Dropping pilots

I paid a fleeting visit to Rascals HQ in October, something I really must make more of a habit of. They had two new beers from their pilot series.

#118 Scarlet's Ale is in everyone's favourite/least-favourite beer style, Irish red. She's a big girl for that, at 5.4% ABV. The brewery describes it as "simple", and I was expecting to disagree, and I do -- Rascals is not the sort of brewery that makes Smithwick's clones. The aroma is quite roasty, and there was something else going on, which I couldn't quite identify. Maybe it would become clearer in the flavour. That did all the things typical of microbrewed red, with bright and meadowy floral notes from presumably English hops; a light caramel sweetness, turning chewier and more toffee-like on warming. The darker roast from the aroma returns in the finish, as does the other thing. It's phenols: subtle, but I think I have a strong sensitivity. I'm rarely able to tell whether it's from the glass, the lines or an infection in the beer itself, just it wasn't quite right. That's extremely unusual for Rascals. There is a very decent beer here, one than transcends boring old Irish red and heads towards Scotch ale territory. Those without the unfortunate predisposition to picking up bleach notes will find much to enjoy.

Next in the sequence was something much more orthodox and without any unpleasant surprises: Pilot #119 Weisse was, I guess, created as part of their Oktoberfest line-up. I know this is merely cosmetic, but the lack of a proper weissbier glass let it down a bit -- I wasn't immediately in weissbier mode when it arrived at the table. Beyond this, it was a straight up example. 5.2% ABV gives it the right amount of heft, and there's a satisfying density with a pillowy softness. The colour is on the darker, more wholesome, side: orange rather than yellow, and completely hazy, although Rascals rarely shies away from that. A huge waft of clove opens the flavour, followed by sweet brown banana and a layer of smooth, gooey caramel. This isn't one of your crisp and summery weizens, being much more involved and sippable. It's well made, though, and I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a genuine Bavarian example.

This arbitrarily chosen pair go to show that, even at Rascals, small-batch experimental beer isn't all candied silliness and high ABV lunacy. They're quite capable of keeping to established parameters, though taking them in interesting directions.

Pull the other one

The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad. Here's what I found, beginning at The Silver Penny on Dublin's Abbey Street.

Adnams brewed a version of Central City's Red Racer Session IPA for the event, identical in strength to the Canadian original, and a charming clear copper colour. It's thin and unfortunately rather soapy. There's a bright fruity flavour that's a little like candy but a lot like a bath cosmetics shop. That makes it a trickier to drink than I'm sure was intended. It's not fully offensive, but whatever the Adnams process has done to the Mosaic hops didn't suit me.

Siren was a surprise to see in the line-up. I didn't think JD Wetherspoon was their bag. Anyway, they'd sent Mesmerist, looking every bit like a New England IPA -- pale and cloudy -- but only 3.4% ABV. The aroma is lightly lemony, and although it's light-bodied, it's not unpleasantly watery. In the flavour there's the rather aggressive bite of low-ABV heavily-hopped beer: a herbal, mineral bitterness with a solid dose of dank resins, despite it not feeling at all oily. Malt isn't much of a feature, but there's a dry crisp base behind the Citra, Eclipse and Mosaic hops. I rather enjoyed it. While it's a bit of a one-dimensional hop explosion, it remains drinkable and fun.

I was wondering why the name of the Hogs Back beer, Notorious PIG, was familiar, and it's because Bullhouse used it for a porter back in 2017. This is a bitter, broadly, though badged as east coast IPA: 3.8% ABV and a crystal-clear medium gold in the glass. The flavour doesn't give up much, but what's there is good: tropical mango and lychee. In keeping with the advertised style, bitterness is not really a feature, although it cheats slightly by having a super-quick finish where it's not really given a chance. The wateriness grates a bit after a while, so this may be a bit too dull to have a session on, but a half was rewarding.

"Brewed at Banks's" was never an especially encouraging thing to see on a collaboration pumpclip but it took on an extra poignancy with the announcement of the brewery's permanent closure. For their last bow, Orihime, with Japanese brewer and Wetherspoon festival veteran Toshi Ishii. It's a pale ale, 4.3% ABV, and while there are some pleasant and exotic fresh hop notes of soft peach and zingy lime, there's also plenty of distinctively English tannin and dried orange peel. There's also an unfortunate soapy bitterness which doesn't sit well with any national characteristics. In toto, it's assertive, punchy and distinctive, but not terribly enjoyable. Bye Banks's. I'm sorry we didn't part on a happier note.

