Six years since the last one, the Dublin Beer Festival returned to the RDS and what a brilliant weekend it was with sellout crowds both days and some seriously good brews to sample.

Needless to say, Team Hop Press was in the thick of the action with our man Stuart Clark hosting a series of Meet The Brewers Q+As featuring the likes of Lineman, Lone Pine, Rascals, O’Hara’s, Vault City and Jack Smyth’s, the brewing wing of Temple Bar’s Gallagher’s Boxty House restaurant.

From start (a Jack Smyth’s Stout) to finish (a Brouwerij and DeMolen barley wine), the quality of the beers we sampled was off the scale.

The Brouwerij and DeMolen boys, who hail from Bodegraven in western Holland, flew over a couple of days early in order to work on a Christmas special with their counterparts from O’Hara’s.

We’re told to expect a beer that “blends the flavours and traditions of the Netherlands and Ireland by using juniper berries and poitín.”

Gentlemen, we’re counting down the days!

As regular Hop Press readers will know, the Dublin Beer Festival found twenty-five Irish brewers, distillers and cidermakers rubbing taps with thirteen of their North American and European counterparts.

Among the latter were Brewski whose head honcho Fredrik Ek was the former president of the Swedish U2 Fan Club, has seen Bono and the chaps numerous times in Dublin and brewed a Where The Hops Have No Name New England IPA in their honour.

If you missed out on this very fine drop at the DBF, fear not, because it’s available from craftcentral.ie.

Among the other beers Fredrik brought with him was their Pineapple Pie Sour, which is the joint winner along with Vault City’s Stoopid Black Forest Gateaux Smoothie Sour of our inaugural Beer As Dessert Award.

We were accosted (in the nicest possible way) by Dave Guilfoyle who insisted on us sampling the complete range of his Brehon Brewhouse libations.

These include the remarkable 9% Bech Bretha Braggot which combines Viking beer tradition with the sort of honey mead we’d have been drinking in 795AD when they came here on their first pillaging mission.

Dave, who’s spent years researching ancient recipes, currently has a batch aging in whiskey barrels, which will be released in the run up to Christmas.

Another massive U2 fan, Tom Madden from Lone Pine Brewing in Portland, Maine was singing the praises of our brewers – he’s taken a particular shine to Urban Brewing’s Mexican Lager – and hatching a few cross-Atlantic collaborations of his own.

Interestingly, Tom thinks of Lone Pine as being the Kings Of Leon of beer – spiky, independent-minded but happy to infiltrate the mainstream if it’s on their own terms.

Trend-wise, the DBF highlighted how Irish brewers have embraced sours, amped up their stouts – Lough Gill’s 13% Spear Irish Whiskey Barrel Aged Imperial Stout being a prime example – and started playing around more with lactose, which gives beer that creamy dessert feel.

While we’re all for wild experimentation – Mad Scientist’s Glorious Mess Ice Cream Smoothie Sour Braggot gets another Hop Press double thumbs-up – we got a warm nostalgic glow sampling Lineman’s Big Calm, a chocolate, caramel and malt brown ale that couldn’t be any more traditional.

That is the vaguest snapshot of what was a stunning Dublin Beer Festival – here’s to doing it all again in 2025!