Deepest regrets

What I'd like, right, is a massive beer festival where all the beers are really good. Unfortunately the European Beer Festival wasn't one of these, so now that I've done a couple of posts raving about the beers and breweries I liked, it's time for one just for the stinkers.

We'll start at the end, shall we? Events on Sunday concluded with the Irish delegation trooping off to Christiania for sundowners. Three mediocre pilsners were available, all from the Thy organic brewery. Their specially-branded Pilsner Christiania is one of the better ones: dry, but otherwise uninteresting. Humle is the same only in sweet. Worst of the lot was their badly misnomered Økologisk Classic: unpleasantly bitter and waterier than water. My previous visit to the commune was much better, beerwise.

Early on the Friday, Thom, MrsBeerNut and I set up camp next to the Klosterbryggeriet stand. Given my fondness for silly Scandinavian beer names, their Årsøl just had to be tried. Apparently there's blueberries in this, but I couldn't detect them: just a heavily alcoholic sugariness. The same sort of over-malted sweetness was to be found in the brewery's Hamburgøl as well.

That Germanic bock-like sweetness was something of a recurring theme in my blacklist. Blå Chimpansee, for instance, is a nice shade of dark brown but loaded with nasty cloying sugars. The same goes for the paler "open source" Free Beer Version 4, though with added mustiness as well. I guess Willemoes 200 År, an actual bock, should be forgiven its sugariness, but it just didn't cut it for me, offering very little else alongside it. GourmetBryggeriet also had a ropy bland bock, called GB Bock². Drinkable, but incredibly boring.

Other blandities included a dodgy English bitter knock-off called Old Nutty, where soap was the only detectable flavour. I was also hugely disappointed by Flying Dog's Kerberos tripel, finding the flavours far too understated here.

And that brings us to the must again. Aarhus Julebryg was the biggest offender here. The supposed sweet malty notes are just about detectable under a thick layer of yucky mustiness. Troldhede's Railroad Rye also laced its signature flavour -- grassiness -- with a stale dry character which ruined it for me.

OK, that's enough bitching for one post. I promise something really tasty for tomorrow.