I don't think I've seen Yorkshire brewer Rudgate at the festival before, and I definitely didn't think a fruit beer called Mango in the Night was their sort of thing. Here it was, though: a 4.5% ABV pale ale with mango. There's a very slight haze to the orange colour and a nonspecific funky ripe fruit aroma. The texture is thin and the condition lacking, for an overall watery mouthfeel. No mangoes explode on the palate, nor any of the promised Citra hops. Instead there's a vague candy fruit effect and what tastes to me like a rasp of papery oxidation. It would appear that yer da has attempted to do something cool so the young folk will be impressed, but has failed. Give him a pint of ruby mild and take him home.

St Austell is also being adventurous, with Fresh Pot. Disappointingly, the name references only coffee (1970s drug puns? Really?) It looks well: jet black with a proper stout head the colour of nicotine-stained teeth. No freshness manifests in the aroma but the flavour is beautifully caffeinated, tasting rich and oily, perhaps more akin to a luxurious coffee cream confectionery than the actual drink. While it's mostly sweet, there's a perfectly poised balancing roast and I genuinely can't tell whether that's the underlying stout or the coffee additive. Fine coffee complexities of cherry and raisin emerge as it warms. This is a marvel of the genre, bringing together all the great stuff about coffee and stout, and staying true to both.

Session 1 ended with Salem Session IPA from Batemans. This was the first not to feature Mosaic, but still goes all-American with Cascade, Amarillo and El Dorado. It's clear and amber-coloured, 4.1% ABV and has a decently full body and proper bitterness. In fact, you wouldn't know American hops were involved at all. To me it tasted like a classic English bitter, leaning towards the brown side of the spectrum, with notes of tea, fruitcake and jaffa orange peel. The tannic bite is its signature feature and makes it well worth seeking out, especially if such things are not part of your normal drinking life. If Batemans wanted it to taste American they have failed abysmally, but it worked for me.

Over at Keavan's Port, it was apps not taps on day one: only Townshend Dinner Ale was listed online but more was pouring. Townshend, from New Zealand is not a brewery I know, and the beer was brewed at Hook Norton. Despite the historical style name it's a bitter: golden and 4.2% ABV. Presumably bored of kiwi hops, they've gone all English with Challenger, Northdown and Target. And yet there's quite a new-world vibe about it, with fresh and zesty lemon, building to a grapefruit bitterness with a little softer peach and melon for balance. While not a powerhouse of flavour by any means, it has the soft-spoken decency of good English bitter. I would expect as much from Hook Norton.

The big surprise for Wetherspoon-watchers this time around was Burning Sky's Aurora, a pale ale of 5.6% ABV. Straw-coloured, said the booklet but my pint was distinctly amber; rose gold at best. There was a certain saison-ish quality to it, which shouldn't really be surprising as it's what the brewery is known for. Pear, dried fruit mix and, oh yes, straw all feature in a dry flavour profile. The strength gives it a nicely long finish, still propelling the goods long after swallowing. And despite this, it's still an accessible cask ale, and probably perfectly sessionable. For €2.60 a pint, it did very nicely indeed.

Over in Norwich, about which much more very soon, The Glass House had a great selection of festival specials on, and I started with Conwy's Born To Be Mild, a dark mild, of course. It's not a brilliant one, even though it has lots of the flavour elements I look for: sweet plums and dry toast. The problem is that there's not enough of either of them. It's all a bit too, well, mild. There was plenty of room for putting more character into this 3.8% ABV ale, and that they haven't is an opportunity lost.

I picked up another of the international collaborations here: Who Dat?, a golden ale created by Urban South of New Orleans and brewed at the generally-reliable Bateman's. Something had gone badly wrong here, and I assumed it was at dispense: a massive bleachy phenol kick making me think of glass washing fluid. On bringing it back to the bar it was replaced without fuss, though the beer wasn't taken off. I've subsequently had reports from drinkers in other pubs that this is just how the beer was. That can't be right. Did nobody taste it before it left the brewery?

