I love this time of year for beer

Pin It Now! This is the time of the year where the weather starts getting warmer, the days longer and not only do a number of new beers come out in Ireland but also some beer festivals kick off.
It started with The Porterhouse Irish beer festival, well festival is not the right word I think. Maybe a celebration week where the Porterhouse chain brings in a number of Irish beers on tap or bottle and promotes them. Actually it is also an Irish whiskey festival but new Irish whiskies are very rare.

This year I have been unable to take advantage of the beer festival. I did get to go to the porterhouse on Saturday. I was there for another reason though. I met an American couple who had contacted me via my blog and talked to them about Irish beer. I did get to try a few new beers though, I just was not in blogging mode as I was too busy talking and eating the good food the Porterhouse serves.

I had the White Gypsy Bruinette which I enjoyed quite a lot. The carbonation is quite low which I found a nice touch. It is an Irish Red style and had a nice malty base along with some chocolate and dry roasted grains. My American companion had a taste and he had never tasted anything like it. Irish Red is a well known beer style in the US but they tend not to be based on real beers in Ireland no matter what they claim. Killians springs to mind.

Carlow has a new IPA out which I thought was fantastic. Not quite like their goods store cask IPA but an absolutely fantastic pint. The typical American style IPA notes are there with grapefruit/citrus ever present, though not so much in the aroma.

I had myself a Wrasslers then just because I could and while still lovely, I found there was something a little different to the way I remember it on tap and I could not put my finger on it. It was almost as if there was fish oil in it or something and a little less roasty? I might have been imagining it.

Afterwards we moved to the Bull and Castle and I had Carlow's Easter stout on cask and I was in love. Rich dark chocolate was pretty in your face. It's like having some 80% Cocoa dark chocolate after being used to 40%. It was so good I had a second and possibly a third? I can't remember but it went down well with the Americans as well as did the Clotworthy Dobbin I suggested and even more so the Porterhouse Brainblaista in the bottle.

Sorry for the lack of pictures and descriptions but Saturday was about enjoying myself rather than taking notes and pictures to blog about beer.

I will try and do better this weekend when I head to Cork for the Franciscan Well Easter Festival. I missed last years so I made sure to be around this time.

For further info on some of the other new beers around, and a much better blog post be sure to check out the report from The Beer Nut.