My recent trip to the drinkstore in Stoneybatter.

I popped into the drinkstore Stoneybatter recently, I was wanting to try out a few new beers both for inspiration and to become familiar witht the commercial beers available.
I was impressed with some and totally unimpressed with others, as it turns out the one I was most impressed with was also the oldest style there.....


The beers pictured are as follows.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Dogfish head 60 minute
Chapeau Gueuze
Chapeau Framboise
Boon Kriek
Belfast Black
SN Anniversary Ale
SN Porter
Belfast Lager
Mollys chocolate stout
Headless dog
Clotworthy Dobbin
Porterhouse Plain
Porterhouse Hophead
Timothy Tailor Landlord

I'll go through them one by one and give my opinion on them.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Nice enough beer, lots of cascade US hops in this one.
Dogfish Head 60 minute
Not a bad beer, again lots of American hops. Not as much aroma hop as the SNPA
Chapeau Gueuze
Wow, what can I say about this one, fantastic. Very fruity, almost like a port wine. This was my favourite of the whole lot and it was a lambic.
Chapeau Framboise
This time a fruit lambic, not as nice as the gueuze, but not bad. Low alcohol @ 3.5%
Boon Kriek
This is another beautiful lambic, cherry flavour this time and a lot more sour than the Chapeau lambics, I think it's more in keeping with the classic style.
Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
This is to SNPA what Coopers Sparkling Ale is to the normal Coopers Pale Ale, basically a darker higher alcohol version of more or less the same.
Sierra Nevada Porter
Not a bad porter, but far from the best of the bunch that I had here, unremarkable.
Belfast Black
This is a good stout, I'd recommend it to anyone, very impressed with another offering from this brewery.
Belfast Lager
I'm not a fan of this one at all, unlike it's black cousin. I dislike the fact that it's brewed using a non noble hop and I'm a pils fan having lived for years in Germany.
Molly's chocolate stout
This for me was the low point of the whole lot, thin, lacking in body, no chocolate note, totally underwhelming. It also had too much patent malt which made it kind of ashy.
Headless Dog
I liked this one a lot, I find that the American styles tend to overemphasise the hops and are in a competition to beat you to death with aroma hopping. This one strikes a nice balance with the usage of American hops in a more measured way.
Clotworthy Dobbin
This was another highlight, but I knew that buying it, I'd had this one before and knew it was a lovely malty dark beer. I like this one a lot.
Porterhouse Plain
Fantastic stout, beats most of them out there, very drinkable, I like it a lot.
Porterhouse Hophead
This is too hoppy for me, not to my taste, it's trying to compete with the aforementioned high hop levels of the US beers. I like it a little more reserved, I think the main reason is I did a beer very like this at Xmas and overdid it one night and have not been good with the hops in those levels since.
Timothy Taylor Land Lord
This is an award winning pale ale/bitter and I probably amn't doing it justice because I had just brewed a best bitter that is very very similar to it by fluke and I think mine is better and I think I'm being objective, maybe not but hey.


It's worth a run down there and as a member of the Irish Craft Brewer website I got a ten percent discount. I got the whole lot for 61 euros which is not bad considering that I had two of most of them apart from the lambics, the dobbin ( only one bottle left) and the SN range as they were 4 for a tenner.

Most of the beer names are hotlinked to the beer on the drinkstore website where you can order online for delivery.