Monthly Tasting Night

Each month members of IrishCraftBrewer.com meet up for their monthly homebrew tasting night in the Bull & Castle in Dublin. Last weeks meet saw a great range of beers including; a number of pale ales, a brown ale, a Witte, an IPA, a ginger blonde beer and an export stout, along with my two offerings, a steam beer and a stout.

The quality of the beers was very good, as always, but in particular for me The Beer Nut's Pacific Gem Pale Ale stood out. It was a pale ale made exclusively with Pacific Gem Hops, 100g in total. The beer was unbelieveably smooth, despite its 6.1% ABV, and had a very light and refreshing taste with a lovely berry like aftertaste. A brew definitely to emulate.

As for my own beers, the reception was very good. The california common beer, Steam Punk, went down very well, while my ISO Standard Stout got a very good reception. I was really happy about this as I felt that the stout was certainly my best brew to date.

We also had a guest attend last weeks meeting. An American homebrewer over in Dublin for a few weeks had come accross our meeting notice and had come along to see what the local homebrew scene was like. He seemed to be impressed with the quality of beers on show, it is always great to meet other homebrewers and hopefully in the future more visiting homebrewers can come along to our tasting nights*.

* tasting nights are held on the second last thursday of every month in the Bull & Castle, for further information see the events thread on the IrishCraftBrewer.com forum.