The crawl is on

In late September I headed off on an 18,000km round trip to the United States, taking in three cities, 38 pubs and a fair handful of beers which you're going to hear all about in varying levels of detail on this blog in the coming weeks. But I'll say this at the outset: one of the objects of the exercise was to attempt a benchmarking of American beers, especially the hoppy ones, against what we have closer to home. And while I had a number of utterly sublime beers, my back-of-the-envelope assessment is that the days of the US being on OMG the next level are gone. We get plenty of locally produced beers in Europe these days that can go toe-to-toe with what America does, and I'm including Portland Oregon during fresh hop season in that. What the US did lack, however, is clunkers: infections, oxidation, yeast bite and other technical oopsies that we see too much of here, even from reputable breweries. Beers that come in for criticism in the following pages do so mainly because I didn't like them, not because somebody messed up the brewing. Though cask dispense is a whole other story. Anyway, let's get the first pint in.

The initial, and longest, part of the trip was New York. We stayed in Brooklyn and on the first evening wandered down to Brooklyn Heights, on the shore of the East River overlooking downtown Manhattan. Cliché be damned, we began with a pizza. I ordered a War Flag Pils with mine, War Flag being based up the other end of the borough. It arrived a rather unhealthy yellow colour but redeemed itself with a lovely lemony foretaste. It had quite a lot of the German brewpub pils about it: crunchy rustic grains and a mild yeast burr. Rounded and filling rather than sharp and quenching it was still rather enjoyable and I would happily have quaffed it and ordered another except for the $7 (plus tax and tip) price tag. Beer isn't cheap in the city I came to regard over the following days as less of a New York and more of a Stinky Geneva.

Anyway, back to the present and around the corner to a pleasant looking pub we'd passed previously for a couple of final beers as we fought the jetlag. More pils for me, this time Joe's Pils from Colorado brewery Avery: an old friend I haven't seen in far too many years. My enthusiasm was short lived, however. It's a rather dull, thin, boring lager, making a bit of an effort with some nettley noble hops and adding in an American fruit-chew-sweet overtone, but ending up underwhelming, if inoffensive.

Looking for a smidge more wow I picked Fruit Fly next, from sour enthusiasts New Belgium. This one has added passionfruit and Citra hops and exhibits a powerfully funky farmyard aroma. Citra leads the charge in the taste: a big lemon and lime tartness, followed swiftly by a burst of passionfruit sweet. I wanted it to keep going in this direction but the finish is rapid: dry and chalky. It's nearly superb but I think I'd like the volume turned up a little on it.

Back to New York breweries and on the left of the picture there is amber-coloured Bronx Pale Ale. Ah, now here's the America I expected: resins on the nose, a full jar of toffees in the flavour, turning quickly to burnt caramel. The hops add a lacing of sherbet and then a hard green bitterness. It's a bit of a tough guy, but loveable and cuddly with it.

Day two brought us over to Manhattan, and wandering towards Times Square at roughly beer o'clock I spotted a neon sign flashing BREWERY down the street. Closer inspection revealed it to be a branch of the Heartland brewpub chain. Inside it was pleasantly bright and cheery with a long bar, a full range of beer options and a folksy -- but not too folksy -- theme. Oatmeal stout for me: Farmer Jon's. This is 6% ABV and as full and smooth as you like. Creamy milky chocolate is the centre, edged with the bitterness of darker cocoa and a grainy dryness to keep it from over-sweetness. It really delivers on the promises of the style.

Another 6%-er for the lady: Indiana, Heartland's IPA. Like our friend from the Bronx it's a sticky one, though tasting more of orange boiled sweets than toffee. But while it's most definitely heavy and sweet, there's an acid bitterness in the finish which accumulates sufficiently to provide balance. Overall it's a little too sweet for me, but it does its thing quite well.

At dinnertime we found ourselves in Hell's Kitchen, just on the edge of theatreland so understandably well stocked with eating options. We found a pleasant little taco place and resisted the upsold margaritas, opting instead for White Aphro, a wheat beer by Empire Brewing in Syracuse. They didn't warn me that it contains ginger but boy does it: a massive hit of sweet crystallised ginger right at the start, and through the middle as well, with a long tail of throat-scratching ginger ale dryness. I quite like unabashed ginger beers so I was fine with it, even if it was pretty one-dimensional.

So far we were just finding beers on the fly. Time now to start ticking off the must-visits on the list I'd brought with me. Rattle N Hum was nearest to where we happened to be standing so that's where we headed. It seems that The City That Never Sleeps doesn't do quiet Tuesday evenings either, and the long, narrow and dark sports bar was packed. We just managed to get a couple of seats at an unbussed table by the solitary window. Fighting my way to the bar I came back with a Blanc Tarte Barrique for me, an all-over-the-place barrel-aged sour beer from San Diego's Green Flash, swinging wildly between the intense woody sourness of aged gueuze and soft luscious peach fruit. It's an absolute rollercoaster but I rather enjoyed the ride; and for her Glacial Trail IPA: more boiled sweets and lots and lots of heavy cloying crystal malt. She liked it but a sip was plenty for me. Another round seemed like far too much effort so we left it there.

It was down to the East Village the following afternoon, and Fool's Gold, a bayou shack-style bar which probably also gets loud and uncomfortable in the evenings but was very civilised at 2pm. And oh, hello Hill Farmstead on the tap list. Sumner pale ale was the shout: murky, of course, and a little bit rough with it, but also demonstrating a pleasant gentle grapefruit bitterness. Simcoe, Citra and Mosaic are the hops and the latter does impart a little of its signature spring onion as well. Not a stunner, but really not bad either.

Next to it there is Other Half IPA, Other Half being a south Brooklyn brewery of no small repute according to this piece by Mr Urch. We didn't make the time to visit it ourselves, but did sample a few of its wares on the way round. This one is extremely, bizarrely, malt-forward for an IPA, brown in appearance and tasting more of chocolate than of hops. A strange and unsettling introduction to the brewery.

