The sun in the sails

This year was my tenth at the Borefts Beer Festival, held at the De Molen brewery in Bodegraven. The Festival itself was celebrating 20 years of De Molen, with a theme of "Back & Future". 23 guest breweries from Europe and the Americans joined the hosts for the party over two days in glorious sunshine. How much fun this festival is is heavily weather-dependent for me. 2024 was a good one. Let's have a beer.

Boerenerf, that most bespoke of the new-wave lambic producers, was where I started. I've never seen their beer outside of a festival so wasn't going to miss the opportunity. I started with an Amarone Lambiek, thinking there might be a bit of grape character to it. When it arrived hazy and orange I was immediately disappointed, but determined to make the best of it. And it starts out as a decent, if a little ordinary, lambic: lots of saltpetre spicing and the dry sourness of fresh leather. After a moment, however, the flavour unfolds further, gradually revealing a tannic red wine character, with mature damson and black cherry notes backed by a complementary oakiness. At 6.5% ABV it's a little stronger than I like for lambic, but they've used the extra gravity to great effect, driving the flavour complexity. We were off to a good start.

I came back to Boerenerf later, to try Mu'sik, again enticed by grapes, for a lambic made with real Muscat, plus cherries. This one is a downright unreasonable 7.7% ABV and a bright shade of purple in the glass. The cherry is somewhat absent from proceedings, but otherwise it's a beast of a thing, packed full of funk and spices. An unsubtle shower-gel fruitiness leads, backed by musky sandalwood and sparks of gunpowder. There's a particular sort of greasy smoke that comes from clerical-grade incense, and this reminded me of that. It manages to be both a classic fruit lambic and also something quite different to anything else I've tasted. Such experiments aren't always successful, but they've absolutely nailed it here.

Finally from Boerenerf comes Kweeper. This is properly outré, being a blend of lambic with quince wine. Now, I'm not a drinker of the wines of the quince, so I'm not sure what I was supposed to be getting from this. There was a certain kind of subtle pear fruitiness arriving late in the flavour, but before that it's pretty straight: dry and flinty but not especially sour, and with a medium level of mineral spice. I thought I was going to get a novelty beer and was a little disappointed by how tame it was. Still, it's another superb, well-made lambic. The blendery currently sources its base beer from five different established lambic breweries and it's very clear that it knows what to do with them. For the full Boerenerf story, I recommend this profile by Breandán Kearney, published earlier this year.

But it would not do to dwell too long at one bar. My only other Belgian beer came from Borefts regulars Alvinne: Cuvée Freddy Kriekepit. This is a version of their longstanding oud bruin, aged in a barrel that wasn't quite emptied of Schaarbeek cherries when the beer went in. The aroma is typical for a Flanders red ale, with an assertive vinegar tartness and soft ripe cherry. Though 8% ABV, it's rather thin and highly attenuated, thanks to Alvinne's hyperactive house culture. The flavour offers a fun milk chocolate start, followed quickly by fresh cherry flesh, leading to a punchy tartness. It's not easy drinking, and oud bruin is a particularly tricky beer style for me, but this is certainly an interesting take on it, the flavoursome cherries really helping to take the harder edges off its hot sourness.

Other than the host, two Dutch breweries were represented. Kees is another regular, and of course strong and dark was the way to go. We begin small, with Black Potion, a pastry stout created with Hungarian brewer Mad Scientist, and a trifling 14% ABV. Plums, apricots, vanilla and maple are all in the recipe, squashed together into an indistinct-tasting jammy mélange. Where there should be a smooth and warming chocolate base, there's quite a thin beer, dark brown rather than black, and tasting more of artificial chocolate flavouring than the real thing. There's loads of booze in with this, making it smell like a liqueur and taste quickly sickly. A dry burnt caramel effect is the only nod to balance. The whole thing is a bit of a mess, and not what strong and sweet stout ought to be. Kees normally does better.

Double Fudge is a Kees standalone beer, an eisbock presented at 20% ABV -- almost twice the strength of the Caramel Fudge Stout it's made from. They're not kidding about the fudge: the aroma is saturated in it, with sweet wafer biscuit tacked on. The flavour doesn't wander too far from that, with the dessertish wafer prominent, and then coffee more than chocolate as the other half. I really enjoyed the original Caramel Fudge but they seem to have distilled all the goodness out of it, instead of concentrating it. The result tastes a bit stale or sweaty; sweetness overdone past the point of tasting sweet, or any way pleasant. I think they should have left well enough alone with this one. I expected a novelty treat but got disturbing weirdness instead.

The other Nederlander was Ramses, playing to type for the Dutch with a CBD-infused IPA called Luiaard. It's 6% ABV and exudes west-coast vibes with its amber colouring and strongly resinous aroma, even if that aroma isn't entirely hop-derived. The flavour carries lots of the beautiful peppery effect I get from the better hemp beers, but doesn't do much else. There's no proper hop bitterness and only a mild malt warmth. I still really enjoyed it, however. This is a well-made novelty beer; simple, clean and accessible, with a subtle point of differentiation from the norm.

Where next? Over to Germany, perhaps. Fuerst Wiacek were representing the Fatherland, and had something uncharacteristically traditional looking: Berliner Landbier. It's basically a Helles, 5% ABV and a pale white-gold colour; perfectly clear too. This is luxuriously soft-textured and on the sweeter side of the Helles spectrum, tasting a little like marshmallows, with a minor buttery bum note. The noble hops represent as celery, which is about as mild as they get while remaining perceptible. I hadn't intended this as a mid-session palate-cleanser, but that's pretty much what I got. No harm.

