THE curtain comes down on another year in beer, which has had high and low points. There remains the frustration at licensing laws which prohibit local craft brewers getting their product out to a wide audience.
The cancellation of CAMRA’s annual beer festival and the winding up of the ever-popular ABV Fest were another couple of lows, but there are reasons to be cheerful too.
Local breweries such as Farmegeddon, Beer Hut and Bullhouse dipped their toe into taprooms and 2020 looks like it could provide more of that. Dare we even dream that a return of Stormont could speed up progress on that front?
In the meantime, here are a few of my favourites of 2019:
Merc Bro – Bullhouse Brewery
Sticky, sweet, juicy – this was a New England IPA which ticked all the boxes in a year when there seemed to be a new ‘juice bomb’ every week. This beer provided an absolute flood of flavours – peach, mango, lychee, low-level bitterness and even a hint of spice. It was a triumph from a brewer now well established as one the best on the local scene.
Zostera – Lacada
The Portrush brewery will be looking to take things to the next level in 2020 as a result of their most recent investment drive. They kept the great beer flowing in 2019 and one of my personal favourites was Zostera. This is a beautifully balanced 7.2 per cent black IPA, with roasty malt flavours married nicely with fruity and jammy notes and a nice hint of spice. Perfect brew for the unpredictable north coast climate.
White Flag Is Raised – Boundary
Every beer drinker has a weakness and mine is rye. I'm a sucker for a bit of spice in an IPA and this one's a belter. Before you get that nice bite of rye, though, there's a cavalcade of tropical and citrus flavours, with a hint of orange marmalade and grapefruit. It clocks in at 7.2 per cent, but hides the strength well.
Lo Fi – Beerhut
One of the trends in the past 18 months has been lower strength IPAs. It’s quite the feat of brewing ingenuity to maintain the levels of flavour drinkers expect from a standard IPA, while keep the abv low, but Beerhut pulled it off in fine fashion with Lo-Fi. They’ve crammed flavours of mango and pineapple into this crushable IPA and kept it all under 3 per cent.