That was followed by a much more orthodox pale ale: Daisy Cutter by Chicago's Half Acre. Funky dank resins pour out of the aroma while the flavour sparks with peach and grapefruit, and yet it never quite tips over into hop-based sensory overload. In fact the bitterness is low enough that it feels like it should be punchier, but as-is, it's bright, fresh and very drinkable, especially at a modest 5.2% ABV.

To finish this post, we stay in the East Village but step away from craft beer and into McSorley's Old Ale House, an Irish-American landmark pub trying so hard to be a blue collar saloon you can see a vein bulging in its forehead. Sawdust covers the floor and surly waiters sling two types of beer at you, two glasses at a time for some reason, both brewed for the house by the ultimate blue collar brewer Pabst. More than anywhere, its darkness, bruskness, and take-it-or-leave-it approach to choice reminded me of U Fleků in Prague.

McSorley's Draft Ale is a pale gold colour with little to say for itself other than an old world hop bitterness which has a touch of white pepper about it, so I'm guessing is made with something German. McSorley's Draft Porter has a definite stout dryness up front, then a middle of caramel and liquorice for a kind of Czech tmavý effect. A nasty saccharine metallic twang creeps in after a while rendering it less enjoyable with each sip towards the end. Were I calling for a third I'd be back on the ale again, but I wasn't. A tiny, exclusive, uber-craft bar had just opened for the day two blocks away and I wanted to get in before the hordes of unspeakable cool people nabbed all the stools.

Baby got backlog

Before I went on holidays in September I made a concerted effort to clear as much as I could out of my beer fridge. This post represents that hurried few days' swigging -- an express train through some of the bottled Irish beers new to me in autumn 2016.

I started with a refreshing witbier from Wicklow Wolf. Belgian White is a fizzy beast, taking a few goes to pour and resulting in a true-to-style hazy pale orange body topped with a crackling white head. It smells of fizz too: a hard carbonic bite, backed up by coriander herbs. I was expecting a hard prickle in the mouthfeel but the bubbles are surprisingly big and the texture of the beer nicely heavy and rounded, moreso than might be expected at just 5.2% ABV.

The label description mentions bananas and I get that estery fruit thing running right through the beer from foretaste to finish. There's a substantial higher-alcohol heat as well, bringing a certain element of acetone to the taste. A lacing of juicy citrus and a dry wheaty finish do a good job of providing balance and keep the whole thing from getting too hot and heavy. You'd probably need to drink it colder than I did to get any real refreshment from this guy, but as a weighty and complex take on wit it works quite well.

Red ale with Sorachi Ace hops is a new one on me, I think, but that's what Wicklow Wolf's Sorachi Red is. It's a clear dark copper colour, almost more brown than red, and topped by a stiff off-white head. The two sides of the equation are present right from the aroma, showing lots of toffee but also the distinctive lemon rind and powdered coconut of Sorachi Ace. There's a very Irish red sort of burnt roast in the flavour, something that successfully pushes against both the crystal malt sweetness and the obstreperous hops.

It's almost classically traditional, if a little strong at 5.1% ABV, and only at the finish is there that cheeky pinch of lemon. Definitely not a mad banging craft beer oddity, but rather a fun modern twist on a quite old fashioned style. Grandad's bought a fixie. Good for him.

Combining witbier with the east-Asian theme brings us to Thai Wit, new from Dungarvan Brewing. It's a whopping 6.4% ABV and rather dark for the style, a kind of amber brown. There's a lovely sweet Thai perfume, the lemongrass particularly prominent. It's rather more style-typical on tasting, the coriander coming through loud and clear on top of a dry wheatiness with lots of fizz. I'd swear I can taste the orange peel but no orange is listed on the ingredients. Perhaps it's the kaffir lime leaf giving it that citrus quality. The herbal finish lasts long, an oily coriander residue left on the lips.

It's a fun and interesting version of the style, not startlingly different but ramping up the flavours and offering a few extra bells and whistles. I didn't have any Thai food to hand but I reckon it would work very well as an accompaniment.

I'm writing this in the aftermath of the 2016 Irish Craft Beer Festival at the RDS and one of the stars of that show was Western Herd on their first visit to a Dublin festival. Apparently, anyway. I didn't get around to actually visiting their stand -- more fool me. I do have a couple of their bottles in the backlog, however, and I'm starting with yet another witbier: Back Beat.

This is a more orthodox orange colour. I had the option of leaving the yeast out but thought to hell with it and dumped the lees in as well, so you can add hazy to the appearance description. The fruit is off the charts in the aroma: bananas at first, then jaffa and mandarin, like a fruit salad (the dessert, not the chewy sweet). It's rather drier on tasting, with a sulphurous note I tend to associate with immature wheat beers. The coriander brings soap, the yeast an earthy grit, and all the lovely soft fruit from the aroma has evaporated. In the end it's a rather harsh beer, perhaps needing to be served very cold to smooth it out. It's complex, sure, but not in the right ways.

The other one of theirs I picked up in DrinkStore is Blue Jumper IPA. At 6.2% ABV a bit of poke was expected and it delivers in the aroma all right, a smack of fresh grapefruit with a definite heavy crystal malt toffee sweetness behind it: American-style IPA the way your momma used to make it.

It's extremely thick, to the point of being almost difficult to pull from the glass. At first there's a harsh and raw vegetal flavour but this opens out shortly after into zestier orange sherbet before settling back into the earthy tones of Cascade, with a more grapefruit and a metallic edge to remind you that this hop is descended from Fuggles.

Poke? Yes, it has that. This beer is extremely hoppy, in way that went out of fashion a couple of years ago but is genuinely fun to drink, as a 33cl serve anyway. The pencil sharpener finish is a bit much, but that gooey orange-toffee centre more than makes up for it.

