My hop nemesis

Though they've been a regular feature on this blog for most of its (exactly) eight years, I had sort of lost track of what BrewDog were doing, beerwise, these days. Outside of the mostly on-trade-related news feed there seemed to be an endless line of hyper-expensive limited editions, none of which really interested me. Now things seemed to have calmed down, with a couple of beers I've been hearing great things about. Time to see for myself.

First up was Dead Pony Club. This is a 3.8% ABV pale ale and so immediately invites comparison with the excellent Jarl by Fyne Ales. Both make extensive use of Citra for a mouthwatering zestiness, but BrewDog couldn't help taking a big scoop from the Simcoe sack, and while this pungent hop just about works in fuller beers like 5am Saint and Punk IPA, it completely takes over here. My experience was of a sharp cheesey foretaste, followed by burning, followed by watery fizz, though I have to give props for the sweet lasting peachiness in the aftertaste.

I'm well aware that I'm in a minority when it comes to my problem with Simcoe. Without its influence I imagine I'd have enjoyed Dead Pony Club more. As it stands, however, it's another reason why I'm rarely minded to run out and try new BrewDogs these days. So it was with trepidation that I popped the next one.

Libertine is nearly double the strength and a very dark but clear red. "Let the sharp bitter finish rip you straight to the tits. Swallow hard - this slut bites" according to the ten-year-old who wrote the label copy, but while the aroma is mostly citrus with a bit of Simcoe funk (it's 100% Simcoe), the flavour puts dark chocolate at the centre, made sticky with a lacing of treacle. And then the Simcoe comes out, held in check by the dark malt which gives us a bit of biscuit to go with the cheese.

Libertine reminds me a lot of 5am Saint, with its mix of heavy malt and funky hop. A pint would probably be too much, but 33cls was enjoyable.

I'd hoped I'd be able to get a bottle of Jack Hammer to go with these but it seems to be in very short supply. I just had a taste of this at the Voyager launch (thanks Alex, and welcome to the blogosphere!) and was very impressed. It's 7.2% ABV and BrewDog claim it's the bitterest beer they've ever brewed. So it must have been the Voyager I was drinking beforehand which left it tasting soft and fruity, packed with mango and passionfruit, reminding me of the exquisitely balanced pale ales put out by Stone. And best of all: no Simcoe, just Centennial and Columbus. Good doggie.

Candy and kippers

More Flying Dog-related fun at The Black Sheep and Against the Grain lately. The former had the Red Ale from FD's Brewhouse Rarities series. At 6.7% ABV this hazy ochre beer wields a bit more heft than your typical American amber ale and piles on the dark malt sugars too with a serious amount of toffee in the foretaste. It's nicely countered with some lovely fresh nectarine and mandarin hopping and the overall package tastes pleasantly like red liquorice bootlaces, or my memory of them, at any rate.

Over at the sister pub I finally found Flying Dog Single Hop Chinook Imperial IPA the latest in the series, following on from Citra and Nelson Sauvin. 10% ABV like the others, and not actually all that big in the hop department. Toffee, once again, was my first impression, and only after a few sips did a kind of spicy bitterness creep into the mix. I use Chinook a lot in my own brewing as a bittering hop but have little experience of actually tasting it.  While it's certainly an interesting flavour profile, I think the sweet malt element in this particular application could have done with being dialled down a couple of notches to let those hops play a bigger role.

Back at home a couple more American beers brought over by friends. Reuben supplied a Smoke Jumper, a smoked imperial porter -- the first of such I've ever met -- by Left Hand. It suffers hugely from the great drawback of smoked beers: kipperiness. It's an unpleasant stale sort of smoke smell that I tend to get when the malt is mixed in with non-smoked malts and other flavour sources which dilute and interfere with it. After the fish course there's a metallic tang and quite a burnt, acrid bitterness. A beer dedicated to fire fighters which recreates the harsh experience of being one, it seems. I've found Left Hand to be a brewery of more misses than hits and Smoke Jumper did nothing to shift that balance for me.

Also at the table, supplied by Richard, was Southern Tier's Imperial Choklat Stout. Cryptic spelling aside, there's no mistaking the chocolate in here: the aroma is rich hot fudge sauce and there's no escaping the cocoa on tasting either. But it's not just chocolate in the flavour, it's deeper than that: I got some lavender and rosewater, calling to mind Turkish delight bars, and even some cherry liqueur, so pretty much everything I like being done with chocolate is in here. It's sublime; a creation worthy of Wonka.

Four interesting and quite experimental beers there, indicating that while not every mix of tastes will suit all palates, the rewards for playing about with ingredients can be considerable.