Denmark is next, and Insight Cellars appeared to be the hype brewery of the weekend. I had never heard of them, but their twice-daily special releases created huge queues, none of which I joined. I just had a taster of Sunstead: Apricot 2023, which I'm reading now is a blend of one, two and three-year-old wild ales, aged in two types of wine barrel and then given a month on apricots. "Transporting you back to the high days of summer" says the brewery; nope, says I. It's very dry, and quite acrid, with an almost gastric sharpness. I couldn't taste much else, beyond a hard and difficult sourness. The fruit seems to have fermented away completely, leaving no sunny juicy sweetness. I would never have guessed the complicated production arrangements and, on taste alone, I didn't really get what it was supposed to be. I hope the punters who stood in line for it appreciated it more than I did.

Also representing the Danes was Fanø Bryghus, from whom I tried Gorm the Old, another pastry stout, 10.1% ABV and served nitrogenated. Very nitrogenated: it's a problem with these small festival glasses that anything running foamy gives you not much else. The presence of vanilla in the recipe is very obvious from the aroma, and the cocoa beans come through in the flavour as smooth and warming chocolate tones. There aren't any spices but I still found a lovely, Christmassy, cinnamon character in the flavour as well. Dispense issues aside, this is how to do pastry stout in a responsible way, resulting in a mellow gentle giant, that's not too hot, not too thick and not too sweet.

From Denmark it's over to Sweden, and a brewery I hadn't heard of before: Mariatorgets Mikrobryggeri of Stockholm. Alto Alegre is a complicated imperial stout, blended from barrel-aged and non-barrel-aged batches, with added coffee and bilberries, reaching 13% ABV. It's densely black with a dark tan head, and even smells dark, a sticky mix of molasses and espresso. The flavour has a little fruit, but nothing I would have identified as the European cousin of the blueberry. There's some dark chocolate too, but mostly it's about the coffee. This is no standard mug of joe, or even the espresso from the aroma, but a camped-up elaborate showpiece with a similar sweetness and spice to Turkish coffee. It's utterly sumptuous and impossible to take at anything but a leisurely pace.

And while Mariatorgets was a newcomer, the other Swedish brewery is a fixture. Närke hasn't missed a year yet. They brought back a few familiar beers, but also an intriguing pair of stouts with Irished-up labels. Dubh Linn was the lighter of them, designed for the session at 4.4% ABV. And it's pretty basic: thin and dry to the point of ashen, all about the charcoal roast and nothing much else. It's fizzy too, creating a similar impression to non-nitro bottled Guinness. I suppose this sort of thing is a novelty to some drinkers, and there was certainly nothing else like it at the festival, but once my curiosity was satisfied, it did little else for me.

Doubtless acting from a sense of regional fairness, there was also Corcaigh, allegedly an imperial stout, though at only 7.9% ABV. It poured headless, and still emphasised roast as somehow the defining characteristic of Irish stout. There's an added herbal complexity to the aroma, and even a little caramel. The flavour cuts the bells and whistles, leaving just blackened toast and a green-vegetable bitterness, again with no chocolate or coffee for light relief. The seriousness works rather better at this strength than in the lighter one. The extra body and alcoholic warmth give it a personality that I can get on with. It was still far from my favourite imperial stout at the festival, however.

There will be more imperial stouts in later posts, but this journey through the north European breweries finishes up in Estonia. There should have been two breweries from the nordic state but something unfortunate seemed to have befallen the kegs sent by Tuletorn, so we were denied their pumpkin smoothie sour and stroopwafel Scotch ale. That left Anderson's as the sole Estonian representative.

I picked Catch Up! Chili from them, a gose brewed with tomato, basil and Carolina Reaper peppers. It's clear and pale, and the modest 4.1% ABV leads to a very modest flavour. I didn't find any normal characteristics of gose, but did enjoy the savoury warmth added by the tomato. The macho chilli peppers should have given it a real kick but they appear to have been used very sparingly and the result is no stronger than a pinch of paprika, right at the end. It's fine to drink, and I should appreciate it on a sensible grown-up level, but I also really wanted that daftly strong chilli burn and was a bit disappointed not to get it. Since it's not proper gose, I don't really get who this is for.

I'll wrap it up there for today. Further exploration of the Borefts Atlas of Beer continues next.

Seasons in Galway

I have been a consistent enjoyer of the Catharina sour beers from Galway Bay, the only Irish brewery that makes them. The latest, Felina, has been around since the summer, and I think I anticipated enjoying it so much that I missed the right moment to open it. So on a chilly late September afternoon, I had to pretend it was early August. 

This is 5% ABV and the lightly hazy orange colour of diluted cordial. Mango, papaya and passionfruit have been added ("100% real") and it's 5% ABV. I expected the passionfruit to be its gateway to instant tropicality, but for once that's not so obvious. To me it tastes primarily of pineapple, though the mango is very apparent too, with the others in supporting roles. As expected, it works beautifully, delivering a ray of purest sunshine, straight to the tastebuds. The sourness is no more than a tang, but one which performs well by balancing the fruit sweetness, and there's also a little hint of tropical citrus -- a fresh squeeze of lime and grapefruit -- to aid that balance further. It is maybe a little thin for the strength and style, although that, and the gently sparkling carbonation, helps to make it an easy drinker. This is definitely another hit from Oranmore's Catharina sour production facility. Keep them coming, encroaching winter be damned.

