I've built up a random assortment of To-Øl tasting notes in past months which I need to convert into a blog post. The oldest is from September 2018, when I landed in to UnderDog and found Ms Grey, a bière de garde of 7% ABV, the last remnant of the Ms-series of beers which I otherwise Ms'sd. I was surprised, and rather charmed by the fruit aroma, all luscious peach and apricot. Nothing agéd about that. It may have been Brettanomyces at work, however, as there was some of that yeast's telltale residual gumminess. The flavour was just as interesting, mixing jasmine perfume with cedar spices, finishing on a harder bitterness, almost like a west coast IPA. This is not at all how I remember French bière de garde tasting, but I'm not complaining: it's a very good beer.
A double dessert to follow, beginning with What the Fudge?, a 11% ABV imperial stout. It took me a while to figure out what the unusual aroma was. Not fudge anyway. I eventually pinned it as Irn Bru: that sickly artificial fruit thing. Obviously it was going to taste sweet, and I was quite discombobulated when it didn't. Instead it tastes sharply burnt and unpleasantly savoury. There's a throat-scorching heat and a metal twang on the end. I feel I'm within my rights to expect smoothness, sweetness and luxury from a beer like this, but that is definitely not what is delivered. "A bit crap" says my note from last November. That about sums it up.
Was the equally gimmicky Goliat Maple Beacon going to be any better? Another imperial stout, this was slightly lighter, at 10.2% ABV. The name references the use of maple syrup, and maybe smoked malt as well? Again this is quite dry, high in bitterness with a tangy phenolic seasoning and a touch of salt. And again I was looking for that rich chocolate effect which was completely missing. It's not offensive like the previous one, but not great, even by pastry stout standards.And another gimmick to finish us off. Dangerously Close To Stupid Amounts of Lychee is one of a series of fruited IPAs, this one coming it at 9.3% ABV. It's a clear orange colour say my notes; my phone tells me I didn't bother photographing it in the gloom of late-night UnderDog. I was expecting lots of tacked-on syrupy lychee but it turned out to mainly taste of toffee, with the fruit no more than a gentle afterthought. A hard aspirin bitterness is all that the hops bring. This didn't really deliver as a fruit beer or a double IPA.
Is it harsh of me to suggest that some of these recipes are demonstrative of what's wrong with beer in general these days? Daring doesn't mean good.
IANAB, but it sounds like there are two problems here. One is the "Pile in the fruit, pile in the sugars, go crazy! What will it taste like? Who knows!" approach, which is bound to be a bit hit-and-miss. The other is that, when they do go crazy, they don't (apparently) have the basic brewing nous to come up with a pastry stout that's sweet or dense, or a fruited IPA that tastes like either fruit or IPA. (Compare BrewDog's more experimental brews - on paper they often look like they're just chucking everything in, but their [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] [style] beers do at least tend to taste like [style].)
ReplyDeleteBah, humbug.
I agree. Though one would have thought, with the stuff being brewed in Belgium, someone there would have had the technical ability to get it right.
DeleteDisagree re what the fudge. It was excellent.
ReplyDeleteOK, you've convinced me.
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