Some more IPA to go on top of that? Sure why not. Amarillo is number four in Eight Degrees's series of 5.7% ABV single hoppers, each of which has gone all out to show the hops at their banging and bitterest best. This guy is no exception. I had a bit of a cold when I got to it so I think the full effect of the aroma was a little bit lost on me. It didn't smell of all that much anyway, just a faint candy-citrus that could be any hop.

However, there was nothing wrong with my flavour sensing apparatus: one sip brings a dense orangey oiliness, the exact same sort of hop density and intensity found in the beer's companions. Where you'd normally expect the malt to sweep in and spread the load, it doesn't. Instead there's a dry and quite tannic bitter finish, bringing Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter incongruously, but pleasingly, to mind. An acidic greenness hangs around on the palate afterwards, waiting to be swept away, temporarily, by another gush of citrus. Like the Galaxy and Mandarina Bavaria versions before it, it's a bit strange to have hops normally associated with juiciness bringing such a hard bitter edge to a beer, but also like those two, it's wonderfully invigorating and at the end of the bottle I was wishing I'd had a pint.

And finally, with the bags packed and the taxi booked, DOT's Sour Cherry Apricot Ale. It's a muddy brown colour with an odd sort of aroma: over-ripe squashy summer fruit and an enticing Orvalesque funk. Though it looks weighty it's only 4.5% ABV, with a corresponding lightness of texture. The flavour is quite light too and I sat perplexed at the keyboard for the first few mouthfuls, trying to find something to grab on to. The apricot is certainly there, as a sort of candied fruit flavour, then there's a kind of cherry skin bitterness and behind it the melanoidin biscuit flavour of the Belgian malt, and also a quite Belgian gritty yeast flavour. It all tails off quickly, leaving just a faint trace of that cherry bite.

It's definitely a disconcerting beer. Unsettling, even. Part of me wanted the flavours to be bigger and bolder, but I also wouldn't want it to be a hot sugary yeasty mess, which I'm sure would be all too easy to do. At the other end it has too much going on to be a refreshing quaffer, nor is it clean enough. So no constructive criticism from me, but I do think the recipe, while promising, needs work.

Sour Brits

The fashion for sour beers continues apace, and is mostly to the good, in my opinion. Today I'm looking at one each from two English breweries who have produced some of my favourite British beers of recent years. Big things are expected.

I had gone into L. Mulligan Grocer looking for something else but when it wasn't available I picked Buxton's Trolltunga instead. They've brewed this in collaboration with Norwegian brewers Lervig and have badged it as a sour IPA, with added gooseberries for good measure and a powerful 6.3% ABV. That all sounds very complex but the reality was rather simpler. It's very pale, for starters: the wan yellow of a Berliner weisse rather than an IPA. The sourness is right up front as a lovely tangy bite with just a hint of sweeter gooseberry candy. The hops are the element which lose out in the combination, and I definitely wouldn't have described this as an IPA. Just right on the finish there's a slightly spicy lemon curd flavour and I'm wondering if that might be the hops at work. They're not grafting very hard if so.

I really enjoyed this. Above all it's clean and assertively sour with enough complexity to keep it interesting but not distract from its essential nature. It tastes nothing like as strong as it is so perhaps a note of caution should be sounded there.

The other beer is even more convoluted. Siren's Tschüss is a Berliner weisse but they've added lime, orange, blueberries and mint: not a combination I've met before. Located on tap in Alfie Byrne's, it's 5% ABV and a dark orange-amber colour. Blueberries can have a tendency to hide in a flavour profile but this wears them right up front in the aroma for a beer that smells incredibly tempting, like a moist blueberry muffin. In the flavour it's the mint that takes over: an eye-watering menthol sharpness plus a kind of pea-skin greenness. Once again something has to give and this time it's the orange and lime which seem to have disappeared completely, and the sourness is quite muted as well. It is still quite refreshing, however. The Berliner bugs have chomped through the malt nicely and left next to no residual sugars.

Tschüss is an interesting experiment. I wouldn't say the different elements gel together particularly well, but they work as individuals creating something that definitely holds the drinker's attention. A bit more sourness would have been nice, however.

And my expectations? Yes, they've been met. I'm looking forward to more sour oddities from both of these breweries.

Just super

The SuperValu supermarket around the corner from me has featured in a few posts this year, including the one about them setting up their own growler station (no, I haven't seen anyone actually use it since then). Their bottled beer offer continues to improve and today's post is about three that I found on the shelves there that I'd not seen in the independent off licences where I normally buy my beers.

In the interests of blogger ethics I should point out that I've done a couple of recent paid gigs for SuperValu's parent company, but I think it's indicative of how serious they're taking their beer offer that they're willing to commission content from a communicator as talented, handsome and modest as myself.

To the beers, then. The first is Kelly's Mountain Lager. This Kildare microbrewery is better known (to me anyway) for its safe and mostly quite dark beers. I'll admit I was sceptical of their lagering abilities, and the wonky label didn't exactly inspire confidence. I put this to the full sensory test for lager, ie consuming it cold from the fridge on a sunny evening after I put manners on my lawn. It's only 4.2% ABV but it has the dark gold colouring of a bock, or even a märzen. And the flavour is along those lines: heavy with a golden syrup sweetness, accentuated by the low carbonation. There's no discernible hop character and only a couple of very minor technical imperfections -- I get a bit of green apple and some greasy esters -- but the finish is clean and it's properly crisp and quenching. Not the world's greatest pale lager but it does the job that the style is best at doing.

The Kenmare brand is exclusive to SuperValu and its sister companies, I think, with the beer brewed at Brú in Meath. Kenmare India Pale Ale talks a big game for a supermarket beer: "Extra Hopped IPA" says the front label, with "a blast of citrus" promised on the back. Well! It's dark orange with a slight haze and the aroma is quite sweet, with a sort of chocolate and caramel effect that isn't very IPAish at all. There's a definite fun spiciness in the flavour, even a touch of herbal dank, but that heavy residual sugar is there too, and it's the sugar that builds on the palate as you drink, to the point that it becomes cloying, more cloying than you'd expect at a modest 5.1% ABV. I think this may be one of those beers where the label copy was written before the hot liquor tank was plugged in, and describes what it's supposed to be, rather than what the contract brewery delivered. It's not a bad beer but it doesn't really let the hops shine the way they want to: the balance tilted just a little too far towards the malt.