Autumn then brought no fewer than two new lagers to the taps at The Black Sheep. I began on Haus, a plain-spoken, plainly presented pilsner. Despite this, they've applied the usual attention to detail to the recipe and created something worthy of being filed with north German classics like Jever. Of course it's clear and clean and crisp and golden, as one would expect, but there's a distinctly Nordsee hop quotient: sharp, bitter and herbal, all cut grass and peppery rocket.

The initial burst is invigorating, and then there's a long finish as well, the green noble-hop oils clinging to the palate like those of a west-coast American IPA. There was a risk in putting such unapologetically assertive hop fireworks on too thin a base, since this is only 4.5% ABV, but there's enough chewy malt to balance the sticky hops; giving them free rein in the flavour without spoiling the party. As Irish lagers go, this is benchmark stuff. I like to assess unfamiliar breweries on how they do pilsner, and were I new to Galway Bay, they'd pass with the flyingest of colours.

All aboard the virtual ICE for a trip south to Bavaria. Three taps over we find Illuminator, a doppelbock. They're not serving this by the Maß on Capel Street, it being 7.9% ABV and Irish people being bad at drinking. In the glass it's the proper chestnut red-brown and smells of burnt caramel with a little cola-like herb spicing. I would never have guessed the strength: something in the lager process has thinned this right out. While it doesn't taste or feel watery, it comes across as a far lighter dunkel or similar. There's that lovely liquorice and fruitcake flavour, but it's quite brief, lacking the malty warmth I was expecting behind it. That could be a temperature thing. Given a few minutes, the beer had warmed up and I got a bit more chocolate and brown-bread substance, but given a few minutes after that, the glass was empty. They have also made this available in half-litre bottles, and I think that might be the better format for it. Still, strong beers on draught is a personal campaign goal and I won't complain too hard whenever one shows up. This is, again, top notch stuff.

Three more beauts from Galway Bay, a brewery which has been quite consistent with its bangers, year-to-date.

Take the Lauterbach

It's like one of those ghosts that doesn't know it's dead. The Lauterbacher brewery claims a foundation date of 1889, with a history in Bavaria going further back to the mid-17th century. The website tells the story in the first person: "we at Lauterbach..." Except you don't have to dig too deep to discover it's a sub-brand of Riegele, centred around a pub in Augsburg but with no brewery of its own any more. Still, I like Riegele's beers so have no objection to the subterfuge.

I guess the "Natur" in Lauterbacher Natur Hell signifies that it's unfiltered, because there's a definite misting of murk through the otherwise golden lager. It's topped with a head of foam as generous as the one idealistically depicted on the label.  The aroma is highly enticing, with lots of the subtle spongecake sweetness of good Helles, spiced up slightly with spinach and rocket hops. The green side is to the fore in the flavour, dry and crisp, with predominant notes of fresh cabbage leaf and a sprinkle of fine-ground white pepper. This time the malt is doing the back-up balancing: not very sweet, just a hint of cookies and vanilla. 4.8% ABV is low but there's plenty of weighty substance to this, allied with a soft carbonation for easy drinkability. The hops provide an encore in the finish, ending on a rasp of zinc-like minerality. I think I prefer the more polished sort of Helles, but for a rustic take on it, this works very well indeed.

Good Helles is always a welcome find. Good weissbier is rarer. It's not a beer style I'm especially enthusiastic about. So here's Lauterbacher Natur Weizen. Even by weissbier standards it's frothy, and took an age to pour. It's quite a dark fellow as well: amber rather than yellow. Candied banana in the aroma put me on alert that it's a sweet one, which wouldn't be my preference, inasmuch as I have one. The flavour is cleaner and simpler, I'm happy to say. There's not very much in the foretaste and, again despite the generous head, the carbonation is gentle. That means you can take a lovely big refreshing pull from it without risking a palate clog of rotting fruit and hot toffee. I had to wait for the tail end for the taste to emerge properly: a gentle mix of winter spices, suggesting clove and nutmeg with a little raisin and prune thrown in. I could level an accusation of blandness at it, but with Weizen, that's preferable to the hot and headachey alternative. It'll do.

I'm glad I took a chance on these. Half litre bottles of Bavarian beer in staunchly traditional styles are far, far from beer fashion these days, but they still exist and can be quite rewarding. Step away from the cartoon cans once in a while, yeah?

The Dublin comeback

The September beer festival at the RDS in Dublin was a fixture on Ireland's calendar between 2011 and 2017. A later move to other venues was less successful and it all wrapped up before Covid. This year saw a tentative return, on a smaller scale and in a different part of the venue, but still filling the remit as required. 20 Irish brewers and a handful of international representatives took stalls in the Ring Hall for two days. I only made it in on the Friday evening, and here's what I found.

I began at Lineman, who had a new IPA called Supernature. This is brewed with a little maize and is lager-fermented, though the brewery has opted not to badge it as a cold IPA. It does pretty much meet the specs, however. The hops -- Citra, and BRU-1 -- have been given an extremely clean and clear base to work from, showing a very dank and piney aroma but with a surprise fruity twist in the flavour, all Skittles and blueberries, lacking any of Citra's more pungent lime and pine. It's 6.4% ABV so is one to take time over, and makes for enjoyable sipping. A perfect antidote to haze, should one be needed.

