not overpowering but it's there toying with the dryness and upping the tartness levels just another notch.

Galway Bay are making excellent sours, even if the odd one is a bit off, they can only be congratulated for taking on this style and tradition of brewing and pretty much nailing it. To do it once would have been great, but they've done it five or six times now and that sub-range of their overall stable is a very welcome addition to the Irish Craft Beer family.

A complete change of pace, and I had to mention this next beer having sampled it in two of the Galway Bay bars, and at home in a bottle too. Diving Bell is a Scotch Ale in the Wee Heavy style - with a salty twist.

This is a rich, decadent and big strong beer. On the nose you get dried fruits, figs, raisins and warming rum alcohol. It pours a very inviting deep ruby-red.

I'm not going to try to describe everything going on in the taste of this beer, not least because each sip brings something different, but also because words alone cannot do it justice. It needs to be experienced. Thick and syrupy, heavy and molasses, treacle and that rum again. Jam-like fruitiness, you could spread this on toast and expect to pick out a few berries. And that is perhaps the most apt description, because underlying all of that sweet goodness is a just-discernible salty undertone. Like lightly buttered toast with some dark berry jam on top.

This beer is like a hug from great big bear who's just been through the fruit bushes. Sticky toffee goodness, slight heat from the 9%, but that's not overpowering. This is most definitely, unapologetically a Winter Beer.

For all that sweetness and big malt flavours, it's the ever so subtle salting that makes this beer. You never think this is a "salty" beer, but the salt is used as it should be, to enhance the flavours around it. To complete the experience and make you want to keep coming back.

I was always more inclined to the malty side of beer flavours, and even though in recent years I've embraced hops in a big way, Diving Bell has reminded me in the best way possible that for all the complexity and great aromas that brewers can get from expert hopping - none of that really comes close to what can be done with the right combination of malted grains.