Vive la similarité

French ale Bellerose talks up its hoppiness early, promising citrus and lychee on the label, though it also lists "spices" in the ingredients, and the "innovative cocktail of three hops" is the sort of marketing nonsense that usually precedes bad beer. It looks OK though: clear gold with just a very light suspended sediment. There's a very Belgian sort of aroma, sweet and honeyish, and the flavour is quite typical for a Belgian blonde too: concentrated nectarine and a dusting of nutmeg.

I'd be confident that the vaunted hops really are making a difference here, adding a depth to the fruitiness, but I can't help wondering if that's a Belgian yeast strain introducing the spiciness or if it's an added flavouring. I suppose it doesn't really matter. The end result is a smooth, subtle, mildly warming Belgian-style blonde. It all could have been much worse.

Talking a good game

Whatever about their products and their prices, it's hard to fault De Dochter van de Korenaar on the self-confidence front. They like to name their beers like they're the best thing out there, and sure why wouldn't you?

For conjuring majestic elegance what better name than Noblesse? This is billed as a blonde but turned out more of an orange-amber shade. It's definitely not in the slightly sticky Belgian blonde category, though at 5.5% ABV it would fit right in here strengthwise. Wheat is listed on the ingredients but it's not a witbier either. Instead it's clean and rather dry: lots of lagery grain notes, tempered by a firm hit of lemon zest and grapefruit pith. And all of this held up remarkably well despite my bottle being indecently almost a year past its best before date.

Can we get even further up ourselves than "Noblesse"? How about Finesse for the full-on lah-di-dah factor? This is a tripel, modestly strong at 8.5% ABV though strangely darker than expected once again. Like all the fanciest-pants De Dochter beers, the bomber-sized bottle comes wrapped in brown paper with a label stapled to it. Hand stapled by craftsmen, I'm sure. Three different grains are in the mix here: wheat, barley and rye and the whole lot is matured on pine resin. Wait, what? "Rijping tesamen met pijnboomhars" it says, and I can't find any sign of that being Flemish idiom for anything else: they appear to have actually bunged some pine in here. It certainly has a big sticky resinous quality: heavy and sugary with every molecule of alcohol coming through in the hot flavour. Fortunately the bitterness holds it all in check, and though not very much like any other Belgian tripel it is quite tasty.

Finally, slap my face with a leather glove and call my horse a knave, it's Bravoure: "for people with guts" challenges the label copy. For people with quick reflexes, thought I, as the beer gushed from the bottle over the table. The residual fizz is considerable, making the whole thing quite prickly and difficult to drink until it settles down. It's an interesting mix of smoked malt and fresh hops, giving off a sort of burnt orange peel aroma while the flavour puts pipesmoke to the fore, set against a mandarin background. An odd contrast but it works rather well, and all in a not-too-heavy 6.5% ABV package.

Despite their airs these are mostly pretty solid beers. Yes, Belgium makes better, and I have my suspicions about the 65cl bottles being possibly a bit of a scam in a country more used to 75s, but outright mistakes are rare in De Dochter beers and not every artisan* Belgian brewery can claim that.

*artisan. adj: of beer, having a simplistically designed and/or wonkily applied label, usu. on poor quality paper stock

All beers to all people

I mentioned in passing recently that Molson Coors's operations in Ireland seem to be ramping up somewhat, after three of years of light-touch beer distribution. It really hit home in the weeks that followed and as a result I've ended up with three sets of free samples from the company, which I guess represent three aspects of the Irish beer market.

The PR firm charged with promoting it all sent me a six-pack of their new lager Molson Canadian. From the full-spectrum advertising it's getting this appears to be pitched squarely at the mainstream drinker, a segment in Ireland which seems already to be at saturation point with beers such as Bud, Coors Light (licensed to Heineken), Miller, Carlsberg, Stella, Beck's Vier and Heineken itself, the brand leader. It's a little strange that they figured there was room for another, but there you go. The accompanying marketing material says Ireland is the first territory outside Canada to get Canadian, while the packaging says it's brewed in the UK. It seems unlikely that they're making it across the water just for us, so presumably there are plans to put it on the British market too at some point.

Unusually for this sort of beer it's a mere 4% ABV: 4.3% is the normal strength for these, demanded by the Irish market to such an extent that AB-InBev brew a special version of Beck's Vier at this ABV just for us. I welcome more lower strength beers, but it still seems kinda risky to me. Pouring revealed a pale gold lager topped by a healthy fluffy froth. It must also have knocked quite a bit of the gas out as it was beautifully smooth on the first sip, and nicely sweet too, akin to the better class of Munich helles, with a hint of dry grain husk. It all unravelled pretty quickly after that, however. The sweetness unfolds into a nasty sweetcorn flavour and is joined by a horrible metallic saccharine tang where the hop bitterness ought to be. By the third mouthful, that metal was all I could taste and only the low carbonation stopped it from being completely undrinkable. Quality pilsner it most definitely isn't.