The substitute was Sapphire Spoon, brewed by Titanic to toast 45 years of Wetherspoon pubs. This was an amber-coloured bitter, and rather a plain one, with basic honey and biscuit notes, but no real hop character. At least it's not sticky or gloopy, finishing nice clean with an almost lager-level of crispness. It's all of 4.7% ABV, which means it could easily have been oversweet with crystal malt, but it isn't. I don't think I've had many of their bitters, but I thought Titanic generally made better beer than this.

There's a vast multi-floor Wetherspoon at Stansted Airport, whence I flew home. On the day, it was serving the final international collaboration: All Dog Alert, an oatmeal stout by Yazoo of Nashville, here brewed by Oakham. At 5.5% ABV it's at the upper end of the strength scale, but it uses it well. Thanks to a big body, aided by the oatmeal, this is a rich and satisfying pint, with chewy, glutinous cereal and a sizeable dollop of chocolate sauce, plus some bonus soft caramel or sticky toffee. For all that dessert busyness, it's quite accessible and easy drinking. Vey much accessible enough to warrant a second pint before departure. It took long enough to find it, but this was the beer of the festival for me.

Unsurprisingly, stout and porter were the standouts. The cask format shines brightest in the dark. Plodding through all the cheap, samey bitters to find them is worthwhile to find the good stuff.

Follow-ups

My September trip to the Netherlands yielded a handful of beers which I didn't get round to drinking while travelling and which therefore came home with me. Let's see what's in the suitcase.

Kees is a brewery I trust with dark beers, and I thought they would be fine on black IPA. This is Midnight Cascade, one I picked up in a supermarket in Leiden. It's definitely a little on the pale side, being brown, not black. The aroma is quite a muted mix of dark roast and flowery hops, neither especially pronounced. At 5.6% ABV there should be more going on, but the flavour continues in this very understated vein. What's there is good: it's not dull or characterless; there's an attractive Turkish delight bouquet of rosewater, lavender and peppercorns, accompanied by a light topping of milk chocolate. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem arises from an irritating lack of bitterness. Good black IPA would throw in a piquant bitterness, of fresh red or green cabbage, or even classic American pine. This has none of that, its lightly sweet complexity simply fading off the palate, leaving only watery fizz behind. I'm not averse to a floral-tasting porter, but this isn't even one of those, lacking any proper richness. There is an excellent flavour profile in the make-up of this beer, but it needs to be bigger, louder, and given a challenging bitterness to make it really shine. 

It was the beginning of Halloween season at multipurpose retail chain HEMA as I was leaving Amsterdam. Their range of Lowlander beers included Pumpkin Weizen, a bottle of which I picked up for funsies. Spiced orange, cinnamon, ginger and cardamom are all listed on the ingredients of this 5%-er, after the pumpkin, of course. It doesn't look much like a weissbier, lacking the head. It smells orangey but not spiced, with a citric hop element too, more akin to a pale ale. We're definitely in weissbier territory with the flavour, however: there's a smooth and slick banana quality to the foretaste which couldn't be anything else. But the other stuff? There's not so much of that. Two years ago I criticised a different HEMA-acquired beer from a different brewery for being far too spiced, to the detriment of everything else. This is disappointingly bland. I know that pumpkins add little to no actual taste by themselves, but the selection of add-ons should have been enough to give this some novelty value. I hunted around the flavour and found nothing but the fresh orange zest and the summer biergarten weissbier vibes. It's a perfectly enjoyable beer, but by reneging on the promise of silliness, it left me feeling tricked, not treated.

Finally, from the shelves of Bierkoning in Amsterdam I procured Stout of the Box, an imperial milk stout by Rauw Brouwers from north Amsterdam. I was expecting this to be sweet, what with it being 10.5% ABV and brewed with caramel as well as, presumably, lactose, but it's bitter. The predominant flavour is a herbal quality, all oregano and rosemary, plus some cola, tobacco, and a rub of sticky liquorice. It's a lot more complex than I was expecting it to be, and definitely not a one-dimensional booze-and-sugar bomb. There's actually something a little old fashioned about its tarry, vegetal quality, in a very enjoyable way. The aniseed lingers long on the palate, giving it an almost medicinal quality. It certainly made me feel better. I'll be looking out for more from Rauw next time I'm in the 'Dam.