The same can't be said for Eight Degrees Cumulus Lupulus, but at least it makes itself clear (figuratively) from the name. The brewery released a beer with the same title back in 2017, in the first flush of the haze craze. The new one has been extensively revised, reducing the ABV to 5.2% and making it a showcase for that most showcase-worthy of hops, Nelson Sauvin. And yet, despite the branding it's not particularly hazy, being quite translucent. Furthermore it's not really juicy either, giving instead a punchy bitterness, all spiky and herbal, suggesting nettles or dandelions to me. An assertive pith character is as fruity as it gets, brimming with lime and grapefruit. I really enjoyed it, but mostly for its West Coast flavour profile, which I'm sure wasn't the point of the exercise.

The other festival veteran which changed hands recently was Dungarvan Brewing. Alas the new owners didn't get the memo that Dungarvan's job at these gigs is to bring cask, and they were all keg on the day. Their festival special was a Cherry Imperial Stout, which sounded like it would be right up my alley, but I was disappointed. Although it's all of 9.5% ABV and has bags of warm cherry character, it was lacking on the stout front: inexcusably thin and missing the complementary chocolate notes I was expecting. I like cherry flavours, but I like imperial stout even more, and this one didn't have the goods.

The cask mantle was taken up by another Waterford brewery, Hopfully, who had a porter called Waterford Dark on the handpump. The only criticism I have for this one is that it's not really festival material, at least to this sipper of halves. This is a plain-spoken, no-nonsense porter, of a modest 4.5% ABV. The flavour is dry, emphasising the roasted grain. I would have like a bit more of a chocolate side, but can't argue with the specs and would very happily have consumed two or three pints of this on the trot in different circumstances. It shouldn't be a festival special and I hope some worthy pub takes it on. Looking at you, Tully's.

I tend to think of Hopfully as a brewery that operates very much in the "craft" space, pushing out endless hazy IPAs and fruited sour concoctions, all with their self-conscious bespoke artwork on the branding. So I don't know why they're suddenly into classic styles. Also at their bar, for example, was a Munich Helles. It's maybe a smidge on the weak side at only 4.8% ABV, but otherwise it's absolutely perfectly executed: silky smooth and subtle; low on hop character, though what's there is classically German, and with the light spongecake sweetness that is the style's signature move. This was another one to make me regret my no-pints policy.

And to go with that, Hopfully also had a Munich Dunkel. I often find these to be a little too bitter for my taste, owing I guess to the combination of noble hops and roasted malt. This one didn't go that way, and I enjoyed it all the better for that. The bitterness quotient is no more than a little red liquorice, accompanied in the flavour by some crispy brown sugar and plenty of soft and rich caramel. That isn't allowed to become oversweet by being set on a pristine lager base. It's well-balanced and satisfying drinking, and not too dangerous with only 5.2% ABV. 

Killarney Brewing was a pleasant surprise to find at the gig. We only get their core range in Dublin, and I know they have a busy turnover of specials and one-offs in their two Kerry taprooms. I tried Il Cielo D'Irlanda, collaboration with Birrificio Italiano and presumably referencing haze and Irish weather in the name. It's a rye pale ale, which creates certain expectations of spice and colour, but it was surprisingly pale and not all that hazy. And I couldn't taste the rye either. It's properly bitter, with a lovely zesty cleanness, but I was still looking for the peppery effect that, for me, is the whole point of rye beers. I think they didn't use enough. Still that's a minor complaint, and it's a lovely beer. A major complaint is that I wasn't even half way through my half when someone knocked it over.

A replacement beer was very kindly offered by Brehon Brewhouse, their cold IPA called Standstill. It's a very good example of the style and doesn't have any of the unpleasant green-onion effect which tends to plague them. This is still clean and lager-like, and 5% ABV, with a strong resinous aroma and classic new-world hop flavours, of lemon and grapefruit. This punchy bitterness is balanced by a gentler herbs or salad side, suggesting celery or melons. As with Lineman's Supernature above, the hop flavours come through beautifully clearly with no interference from anything else. I haven't always got on with Brehon's IPAs, but this is some of their best work.

Unfortunately I can't say the same about their gluten-free lager, Light & Bright. It is indeed both of those things: 4.2% ABV and a limpid pale gold. The flavour seemed a little off to me, however, with a kind of musty sackcloth graininess and a surprise banana sweetness. Maybe the aim was to make an almost flavourless lager, but if that's the case, it hasn't worked (and why would you bring it to a beer festival?), falling foul of some quite commonplace pale lager problems.

I had one last Brehon beer late on in the evening, a sour one called Sloe It Down. I've become quite accustomed to fruit beers like these not being sour at all, so it was a very pleasant surprise to discover that this one is. It's a golden colour, not really tinted by the fruit, and I'm guessing real sloes have been used. They have almost completely fermented out, leaving no more than a vague echo of unspecified berries: gooseberry and redcurrant, perhaps. The real joy of this 3.5%-er is the tartness, which is deliciously mouthwatering and refreshing. It might make a good base for some other fruit, if they felt like it.

The offer from Lough Gill was a little disappointing: lots of beers but mostly ones that are in regular production. It's a brewery where one might expect an outré festival special of the sort they used to bring to the Alltech extravaganza in years gone by. Here, it was nothing more exciting than an Amber Lager, itself not the most exciting of beer styles. It was on the pale side of amber but tasted much darker, with notes of caramel, fruitcake and a mild toastiness. The whole thing is convincingly retro; a reminder of times when discerning beer drinkers were more easily pleased, perhaps.