Last up is Garage Days from Corrib Brewing under their Wild Bat label, a pale ale at a full 5% ABV. I got huge fizz from this, though at least some of that was down to the glass I chose. Beneath the foam it's a rich amber colour with a slightly funky orange smell once you get past the gassy CO2. It's another malt-heavy one, but not as sweet as the Kenmare, more rounded and balanced. The hops bring a decent amount of fruit and spice but it's all very old world: jaffa, cloves and pepper. There's also a slightly hard metallic edge and some headachey hot alcohol. The label refers to how the recipe started life as a homebrew favourite and I get a definite homebrewish feel from it. It's enjoyable to drink but doesn't seem as polished as most commercial pale ales.

OK, so SuperValu has a good selection of new stuff but they all seem to lack a wow factor. Nobody goes to the big multiples to be wowed, I guess.

The cask task

JD Wetherspoon Real Ale Festival: are any words more stirring to the human soul?  Late October means it's time for my annual ritual of cycling out to the South County coast and seeing what's on the pumps in my two locals. I usually stop in Blackrock first but decided to start in Dún Laoghaire this year, to catch the cavernous Forty Foot before it got loud and crowded. As in recent years, English hops was the theme, with every one of the 30 festival beers using nothing but.

An awkward five new ones were on the wickets and I began with three thirds. Banks's Gold Ingot certainly looks the part: a perfect blingy gold colour. Spicy and citrus is promised on the clip but that's a bit of an exaggeration. It is plenty bitter though, the grass and metal of down-home English hops, with East Kent Goldings, First Gold and Flyer being the varieties billed in the programme. A light biscuit malt sits behind this but that's about your lot. The galvanic pencil sharpener metal is the last bit to fade from the palate. It's certainly punchy and invigorating, but very much in an English way, a flavour which precludes modern fripperies like citrus.

Bigger things were expected from the first of the international collaborations, Hop Session, brewed at Everards with Afro-Caribbean Brewing of Cape Town. It's a slightly darker gold than the previous one, though the same 4.3% ABV. There's a little bit of a tropical buzz here, achieved with Bramling Cross, Challenger and Cascade. Not quite pineapple and passionfruit, but definitely something approaching a mango, set against harder grapefruit and spinach. The malt is an afterthought but there's just enough of it to keep the hops buoyant and, if not in balance, at least not harsh. While almost passing for a new world beer, its roots show at the end, however, with an earthy metallic twang.

And thirdly of the thirds, Theakston Vanilla Stout, ratcheting up that ABV to a hulking 4.5%. It tastes like more, though: thick and rich and sweet. A bitter treacle overtone shows the hops working in the background while the main action is a dialectic struggle between sticky vanilla and dry roast. While I enjoyed it, a third was plenty.

The last two weren't actually part of the festival line-up, but that's no reason not to tick the buggers. Next is Blondie by Nottinghamshire's Grafton Brewery. Closer to copper than blonde, by the looks of it. It's sweet and tart, like sour candy with a hint of strawberry shortcake. Summer fruit is definitely what I found in the aroma when I'd sipped down far enough to smell it. An out-of-keeping putty bitterness is where the flavour ends. Not a bad beer overall, and rather more interesting than I was expecting.

We stay in the Midlands for the last round: Sadler's Peaky Blinder black IPA, brewed with today's craft-beer-inclined Brummie gangster in mind. It's fully black and smells powerfully of cabbagewater, molasses and sherbet: a combination which promises complexity, if not actually a good time. And so it is in the flavour. It has a soft effervescence and strong herbal-floral taste that probably looked lovely on paper but ends up tasting like old bathwater. There's an intensity which I'm sure comes from the hops but which doesn't deliver proper hop-like flavours. It's extremely rare for me to be saying that a black IPA needs extra bitterness but I think this one does. I love black IPAs that are sweet and tropical and also enjoy the extremely green and vegetal ones. This takes a third path and I don't really want to follow it.

Time to turn the ship around and make for Blackrock. The Three Tun Tavern had its new Cask Marque cert propped on the bar. Well done to them and, with the system seemingly live in Ireland, I hope some of the non-Wetherspoon cask-serving pubs will take advantage of it.

Another round of thirds, starting with Tring's Warrior Queen, a 4.6% ABV pale ale. Not much of an aroma from this but the flavour is a weird squeaky green bean thing, all sharply tangy with a chalky mineral backdrop. It's very odd. The literature tells me that Fusion is the hop what done it. Use with caution, I guess.

Next it's Epic Brew from Wadworth, a golden ale brewed with Epic hops. It's only 4.5% ABV but very thick and sweet with a floral sort of spice. After a few minutes of trying to place what it reminded me of I came up with honey: it's that specific mix of summer meadow pollen and sticky sugar with an edge of waxy bitterness. It finishes quickly, adding a lager feel. Epic is an overstatement but it's decent stuff, for one at least.

Old Crafty Hen is next, a Greene King brand extension I've seen many times in clear glass bottles and would normally have passed over except the programme mentioned it includes Greene King's near-mythical 5X strong ale in the blend. I'm in. This occupies the madman slot in the Wetherspoon festival line-up: there's always at least one big strong beer, though at just 6.5% ABV OCH is lighter than usual. It's lovely, though: a big juicy tannic raisin thing, soft and sumptuous. I expected building sweetness but it doesn't do that, staying dry and clean all the way down. I'm really surprised at how much I enjoyed it, but the chances of me buying it in a clear bottle are still basically nil.