For the casual drinker of "craft" beers, yet another seasonal from Blue Moon, this one called Valencia Grove Amber. The name suggests someone thought that what Blue Moon needed was more orange, but it's actually got less of a sticky fruit thing than usual. Instead the amber malt flavour is to the fore: an intensely sugary biscuit character that builds as it goes down with no hop bitterness or yeast spices to balance it. The finish is a dusty, musty burlap with possibly a vein of coconut through it. 5.9% ABV would suggest a heavy beer but it's not really, and the residual dark sugars reminded me of the sort of effect you get with England's less pleasant heavy brown bitters. Whoever this is aimed at, it ain't me.

It's hard to know whether to take the final two beers seriously or not. They come from a genuine small brewery -- Sharp's of Cornwall -- are of robust and flavoursome styles and are presented in very sober wrappings with thin san serif text and a graphic of the brewer's signature. But then they also arrived with a matching branded bar of chocolate each.

I opened the Honey Spice Tripel first. It's one of those beers that magically transports me straight back to Belgium on the first sip: that beautiful yeast-derived spicy warmth is present from the outset. There's a lovely honey perfume in the aroma and it drinks smoothly, without too much spicing or heat, despite a whopping 10% ABV. The flavour tails off quite quickly, however, leaving a kind of lagerish watery fizz on the end. Not very complex, but tripel doesn't necessarily need to be. Perhaps a bite of the lemon meringue white chocolate would open it out. Nope! The chocolate is delicious but massively overpowers everything else. The intense sugar and lemon zest completely coats the palate and it's impossible to taste anything through it. I began to worry if I'd ever experience another flavour again, and ended up using the remains of the tripel to try and wash it off. When that didn't work I reached for the water biscuits. Lovely chocolate, but not a match for beer or anything else.

To the Quadrupel Ale next, a reddish brown beer, so a little pale for the style, I think. It's also 10% ABV. The aroma is quite, quite beautiful: fresh C-hops in abundance giving an amazing mango and sherbet effect, like the best American amber ales. This is not a beer for aging. It tastes powerfully fruity, full of prunes in particular, but with elements of dates, figs and similar dark chewy loveliness. After a few sips I began to find the sweetness a little bit jarring but the peachy hop echo in the aftertaste makes it worthwhile. The chocolate is a 70% cocoa dark one and is a stroke of pairing genius: the bitterness counteracts the sweet malt perfectly, without interfering with the hops and actually helps clear the palate, something chocolate is not normally known for. With the prunes subdued, the more vinous qualities of the beer come out and I begin to see why the marketing bumf suggests this as an alternative to port as a digestif.

Molson Coors may not be supplying the best beers on the Irish market, but they certainly can't be faulted on the variety.

The shape of things to come

German IPAs and imperial stouts are one side of the changes being wrought in teutonic brewing these days, but arguably of more interest is how the native styles are being altered, played with, by brewers who want to give the drinkers something a little bit different. The BrauKunst Live! festival in Munch last month afforded the opportunity to try some of these innovations first hand.

Sometimes it's no more than the name. Camba Bavaria's Fire Beer sounds intriguing but really it's nothing more interesting than a solid, caramel and chocolate-driven doppelbock. A Bourbon Doppelbock is much more like it, and it works remarkably well. The barrel imparts no whisky heat but instead there's all the wood and sherry and dark fruit added to the rich doppelbock flavour profile. The end result is warming, vinous and with a long lingering aftertaste.

Monarchy of Musselland from Cologne had given the wood-aged treatment to their dark gose, making Son of a Batch: Apple, matured on apple wood. It's 5.2% ABV and a barley wine-ish dark red colour. The texture is thin, suggesting the high attenuation typical of gose, and the carbonation is gentle. There's a beautiful summer fruit tartness to it and almost no sappy wood, which is a bonus.

While we're on old-fashioned German beer styles, Weissenohe brought Gruit, although the staffer insisted that they had to add some hops to it or it wouldn't have had a shelf-life. Our subsequent discussion on the antiseptic properties of various herbs was hampered by a failure of botanical vocabulary in each other's languages. Weissenohe has never been one of my favourite breweries, largely because of the overwhelming green noble hop character of their beers, and there's no escaping that, even with this gruit. There's a vague herbal sweetness going on, but nowhere near enough to counter the nettles in what's an otherwise rather dull beer. Still, I walked away heartened to know that gruit lives on in Germany, even if they're not sure about leaving the hops out as yet.

Bavarian weissbier giant Schneider is no stranger to innovation, having produced some ground-breaking hop-forward beers in recent years. Downing pints of Hopfenweisse late into the night at the Weisses Bräuhaus was one of the highlights of this trip and I've never been happier that the experiment became a regular beer. At BrauKunst they launched the second in their Tap X series, replacing the Nelson Sauvin wheat beer from a couple of years ago. Sommer Weisse is the new one, a cloudy blonde with grass and liquorice in the aroma, turning towards more herbal eucalyptus on tasting. It's smooth, light and very quaffable, though lacks the big wow factor which I suspect punters shelling out for a big bottle will be seeking. Definitely built for al fresco drinking in Munich this summer, however.