It's not often that I get to drink Outer Place beers on draught, and their latest was a pale ale called Atoms. This, I would say, is another beer style that rarely gets anyone's blood pumping, but this is a superb example. It's hazy, as is the Outer Place way, and they would like you to know it has been double dry-hopped with Exclipse and freezy Citra. The result is an absolute fruit bomb, tasting of a mélange of tropical and citrus, with ripe mandarin being most prominent. It's sweet too, creating an effect that reminded me of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum, although that's something I haven't tasted for real in decades. Despite the murk, it's light-bodied and very refreshing. A class act all round, I thought.

Some stouts to go out on. Kildare brewpub Dew Drop was a welcome addition to the line-up: their draught is largely confined to their own premises and even the cans are hard come by. Among the regulars, they brought a stout I hadn't seen before, called Turnpike. You can very much tell that this is aimed at the mainstream Irish stout drinker, with its 4.1% ABV and nitrogenated serve. The aim isn't to do anything fancy, and it doesn't. Instead, it's a plain and well balanced example, emphasising the dry roast in a way that makes me suspect there's only that and pale malt in the grain bill. There was an interesting parallel with Hopfully's porter which, though similar, was aided by the temperature and texture of its cask format. I confess, I'm not a huge fan of this kind of stout. They tend to seem like something is missing, be it chocolate, coffee, hop fruit or alcoholic warmth. I suspect that anyone making them, who doesn't have their own outlet like Dew Drop, is on to a loser, because the big brands are popular because they're big brands. This drinker wants a point of differentiation in his microbrewed stout. 

And here's a case in point. One brewery had brought a beer that could almost have been designed for me: Rascals, and Holy Molé. This is the second version they've done, though I never tried the first one from their pilot series. For round two they've decided to reduce the ABV slightly, from 5.5% to an even 5. There's an excellent milk stout base, with all the sweet creaminess you would expect. And then it has been spiced up significantly, giving it a big kick of chilli flavour and heat which hits the back of the throat before settling snugly in the belly. Somehow it manages to stay blanced and drinkable with that, though perhaps my tolerance for such things is more than most. Not many Rascals pilot beers get the upgrade to full-scale production and packaging, but I'm very glad this one did. I will be back for more when the cans arrive, which they probably have by the time you read this.

And that's your lot. I did miss quite a few new beers at the gig, and the entirety of the imports, but I may get to catch up with some of those in due course. For the moment, it was lovely to have the festival back in the RDS, and although that particular part of it is due for demolition, I would love to see it elsewhere on the campus next September.

Distant horizons

The temperature hit the mid-30s when I was in Plovdiv. That necessitated some split-shift tourism, visiting sights in the morning and evening, with the sweltering afternoons spent cowering under air-conditioning at the hotel. Hot-weather beers were also a necessity and, via the good offices of the Beertherapy off licence in town, I found these potentially suitable candidates, from Helsinki's CoolHead brewery. The name alone seemed apt. 

Naked Sauna Sour was where I started. This is described as a Nordic sour, using mixed fermentation. It's a hazy orange with no real head, so nothing unusual there. Both the flavour and aroma seemed the very opposite of Nordic to me: downright tropical. I was getting a Liltish mix of pineapple, mango and grapefruit, although unfortunately the brewery doesn't tell us what the actual ingredients are, though they do say that coriander seed is part of it, which I never would have guessed. It could be that the fruit is entirely hop-derived, in which case I'm very impressed. At only 4% ABV it's light-bodied and very refreshing with lots of cleansing sparkle, if not a very pronounced sourness. Still, I liked what it does. There's no excessive sweetness or syrup, and it served up some very welcome hot-weather refreshment. As far as I can see, they've been making this for a few years now, and seem to have it finely honed.

That was enough of a success to have me back in the CoolHead section of the Beertherapy fridge the following day, for more of the similar. Round two opened on CoolHead Gose, seemingly a simple example, only 3.5% and classically constructed with only salt and coriander as add-on ingredients. The first impression I got from tasting it was that the earlier one definitely wasn't made with fruit. This is also a mixed fermentation beer, presumably using the same microbes, and it tastes massively of sweet and juicy pineapple. The salt gives the body a briney boost, which lessens its refreshment power a little, but the spritzy fizz and a solid helping of sourness mean it still gets the job done. I couldn't taste any coriander, just some extra fruit complexities, like Golden Delicious apple, cranberry and whitecurrant. I can't say this tastes exactly like a classic gose, even when it's made from the same stuff, but it's not some candied concoction either, and is very palatable indeed.

The next one is a candied concoction, and with Nordic honesty is labelled as a "candy sour". The name is Pineapple Grapefruit Sour, which could have been applied to the first beer. This is quite a different creature, however. It doesn't appear to be mixed fermentation, and doesn't have anything like the same flavour profile. It's 5% ABV and a murky dark orange colour, quite heavily textured and smelling of a grapefruit soft drink more than beer. This is very much one of those theoretically sour jobs, tasting sweet and sugary. The grapefruit adds a little zest to the flavour but not enough to balance it with any significant tartness. The pineapple is no more than a faint trace, mostly in the aftertaste: real, but unobtrusive. As these things go, it's good. They haven't loaded it with vanilla or lactose or suchlike unpleasantness, but in a sequence with the previous two beers it doesn't stack up so well.