Right, next set of thirds. Evan Evans Autumn Frenzy. Copper-coloured, with a maple syrup sort of sweetness. The watery finish has this weird savoury mushroom quality making me wonder if they're going for a full-on forest floor leafmold thing. So, OK, it's autumnal, but nobody wants to drink a third of a pint of fungal maple syrup. I think I get what it's trying to be, but there's still a really dull brown bitter at its core, dragging down all the seasonal bells and whistles.

In the middle is Titanic Brewery's SEA ("seriously enigmatic ale" -- if ever a name suggested a batch of something else that went wrong), another brown one, at 5% ABV, and another odd one. The flavour is more muted than Autumn Frenzy, but it's thicker, almost like a gloopy nitrokeg bitter. That mushroom thing is there again but this time there are no brighter notes to lift it off the forest litter. There's a bit of cleansing tannin but it doesn't do enough to keep this beer from being heavy, cloying and difficult.

The day's second and final international collaboration was Braddon Bitter, produced at Wadworth in association with BentSpoke of Canberra. Brown again, and with some nice burnt caramel and a sharp dark fruit thing, all blackberries and sloes. I had to check if Bramling Cross was in the house but turns out it's all Admiral and Cascade. It's pretty dry, sucking moisture off the palate and finishing tight, sharp and astringent. This is another one of those beers I'm really enjoying a third of but more than that would probably get difficult.

OK, enough cask. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been eyeing up the new Wetherspoon can all afternoon. Treason is an IPA from Windsor & Eton, 5.8% ABV and a hazy orange colour. There's a balanced orange fruit bitterness and a hint of dank in the aroma. It tastes fresh and fruity with distinct overtones of Punk IPA and Bibble. Citrus! Resins! Cool! Acceptance! It is very nice, and top marks to the brewery for putting it together, but it does taste like quite a few other beers to me. It's just as well that quality and flavour trumps individuality every time.

Overall, quite a good festival this year. No stand-outs, but the beers I didn't enjoy were at least interesting. And that, in general, is the best any blogger can hope for. The festival continues until Sunday and I'd imagine that several in the line-up will be around for a while after that.

Belgium's smallest pub crawl

A mid-afternoon flight home meant I only had time for a handful of beers on my last day in Brussels. I began by nipping across to Cantillon, to restock my cellar with lovely lovely gueuze. There was much of interest on the bar blackboard there, but only by the 75cl bottle, so not practical drinking for the solo traveller in a hurry. Back, then, to Moeder Lambic, which had just opened its doors.

I started my day, as perhaps one always should, with De Ranke's Cuvée de Ranke. It's a handsome clear gold colour and smells like a classic gueuze: it has that woody bricky quality. The resemblance ends on tasting, however. It's powerfully tart: a big smack of raw sour power followed by a hard mineral edge. A softer chalkiness rolls in behind it and then the more subtle flavours emerge: lemon zest and a pinch of vanilla. 7% ABV gives it plenty of warmth as well, limiting its ability to refresh, I thought. Though perhaps not as harmoniously constructed as gueuze, the different elements are well coordinated into a single smooth sour experience.

A stablemate to follow: Kriek de Ranke, the same strength so presumably the same beer with added cherries. It's honkingly sweet at first, the cherry syrup mixing with the alcohol for a disconcerting cough-mixture effect. That sharp nitre sourness peeks in around the edges, but doesn't really get to do much. While Cuvée de Ranke could fill in for a gueuze when none is available, this is no substitute at all for decent kriek.

There was a new house beer on the menu, a companion to L'Amer des Moeders. La Moederation is also brewed by Jandrain-Jandrenouille and is 8% ABV. It looks like Duvel, all pale and slightly hazy, and it smells like Duvel too: a familiar strong candy-sweet aroma. But it doesn't taste like Duvel. It doesn't taste like anything really, which is very sad. There's a sort of white-sugar plainness, and a dry saison-like fruity quality from the suspended yeast. But there's no contribution from the hops and the flavour screams out for a bit of green punchiness. Give me 80cc's of Styrian Goldings, stat!

My wander back towards the station left enough time for a very swift one at an old favourite, the charmingly eclectic Poechenellekelder. I think I'm reaching that happy stage in life where I can go into a Belgian beer café, even one with a reasonably substantial menu, and there won't be any new beers to tick so I can settle down with something familiar. And I nearly did that here, but for one niggle. I was reminded recently that while I have a review of a vintage version of De Dolle's Oerbier on here, I'd never written about the original.

So Oerbier it was, a dark brown 9%-er. It smells warm and dark, like moist fruitcake: all raisins and bread. The first impression on tasting it cold is of a rough and gritty Belgian yeast flavour, and then all the heat of that high strength. I had been expecting smooth and warming but it's really rather rough and savoury, with the fizz level somewhat overdone. When the temperature rises a few degrees a kind of malt loaf flavour emerges but it's still tough going to drink, which isn't ideal when you're watching the departures board on your phone. If you just want strong and dark and Belgian, Oerbier is that. But in the complexity stakes it's a long way behind the likes of Rochefort. Like the sour beer I came in on, the established classics still have the beatings of the younger upstarts, in this old fart's opinion anyway.

A cool reception

Each year the European Beer Consumers Union holds a reception in Brussels for MEPs and the drinks industry, just to remind them of us, the humble consumers, and our concerns over issues like provenance, ingredients transparency, taxation and whatnot. I missed all but the first few minutes of last year's but decided to go over to this year's as a special one-night trip. The venue was a beautiful community centre with a garden, and the weather played ball too. Beers from many parts of Europe were brought along for the guests to try.

Centrepiece of the event was Browar Maryensztadt from eastern Poland who had a draught rig set up and brewery staff on hand to talk about the beers. The first to come pouring out was Wheat You, so a wheat beer then. OK, I'll try that. Turns out it's a lot more than a wheat beer: there's a superb fresh peach aroma followed by a juicy mandarin flavour. It's still softly textured like a weissbier and has some of the yeast bitterness of a wit, but there's a definite leaning towards pale ale sensibilities as well and it makes great use of the strengths of both kinds of beer. As a refresher after travelling 1000km it was perfect.