Schneider wasn't the only behemoth launching a new beer. State-owned Hofbräu -- a by-word for staid Bavarian traditionalism -- had a new Festbier to show off. Sure, there are other German breweries making something called festbier: there's nothing radical about the name. But someone has raided the hop store for this one: sharp lemon rind opens proceedings and the malt gives it a sort of lemon meringue pie effect. Quite delicious and very surprising.

There's less mucking about going on on the pils front but I can't finish up without a quick shout-out for Schönram's Grünhopfenpils. The only innovation here is that the Hersbruckers have been thrown in straight off the bine adding a wonderful pepperiness and really making it stand out from most German pilsners.

And that brings us down to the wire, and the last brewery of the trip. I'd made a second, solo trip out to the festival on the Sunday afternoon, flitting from stall to stall trying to cover as much as possible without missing my plane (which I very nearly did). I'd walked past the Riegele stand a few times and this time actually stopped to read the blackboards. Riegele were at the Berlin Beer Festival last summer and I had a very tasty doppelbock from them. But while very few breweries brought anything innovative to Berlin for fear of scaring the Prussians, there was a definite playfulness apparent in their offerings at BrauKunst. I started with their weizenbock, Augustus: 8% ABV but could pass for half that, being very smooth and drinkable with lots of ripe banana. And then they also had a Simcoe Kellerbier, as one does. I've some nasty things to say about Simcoe in a future post, but this was just stunning: an uncompromising blast of heavy funky hops, unencumbered by any interference from malt or yeast and covering the tongue in a long-lasting oily hop slick. Perhaps lager is where Simcoe really belongs.

And with a mouth full of resinous Simcoe, my weekend ended. BrauKunst Live! is highly recommended as a festival for taking the temperature of progressive German brewing. Having the wonderfully beery city of Munich as a backdrop is just a bonus. Thanks to Barry for making the arrangements.

Broadening the horizons

I finished yesterday's post on a bit of a whine about BraufactuM and the whole overpriced corporate "gourmet" beer angle they seem to be pushing. I can't complain too much, though, as there were some very interesting imports on their stand next to their own stuff. For one thing they've acquired import rights to California's Firestone Walker. I took the opportunity to try Pale 31, the standard pale ale. I loved the flawless clear gold colour and the sharp citric aroma which immediately puts the palate on full alert. It's no hop bomb, however, being gently flavoured with hints of peaches and honeydew melon. One of those effortlessly delicious and drinkable beers. Double Jack is the brewery's double IPA and it's a mellow, warming one, again not overdoing things on the bitterness front, but not really on any other front either. A much better strong beer experience came from 14th Anniversary, an extremely boozy 12.5% ABV ale but one where all that heat doesn't matter, especially in a 100ml serve. Up front it wears a big smooth chocolate liqueur flavour: sinful and sumptuous.

A long-time stand-out on my list of must-drink beers is Baladin's Elixir and I was delighted to see it too was in BraufactuM's fridges. I requested a taster and, as no bottle was open already, my server popped a new one and the beer within exploded, foamily and messily, over the concrete floor of the Munich transport museum. Better there than at home or in a hotel room, I guess. Eventually, a sample was poured into a glass for me, at a 50% discount due to the inconvenience. And to be honest it wasn't the beer I'd been waiting for: hot smelling and rather characterless, like a first-attempt homebrewed dubbel. A surprising drop of the ball by the Piedmontese brewery there.

And speaking of hyped-up Italians, there was some Birrificio Italiano Tipopils knocking around and I secured a sip courtesy of Mark. It's quite nice, with a pleasant nettley bite, but to be honest I can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I need more than a mouthful to judge it properly.

While we're visiting the neighbours, a quick courtesy call on Austria whose brewers had banded together into a single large bar. Gusswerk were offering that German teenage classic the hemp beer, and theirs is called Synergy. While there's definitely some hempy pepperiness buried in it, it's mostly just a rather disappointing plain pils. At the other end of the bar Gusswerk were offering Horny Betty, a version of their Black Betty with added horny goat weed. I don't recall a style being named but it's dark brown and 9.2% ABV, tasting somewhere along the Belgian-style quadrupel to imperial stout spectrum: lots of dark fruit esters and lots of smooth chocolate too. Far from being a mere puerile novelty, the horny goat weed actually adds a pleasant herbal, medicinal character to the overall flavour.