I know this small set is in no way representative of Dutch brewing, but they do make interesting beer, even if it's not always brilliant.

Lager season

It's nice to see breweries and pubs making a bit of an effort around seasonality, and Oktoberfest time brought multiple opportunities around Dublin to drink appropriate lagers.

That said, I've had Sun Spots from Outer Place Brewing sitting in my fridge since the summer, which has been far too long. They describe this as a West Coast Pilsner, although there's a haze on it which calls to mind the other sort of IPA. I take it that the description is meant to imply hops, and it certainly has those, smelling like fruit candy and tasting extremely zesty with a sweet backing, like cloudy lemonade or lemon drizzle cake. That's down to the presence of Citra, Mosaic and Idaho 7. I know there aren't any real lines between hopped-up pils and cold-fermented pale ale, but for me this falls more into the latter. The fruit character doesn't leave room for pils crispness, and without that I don't think it can claim to be a pilsner. Regrdless, it's a lovely beer. 5.2% ABV is perhaps a little on the strong side for something so refreshing and thirst-quenching, but if that's what it took, that's what it took. Outer Place doesn't have a core range, that I know of. This beer is a better candidate for any hypothetical one than all of their haze.

It was nice to see The Porterhouse leaning into its new status as a contract brewer by flagging that their seasonal Festbier was brewed by WhiteField. It shouldn't be a mystery and WhiteField is a trusty brewer of traditional European beer styles. So, I would love to say that this is a good example but -- oof! -- the diacetyl. There are those who say it isn't necessarily a flaw. Pilsner Urquell has a substantial fanbase, after all. After the initial shock of big butterscotch, I did begin to adjust. It's a sweet lager, bringing hints of brown sugar and fruitcake. I guess, as a party beer, it's meant to taste bigger and bolder than the norm, but it needs hops to balance the all-in malt, as any Urquellite will tell you. It's also not especially strong at 5% ABV. I'm really not sure whether to flag this as flawed or simply not to my taste. Either way, I wasn't feeling the need for a full litre.

More autumn lager is a bonus. Nobody said they had to be precisely to style, however.

Something for everyone

DOT continues to barrel age things that most breweries don't, such as the "micro fruit sour" called Yeah Yeah. It's not all that micro, at 3.4% ABV, and is a translucent pale amber colour. Strawberry, raspberry and white grape are the fruits, and none of them are especially prominent or distinctive. The raspberry is uncharacteristically quiet, while the strawberry is perhaps most noticeable, as a sweet jam or compote effect. The barrel ageing, on the other hand, makes a major contribution, adding notes of shaved coconut and pure vanilla essence. It threatens to get a bit sticky and cloying, sharing a flavour profile with beers which are. The low strength saves it, however, ensuring it's crisp and fizzy. It's certainly unusual, but I deem it an experiment worth repeating. You get the happy elements of a summer fruit beer, but also plenty of serious barrel complexity to stroke your chin about. Yeah Yeah? Yeah.

My recent complaint that the Teeling Distillery giftshop was overcharging for the small cans of DOT collaboration beers at €5.50 has been heeded. The latest addition to the series was €6: For Wheats Sake! This is a 4.5% ABV wheat beer, aged in former white wine whiskey barrels. It's a slightly hazy golden colour with the fine-bubbled head of a quality pilsner. The aroma is strongly fruity, and I don't know how much of that is the wine barrel and how much the hops; grape meets lychee. The wheat performs well in the texture, giving it a lovely silky mouthfeel: refined and sophisticated. The fruit aroma concentrates further in the flavour, turning to perfume, sprayed on with abandon, giving generous amounts of rosewater and jasmine, plus cinnamon and nutmeg spicing and a more serious funky musk. That might be a bit overwhelming were it not, again, for the low strength allowing for a swift finish. It's another bit of sunny summer fun, and fully unique. However, the price tag is an extra bit of spice I could have done without.