I didn't have such good luck with their next one, Czarnolas, described as a double black IPA and 7.6% ABV. It's very heavy and very sweet, tasting far more of caramel and hot alcohol than hops. A slight bitterness in the finish is the only claim the flavour makes to being an IPA of any kind. Dirty, boozy and difficult to drink, it's pretty much the opposite of Wheat You.

Another burning disaster was expected from Gorączka Sezonu, described by the brewer as an imperial saison. Eww. I hate strong saison and this one is a runaway 8.4% ABV. But... it's brilliant. It manages to be weighty and warming without tipping over into sticky and hot. The generous use of Cascade and Citra gives it a lovely pinch of lemon-and-lime bitterness but there's also a major snap of white pepper from, one assumes, the saison yeast. It's another beer that combines elements from different brewing traditions to fantastic effect.

Danish brewery Thisted was represented but nothing of theirs really stood out. Goldings "British pale ale" was a clear lagery gold colour and quite dry with a cereal crispness and a rather Germanic pepper and celery hop flavour. Perfectly drinkable but rather dull, and not at all what I'd expect from the description. The same goes for Boston, the American-style pale ale: very plain and grainy, and gold again. I don't think this lot have got the hang of either British or American styles. Their prestige beer was Madagascar, a stout with vanilla. It's very very dry, reminding me of gritty first-time stouts at homebrew meet-ups past. It doesn't taste of vanilla either, so that's a basic fail. Sorry Thisted: you do some great lagers, and I will defend your Limfjords Porter to the very death, but this sort of modern beer doesn't suit you.

There was a handful of British beers but I only tasted one: Embra, a red ale from the usually-reliable Stewart Brewing, from Embra, of course. It's thoroughly unexciting. The blurb promised Chinook but neither the flavour or aroma delivered any. It strikes me as the sort of beer that might shine with some cask complexity beneath, but cold from the fridge in far-off Belgium it just didn't work.

Closer to home there was a very inverted-comma'd "IPA" by Huyghe, created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their Delirium Tremens brand. Delirium Argentum tastes exactly like standard Delirium Tremens: lightly fruity, slightly chewy, and quite easy drinking -- the ABV lowered to 7.8% ABV. Nothing too dangerous or daring here.

My token Dutch beer was Tasty Lady Porter, and I was a little apprehensive as I've found previous outings by this female brewers' collective a little unsettling. This is a classic, however. The aroma balances sweetness and dry roast in perfect equilibrium and the texture is textbook creamy. It tastes maybe a little too sweet with luxurious milk chocolate holding the centre but there's a pleasantly smoky edge as well. Very nicely done and a beer to drink in quantities bigger than teeny sampler glasses.

Which leaves only Italy and a bunch of breweries I'd never heard of. Score! I was drawn immediately to the paper wrapping of Margose by Birranova,  based way down south in Apulia. It's a straightforward classical gose: a wan pale yellow with a light savoury saltiness, turned slightly towards bathwater by the coriander but still lovely and cleansing.

Away up the north, to the west of Milan, is Birrificio Sant'Andrea and they had a saison called Sexon. Just 5.5% ABV and a pale orange, smelling not unpleasantly of stewed apple. It tastes like that too, with even a bit of complementary cinnamon spice. But that's your lot. It doesn't quite manage the refreshing crispness of good saison, staying just on the happy side of inoffensive.

From the same operation comes La Rossa del Gallo ("The Red Rooster"), badged as an English-style bitter but piling on the booze at 6.9% ABV. It's unsurprisingly strong and warming with some red berries up front and then a long genteel malt-biscuit finish. Softly spoken and elegant: a continental's idea of Englishness, perhaps.

And an imperial stout to finish, of course. Croce di Malto's Piedi Neri, complete with a rather literal rendering of the the tribal name. There's kind of a rough, hot, tobacco-like aroma which put me on edge but it's wonderfully smooth to taste with just a mild violet floral quality amongst the gentle cocoa and coffee. No loudness or brashness here, simply lots of class.

And that was it for the evening. Thanks to all the EBCU team who put it together. Remember: beer is not just for taxing or worrying about the public health implications of. You can drink and enjoy it too.

When Friday comes

Friday evening. Work done for the week. Three friends have an event to attend elsewhere in town later but they meet in The Beer Market. It's a nicely flexible drinking space: you can session on pints if you like; you can buy something exclusive and spendy too, and the 33cl servings that most things arrive in are useful for co-ordinating the timing around the table.

One reveller goes for Summer Spreeze, brewed by Siren with input from Evil Twin. It's a lightweight session IPA at 3.8% ABV with additions of coffee and jasmine green tea because somebody thought that was a good idea. They don't contribute much, thankfully: a slight sweaty coffee note in the aroma and some mild jasmine spice, but then it's over to the hops, in a big way. No citrus, however: instead there's a heavy resinous dank and savoury garlic. It doesn't sound great but works really well and it's oily enough to pass for a beer almost twice its strength, with no trace of thinness or harshness. An odd twist on session IPA to be sure, but a fun one.

Another was drinking Fourpure's Burnt Ends, a smoked porter. The caramelised aroma of this smells like the burnt outer bits of barbecued meats, ie irresistibly delicious. At 5.8% ABV it's quite a big, dense beast but this gives it a lusciously smooth texture. Beyond the smoke, of which there is plenty, there's a quite simple chocolate and treacle sweetness of the sort that might make another strong porter cloying or difficult, but the smoke helps dry it out here and the end result is delicately balanced and very classy with it. I don't always appreciate Fourpure's offerings but this one is right in my wheelhouse.

Somebody thought it would be a safe bet to order Founders Nitro IPA, bless them and their innocence. Though perhaps I'm being unfair: Founders does turn out some very good hop-forward beers and maybe they know enough about it to not let one be ruined by the enemy within of beer flavour, nitrogen gas. But no, this is an absolute travesty, tasting all gloopy and soapy, like lemon washing up liquid. Hop flavours do their best work when they're distinct, separate and clean. This just smooshes everything together into a thick mess with a sharp edge yet not even properly bitter. Craft and nitro: just stop it. Stop it now.