On tasting Engelszell Gregorius back in February I mentioned I was looking forward to their next beer. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long because here it was: Benno, a tripel. Unfortunately it's not a great example of the style. Appropriately gold, it's missing the lovely fruit and honey and spice one would expect and is instead rather unpleasantly sharp. A shame.

Czech representation at BrauKunst Live! came in two flavours: the big bombastic glitz of Pilsner Urquell and on the other side of the hall, Honza Kočka, single-handedly flying the flag for his Nomád brand of ales. A question about how receptive the German market is to Czech IPA was shrugged off: Honza was mostly there to make contacts, drink beer and have fun. Sounds fair. Easy Rider was the Nomád beer everyone was talking about: a modest 4.8% ABV pale ale hopped with Chinook, Willamette and Cascade and bursting with fresh zingy citrus flavours on top of a fuller, weedier, hop funk. Above all it's sessionable, easy-going and sociable, hitting similar places as the Firestone Walker Pale 31. Its bigger brother is Karel, a 7.6% ABV IPA done entirely with Czech hop varieties. The end result is one of those warming, malt-driven IPAs very much echoing the English style for me. Very enjoyable but not for the hopheads. For them it has to be the novelty 13 Hops, brewed to 13° plato, so somewhere just north of 5% ABV, using wheat, caramalt and guess how many different kinds of hops. To be honest I could only taste nine or ten to begin with, but the citrus kick rises slowly on tasting, building to a sharp acidic finish from the full baker's dozen. It's a surprisingly clean beer, given everything that's gone into it.

We finish our visit to BrauKunst Live! tomorrow with some of the more traditional German beer styles.

Beer speed dating

Although I've been to bigger festivals, BrauKunst Live! in Munich was among the most daunting. Even setting aside the familiar breweries -- headline locals like Schneider and ubiquitous festival fixtures like De Molen -- there was so much I had no clue about and it was really difficult trying to figure out where to start. Fortunately the standard beer measure was only 100ml so at least picking any given beer wasn't much of a commitment.

Happily also, admission came with four tokens for specific stands, one of which was Camba Bavaria from Truchtlaching, east of Munich towards Salzburg. They had a helpful plasma screen above the stand to tell punters what was available, so I kicked off with their Pale Ale. It was terrible and reeked of piss. Surely this can't be typical of the new wave of American-influenced German ale brewing? Over to BrauKunstKeller to try their Laguna IPA. Awful again: brown, and sticky with an unpleasant mix of stale sweat and sugar. You're letting me down here, Germany. The modestly monikered Bavarias Best IPA by Schönramer was rather better. Closest to an English IPA with its gentle marmalade hopping it also presents a strange, but not unpleasant, lagerish grain element too.

What was required here was a bit of direction, and Barry's recommendation was to try Hopfenstopfer. This is a side project by the brewmaster at the otherwise traditional Häffner Bräu brewery in north-west Baden-Württemberg. The beers would be instantly recognisable to anyone who has been keeping even half an eye on what the likes of Mikkeller and BrewDog have been up to over the last five years, though still seem to be in the early "Yay! Hops are great!" phase. So take Hopfenstopfer Citra, for example: 5.1% ABV and a hazy yellow-amber. It's lightly carbonated and provides an ideal platform for lots of herbal, slightly spicy, Citra flavours to come bursting out. There's something similar going on in Incredible Ale only this uses a cocktail of Cascade, Nelson Sauvin and more besides. It's very dank and funky but just at the right level: strong, but not overpowering, which is how I like my dank. For an altogether calmer, more balanced experience there's Jahrgangsbier, a pilsner using local ingredients and eschewing the pale ale bitterness for a light and crisp mineral character. The highlight of the Hopfenstopfer range for me was Comet, a 6.8% ABV IPA utilising Comet, of course, plus German varieties Taurus and Saphir. There's a bit of an acid burn in the foretaste but that fades leaving a lovely balance of citrus and dank, sharpness and funk. This combination of German ingredients and methods with foreign recipe influences was much more what I was hoping to see at the festival, and Comet was one of the few beers that left me wishing I could sit down with a pint of it.

I struck gold again over at the Weihenstephaner bar which was being manned by the students of Bavaria's state-owned brewing research institute. What had first caught my eye was Infinium, the collaboration with Boston Brewing in its very fancy 75cl bottle. 10.5% ABV and using classic German Tettnanger, Mittelfrüh, Spalt and Hersbrucker hops. Though a gorgeous shade of clear dark amber this is all mouth and no lederhosen, being quite a dull but hot beer with not much going on in it at all. However, the students' pride of place wasn't given to this, or one of the long-established heritage beers, but to Banx, a hazy golden pale ale they had made with Topaz plus new German variety Mandarina. It hits that precise sweet spot between US-style citrus and German herbal hop flavours. Beautiful.

