Backroom barrels

Ireland's most bijou beer festival returned to the rear of Smiddy's Bar on a glorious day in late April. Combining two previous themes of the event, this was officially the Mullingar Wild Beer & Cask Festival, although willd beer was a little in short supply, with Third Barrel shoring up that bulwark by serving a couple of its well-established (and delicious) Brett beers.On the cask side, Rough Brothers of Derry was a new addition. I encountered their IPA at the CAMRA festival in Belfast last November. I said it was clean and simple but unexciting, and that's very much the case for their Northern Pale Ale as well. This is only 4.5% ABV, but I'm fully aware that other cask brewers can do a lot, flavourwise, within that parameter. This offers a clean and crisp base, like a cream cracker or water biscuit, and then an extremely mild hop bitterness which threatens to become actually citric but never quite manages it. My guess is they're going for something retro with these. They have the…