And because the first one to arrive had finished his drink while the others were still only half way through, I... I mean, he, gets to have another. Back to Siren again, and Proteus, a pale ale. Only 4% ABV but a whopping €6 for a 33cl glass. It needed to be amazing at that price but unfortunately it wasn't. It's rather dark for a light pale ale, and that leads on to a thick syrupy texture with bags of toffee flavour. A bit of research tells me I'm to expect Motueka, Amarillo and Citra, with the emphasis on the first of these. But while Motueka often comes across as too sharply green for my tastes even that doesn't survive the malt onslaught so all that's left is a mere echo of indistinct hop fruit. Apparently this is version one of a series but I'm not sure I'll be buying a ticket to the sequels.

A nice mix of the good and the grim. Something to talk about on the way to the next engagement.

New lager for old

Back in the spring I read with interest on a number of sources about a project Carlsberg were doing to recreate an old recipe from their archives. They'd started by isolating the yeast from a lager bottled in 1883 and then, with characteristic Scandinavian thoroughness, had acquired suitable heritage varieties of barley and hops, matched the water chemistry to what the brewery was using back then, commissioned wooden casks to 19th century specs, and even had specially-blown glass bottles created. And the answer to why they'd want to meticulously recreate a beer like this is literally because they can. Carlsberg is the birthplace of modern scientific brewing, its laboratory the first to identify both lager yeast and the darling of the crafterati Brettanomyces, in addition to many other achievements and discoveries over the years. If anyone has the data and resources to pull this off, it's them.

Historical beer recreations always interest me, to the point where I get quite frustrated by modern beers which are "inspired by" -- or similar weasel words -- beers of old. Do it properly or don't claim the heritage in your marketing. This Carlsberg Rebrew takes doing it properly to another level completely.

So I was delighted when Carlsberg's Irish brewing partners Diageo set up an evening where the brewery scientists got to talk about the project and, most importantly, I'd get to taste the beer. The Science Gallery in Trinity was, appropriately enough, the venue chosen. When samples of the beer were first distributed to the crowd it was interesting to observe the effect of appearance on taste perception. The room was dark, the beer appeared dark and it most definitely tasted dark: lots of caramel and even chocolate, a bit like an English strong ale or German doppelbock. Another taster in a more brightly-lit area really lacked the rich dark flavours, though was still undoubtedly malt-forward. Attendees were given bottles to take away so this gives me a chance to examine the beer properly.

It is definitely amber rather than gold, a clear dark red. The carbonation is low and the head no more than tokenistic. At 5.8% ABV it's stronger than any flagship lager is likely to be these days and the strength is very present in the flavour: a warming golden-syrup sweetness. Behind this there's a wholesome bread-like quality, very reminiscent of German bock, though without the hop load. Indeed the Hallertau hops really don't have much to say, imparting only the vaguest of green bitterness. A very faint dry roast right on the finish serves as balance for the sweetness and works with the lager cleanness to prevent the sweetness building unpleasantly as the beer warms: I was able to look after the entire 75cl all by myself.

Like pretty much every other beer critic who has written about the beer I am not wowed by its flavour. "It was … OK." said Martyn Cornell, who also featured in some of the publicity material around the project. To me it's a decent and wholesome medium-dark lager, a comforting autumnal sipper of which there are plenty of commercial examples. But as pretty much every other beer critic also said, it's not about how it tastes, it's about what it is. When brewers of things more interesting than basic pilsner start to recreate old beers with this level of historical fastidiousness, then things will get properly interesting.

Hello from the other side

Normality and routine returns today after three weeks on holiday from the daily grind. I spent most of it bimbling around the USA but you'll have to wait a few weeks while I sort my stack of beer notes into semi-coherent blog posts if you want to find out what I drank there.

I returned to the shock discovery that Irish beer has not stood still in my absence so with bag unpacked and the first load of laundry on I nipped over to The 108 in Rathgar to seek out Galway Bay's newest releases.

Just gone on tap was the brewery's take on the highly-fashionable Vermont-style IPA, dubbed I ♥ NE. I'll be honest: I was expecting it to be soupier. It's hazy all right, opaque indeed, but more of a pale yellow-orange rather than the full-on Sunny-D effect which is one of the style's gimmicks. The head retention was a bit poor but the aroma was gorgeous: pure, fresh citrus juice. The flavour is just as bright and juicy, with ripe mandarins the main feature, plus a pinch of peppery spice and then a green spinach edge on the finish, giving it a good bittering balance. At only 5% ABV it's extremely drinkable, though that greenness does build as it warms, becoming the sharp grassy effect you get in beers that have been dry-hopped too long. Still, the happy surprise is that there's absolutely no yeasty off flavour: it's all hop, all the way down. A strong candidate for regular re-brewing here, I reckon.

I just missed the first appearance of Ceasefire before I left. This is the second beer that Cigar City assisted with on their visit to Ballybrit and was formerly called Brigid -- some labels and tap badges still have the original name. It's a blonde sour beer with added rhubarb and sloe. While the texture is quite light it manages to create an illusion of stickiness with a kind of purple jammy flavour at the front -- it could be blackberry, or blackcurrant, but I'm guessing it's actually the sloes. And then beyond this there's a rather basic dry crisp beer with a kind of aspirin tang, leading to a damp squib of a watery finish. No rhubarb, and barely even any sourness. This is really rather a dull offering, putting in the bare minimum of effort with the flavour. Proof, if it wasn't already obvious, that sticking a big-name brewery on the label is not a guarantee of getting good beer.