By contrast, it was less than half the price for another 4.5%-er, this time in Aldi. Interstate was next in the regular Spin Off Series DOT does for the supermarket. You don't get any barrel-ageing for that, only a perfectly straight American-style pale ale. It's quite an old-school offering too: a deep ochre colour; a little hazy, but not in the New England way. The aroma has tangy citric hops, sure, but a considerable malt component as well, which has become rarer in pale ales these days. The overall effect is of an orange-flavoured cookie or cake. As expected, the flavour leads with the bitterness: sharp to an almost metallic degree. This is where I'd normally say it fades to let the softer fruit through, but it doesn't really. Orange is still the dominant feature, but in a pithy and peely way, infused with oily zest. It's not a million miles from your classic Sierra Nevada, though the lower ABV shows in a lesser intensity and a thinner body. Still, it gets the job done and is excellent value.

Oktoberfest season brought two more Spin Offs. Helles promises the fundamentals: "golden lager with a slightly sweet finish". Slightly is apposite. I like a cuddly, fluffy Helles but this one is more on the dry side, with a crisp mineral rasp, more like you'd expect from a pilsner. Still, 5% ABV gives it a decently dense body, making for properly süffig drinking. The thick and pillowy head of fine foam made me wish I'd poured it into a proper handled mug. Its hops emerge as it warms and are noble to the core, presenting damp grass and green weeds. A certain degree of ester fruit threatens in the background of the flavour but never quite makes it to the fore. It's a pretty decent take on the style, and I don't think Aldi sells Spaten any more, so is filling an important gap.

Alongside that came Bock. In Germany, on its own, that would have suggested a pale beer, but this is no Heller Bock, nor Dunkel Bock nor Doppel. Its dark honey colour conjured the Netherlands rather than Germany for me. That's superficial, however. Dutch bock goes all in for caramel, this is much cleaner, tasting hardly dark at all. It doesn't taste bock-like, really, missing the big syrupy malt and loud weedy hops. Instead it's quite clean and plain, crisp and lagerish even more so than the Helles, with only a smidge more sweetness, from soft-spoken strawberry and raspberry notes. While balanced and refined, it does run the risk of being a little boring. I could have handled a bit more vegetal sharpness or burnt malt tang, especially at the substantial 5.9% ABV. But hey, it's Oktoberfest, and easy-drinking fortified lagers are the whole thing. This may not look like one, but it is.

We finish on the Silk Road, originally a pale ale but subsequently aged in Chinese red wine barrels and with added lactose and sour cherry. It's 6.2% ABV and, obviously, pink. The aroma is sweet and a little jammy, that fruit making itself felt on several planes. And it's there in the flavour as well, though not so much as real fruit, more a candy analogue: bubblegum or sherbet. That's far from the whole picture, however. At the front it's a coconut tang, like in the beer we started on, which I'm guessing derives from oak vanillin, and then a gentle peach-skin bitterness and a light nutmeg spice. I noticed the can was a bit squishy on opening, and the lack of carbonation lets it down. I feel we would have got more value out of the complex production process if it were fizzier. It's good, though, but could be better.

There's some nice diversity on display here, and all at reasonable strengths, if only occasionally reasonable prices.

The usual valediction

On the way home from the Borefts Beer Festival in September I spent a night in Amsterdam, and the days either side of it going to mostly my usual haunts in the Dutch capital.

That started at Arendsnest where, with Oktoberfestfest season imminent, I picked a Märzen: Sancti Selectus, from the Egmond brewery. It's the requisite 5.6% ABV, amber coloured and slightly hazy. At the centre is lots of bready richness, decorated with a meadowy floral perfume. While full-flavoured, it's also incredibly easy drinking and deserves to be sold in much larger measures than the pub was offering.

From there across to its sister pub, Beer Temple. Hola Fantasma comes from the Long Live Beerworks in Rhode Island. It's a Berliner weisse of 6% ABV with added blood orange, pineapple, strawberry and blackberry, turning it a murky dark pink. All of the added fruit get a say in the flavour, though the orange speaks loudest, being both citricly bitter and juicily sweet, like real mandarin pieces. The various features hang together well, creating an invigorating but gentle sour beer, one with an upbeat summer quality.

I didn't want to miss the opportunity to try this year's anniversary beer from the MoreBeer pub chain: Big Fat 15, a triple IPA of 9.99% ABV, brewed by Poesiat & Kater. It arrived an innocent-looking clear yellow but showed its true colours early, with a heady aroma that's both brightly zesty and weightily dank. The texture is chewy, and you know you have a strong beer on your hands. Its flavour follows the aroma, bringing fresh lemon, a harder grapefruit bite and then an equal amount of resinous pine. For a deliberately extreme beer, it's very well balanced, bulked up with malt to counter the souped-up hopping without impeding it. It's a worthy celebration, then.