One of the very few beer brands I'd heard of before the festival was Propeller. They had a double IPA on tap on their stand, called Aufwind. It wasn't quite on the money for me: a mere 6.5% ABV and much more about the crystal malt toffee flavours than any big hop effects. Nachtflug imperial stout was much better: sweet and smooth and oddly reminiscent of a quality doppelbock, with that silky caramel sensation they do so well.

Sticking with the German stouts, there was the rather pleasant Fritz Ale Milk Stout which completely missed the babyish sweetness that normally comes with the label and instead packed in the dry roastiness, Irish style. I wasn't complaining. Over at Pax, an operation where the cool t-shirts and biker moustaches are more prominent than the beers, there was Black Gold, an extremely dry oatmeal stout with added liquorice. It's 5.3% ABV and very full-bodied. Enjoyable to drink but quite hard work.

Two from the more outré side of things to finish. BraufactuM are a subsidiary of German food and drink giant Dr Oetker, specialising in expensive strongish beers for the "gourmet" market. They had a vast sprawling stall by the entrance of BrauKunst Live! and weren't shy about charging a premium for their tasters. The two I tried were Roog, a nicely balanced 6.6% ABV smoked beer, one which allows the sweet dark malts to come through the smoke and making the most of both elements; and Arrique, a Rioja-aged barley wine, 13.5% ABV with quite a big vino tinto character and some nice woodiness, but overall rather tame for the stack of beer tokens they were demanding in exchange for a sample. Thankfully Mr Dredge's press pass spared us the need to splash out -- cheers Mark!

The very existence of BraufactuM shows that there's definitely a change in the air with German brewing, though personally I'd like to see the Hopfenstopfer model become the more common template for the way forward. Later in the week I'll have a look at how the more traditional German beer styles -- which don't seem to be in any jeopardy from the new wave of craft -- have been given a progressive twist by some of the brewers, but before that let's have a look at the foreign beers on sale at the festival.

Hello Munich!

It was gone 10am by the time Kieron, Brian and I landed in Munich, so well past beer o'clock local time. The city that will do her level best to get beer into you at all times in all places has a convenient brewpub at the airport and that was our first stop. Trade was sparse at Airbräu: just a handful of business types catching up over weissbier and pretzels, plus a couple of families fishing for weisswurst in giant steaming bowls and washing it down with yet more weissbier. Heathens that we are, we ordered the pils. Fliegerquell is served unfiltered, with a light carbonation which does wonders for its powers of refreshment and quick drinkability: perfectly engineered for the modern air traveller. Some lovely fresh citrus comes out on the nose and the flavour combines this with a dry wheaty spiciness. A great start to the three-day trip.

Having caught up with Barry who had travelled over from Baden-Württemberg and thrown down a few tasty wheat beers at Schneider's Munich tap, the next stop was lunch in a specialist sausage place next to the Victualienmarkt. It was a Hacker-Pschorr house and the speciality was Edelhell served from the holzfass, a small oak barrel behind the counter. It had a pleasant grassy noble hop aroma but was otherwise a rather dull affair: clean, bright, but boring. By the time Mark, Jon and Rudi joined our party I was ready to move on.

The main reason for our visit was BrauKunst Live!, a beer festival out at the MVG transport museum which filled the rest of the day and will feature in later blog posts, but on the following day our first port of call was the Ayinger Wirtshaus, just across the way from the Hofbräuhaus but altogether more classy, in both décor and clientele. I kicked off with the translucent yellow Ayinger Kellerbier, a lovely sweet and fruity lager with a hint of weissish banana to it. The Bayrischer Dunkel wasn't quite on the money, avoiding being heavy but a bit too fizzy instead and while the caramel flavours were nicely muted there was also a slightly unpleasant metallic twang.

To the suburbs next, and the Forschungsbrauerei: a rambling inn with an attached microbrewery set in a rather desolate semi-rural neighbourhood next to the train line. Seasonal of the moment here was St Jakobus, billed as a blond bock. I ordered one before remembering that pale German bock is consistently one of my least favourite beer styles. It's a whopping 7.6% ABV, though how blond it actually is remains a mystery as it arrived in a stein. The flavour is intensely grainy, like inhaling the dust from a maltsack. Thankfully the inevitable strong nettle flavour, which is what usually turns me off bocks, was subdued under the malt. At the same time it wasn't overly sweet, invoking cream soda and vanilla ice cream from the tasting committee around the table.

The two year-rounders on the menu were a pale lager and a dunkel. Despite the name, Pilsissimus is billed as an export rather than a pils, and it certainly has that warming fullness typical of the style. The highlight was the Naturquell Dunkel, a shade or too paler than would be normal for Munich dunkel and with a gorgeous smooth chocolate raisin flavour instead of caramel stickiness. Brian said he could have stayed there drinking it all evening and I'd have joined him.