Finally for now an autumn seasonal from Galway Bay called Harvest Altar, described as an "American brown ale". It has a big, but not immodest, ABV of 5.6% and uses it well, delivering a heavy satisfying body. This forms an excellent base for the warming chocolate and mocha-coffee flavours at its centre. And at the start, that's all I thought it did: it's a perfectly reasonable flavour profile for a wholesome autumnal dark ale, after all. Then the hops kicked in. I first noticed them in the aroma: a very vegetal English effect, like a bitter laden with late East Kent Goldings. As the beer warmed this came out in the flavour too: a definite hard bitterness which starts subtly but builds as it goes. I'm guessing the surprise hoppiness is another part of what makes it American-style, but you won't find any citrus here. I rather enjoyed it; it adds an interesting complexity to a rock-solid traditional style ale. Hopefully Harvest Altar will last until the temperatures really start to fall and we need to make our sacrifices to the winter gods.

For my part I'll be glued to the keyboard as the nights draw in, putting together my holiday blog posts. I've plenty of pre-scheduled content in the pipeline to keep the lights on in the meantime.

Who you calling a homophone?

Our host for the October Session is Derek from Ramblings of a Beer Runner and the topic he has chosen is gose, the native beer style of Leipzig. This light wheat beer, typically brewed with coriander and salt, survived near-extinction and has gone on to become one of the world's most fashionable styles among the crafterati. And, as Derek notes, it's becoming more famous for its chronic mispronunciation in the anglophone world of craft beer than for its unique production method and resulting flavour. So, even though everyone else is doing it, I'd like that to be my lesson out of this round of The Session: it's not pronounced "goes" and examples should not have names that make puns as though it were.

Arriving just in time for my deadline this month was a freebie bottle of Fyne Ales's This Gose (grrr) and a pack of smoked salmon from their collaborators Loch Fyne Oysters. According to the press blurb, and indeed the bottle label, the two are intended to match perfectly with each other. Let's how that goes (pronounced "goes").

The beer is a light 3.8% ABV (compare the whopping 6% of YellowBelly's one) and a pale clear yellow, topped by an ultra-fine layer of white spume. There's very little aroma but the texture is beautiful: soft and round, like a nitrokeg weissbier. The flavour starts out like an unadorned gose: a pinch of salt, mild herbs, and a clean finish. But in between, presumably from the unorthodox inclusion of lemongrass in the recipe, there's an out-of-character lemon flavour, like lemon meringue pie. I swear I even get the dry crunch of the topping and sweet biscuit of the base. It sits rather oddly next to the other savoury elements of the flavour, but not at all unpleasantly. And I took an embarrassingly long time to make the lemon connection to the salmon. Bring on the fish!

"Mild cure" said the packaging, but in my opinion it was anything but. This beast was massively smokey, just how I like it, with a gorgeous melty sushi-esque texture. As a match for the beer though? No, I'm not feeling it. The smokiness absolutely smothers the subtlety of the gose, drowning out salt, coriander and lemon alike. I was left with that nice smooth fizz to counterbalance the oils, but frankly I'd have been just as happy with a decent pilsner or pale ale.

It was a fun experiment and I don't for a second want to sound ungrateful for free beer and free fish, but the two just didn't quite dovetail for me. Any chance we can try this again with a grodziskie? This Gose, meanwhile, works better by itself. Just remember how to say it, yeah?

Running on fumes

A random pick from the back of the beer fridge: La Fumette by Belgian brewery MilleVertus. It's an ambrée, which is a style that I don't recall ever liking an example of, but the bonus is it's fumée as well. Plus it's 6.5% ABV, which is higher than usual, I think. That's got to be good.

Though bottle conditioned the sediment stayed stuck to the bottom and I got a clear glassful of something definitely amber. The head didn't hang around very long, however. It smells sweet and very boozy: I get ripe figs and plums, almost like a dubbel, plus a phenolic edge which I'm guessing is the smoke but could easily be just a result of warm fermentation.

For all the big booze it's surprisingly highly attenuated, the texture thin and, as I feared, not lifted by any proper carbonation. There's an unpleasant sour tang while, the smoke just makes it taste oxidised. A very Belgian sugary candy note finishes it off.

This is an absolutely terrible beer but at least the thin texture and low carbonation makes it easy to drink, as long as you don't mind the disgusting taste.

Turns out the only way you can go from normal ambrée is down. Give me a boring one over this any day.

Try try again

Persistence Brewing Company is the latest addition to Dublin's beer offer, its taps confined to that cluster of trendy bars along Fade Street including Idlewild, Drury Buildings and that one above L'Gueuleton that doesn't actually have a name. It took a bit of poking around to find where the beers are brewed: the brewery in the background on the Persistence website is Rascals, but that seems to have been a couple of years ago. Eventually Kevin the proprietor got back to me to say that the current range comes from JJ's in Limerick with a standalone brewery currently in planning. There'll be four beers in the range eventually, though the pils had yet to be brewed at time of writing and the red ale wasn't on tap when I dropped into Drury Buildings on a rainy lunchtime in August.

I started with the stout, P45, a 4.5% ABV session number served on nitro and looking very much the picture of mainstream industrial Irish stout. It's an especially sweet example of the style, big on chocolate with just a modicum of bitterness in the finish. And that's your lot: it has no particular stand-out features; no quirks or flaws. It's just impressively average. There's nothing here to scare the drinker of mainstream stout (or indeed anyone else) which may be just as well as the bar doesn't serve any other example on draught. This one really could do with a bit more personality.

P60 IPA was much better. An orange hazy affair, it's 6% ABV and has a lovely fresh and spicy hop aroma. It was served extremely cold so the flavours took a while to unfold. There's a nice balance of sweet sherbet zest and a harsher resinous bitterness. The former dominates at first, and is the more enjoyable element. As the beer warms it starts to get heavier and bitterer and more difficult to drink. Still, it's decent stuff and is pretty much what you'd want as a house IPA: hitting the right flavour points without being too complex.

I'll be keeping an eye out for the red and the pils, though I'm expecting similarly workmanlike performances from them as well: both are hard styles to impress with. Perhaps the flair will come once production goes in-house.