The dark beer next to it is Fourth Press, a blend of strong stouts and ales, produced by Private Press Brewing in California. There must have been some powerful beers in there, because the average of them has left this at 15.2% ABV. It's black and headless, with an aroma of date, raisins, coffee and non-specific brown booze. Taken together, there's a bit of chocolate liqueur about it, with some vinous dark fruit as well. It's not a beer to drink a lot of, but it's absolutely gorgeous, combining imperial stout's dark richness with barley wine's warming fruit. I didn't think it would work this well, but it has.

Next stop was In de Wildeman where I started on Jopen's Farmhouse Rock, a saison. It's a big one, at 7% ABV, made with buckwheat and grains of paradise. Still, it's completely clear and a very pale yellow. Unsurprisingly, it's very clean for the style, missing all of the rustic earthy fuzz they often have. That leaves space for all the estery fruitiness, here suggesting white grape and honeydew melon in particular. While very obviously a strong beer, it's refreshing too, and generally tasty and enjoyable.

For herself, Morning Joe, the one by Basqueland -- it's not the most original name for a coffee stout. It's a serious one: 6.2% ABV and heavily infused with real coffee, presenting dry dark roasted notes as well as greasy coffee oils. A slight herbal quality lifts the flavour out of the gloopy depths of the filter machine, but you really would want to like coffee to get anything out of this. As a stout-first sort of guy, it left me a little cold.

Passing by the pub later on the way somewhere else, I swung in to try an interesting-looking barrel-aged beer they had on: Kees's Barrel Project IPA. This is a medium-strength IPA given a quick sojourn of ten days in a bourbon barrel. The result is 6.5% ABV and looks hazy yellow, like a witbier. Generally, I'm sceptical about the benefits of ageing hop-fronted beers like this, but the way they've done it here worked spectacularly well. All the hop fun is still there, the flavour teeming with fresh grapefruit. And then the bourbon adds a fully complementary lime sourness, making the whole into a kind of American whisky-based summer cocktail -- maybe an Old Fashioned? It tastes much lighter than the ABV suggests and is tremendous fun to drink. This is the second year of the project and more would be very worthwhile, I'd say.

We strayed a little off our usual route when I decided we should call in on De Prael on Monday afternoon. I haven't been to this pleasant little brewery taproom in several years, although that's largely because I don't really like their beers. But it's important to check in now and again with breweries you don't like, just in case they've become superb. So here we are.

They like to stick to their core range, and the only thing that was new to me even after a prolonged absence was bottled De Prael RIS, the imperial stout. After the weekend I'd had, impressing me with an imperial stout was a tall order, and at only 8.7% ABV it didn't start well. It's extremely fizzy, a common De Prael issue, and took forever to get poured into a glass. Along with the high carbonation comes a thinness, which I thought excessive even at the compromised ABV. At the centre of the flavour is a big, unsubtle, liquorice bitterness, segueing into a kaleidoscope of hop flavours, like one might find in a black IPA. The finish is dry, burnt and astringent. While I do detect the slightly amateurish character that De Prael beers can have, it does hit the style points of serious, old-fashioned, imperial stout quite well. For that I give it a pass.

Dining got me my final two ticks. The restaurant A. van Wees was a worthwhile discovery, for the good food and extensive genever menu. There is a good beer offering too, and I went for Strip, a witbier from Oedipus. It's a decent example of the style, and heavier on the floral side than most, doused in lavender and violet from the outset of the flavour. It finishes quite quickly and quite dry, and there's a nicely soft body, making the whole thing very thirst-quenching, like iced tea on a hot day. I'm guessing this is part of the regular line-up though I hadn't seen it before. For something produced by a Heineken subsidiary, it's very good.

