Still dobry after all these beers

The third and final day of Wrocławski Festiwal Dobrego Piwa was a scorcher. It's just as well that an international-grade football stadium provides plenty of shaded areas. On arriving at noon the Browar Grodzisk stall caught my eye immediately. Turns out it's not just a style. A cold half-litre bottle of authentic Piwo z Grosziska cost me 5zł, a smidge over €1. For those wondering about the specs of the real thing, it's 3.1% ABV and 27 IBUs courtesy of Magnum and Lubelsky hops. Sadly I don't have a PPM number for the smokiness. It's pretty damn smoky, mind, though not fishy and only slightly hammy: more like real wood fire smoke. A dry wheat crispness precedes this, the smoke rising quickly behind it before fading respectfully away. There are no jarring, clanging features: it's elegant and the simple flavours perfectly integrated. It is just a little bit too fizzy for proper refreshment, however, but that's easily fixed.

I assume that having a local boy as outgoing head of the European Council is a matter of national pride, hence Kaszubski naming its smoked imperial stout Donald T. I only had a taster of this and was glad I didn't go for more as it's far too sweet, all concentrated chocolate on a thick and sticky body. A full glass would have been too much hard work as the thermometer headed for 30°C.

The same brewery's Bytów Pils was much more like it, or should have been. I wasn't put off by the hazy orange colour. I was put off by a flavour offering parallel streams of mandarin juice and sick. From this distance I don't actually remember the experience, but my notes also mention metal and eucalyptus plus a hard pithy bitterness. The whole thing was just too busy to be refreshing. Best just move on.

The last time I had one of those fake-out pale stouts (Open Gate's Ghost Roast) I said they never work. I was tempted to give another one a go by Martyn Cornell who had enjoyed Hopium's Michaił Jakson, an imperial example at 8.5% ABV. Another hazy orange beer, this one smelled of stale coffee. It tasted of fresher coffee, but still just coffee, not stout. There's a seam of sweet syrup: vanilla, hazelnut and strawberry jam, finishing on an oily coffee bitterness. Served on cask it was a little lifeless and warm, but while it wasn't at all like an imperial stout, it was actually OK to drink.

Who wants beer without hops? I did next, apparently. Disco Ursus from Solipiwko is a 3.9% ABV wheat beer. Via, presumably, some herbal magic, it still manages to produce some light perfumey fruit flavours. There's a charming soft texture, low carbonation and ice-tea tannins which together make for easy-going, unfussy refreshment. I was charmed.

The qualifier "forest bomb" on Roch's Balios black IPA intrigued me enough to buy a glass. How piney can one make these, I wondered. Pretty piney, it turns out. There's a very pure and very real blast of pine needle in the aroma. It's there in the foretaste too -- slightly artificial and unsettling. It does blend well with the thick dark malt, though, and when it fades after the initial jolt there's a grassy marijuana buzz more in keeping with good black IPA. An odd take on the style this, but an enjoyable one. I'm glad I took the risk.

Rather than the usual midnight finish, the festival closed at 8pm on Sunday. At this stage in the early evening I felt it was OK to hit some hard stuff. Obviously I got distracted by other things almost immediately afterwards, but my next one was a 10.7% ABV mead-barrel-aged version of an imperial stout called Srogi Niedźwiedź from Łąkomin. This was a deep brown colour with a loose head of bubbles. It was my first ever mead-barrel beer and I wasn't at all surprised to find it smelled of honey, as well as honeycomb candy. Again, no surprise at the intensely sweet flavour, with lots of chocolate syrup and banana. A marker pen off-note may have been from fermentation, but it's a flavour I often get from mead too, so maybe it's legit. Either way, this was just too jarringly sugary for me. You need to really like your imperial stouts sweet.

Almost every stall had some sort of take on American-style IPA and I realised at this point that apart from the sage-flavoured gluten-free NEIPA I mentioned yesterday, I hadn't tried any. Chosen, at random, as the champion for Polish USIPA was Hopsbant from Birbant. It's 6.7% ABV and a bright orange shade. The aroma is pleasingly zingy, like orange sherbet. There's a certain pithy bitterness in the flavour: jaffa spritz at first building to a waxy and weedy crescendo before fading out as candy or orangeade. It's decent, but I was in the mood for more of a palate-scrubber.