Finally, tropical heat calls for Tropical Sour, this one with mango, passionfruit, lychee and peach, and looking like a blend of the juice of all of them, one with sizeable chunks of what I hope is fruit pulp bobbing about inside. We're back down to 4% ABV, and back to a light and fizzy body. For all that it probably has a high proportion of real fruit in it, it doesn't taste especially fruity; only of a general mish-mash of unspecified tropicals. I guess the passionfruit is to the fore, but a good deal less than in most passionfruit-flavoured beers. The aroma is rather brighter and fresher, suggesting a fleshy juiciness that never gets delivered in the taste. It's OK, but not their best work.

I think what we might have here is a clear demonstration of the benefits of mixed fermentation. Those ones were much more complex and, frankly, much more fruity than the ones with actual fruit in them. Overall, there's a Nordic thoroughness to each -- all are as the brewer meant them to be, I'm sure. But that's not to say that they're equals.

On the early train out of Plovdiv I opened Tundra, Põhjala's non-alcoholic pale ale. I guess I thought that this reputable brewery would be better at this sort of thing than most, but they're not. It's a very typical example of the genre with all the attendant problems. The main one is an unpleasant metallic bitterness right at the centre, nasty and inescapable. There are some nicer features behind this, suggesting that this would be quite enjoyable, were it a regular beer. The texture is soft and creamy, with some sweetly pleasant tangerine and satsuma notes, very much in New England territory without going overboard on the vanilla. It's just a shame that the aspirin honks all the through it, from opening to aftertaste. My quest for acceptable non-alcoholic pale ale will continue, when I can be bothered.

With the sun over the yard arm it was booze yes, gluten no, for the next one: Helge pale ale at 5% ABV. Often, gluten is stripped out by a clarifying agent, but not here: it's a very hazy pale shade of yellow. There was a distinctive and unusual aroma and flavour and it took me a while to pin it down to sherry, of the dark cream sort. I would be surprised if this were the result of oxidation so I suspect it's the result of whatever gluten-avoiding grains they've used, although only oats and barley are named on the can. The hops add a seriously tropical character: a concentration of passionfruit and pineapple with lots of juiciness. There's a little of haze's typical grit, but well hidden under the sherry oddness. It's not bad, overall, and certainly an interesting take on hazy pale ale. No gluten doesn't mean it's lacking in flavour or individuality.

We finish sour, with Meri, a gose. It's a straight-up example, something much easier to find in Bulgaria than at home. In the glass it's a pale amber colour, the head quickly fizzling away. Its aroma is spritzy lemon, suggesting a generous quantity of hop, but that doesn't get realised on tasting. First up there is a jaw-pinching sourness, followed by a smooth yet assertive salinity. Is pink Himalayan rock salt a more salty salt than ordinary salt? From the taste of this beer, it might be. But no hops and no coriander to speak of, even though both are in the ingredients, which is disappointing. The salt is all that's left in the finish and aftertaste. This is OK but unexciting. Straight gose is such a novelty that finding one is always a treat, but there are ways of zhushing them up without doing anything weird. This doesn't bother with either approach.

I associate Põhjala more with strong, dark and/or barrel-aged beers. These three middling efforts in the light and pale space indicate why that may be.

And that's the end of the Bulgaria posts. I'm very glad I went; I commend Plovdiv in particular to anyone into visiting cool European cities; but the beer scene didn't seem to be quite there in summer 2024. A final shout out to everyone involved in keeping it running. I appreciate how difficult that is.

Ze Germans

I'm guessing the large number of Czech and German visitors to Bulgaria are one reason it carries more of their beers than ones from any other country. When I was feeling down about what the Bulgarian breweries were offering, at least I could fall back on something from countries where the general beer standard is rather higher. And that even yielded a few new ticks. I didn't know that Dortmund icon DAB had such a range of beers, for one thing.

DAB Dark, for instance, was quite a surprise, but one I fully accepted and wanted to give a try. This is 4.8% ABV and pitch black with a white head. I don't think they call it a schwarzbier anywhere on this version of the can, but to my mind it absolutely is one: lots of dry, burnt-toast roasted grain set on a super-clean lager base. There's a lot of charcoal, but a tiny smoosh of softer caramel as well, to balance it out. It's beautiful, and deserves to be as famous as DAB's style-defining Dortmunder lager. I'm annoyed at the world for not showing it to me before, though I have never set foot in Dortmund, in fairness. When I do, I hope to be drinking this.

DAB also brews a Hoppy Lager, seemingly for Italy as all the can information was in Italian. This is 5% ABV and unfiltered, so an unappetising misted yellow shade. There's a strong citrus perfume, suggesting cloudy lemonade in the aroma. The flavour is just as zesty, and I'd almost believe that extract of lemon or grapefruit has been added in, but I'm sure the doyens of Dortmund don't play that way. The can says, in Italian, that nothing fancier than Cascade has been used to create the effect. It's impressive. Of course, under the hoppy zing, there's a classic Dortmund lager. Unfiltered can sometimes mean there's a touch of earthiness or grit lurking in the taste, but that's not the case here; all it does is leave the hop character intact and maybe give the mouthfeel a boost, it being slightly fluffy rather than perfectly crisp. It's beautiful stuff all the same. I can see why the Italians are trying to keep it all for themselves.

On a sillier note, I couldn't resist Schöfferhofer Watermelon Mint when I saw it. The brewery has a number of good-quality radlers, and this is another one: weissbier mixed 50/50 with a soft drink and coming out at 2.5% ABV. It's quite a bright pink colour, evocative of real liquidised watermelon. The aroma gives fresh mint first: a burst of toothpaste or mint imperials. The softer watermelon lurks under this, subtle and real, not the harsh green twang of concentrate. It's very fizzy, but that's about the only common feature of weissbier I could detect. Otherwise, it's once again mint to the fore with the juicy fruit behind. This is tasty and very refreshing, and I commend whoever came up with the idea. It's not very beer-like, though, tasting much more like a minty soft drink. I absolutely see a use for it, however.