And the last meal before Schiphol came with Hertog Jan Bockbier, it having been the season for the Dutch amber lager, and all the big breweries were heavily promoting their annual release. I hadn't tried the one from the good Duke before, and found it... decent. Not terribly different to the ones from Grolsch and Amstel, which probably shouldn't be surprising. It is particularly dark, however; almost black. There's an amount of complexity that's very unusual for an AB InBev beer, starting with a bite of crisp burnt caramel, and then showing liquorice bitterness and tangy autumn fruit: plum and damson. It shouldn't have taken so long for me to give this a go, but I commend it. I wish we had a seasonal style that forced all the boring breweries to make good beer once a year...

And on such musings I take my leave of the Netherlands once more. And this time I won't be a back for, oh, a couple of weeks. Can't wait.

White bread and herrings

On 3rd October 1574, during the Eighty Years War, the Spanish who besieged the city of Leiden were routed by a band of Dutch rebels. Supplies of herring and white bread were brought to the starving populace, who made it an occasion of annual celebration in the city. Extra stops were pulled out to mark the 450th anniversary this year, including a grand communal meal on the eve of the big day. I arrived a couple of weeks prior, as registration opened for locals who wished to participate. By the looks of queue that snaked along the canal, past where I sat outside the Stadsbrowhuis, that was everyone.

No traditional Dutch food for me, though, just beer. Jopen's 6.5% ABV black IPA, Black Hop Sun, was on the menu. This has a strange but not unpleasant sweet and herbal aroma, of basil and incense. The flavour, too, is sweet to begin, starting on uncharacteristic candy and vanilla. That quickly butts up against a hard bitterness which is part green and metallic hops and part astringently dry roast. It's not very well integrated, and while it does have the boldness of good black IPA, it's rather severe and difficult drinking. 

That's the tall glass. The squat taster beside it is Piece of Cake: Apple Pie Crumble, by Frontaal. This one is 10% ABV. The name indicates what it's supposed to taste like, but it doesn't. It's very sticky, and the aroma goes large on brittle toffee. In the flavour that translates to burnt caramel, coming after a warm and cake-like sweet flavour. There's perhaps a little apple -- stewed, not crisp -- but none of the buttery biscuit side that is the whole point of crumble. I liked it, as a walloping big dessert stout, but it doesn't quite deliver on its promise.

I thought it only polite to order something from the in-house brewery next, and that was Blekkie Blekkie in Je Bekkie ("Pale Pale in Your Mouth", cryptically), a stout. It's unusual to see a session strength stout from a Dutch microbrewery, and this one is only 4.9% ABV. Chocolate, coffee and vanilla have all been added to it, and they're very obvious, leaving little room for any stout character. A sort of vanilla-laced cookie aroma starts us off, and then the flavour loads in the dense filter coffee, according it only a sprinkling of powdered chocolate. It's all a bit basic and home-brewish, an effect accentuated by the shortlived head. It's a valiant effort, but not a great beer, all told.

And while we're on bizarre names, the barley wine beside it is called A Walking Study in Demonology, and comes from the Low Key Barrel Project in Kent, collaborating with the candymen of Vault City in Edinburgh. There's blood orange, maple syrup, tonka beans and brown sugar all wrapped up in this 12.4% ABV package. It's a dark brown colour and has an aroma that's simultaneously sweet and sour. There's a very boozy heat, and while it's sweet, it's not heavy. I couldn't help thinking a beer like this should be heavy, to give it a comforting warmth. This doesn't have that but it does have tonka's inescapable cinnamon flavour, and a squeeze of orange zest. There's not much of note beyond that. For all its convolutions, this is another quite lacklustre strong beer. Refer to Monday's post for examples of how to do these things properly.

I paid a dinner visit to Leiden's other brewpub, Freddy's: the one housed on the ground floor of Heineken Netherlands's headquarters. I had a few of their beers on my last visit and wasn't terribly impressed. The menu seems to have shrunk in the two years since, and the only thing of interest on it was Freddy's Tripel. It's a dark one -- amber or garnet -- and it doesn't taste like a tripel either. There's a lager cleanness, making it seem more like an autumnal Dutch bock, but it's also very hot, the booze drowning out any subtleties which might have been present. Cereal or porridge are all I got from it, really, and maybe a tiny hint of liquorice. It fulfils the role of being a basic strong beer, but I don't think that's what anyone wants from tripel. Where are the spices?

Leiden has much better beer available than this lot. Some poor choices were made. It's just as well there was a festival of great stuff going on nearby. And when that was over, we went to Amsterdam.