A zero-three of...

Wrocławski Festiwal Dobrego Piwa -- The Wrocław Festival of Good Beer -- has solved all those things you don't like about beer festivals. Admission: free. Receptacles: glass. Beer tokens: nope. Food options: excellent. Drinking and rinsing water: plentiful. And because it's held at a football stadium, the seating and toilet capacity is far in excess of what's required.

Not that it's a small gig. There are 77 stands arranged on the concourse around two sides of the 40,000 seater, with some brewers doubling up, and most with a lengthy list of beers on offer. The choice was dizzying, and represented a significant chunk of Poland's booming beer scene. From three days of flitting randomly around the bars I did, however, get a certain sense of generic Craftonia about the offer. It seemed like everyone had the traditional styles -- their pils, their weizen and their Baltic porter -- and then a plethora of trend-chasers: New England IPA, fruited sour ales, barrel-aged imperial stouts, much of it indistinguishable or unremarkable from one brewer to the next. Next to none of them seemed to specialise in particular styles or processes. I did make an effort to pick unusual-looking beers when I saw them, so hopefully the reviews which follow won't be too generic in turn.

I liked the glass arrangement: three official designs were available to buy at the festival shops, but most of the brewers had their own branded glasses for sale and you could use those if any took your fancy. Presumably you could also have brought your own from home, or there was the default option of the plain plastic tumbler. Servings for most beers were offered in 0.2cl and 0.3cl (plus plenty of 0.5cl offerings, Ron), and since I was in no rush I opted for the middle measure. "A zero-three" was how the brewers all phrased it to this bewildered monoglot, so "a zero-three" was the order.

I mentioned yesterday a dry visit to the Widawa brewery, and so that's where we started upon arriving at the festival just after opening on Friday afternoon. Our guide Tomasz had created a beer with them, a pale ale which claimed to be Poland's hoppiest. Beware of Shark is only 4.7% ABV. It's a hazy orange colour and has a thick New England texture. The flavour is an odd mix of savoury and sweet: blending strawberry and sesame. There's not very much going on beyond that. I waited for a bitter flourish to arrive in the aftertaste but it never came. I think I expected something more spectacular from this.

Widawa also created a Baltic porter for it's 7th Anniversary, an 11.5% ABV monster with a luxuriously rich blend of coffee, chocolate and whiskey. Silky smooth yet incredibly powerful, it's up with the best of Europe's barrel-aged imperial stouts. You'd never guess it's a lager, that's for sure.

Next up is Dwóch Braci and the first fruited sour beer of the gig: Juicy Rider. It follows the frustrating pattern I mentioned yesterday in that it's not at all sour. Mango is the fruit they've used, to 15% of the total ingredients, and it produces something at 4.3% ABV which looks like egg yolk and tastes like a smoothie. It's bitty, it's gritty and it doesn't taste like beer. Not my bag at all.

The daft name and branding of Funky Fluid meant I almost gave them a swerve, but that would have been a terrible mistake. It doesn't look like the sort of operation than can turn out a superb pils but its Pils Please is exactly that. Clear gold with a herbal aroma, it simply exudes freshness. There's a clean and crunchy green cabbage bitterness as well as a soft honey-and-syrup sweetness. I'd call it more Czech style than German, but it's absolutely classical in how it's put together.

That made me brave enough to chance one of their fruity sour numbers, rejoicing in the name of Funk You #4. They've piled everything into the juicer here: passionfruit, mango, apricot and lime. The last of these adds a lovely tang which almost makes up for the fact that, once again, there's pretty much zero sourness. Fruit pulp is what it tastes of, but at least there's an interesting blend of flavours this time. It wouldn't work at all without the lime bitterness.

Back to the pils, then, and Długi Weekend from Za Miastem, just outside Poznań. It's clear, of course, and quite a dark gold; the ABV a middle-of-the-road 5%. Immediate plus points are awarded for the creamy texture, and a follow-up bonus for the fresh and grassy Saaz flavour. This gets intense very quickly, leaning a little too close to plastic for comfort but I got used to it and by the end of the glass was having a wonderful time. This can be sipped to enjoy the hop kick slowly, or slurped for a satifyingly filling sort of refreshment. Bang on.

Hajer had a dinky little scam running at their stall. Buy one beer, get a złoty off your next. I'd only gone over for their RIS imperial stout. It's a moderate 8.3% ABV but came on very thick and hot from the first sip. Fortunately the strong bitterness helps temper this, as does a roasted burnt caramel effect. All the classic features of the style, then, in good proportion. Maybe I've been drinking too many barrel aged or weirdly-enhanced variants, but I found it a little boring too: missing any real distinguishing features. I'm probably just spoilt; there's nothing at all wrong with this.