And while I was searching for one of those I got distracted by the Warsztat bar and their Summaczne sour pale ale with sumac. It sounded interesting; it looked like coconut water and it tasted of... just water. There's a sugary lemon-barley-water effect but very little other character, and certainly not sour or hoppy enough. Only when walking away did I notice that it's only 1% ABV. That does explain the flavour, but doesn't make it forgivable.

8pm struck as I was buying another big dark beer to make up for that: Echo - Wild Barrel by Nepomucen. This is a Baltic porter of 9.3% ABV with a punchy balsamic aroma and lots of warming umami in its flavour, alongside a hint of high-cocoa dark chocolate. This exists somewhere on the spectrum between Flemish red and imperial stout, and it's a balanced profile from which other sour stouts would do well to learn.

I had paused to consider this on a bench by the Probus brewery bar. From the dramatic chalkings on their blackboard it looked like they had saved something very special for the end of the festival: "Curari Lambiczi". Could this be the sour saviour I'd been looking for all weekend? I had to get one. And of course, in the interests of science, I had to take a sample of ordinary Curari as a control.

Curari is a blackcurrant Berliner weisse -- electric pink in colour, 3.4% ABV and with an enticingly tart aroma. We were off to a good start. It's plainer to taste: grainy and almost lager-like. After this dry breadcrust the fruit swings in late but not strongly. I felt a bit gypped by that but enjoyed the proper sourness.

So what happens when a lambic culture (courtesy of The Yeast Bay) is added to this, with some wine barrel-ageing too? Curari Lambiczi is altogether more serious-looking: a dark red rather than pink, with the ABV increased to 4.9%. The serious funky aroma tells you Brettanomyces has been at work, though the berries are here too, if anything accentuated compared to the base beer. The flavour is a gorgeous gummy funky riot of Brett, with a savoury tang of salt and long-lasting macerated grapeskin and raisin. Wild yeast enthusiasts may not be astounded by how much of a difference there is between these two beers, and how much extra complexity the change brought, but I definitely was. Amazing stuff.

By now I was definitely being herded towards the exit so just time to grab a strong nightcap before all the shutters went down. In fact, I did this all three nights.

Friday's finisher was Dimi3ri from Łańcut, a popular brewery left until near midnight when their queue had died down. It's an imperial stout of 11% ABV and sweet without being sugary, showing lots of coconut up front and an old-school heartwarming cocoa richness behind. I found it both sippable and slurpable: a real all-rounder, with enough of a spirituous kick to make it complex, yet without any serious alcohol burn. Very well put together.

Saturday night it was the turn of Świdnica's Likedellers barrel-aged Baltic porter, a 9.5%-er. It's quite plain for the strength, or maybe subtle is the correct term. There's a light cherry fruitiness and a mild savoury quality, touching on soy sauce. I didn't really get any identifiable barrel effect, though it is perhaps a little sweeter and smoother than typical Baltic porter. While fine to drink -- unchallenging and decent -- it didn't excite me, and lacked the bitter invigorating punch that makes the style so wonderful.

My last beer of the festival was an arbitrarily picked Baltic porter: Porter Bałucki from Piwoteka. This 8%-er is quite dry and crisp, hiding the big dark malt well. In its place you get intensely roasted coffee, drifting into burnt toast and wood fire embers. It's a little thicker than I'd like, ideally, but it's an excellent sipper, devoid of off flavours or any unbalancing features. A little more herbal bitterness might improve it, but I'm just trying to find fault now.

I think I did OK on my vow to go to Poland and drink lots of Baltic porter. Yesterday I mentioned a pub crawl around the city of Wrocław itself. That's coming next. In the meantime, a hearty congratulations to the organisers, exhibitors and universally well-behaved clientele at this superb festival. It's a very efficient and fun way of taking the pulse of Polish beer.