But back to the city again for a bit of pub-hopping, between the cosy camaraderie of the Augustiner-Keller, the post-football insanity of Andechs Am Dom, and what's probably an every-Saturday-night insanity of the Hofbräuhaus and Schneider. The only new tick was Tegernseer Hell, quite a bitter version of a Munich helles, pale to the point of being almost green and pleasantly bitter and herbal. As we started winding things up on Sunday afternoon I noticed Löwenbräu Urtyp on a menu, a beer I wasn't previously aware of. It arrived bottled and is 5.4% ABV. It's another very full-bodied malt-forward golden lager but not especially sweet. It reminded me a lot of the Oktoberfestbiers and it's nice to know something like them is available out of season.

So that's the sort of thing one might get up to on a typical weekend break in Munich. But this wasn't just any weekend in Munich...

Don't fall over

The beer/life balance is a perennial concern: trying to sate my curiosity for new beers while staying on the upright side of healthy; trying to enjoy favourites and home-made beers while also leaving space for the new ticks and their new tricks; trying to keep a variety of beer types in stock so every drinking mood can be accommodated, without overly hoarding; local or foreign; industrial or nano; stay home or go to the pub: it's a plate spinning exercise and one where I don't always keep the crockery intact.

Bryan of This Is Why I'm Drunk has chosen "Finding Beer Balance" as the topic for this month's Session, and having just set out some of the matrix of beer choices, I don't think I have a proper answer. But perhaps no answer is required.

Beer is, if nothing else, varied. It's rather odd to think that this product is made all over the world and yet gets shipped all over the world too. The styles, the strengths, the fashions and the methods vary so hugely that a drinker picking and ticking randomly enough may find that the world of beer balances itself. The golden rule is a simple one: drink all the beer. You might need to put in that extra mile to get some variety in your diet, but for me it's always worth doing. Balance in variation is why I'm still tasting, learning and enjoying beer and have no plans to become settled in my tastes.

So with all that in mind, I'm drinking a beer that's pretty much from as far left-field as I can find: Sullivan's Traditional Irish Ginger Beer from Co. Kilkenny, kindly gifted by the lovely Dave. "Traditional" always gives me white knuckles when it appears on beer labels, but they talk a good game here, explaining that commercial ginger beer production was a genuine activity in late 19th century Ireland, dying out at the beginning of the 20th. The substance itself is very strange: 2% ABV and a wan hazy greenish white. "serve ice cold, optional over ice, slice of citrus" says the neck label, but I'll leave that new experience to the next time.

The flavour is very strange. The expected ginger kick didn't arrive and instead there's just a Canada Dry ginger flavour lacking any sort of burn. The base flavour is a sweet and sugary white lemonade thing -- doubtless due to the inclusion of traditional Irish limes listed on the ingredients -- plus a rather disconcerting sour milk lactic tone to it, which also comes out in the aroma. This isn't helped by the relatively full body and very light carbonation. I should add that my bottle is a couple of months past the best before so perhaps it tastes cleaner when fresh.

For all that, I rather enjoyed the weirdness of it. I'd prefer a bit more spice, and it strikes me that a two litre jug would make a better serving size than a 33cl bottle, but it's certainly different. And when seeking balance and variation, different is an absolute good.

Amber is in

As usual I trooped down to the Franciscan Well on Easter Saturday for their annual festival of Irish beers. There's generally a wide range of offerings at this, and 2013 was no exception, despite a no-show from the UCC Pilot Brewery to add their own Germanic flavour. Yet amongst all the variety I noticed a bit of a theme in the beers I drank: amber and hoppy is where it's at.

I set the tone with Garnet, a two-Chameleons-ago amber ale by Metalman. A bit of a candystore beer, this, mixing rich and buttery Werther's Originals with tangy Refresher chews. Though light and very drinkable it leaves a long and satisfying aftertaste. Up at the Dungarvan stand, Cormac was pouring Mahon Falls, a rye pale ale based on the one they had, briefly, at the Dublin festival last September. Although the recipe has been altered slightly there's still no grassy rye flavours in here, which is great. Instead you get a puckeringly bitter grapefruit bite, followed up by softer and juicier peach notes. At almost 5% ABV it's on the strong side for a Dungarvan beer, though the malt contributes little to the flavour other than a platform to carry extra hops.

Meanwhile, around at the White Gypsy bar there was the welcome return of Mustang, a pale ale I've heard much about but never got to taste before. It's a 6.5% ABV American-style pale ale, though definitely on the amber end of the colour scale. I was expecting big and hoppy but it's much more complex than that, including some smoke in with the tangy citrus and dank funk and toffee. Half a pint didn't do it justice. There was also a rather nice Cascade-dry-hopped cask special of Trouble Sabotage: its weight and warmth proving an ideal antidote to the chilly conditions.