Much of the beer shopping was done in various Lidls, and in one I found one of the Eichbaum "Steam-Brew" beers which as far as I know hasn't yet appeared in Ireland. This is Steam-Brew Wheat Pale Ale which is 5.6% ABV and has a weird aroma of tinned fruit and stale sweat. Of the two, I'm happy to say that the flavour concentrates more on the fruit, with peach in particular and then a slight lemon zest but no real bitterness. Still, the savoury, salty, sweat thing never quite goes away, and adds an unpleasant oddness to the picture. I don't know what they had in mind when they designed this recipe, but no other beer tastes like it, and with good reason. Overall, it's too sweet and quite cloying. Although there are features from good wheat beer, of both the German and Belgian persuasion, it doesn't join them up in the way that reputable brewers of these styles do. I'm not surprised that this is another dud in a generally poor series, but at least I know not to bother with it if it appears here.

I flew home via Frankfurt, which is not one of my favourite airports in general, but I discovered that it now has a "craft beer" bar, which at least shows that they're making an effort. Of course, in the way of these things, it needs must be tied to a single large brewery, and here it's Radeburger, the subsidiary of Dr Oetker which owns Allgäuer, Tucher, our DAB friends, and the self-consciously craft label BraufactuM, which I'm surprised to see they're still running with, a decade later than big craft brands convinced anyone.

Yet here they are with BraufactuM Pale Ale, and it is an archetype of the massive industrial brewery trying to make beer in the cool 1990s American mode. The amber-coloured liquid has an aroma of sweet flowers and a little pine resin. It hints at classic US pale ale but doesn't venture into that bold territory, neither in the aroma nor the flavour, which is very plain. I got some sweet strawberry notes of the sort you sometimes find in Irish red ale, and a little of the resin from the aroma, but that's it. The brewery talks a big game, calling it a fruchtbomben and telling us that Comet, Callista and Herkules are the hops. It's not, and the hops don't matter. It has the weight of a good American pale ale, and is all of 5% ABV, but it simply does not deliver the goods. On the journey out I drank a can of Spaten at the gate between flights, and I would have preferred to do the same on the homeward leg instead.

We're not home yet, though. I have one more set of Bulgaria-acquired beers to tell you about.

The nationals

My last three posts covered what I saw of the craft scene on my visit to Bulgaria, and I make no attempt to define what I mean by "craft" there: Bulgaria has a fairly clear line between the small producers making IPAs, stouts, sour fruited beers and the like, and the industrial multinationals who do pale lager and very little else. I'm always interested in how the macro game plays out in any country, and so drank quite a bit of this beer, both by choice and by default when nothing better was available.

I guess the national flagship is Kamenitza: it is at least the beer I saw most often. The history of this one (they claim) goes back to 1881 in Plovdiv, though production now happens in the nearby town of Haskovo. It's one of the StarBev family of brands across central and eastern Europe, initially acquired by AB InBev at the fall of communism but now part of Molson Coors. As a national flagship goes, it's not a bad one: 4.4% ABV and pretty much as clean and dry as you would like. Inoffensive, but not dull, with a soft and bready texture and little sign of cheapness or cut corners. I got a very slight solvent note from one pour as it warmed in the afternoon sun, but I blame myself for that. It's usually about €3 for a half litre so is not meant for sitting over. 

StarBev's second brand is Astika, which I drank on the epic journey from Burgas back west to Sofia. This is lighter than most, at 3.8% ABV, and seems to be brewed to a price point that's displayed on the can. For all that, it's fine: crisp and clean when cold, with merely a tiny buzz of bitterness from what I'm guessing is hop extract. As it warms, which this one did in a non-airconditioned train carriage on a 30°C day, a note of pear creeps in, but it doesn't get unpleasantly estery the way some beers of this sort do. The price-conscious Bulgarian lager drinker is well-served here.

Occupying, I'm guessing, a place between the two in the StarBev portfolio is Burgasko. The branding here leans in to Burgas's location on the Black Sea, and the jumping off point for the many holiday resorts along the nearby coast. A sunbather adorns the can and, maybe I'm just the suggestible sort, but the beer seemed well designed for that context, being very light, very pale, very refreshing, but tasting of almost exactly nothing, just fizz. No need to worry about the beer losing character when served chilled to the maximum: there's nothing in here to be lost. Beach-resort drinking did not feature on my trip at any point, but if it had, I wouldn't have objected to this being the cheap local lager for it.

Naturally, Heineken has stuck its oar in for a piece of the pie, and their most ubiquitous brand is Zagorka. I had two pints of this, and slightly different experiences with them. At the hotel bar in central Sofia it seemed either poorly-made or very tired, with notes of disinfectant and metallic aspirin. But it was much better in the airport hotel on the way out, for a given value of better. It's quite surprising how plain and characterless it is for a 5% ABV lager: you might have thought there'd be a decent malt base at least. Instead, it's an exceedingly pale golden and, in good condition, tastes of almost nothing. Whatever their process is for sucking all the personality out of a beer, it works very well indeed.