What could follow that but another stout: Farorz, claiming to be American style, and just 5% ABV. From the description I should have expected the massive rush of citrus which almost drowns out the sweet coffee roast. That calms down after a moment to become a kind of urinal-cake, herbs-and-flowers effect. It's difficult to argue with the concept, though: you want a hoppy stout? That's what you get. The different elements are still just distinct enough for it to be considered balanced, albeit in a slightly extreme way. All of which is to say I'm not sure if I enjoyed it or not.

Time for another one of those sweet so-called sour beers? I hadn't totally given up on finding one that was actually sour, and pinned my latest hope on Rozgwiazda from Gorzka Prawda, a purported gose with cherries. It's only 3.7% ABV, light and soft with effervecent sherbet fruitiness and some novelty bathsalts thrown in for good measure. Tangy is as close as it gets to tart, but it's very much in a candy sort of way -- cherry sweets more than the real thing. It's hard to be angry with a silly fluffy number like this, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I called it a night there.

Next day, with the gates open at 12, I stopped first by the Dobry Browar stand for their Czarna ("black") IPA z Gniezna (Gniezno is the brewery's home town and they seem inordinately proud to represent it). This is pleasantly heavy and thick, though also manages an intense dryness on the finish. Before that there's a flower bomb of hops: violet and lavender, plus a powerful burst of spritzy citrus. There's a slightly harsh edge which makes it more serious than is ideal, but I enjoyed it.

The brewer was very keen to show off his other wares, including a Martell-aged Baltic porter, Porter z Gniezna. This is still a Baltic porter to its core, 8.3% ABV, clean and bitter, with a mix of liquorice and dark chocolate in the ascendant. The spirit adds a superb extra dimension: a warmth and a smoothness, rounding off the harder edges beautifully. A real luxury sipping beer, this.

The next two he wanted me to taste were both gluten-free, seemingly a new direction for the brewery and they're desperate for feedback. Owsiane z Gniezna is brewed from a 100% oat grist and is a milky yellow colour. Despite Simcoe, Rakau and Fuggles hops it's rather sweet, offering a summery hit of strawberry jam. I found it a little sickly, though I'd never have believed there's no gluten.

NEIPA z Gniezna employs an unorthodox mix of sage and chamomile, and as a result has a massive herbal sage aroma. A soft texture is the only nod to New England IPA that I could find; no hop fruit or vanilla. I like sage in a beer, but I still wasn't sure what to make of this. I'm sure the gluten-dodgers will find it as interesting as I did. Onwards.

My favourite branding of the festival -- and there were lots of superb examples -- was the modernist style of Cztery Ściany. I paid tribute to that with a zero-three of Squat, described as an apple sour saison. It's a bright and clear gold colour and smells like appleade, all apple concentrate and fizz. There's a floral honey foretaste followed by an inrush of booze which made me check the ABV. 7.6%! The syrupiness is the dominant feature all the way through here, which is a bit of a shame. Only a slight saison earthiness in the background provides any balance, and it not really enough. Unacceptable sweetness strikes again!

That set me on a quest for the most convoluted sour beer I could find, which led me to the Maryensztadt stand, and a glass of their Joyride, which came with a whopping 17zł (€4) price tag. It's brewed with ariona (black chokeberry) and aged in Rioja wine barrels, finishing up at 8% ABV. It's a pinky-purple colour with a strong oak aroma and tastes like a good, if slightly clumsy, take on a Flemish red ale -- cherry is the main flavour, actual real sour cherry, for once. The relief of finding something properly tart allowed me to overlook the overdone barrelling.

I sat with that a while, during which time I was joined by Martyn Cornell. He was bearing an even more expensive beer: Swidnica's Jopejskie, an authentically-brewed Danzig jopenbier, starting with a Baltic porter wort of 50° Plato, boiled for 24 hours with spruce, cool fermented, wild fermented and then barrel-aged. You can read what he thought of it in his account of the trip here. I was less impressed. It tasted like hot autolytic gravy to me, like paradoxically savoury caramel, and the sort of thing that cannot be doing the drinker any good. Bleurgh. We agreed to disagree. And then we went to the pub.

What we found in the pub will follow later in the week; the rest of the fest continues tomorrow.