So much for the amber, let's get some gold and black in for balance. Seven Windows Brewery is due to open in Cork before the end of the year. Mi Daza stout was the first beer produced under the brand, contract brewed at Franciscan Well, and it's joined now by Sunbeam pils. It's a very pale yellow but is beautifully put together, starting with fresh lemon sherbet and ending on lovely digestive biscuit. Very moreish.

Galway Hooker, meanwhile, had brought along their enigmatic stout-of-many-names. Originally called Bonaparte it can also be found labelled as Dark Haus and BH001 although here it was simply badged Galway Hooker Irish Stout. Though light of texture it's fantastically creamy and big on the chocolate flavours, but suffered a little from being served very cold.

I know how it feels too. After a few hours wandering about the chilly yard I took shelter in the upstairs bar where festival punters were being treated to an unexpected boon from Molson Coors's takeover of Franciscan Well: a range of cask beers from Sharp's. Not an unqualified boon, mind: yawnworthy Doom Bar was there, joined by the equally dull and grainy Cornish Coaster, plasticine flavoured Sharp's Special, boring brown Sharp's Own and the almost completely tasteless '90s throwback Sharp's Ice. But I'm less willing to hurl insults at Black Rock IPA, a fairly simple black IPA with a fun white lemonade flavour and a mild acidic bite. The highlight for me, however, was Panzerfaust, a black gose. This has a beautiful sherbet piquancy to it with darker treacle overtones and served barely carbonated for supreme drinkability. Molson Coors appear to be ramping up their presence on the Irish beer scene more and more. Further beer of Panzerfaust quality would be a welcome intrusion.

Spice of life

Knowing my prediliction for beers with odd ingredients, my wife frequently brings me back strange beery concoctions from Belgium, where unorthodox recipes seem to be much more commonplace than here. I did a bit of a clear-out last week and this is what I found in Novelty Corner.

First up was Goji, presented with very scant information on where its brewed and by whom. Brasserie d'Écaussinnes near Charlerois seems to be the most likely origin. What we do get told is that it's top-fermented, 5% ABV and flavoured with goji berries. Pouring revealed a clear blonde beer, fizzing madly at first, then settling down, like champagne. And like champagne the flavour is crisp and clean, with a lovely succulent juicy berry flavour, from the gojis, I guess. It's sweet, but not overly so, echoing the flavour profile of a mimosa or bellini, I thought. It's a simple drink, and not a particularly beery one as such, but tasty. A good start.

The clunker of the bunch came next, when we switched to the MilleVertus brewery and their saffron ale La Safranaise. It started intriguingly: 7% ABV and pale amber with a lovely peppery medicinal nose, promising an intense taste experience. And that's what it delivers, but so intense as to be absolutely disgusting. The body is very sticky and infused with a powerful eucalyptus and disinfectant flavour, like someone left the golden syrup too close to a tub of Deep Heat. Bleurgh!

We stay with MilleVertus next, and L'Amarante -- a little stronger again at 7.5% ABV and pouring a beautiful clear dark gold. The promised peppercorns are absent in the flavour and instead we get lots of fun sweetness, with notes of chocolate and peppermint. The aroma is the only herbal element in the package, giving off a gentle fennel perfume. It's a simple, understated and pleasant beer, in stark contrast to La Safranaise.

For the last three it's back to Écaussinnes, starting with Cookie Beer, conjuring the speculoos biscuit as its inspiration. It's yet another golden offering but this time with some horrible great lumps of sediment cavorting indecently in the glass. First impressions are of a full, sweet and fizzy beer, kinda like Duvel minus the hops. But then the lacing of cinnamon kicks in and spices things up, but not too much. For something that screams novelty it's actually quite subtle.

Florilège d'Hibiscus was the only one of the set with true novelty value, pouring a dark purplish colour, topped by cherry blossom foam. The beer is rich and syrupy but in a good way when you don't have too much of it to drink. And the flavour is a strange mix of lurid red ice cream sauce from childhood coupled with very grown-up blackcurrant tea. Sophisticated yet cheeky, as a more twattish beer writer might put it.

Late for the photocall up top, there was also La Loubécoise, 8% ABV and brewed with maple syrup. This is a deep mahogany red but keeps its secrets to itself on sniffing. I guess the maple syrup is doing what is expected of it, since tasting reveals a heavy, sickly beer with a touch of woodiness to it. A smoky acridity adds complexity but doesn't make it any nicer or easier to drink. I've known maple syrup to work well in beers, but either they haven't used the right stuff or -- more likely -- they've added way too much.

On this showing I can see why some people give novelty ingredient beers a wide berth: it really is a bit of a crap shoot. But if you'd asked me which would be the best and worst additives out of goji berries, saffron, peppercorns, cinnamon cookies, hibiscus or maple syrup I'd have guessed completely wrongly. And having one's assumptions challenged is all part of the fun with beer.