Woolpack - Hardknot Brewery beers

**Excuse the layout of this post, I tried using Picasa to blog and it made a mess of it**

Firstly, on the left here is a rather foamy image of my Bán Oráiste which I tried on Sunday. I have to say it has a fantastic flavour. As you can see it is very yeasty looking, probably not the most appetising colour but the flavour is worth it in my opinion.

Now on to the woolpack beers. I enjoyed all these beers in the woolpack on cask and I brought some back. I originally had the bottled versions at a tasting session were I met up with other Irish Craft Brewers to try them. Unfortunately something was not right, they all seemed to have this sherbet fizziness going on which to many seemed like an infection. Since then I tried them all again and I did not get that taste so either they were from some bad batch of bottling (unlikely) or else the fact that they fell through the bottom of the box on the way and bounced off concrete may have caused some issue. It is very odd either way but here is what I thought of these beers in the bottle.




Starting off with Woolpacker, which is Dave's session beer seems right. It is his biggest seller and rightly so. It is easy to drink and the ABV is not too high so you can enjoy more of them.
There is a very obvious malty base here with a slight aroma of mandarin and this is also evident when tasting. One thing I found, for whatever reason was that it seemed to me that this was much more bitter than on cask? I liked that fact actually as it was a very well rounded beer with a very nice lingering bitterness. I was having this with popcorn with sprinkles of Cholula hot sauce and it went down very well so I would imagine this is great with spicy food.























Next up is the 4.4% IPA and I think my favourite of the bunch. It had the typical American IPA citrus / grapefruit thing on the nose. This is very drinkable to me. It is not too complex and some might argue that it is just a basic IPA with nothing to make it stand out from the crowd but that is fine with me. It is no Big Daddy IPA but then that is a different beer, it is much bigger and more complex and this is more refreshing I think and since it is only 4.4% I can enjoy this for longer.








When I first arrived at the Woolpack, I had Final Frontier on cask and it was the second last pint I believe as there was no more when it came time for a refill. I remember this fondly on cask but I found in the bottle that it was pretty uninspiring. It is certainly far more bitter than beyond the pale but without anything to back that up in body. There was little in the way of aroma either so it seemed that most of the hops were bittering hops. I remember it being better on cask but I think I even preferred beyond the pale on cask than this. Hopefully there will be more frontiers to cross for Dave's IPA style beers, the bitterness is fine but I think this needs a little more body to back it up. Perhaps a some or more crystal malt (depending on if he uses it) in the next batch.

Lastly we have the stout. This one was professionally bottled and caused a bit of a stir at the tasting. We seem to have been divided on this. The Beer Nut said he liked it I think but some of the others did not. I decided to reserve judgement until I tried another bottle.

I found the body very thin, it was a little watery but then perhaps that is just me as when I brew a beer I pack it full of flavour and body, perhaps too much actually but that is how I like it. There was some chocolate on the nose and this followed through a little on tasting but something else came through which I am not sure about. Where did the citrus come from? At least to me it had a sharp citrus bite which I simply did not enjoy very much.





There is one more beer worth of a mention and that is zippy red IPA. At 6.6% this is the strongest of Dave's beers. I took his last bottle home with me so I did not get to re-taste it myself after the tasting session. I loved this on cask, it was very nice and had I not already been full of beer I would have had more than the half pint (and a taste earlier). In the bottle it was disappointing but it could have been the dropping effect.

If ever there was an example of CASK versus everything else then this is it. These beers were a lot better from the cask so you need to go there to the woolpack and try them, then again since you can only get the bottles from the woolpack anyway, my advice is to just go to the woolpack and try these beers yourself. It would be interesting to go again some time and actually compare the cask and bottles side by side.