Much as I didn't enjoy my initial Zagorka experience, I was charmed by the look of Zagorka Retro when I saw it in Carrefour a little later. "Retro" doesn't just mean the 1970s label, it's also unpasteurised, and I think that makes a big difference. Unfortunately it was very skunked, thanks to the green glass, smelling of fermented cabbage and old lawn clippings. The flavour is cleaner, and I couldn't really detect the lightstrike. Instead there's sweet cereal and a little noble grassiness. Beyond the too-obvious skunking, it's rather decent. I don't know if a canned version of this would fit the branding, but I reckon it's worth trying regardless. At a guess, this answers the demands of Zagorka drinkers who noticed how bastardised the main beer had become.

The Zagorka brewery also produces Ariana, though I don't know where on their premiumisation spectrum it sits. The beer is good, however. It's beautifully smooth and clean, with low carbonation and a soft bready texture. While only 4.5% ABV it's in no way thin or watery, showing some quite Germanic vibes. There's maybe a tiny estery element -- the suggestion of a headache -- as it warms, but I had to look for that. Otherwise it's quite a plain but satisfying affair. I didn't see it on draught anywhere and would have been perfectly happy with a cold mug of it.

The brewery also produces the Stolichno brand, of which I saw two different beers, both in German styles. It seems a little odd that a premium type of range didn't include a take on American pale ale, but whatever. First up it's Stolichno Weiss, claiming to be a normal weissbier, though at the toytown strength of 4.4% ABV. It's a little on the dark side, and not very hazy, but the flavour is spot on for accuracy. There's lots of big and mushy ripe banana, almost into the foam candy level of sweetness. Clove doesn't feature, nor anything much else, saving a soft caramel sweet side. There's a surprising amount of body given how light in alcohol it is, and it absolutely passes muster as a proper weissbier, just not one of the really good ones. File under "workmanlike". If it serves to introduce a Bulgarian audience to the wonderful world of strange-tasting beers, as Erdinger did for so many in my part of the world, then it has an honest and worthwhile purpose.

There's also a Stolichno Bock: a rare and valuable seam of darkness through this otherwise uniformly pale set of industrial beers. This has a bit of welly at 6.5% ABV, and with it it's dark and treacly, the flavour piling in gooey fudge sauce and burnt fruitcake, with some lighter cherry. That gets balanced by a very Munich-dunkel-style herbal bitterness, adding a tang to the finish and balancing all the dark sticky sugar. It's one of those beers that serves as a reminder that even Heineken Bulgaria's brewers have the talent and equipment to make really good beer, but mostly don't. This one was better than about 80% of the independent beers I drank, and it's readily available across the country in bottles and cans. It's not for the session though. One or two at a time is plenty.

Carlsberg's mainstay in these part is Shumensko, in its vibrant red can. It's 4.8% ABV and a slightly washed-out shade of golden, suggesting that high quality is not part of the spec, but sometimes we get lucky with these. Not here. It tastes cheap. There's a syrupy extract feel to the malt side, and a hard tangy metallic character in place of hops. If I look hard there's perhaps a bouquet of fresh meadow flowers as well, but I'm reaching for them and I can't sustain that picture in focus for long. A few seconds later we're back to pencil sharpeners and flinty sparks. I knew this round-up would include at least one basic-of-the-basic industrial lager, and here it is. Drink it if there's nothing else, or if you fancy it at c.90 cents the can in Lidl, as I did. 

Around the same price, Carlsberg also offers Pirinsko, which is 4.4% ABV. This is proper middle-of-the-road stuff, medium-bodied with a hint of golden syrup sweetness but nothing much by way of hops. It's... Carlsberg, essentially. There's the building blocks of decent lager but with all the corners cut and all the edges planed beyond smooth into a dull blandness. This is a beer it's hard to be offended by and, for example, consumed cold from a hotel fridge while sitting on a hotel balcony, is bang on. It's hard to write a review of it, however, because it's so purely average, and deliberately so, no doubt. Basic industrial lager is what this post is about, and Pirinsko is an exemplar. Full marks for that, I guess.

Britos seems to be quite commonplace in the east of Bulgaria, and this one may actually be wholly locally owned. I couldn't tie it to any of the big players and the company was only founded in 2012, even though it looks like one of the heritage brands. The beer itself is a very middle-of-the-road macro lager, and I doubt that bringing a quality drinking experience to the people was what the owners have in mind: this seems very much designed to be indistinguishable from the many other big labels. It's a middling 4.5% ABV, and nicely smooth, but the flavour is quite cheap-tasting: a generic mix of crackers and metal, which I've tasted in many, many hot country lagers, but which the Bulgarian big boys have mostly avoided. Anyway, Britos is fine if it's what's being poured, but is by no means a cut above the mainstream, unfortunately.

Finally we have Gayda: the bagpipe beer. A fully armed bagpipe, according to the label. Like they're not dangerous enough already. I'm not sure this should really be included amongst the industrial beers as it doesn't seem to be from a multinational, but it is contract-brewed and is a fairly standard pale lager. To wit: it's 4.8% ABV and a medium golden colour, smelling sweetly of honey-crusted breakfast cereal. That sweetness intensifies on tasting, giving it an almost bock-like sense of concentrated malt. For me it was quite tough drinking: the beer isn't big-flavoured, but what's there is at once sickly sweet and vegetally bitter. An overactive fizz is thrown in for bad measure. I wasn't charmed by this guy at all, finding it rough and difficult, even at a low fridge temperature. It has character; just not the good kind.

And that's all I have to say on Bulgarian beer, for better or worse. Of course, imports are available, and I'll be talking about those next.